Something To Live For

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"Okay, so what's your new name?" Cava asked.

"I'm not going to tell you. Only to you and a friend in New York was I ever Jean Valier or Solomon Ayre. As to my future payments we’ll set up something discreet. My old nom de camera will appear nowhere ever again. Jean Valier disappeared in New York. When I call from now on I'll say Gino, which is not my real new name, but you'll know me as Gino. Never call me Solomon again. It’s Gino, remember it.”

"I find that insulting," Cava said. "You don’t trust me?"

"What if your phone is tapped?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Why would my phone be tapped?"

"Why not?" Solomon asked, "I can think of a lot of reasons, pissed off insurance companies for one, they just do it, they don't ask for a court order. You know that, this country isn't a paragon of equal justice for all. If you have enough piston here you get a phone, you get a residence permit, you get a f*****g wiretap. A friend of mine in New York once told me to always assume the worst if you've broken the law just a teensy weensy bit and if you haven't, then assume zero. It's good advice. Keeps the mind on edge."

"I still think––"

"What if I had said I was Jean Valier when I called you to set up this meeting?" Solomon asked, interrupting Cava. "Even using Jean Valier as a cover at the start of our collaboration in New York wasn't smart. And saying I was a friend of Valier’s when I called Gamma now was risky, but I knew it would get you out of your office. The police or even Interpol and insurance bounty hunters too, they now follow you to meet Valier's friend because they remember the name Valier appeared on some shocking photos in New York last year. Some folks may think it’s worth keeping an eye on Gamma, maybe there’s a connection between Gamma and Valier and the bank heist. Valier was an innocent bystander? Or was he in on it? You lead the cops to me here and now and voilà. You can imagine the rest. I’m done for. I'm being realistic, which is a polite way of saying I'm f*****g paranoid. I got that from my friend in New York too."

"What if I have to get a hold of you?" Cava asked.

"Call me here." Solomon gave Cava a slip of paper with a number. In fact the number was a phone in a small camera repair shop in an alley near Les Halles. An American draft dodger whom Solomon had befriended and now paid regularly ran the place.

"What is this?" Cava asked.

"There you can leave a message for Gino. I never call from there. I never go there. And if you find the place and anybody, and that includes you, goes there in person you’ll be informed there’s no Gino.”

"Oh yeah?"

"Cava, it's safer this way. I'm sure you’ll understand. You get in touch with me for work. My friend in New York is the only person, apart from you, who knows I am in Paris. If that person gets in touch, you call this number and leave a message."

"Okay. Your friend in New York, what’s his name? Or her name?"

"It’s a he. Tatti. Remember it."

"I already have," Cava said.

"Now, take a look at these." From his inside pocket Solomon extracted the contact sheets and the negatives of the second bank robbery. Cava took out a magnifying glass and looked at the contact sheets.

"These are incredible!"

"Thanks, Cava. Take these photographs and sell them. I need money."

"Sure. They’re great photos."

“We both believe in luck. It takes two to tango. We're helping each other. One more thing and I’m dead serious about this. Don’t go blabbing to anybody about me and that means nobody, not even Bo when you see her in New York."

"I'm not seeing her anymore," Cava said.

"Oh, really? What happened?"

"She’s seeing this other guy, some hot shot lawyer, I think."

"A lawyer? Ever see the fellow?"

"No. I never had the honor. Don't even know his name."

"I'm sorry about you and Bo."

"Who knows?" Cava said. "I was so crazy about her. Still am really. And don't worry, I won't say a thing. You are a great photographer. For me you're a hero or you will be one day when your pictures are published with your name on them."

"Not for now. Keep my name off," Solomon said.

"Yes, sure. You know I wouldn’t say or do anything to harm you."

"What are you going to do about Bo?"

"Ah, that is none of your business," Cava said. "I have my secrets, you have yours, Gino."

Cava paid the bill and both men stood up to leave.

Chapter 2

Solomon stayed on in Paris.

He never lacked for work. He went abroad some times on photo assignments. When he was away he made sure to call Esperanza and Rose every day. He never let himself forget that Jesse’s father would go to great lengths to track down Rose and take her back to the U.S. Solomon stayed in Paris as much as possible. Although he trusted Esperanza he worried about his daughter when he was away.

He had expected some news from Tatti after the second month in Paris, but none came.

Solomon struggled with the Gallic language. The French he had learned in high school had quickly come back to him. He discovered that nobody in France or anywhere else for that matter spoke French without making mistakes. Grammatically it was a difficult and rigid language. Everybody made mistakes, including the president of the country. What other Latin based language, Solomon asked himself, was so persnickety about rules that some past participles had three e's in a row? Granted, two of them had an accent aigu, but still. And yet most grammatical rules were riddled with exceptions.

