glanced again at his reflection in the window. He was dressed with a kind of upscale urban casualness in a white shirt open at the collar without a tie, a dark blue blazer and gray dress slacks. Once again he found it familiar yet different. He had spent three nights in this neighborhood, living at the hotel where Mireille had stayed when she first came to Paris. At night when he prowled the bars and clubs in the street, he had dressed in a fashion close to the reflected image, but he had not owned a blue blazer. The jacket he had worn then had been a neutral brown and his trousers a dark black. Despite his effort to accommodate the variations, he felt a sense of disorienting unease, an inescapable sensation that something was amiss. He turned away from the glass-enclosed concert. He shivered involuntarily as another burst of cold air swept up the street scattering a few scraps of waste paper while eliciting some nervous giggles from stylish young women whose skirts fluttered up their well toned thighs. Steam arose from a freshly deposited brown pile in the middle of the sidewalk - a reminder that the French loved dogs but regarded cleanup duties with notably less enthusiasm.
The streetlights responded to a gradually deepening twilight. The sky held a faint trace of light from the passing day that had not yet fully surrendered to the darkness of a Paris night. The Quartier Saint Ambrosise, like much of the 11th Arrondisement, had undergone substantial changes in recent years. Once largely a commercial - industrial district it was being transformed more and more into a hip residential area favored by young urbanites who found the lower property costs attractive. The grand reconstruction of Paris in the 19th century had largely spared the area. The streets remained narrowly confined and lined with venerable brick structures, some that were centuries old. The contrast between the remnants of earlier times and the sophisticated bars and restaurants blossoming along the Rue Oberkampf could be both visually dissonant but throughly appealing.
Mckenzie continued to find the city scape familiar, and yet, with each step more and more unsettling. His memories of his 1982 excursion overlay the features of the street and the surrounding buildings like a traced image resting atop another picture. There should be a way to align the two images, to make one consistent with the other. Nevertheless, there were discrepancies he could not resolve. He clearly recalled the dance club he was approaching, the raucous sound of a driving rock and roll beat enticing a more energetic crowd than those who frequented Chez Grenier. The music sounded out of place - as if the DJ inside had picked up the wrong stack of records. Three doors further down there was a restaurant where he had eaten lunch on his last day in Paris. The name was wrong. It had been called La Bonne Garoupe but the sign above the entrance now proclaimed it to be La Taverre. Why was that wrong?
He tried to physically seize his mind and shake it as if it were an unruly child. He sought to regain the rational persona that had been slipping out of his grasp with each succeeding step. Stop trying to make all of this fit into some understandable context. Delusions aren’t bound by what you think you know. It is all going to end soon anyway. Either you will regain consciousness or you will die. Stop treating this like a puzzle you can solve.
Mckenzie suddenly became aware of an approaching couple who looked at him with a trace of apprehension before averting their eyes and hurriedly walking past. In their evident discomfort, they edged over to the portion of the sidewalk furthest from him. That is just great, he thought, realizing that his internal monologue must have inadvertently become audible. This was exactly what he wanted to avoid, behaving like some kind of crazy, ranting street person, or a refugee from an old Twilight Zone episode.
Glancing across the Rue Oberkampf, he felt a comfortable sense of visual symmetry restore itself. The little wine bar that had decorated a portion of its wall with Mireille’s pictures was precisely where he recalled it. The name painted prominently on the window, Les Caves, was as comfortably familiar as the faint notes from a solo piano emerging from inside. He found himself wondering if you could actually taste wine in the midst of a hallucination. It was time to find out, he thought.
The traffic on the narrow one-way street had increased. As the early evening haze gave way to the full darkness of night, cars on the tight passage way snaked forward, bumper to bumper. Flashing headlights illuminated both the street and the inevitable illegally parked vehicle that constricted the roadway even more than usual. Horns blasted at the offender with a wasted fury since the driver had already dashed inside a store and could not hear the anger he had unleashed. Nevertheless the operators of the other vehicles felt duty bound to exercise the fundamental French right to be irritated by every other driver they encountered.
Mckenzie timed a gap between two passing cars and dashed across the street. It felt comforting to be engaged once more in the venerable Parisian custom of aggressive jay walking. Then he experienced a renewed sense of unease as he reached the security of the sidewalk. There was something about the cars in the parade - like procession behind him that was out of focus. Trying to brush aside that indefinable sensation of doubt, he entered Les Caves.
The rising cloud of cigarette smoke filled a relatively small space, tables and chairs jammed together so close that a communal intimacy was unavoidable. The introspective music was being played by a young woman whose huge piano filled a far corner of the room. All of this matched his memories. Almost. The tables were all occupied by couples or small groups, savoring the excellent variety of wines offered by Les Caves. Everyone seemed to talk, smoke and drink at the same time without missing a beat of the music. Waiters navigated the crowded floor with practiced aplomb, never spilling a drop of liquid from their skillfully balanced trays. Without bothering to look for an empty table, Mckenzie ran the obstacle course to the bar that extended the length of the far wall.
Sliding into a vacant stool, Mckenzie was greeted with surprising alacrity by the middle aged man tending this section of the bar.
“Bonsoir Monsieur”
“Good evening,” Mckenzie replied. He remembered clearly the grimaces his attempted French accent had garnered on his previous visit so he chose to stay in English as much as possible. “A glass of chateauneuf du pape please.”
The bartender smiled approvingly and turned away. At that moment, the piano piece rose in volume in a triumphant cord before fading softly away. A restrained but appreciative round of applause filled the room. An attractive woman rose from behind the piano, smiled at the crowd ,and offered a grateful bow of thanks. One of the waiters approached and presented her with a glass containing a clear liquid. The empty Perrier bottle on the tray indicated that she was not sampling the specialties of the establishment, at least not, while she was performing.
Mckenzie had just raised his wine glass to his lips when he felt an involuntary tremor shake his hand. He turned to watch the lovely pianist pass through a door into an unseen part of the bar. Her hair, blonde, thick, and flowing hung down well past her shoulders.
“I beg your pardon.” Mckenzie interrupted the passage of one of the waiters. “Who is the lady who performed on the piano?” He tried to sound mildly curious, hiding the tension in his voice.
The waiter smiled knowingly as if he were experienced in dealing with inquiries by young men about the lady in question.
“Her name is Ellise Delacroix. She is quite good, yes?”
Mckenzie nodded his agreement.
The waiter’s grin widened. “And she is quite lovely too, nes pas?”
Mckenzie again limited his response to a nod.
“Do not waste your efforts Monsieur.” The waiter leaned forward conspiratorially and spoke in a low whisper. “She is the friend, the very special friend, of Monsieur Ingres, the owner of this establishment.”
Mckenzie smiled as if grateful for the advice and turned back to the bar. He took a large sip from his glass. To his relief he found that you really could taste wine in a hallucination. Her name was Delacroix and she was the friend of the owner. But when he had been here in 1982, when he had really been here, her name had been Ingres and she was the wife of the owner. The long blonde tresses that tumbled down her back tonight had been cut short - almost as short as Brenda Stewart’s hair.
Calling upon every element of self control he possessed, Mckenzie buried his growing turmoil under a steely placid exterior. He rose