Those You Meet Along the Way: Suzanne

It’s April in Paris. We’re in a camp ground. A trumpet wakes us . . .Every day.
We are enchanted. Nothing around us. Makes us forget how to play. Hey. I got no future as song writer. Anyway, we are in Paris and there’s a world famous trumpeter next door. Had a role in the Louis Armstrong movie about musicians in Paris. He plays a lot of Biderbeck. Then there’s a kid who sleeps until dark, goes in to the jazz joints, comes home at two AM and goes to the bathroom to run chords and standards until dawn. He is trying to master everything Thelonius Monk ever wrote. He came over following a girl, hoping to become a pro. She left him, he’s still following his dream.

Every day we take the train to Paris, have lunch on some bench and do the next gallery, or wander about one of the parks we haven’t visited. Sometimes we watch the police rounding up the illegal using mopeds and herding them like stubborn cattle off to the busses, then the planes or ships back to Algeria or points south. We meet a friend from Spain namedKarl and help him write a guide to cheap restaurants and good wine bars. There seems no end to each day, yet it comes so quickly. And suddenly we have five former students clustered about our tent and truck. Two came from Asia. One is photographing A Small Slice Of The Big Pie, and will become a well thought of pro. Two are from Amsterdam and still have traces of what that city is infamous or famous for. The last from England, following the other guy from Adam. It’s a good time for all except for one lonely girl who's boyfriend neglects her.

After they shove off, Marilyn and I run into Suzanne and her Finish lover-husband. She has a very good soprano voice and my dwarf is an alto who can bust down doors with hers. They sit around singing in the evenings while her guy tries to convince me that being a kept man is cool. I’ve been there and it ain’t at all. After a couple of days Suzanne disappears for the day, sometimes late at night. When Zeck asks her what’s up, she confesses she’s with kid. He refuses to work so she goes into the Metro and sings for their suppers. Suzanne likes the sound of Zeck’s voice as they sing duets and suggests that she come along the next day's for a gig.

Next afternoon they’re off and I followed later. When I got to their station, I had to pass a string trio, a Cuban Bongo player and a trumpet player trying to make like Dizzy. Stiff competition if you ask me. But Parisians have tastes. You got to be good or you get nothing. The open guitar box has lots of coins and a few bills. So I settle in across on a bench and listen. They do Kenny Rogers, The Gambler. "You've got to know when to hold 'em." My Dwarf stayed until she got hungry before folding, and Suzanne kept right on going. Later she tried to split money with Marilyn but got turned down. The Fin grinned and asked if I wanted to join up. We moved our site the next afternoon. And oh yes, she blew him off, went back home and had her son. We got letters and Xmas cards for a long time. But when I think of her, I can only see her no good husband, sleeping on a tarp in the mid day sun while she . . . .so it goes.

So it was April In Paris. We never got tired of sitting under a tree. We camped for six weeks at Maison Lafitte. We made friends. We became temporary family on the loop for the full timers.
It was wondrous in Paris. Lost in Ilse de Cite. Always believing we could forever stay free.
Wish we had more time. Seven weeks wasn’t long. Not to sing a song about Paree! Sorry.