He was appalled at the rudeness of Parisians in general and of waiters in particular. He could sit in a bistro and wait until the cows came home before the waiter deigned to notice him. When the waiter at last did sidle up and realized that Solomon didn’t speak French fluently the waiter often just walked away. Once Solomon began to master the Gallic tongue he did what most Parisians did, namely be extremely rude and get quick service, everywhere, be it at the corner brasserie or at the post office where the rudeness of the employees was legendary.

Cava occasionally took Solomon along to dinner parties and some times Solomon took Rose along. He soon discovered that Parisians did not particularly like babies, especially those, who were not toilet trained. Propre was the French word used for toilet trained. Propre meant clean. Parisians preferred clean babies. Babies who were not toilet trained were dirty. Small children in general were not welcome at dinner parties. And the same attitude prevailed in restaurants where there were never any high chairs for kids. Parisian eateries preferred to welcome dogs rather than very young human beings. Dogs, particularly purebred ones, were a status symbol. Children were a nuisance.

And Solomon grew tired of the food mania. Food was an ongoing, national obsession. Whenever he was invited to somebody's house for a meal the talk invariably turned to the food and where the hostess had bought it and how she had prepared it, and oh yes, she had gone clear across town to buy the bread at that special boulangerie, you know, the one by the Gare du Nord where they also made the best éclairs and Paris-Brests and as far as the fish went, well, for that you had to go the fishmonger on the Rue Marbeuf, that was really the only place in town to buy fish if you really cared about what you ate, we're not Americans after all, just look at those amerloques, they're all so fat and that's because they eat so badly and as for our mussels here, now that was something else altogether, the place to buy mussels was at the Place Clichy, but the problem with going there was that there were so many whores in the neighborhood.

And so it went. When it came to the wine it was always the same tra-la-la. Ah, the wine, merciful God in heaven help me, Solomon thought, as the guests talked about the bouquet, the robe, the transparency, the maturity, the youth, the age, the tears, the color, and the attaque. Solomon liked that term best, belle attaque, for example, meant the wine dribbled its way smoothly and aromatically down your gullet. And there was also millésime this and millésime that, this vignoble and that terroir.

Solomon tried to learn how the French developed their taste for food and wines and cheeses, but very rarely did he come across a person, who really knew what she or he was talking about. After a few years in Paris Solomon came to the conclusion that food was a limited subject matter and that any country so obsessed with food had little time to dwell upon more important matters such as dignity and courage, to name but two.

What Solomon came to detest more than French culinary blowhards were American culinary blowhards, who tried to out-French the locals when it came to food. In comically accented French these Americans pontificated about food and wines at the slightest prodding. More galling was that these Americans usually referred to themselves as expats, when in reality they were fat cats earning whopping salaries at large American companies or law offices and were in Paris only for a three-year stint until their contracts ran out.

The real American expats Solomon felt close to were of a different stripe, they were the ones who steered clear of the American Embassy and avoided the consular office on the Rue Saint Florentin like the plague. Most of these other Americans lived in Paris illegally, working and getting by without residence and work permits. Solomon heard humiliating stories of young Americans trying to get a residence permit without the help of savvy, well connected, and expensive lawyers, stories of queuing up day after day, starting in the wee hours of the morning, at the Préfecture de Police on the

Île de la Cité. The bureaucrats there treated these young Americans of modest means like cattle. And invariably just at the moment when the residence permit was within reach the youngster would be informed that yet another document was missing. There was always one more piece of paper to present and the waiting began again the next day. A piece of paper. A document to prove who you were, how you were allowed to survive––if you were even permitted to stay in Paris.

Anybody could be stopped any time on the street or in the metro and be required to show identity papers. Vos papiers s'il vous plaît, those were the dreaded words and the cops, les flics, could keep you locked up for three days, no phone call, no lawyer. Papers. Documents. Expulsion. Boot you out of the country. Solomon was indeed grateful that along with his forged passport, Tatti had also furnished Solomon with a long-term visa and a residence permit. Liberté. Egalité. Papiers d'identité. Paranoid was the thing to be. And any American who was not working for a large firm and yet looked legal and comfy could be CIA. The Vietnam War was raging and yes, paranoia was a realistic attitude to have, especially if you were a young American and prime fodder for the U.S. armed forces.

In New York Solomon had worked with a hidden camera and that was how he had achieved his first successes. But in Paris he stopped using a concealed camera. He photographed young Americans, their tribulations with the law, the places where they worked illegally, and the places where they gathered in the evenings, in small apartments, sometimes in Solomon's own abode, far from Montparnasse and Saint Germain des Prés. When they appeared in magazines Solomon’s photographs demystified the Paris of artists and intellectuals.

His pictures cast a revealing light on the wealthy, pretentious artistes, who paraded themselves on the terraces of expensive cafes like