Les Girls du Saint-Apolline

Paris. La Gare du Nord. It’s early evening… I get off the train from Amsterdam after being stripped naked by French narcs. I load my stuff into a taxi and head for La Porte Saint-Martin, which is 75 meters from Le rue Saint-Apolline where the unseen apartment I signed up for is located. La rue Saint-Apolline is also known as ‘’hooker alley,” an attribute I was unaware of when I signed up for my apartment. This street is like a scene from Irma La Douce, but without Shirley McLaine and without the music and dancing. I unload my stuff from the taxi and walk the short walk to La rue St.-Apolline. In front of the doorway to my apartment building, I see the girlfriend of my propriétaire waiting for me. She looks troubled. She paces nervously in one direction, then another. As I approach, she backs away. Her lips convulse into a large oval…”NOooooo!” she cries. I stop. “Francoise,” I say to her. “C’est moi, Robert.” She looks relieved. “Oh,” she says, “I thought you were a client!” “A client?” I ask. “Yes,” she says. “Look down the street.” Poised provocatively in the doorways of La rue Saint Apolline, I see the shadowy figures of women. “Ah!” I say. “You were worried you might be mistaken for une femme du rue.” “Yes,” she says. “This has happened; I’ve learned to be careful.” “You can’t be too careful,” I reply. I was soon to learn that this trite cliché should have been taken more seriously. Two days later…I’m feeling pretty comfortable in my new apartment on La rue Saint Apolline. The neighborhood épicerie is on the corner of La rue Saint-Dennis….(so many Saints!)… right down the street from my apartment. I stop to pick up une baguette, du vin, et du lait. At the Kiosk on the corner, I buy a copy of today’s newspaper… Le Figaro. These are the emblems of my neighborhood membership. I live in the neighborhood, and when les girls of St.-Apolline see these emblems, they’ll know I’m not a client. They would not hit on a neighbor. Right? No! Wrong! These emblems turned out to be worthless. This feeble attempt at subterfuge was no match for the romatique penchants of les girls of St.-Apolline. Baguette under one arm, Le Figaro under the other, I’m yanked…or hooked…off the sidewalk into the shadowy doorway of a hotel de pass (this is how the name “hooker” came about). The hooker wraps her arms around me… more like a restraint than a hug. She brings her face close to mine. Her perfume is heady…and surprisingly expensive. The delicious, intoxicating scent envelopes my senses. I feel faint. I feel heat radiating from her body…it’s intense and accompanied by an odeur suggestive of body fluids but not entirely displeasing. “Tu viens, cherie?” she asks. Sweet the smile on thy lips…red as blood tides rising. I tell her this and she laughs. “Do you want words or love?” she asks. I breathe her perfume and feel myself drifting into timeless space where sense and sensibility part company. “Non, cherie,” I tell her. “Tonight I have a rendezvous to dance the tango at La Balajo. “Ah,” she says, “you are a danseur of the tango…the dance of amour, non? Come,” she says, “we shall dance the tango on the way to my chambre.” She seizes my left hand in hers, assumes a classic tango pose, and, humming a few bars from La Compensita, moves into the doorway of the hotel. Her arm encircles my neck like a gaucho’s whip as I’m dragged towards the dark shadows of the hotel courtyard where waits….who knows what? “Row—bear?”….a voice reaches me from beneath the lampposts on the sidewalk. It’s Francoise on her way home. “Is that you hiding in the doorway? she says.”. “Yes, cherie,” I shout back, “I’m coming right away.” The gaucho grip around my neck weakens. I free myself. “Sorry,” I tell the girl in the doorway, “my date is getting impatient, and maybe a little jealous; she can be dangerous.” “Perhaps later,” says the girl in the doorway, “on fait l’amour gentiment.” I confess that I continued my relationship with Claudie, the rue Saint-Apolline girl, as well as her friends … but as a neighbor rather than as a client. We are all neighbors living and working on the same street, n’est-ce pas. I was curious…and would it not be impolite to ignore one’s neighbors? The girls of La rue Saint Apolline have humour and warmth and many other admirable attributes besides their professional qualifications. Each has her own Greek tragedy to tell…but these are tales for another time. Copyright (c) Paris New Media, LLC Bonjour Paris is pleased to have Robert Osborne as a contributor.