One
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
My tentative plans were to go to Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, perhaps Finland and back to Paris. And then from there or here now to London.
I met her standing in line at the American Express in Paris. She was American from Seattle, living in Paris by her wits, selling newspapers on the street or some such thing. Think she was a student originally. The story was: to get a job you needed a work permit, but to get a work permit you had to have-already a job. She was about five-seven in height, shoulder length brown hair, good figure, and fairly good looking maybe with a Chagall moon face. She lived on Montmartre. And she was a bit of a user, but wouldn't admit to it.
She would say, "Oh - drive me over to the Shakespeare and Company Book-store and I will introduce you to George Whitman the proprietor. It was a famous place where Hemingway, Joyce and Ezra Pound hung out - way back when. It was still a hangout for young would-be writers, and was like what I would later learn to be, the City Lights book-store in North Beach, San Francisco. And she did take me there and she knew the guy, and he had some kind of wishing well in the shop with a canopy, where for a small donation which she made, he would somehow produce a fire that would flame up out of the well - big wishing sell. He seemed like a nice enough guy and although I had read a good deal of Hemingway, I was out of my depth here.
But when we were riding, her on the back of my scooter, she would suddenly say, "Oh - stop here I have to get something !"
(50 of 278)
Next Page
