French Whispering


Now it is dark in the theater. The curtain whispers and opens her arms. An actor is on the stage. Your eyeballs fire taser wires into his tenders and a current of pure love surges through the wires and hits him full power. His face contorts into a terrible leer, like the face of a madman locked in the basement when you finally shine the light down there.

“My god, Captain, he’s being kept down here like an animal in a cage.”

“Right you are Jenkins. Imagine the bloody paperwork on this, eh? I mean, if it takes us half the afternoon to go about normal business, what’s it take us on something like this, eh? A fucking madman in the cellar, and we found him there, eh? Bloody nightmare. I say we shoot’im, eh?”

“Shoot’im? Bloody bugger gets locked in a cage by some demented bloke and suffers the loss of his facility in consensual affairs, and all the time what must he be thinking? I’ll tell you what. He’s thinking, ‘If only the bloody police would find me.’ So we find him, and do we go after him that’s put his mate in solitaire? ‘Here, why would you do such a thing?’ No, we bloody shoot’im! Who let you on the bloody force is what I want to know.”

“Calm down, somebody’s hit you with a love cannon.”

You begin to write a song, called, “On the Trail of Love.” It is a song about a predator who feeds on love, like a vampire feeds on blood. “I must have your love,” he breathes with a vaguely Fench accent. He has practiced French breathing at the academy and does it with confidence. His vocal chords unzip with lazy precision as the phrase drifts from him like faraway conversation. “I must have your love.”

He is making strange, insinuating movements and lifting one eyebrow for emphasis.

“Yes officer, that man right over there."

You begin to run along a mobius loop.

“Halt!”

You realize you are through with songwriting because it only leads to trouble with the law, when all you were looking for was love. You remember the song was “On the Trail of Love,” and now you know what it’s about. It’s about vampires, madmen, corrupt policemen, and French breathing school. It’s about strange facial gestures and miscommunication between men and women.

“What’s it about?” the production mogul asks. You could never have met him except somebody did you a favor and got you in to see him. But you’re ready. You know what “On the Trail of Love” is about. It’s about a woman on a train who hears a French whisper in her ear. It’s about being shot with a Taser because you tried to run away from the police. It’s about playing imagination, just like when you were a kid.

“I love it,” The mogul says, going all emo. “It reminds me of when I was a kid and used to play with my imagination. Then I stopped and started playing with my ... well, let me take the treatment with me, kid, and I’ll see what development thinks about it.”

There is a man watching you as you come out of the restaurant. He saw you with a mover and shaker. He is watching you, like he wants to say something to you. The sign which he wears for six bucks an hour advertises a local card reader, “Madam Shelly. She sees behind the veil of time.”

He speaks to you and you say, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t smoke,” vaguely offended that he didn’t ask for your autograph. You are struck by a mean impulse to push his wheelchair over the edge of the curb. “I really should talk to somebody,” you realize. “Taxi!” You give the driver the address of your therapist.

“I’m not in the business of psychiatry,” he says. “My clients are not low functioning people. They know that to function at a high level you need somebody to audit your analysis, the same as you need a CPA to audit the books. You don’t need to waste a lot of time figuring out the process if you hire a guide. In the end, it is economical."

“I”m sorry,” you say, “but I am seriously disturbed and need to be medicated."

Now you can’t get a taxi downtown. “Of all the days to have a fight with my therapist,” you think to yourself. Maybe you could go back and say you’re sorry. Your mind reels round and round like black wheeling birds high in the sky. “Buzzards! Wait! I’m alive!”

They grudgingly flap away.

The people behind you keep whispering. You are irritated because they are French whisperers. The only thing you understood was when the woman said, "This is no Hollywood ending."

Posted: Tue - January 10, 2006 at 04:15 PM