Paris Turf

When it began to rain and the wind scattered the leaves from the two little trees out front, the solitary customer in the bar drained his beer and said, “It’s getting colder and colder every day now. Perhaps this year there will be a bit of snow to cover up the dog shit.”

The bartender laughed and shrugged, and the last customer settled his tab, said goodbye, and went out into the rain clutching his bag of groceries under his jacket. He was a cheerful, decent man who lived somewhere in the neighborhood with a sick wife. Each afternoon he stopped in at the bar for two beers before going home to his wife. They lived in a little house that was time and again being spray-painted upon by teenagers.

There was apparently nothing that could be done about it; he had just been discussing it with the bartender. The graffiti was now everywhere in the city, even in the cemeteries and on the oldest monuments and buildings. People, the man had said with a resigned shake of his head, were getting worse all the time. There was no getting around it.

The bartender watched the man lean into the cold rain and disappear down the block. He lit a cigarette and sat down for a moment on a chair near the door. The punks hadn’t yet spray-painted on his bar, but he’d love to catch some of them in the act. The little bastards were making the once quiet neighborhood a noisier and noisier place. When they were older they would have no use for a quiet little bar; they wouldn’t be able to sit still, and wouldn’t set foot in a place that didn’t have loud music and bright lights and dancing.

Another customer eventually came scuttling in out of the rain. He had a small dog on a leash, and proceeded to order a glass of wine, which he paid for with small change. The bartender didn’t like it when customers brought the small dogs into the bar. Big dogs he didn’t mind so much, but the little dogs were so often spoiled and ill-behaved. Nonetheless, he couldn’t forbid his customers from bringing their dogs into the bar; so many of them went everywhere with their animals, and the practice was accepted everywhere.

The bartender didn’t like this particular customer, either. He was a stooped little man with one crooked eye and very bad teeth. When he spoke he cocked his head back against one shoulder and pulled his top lip up away from his teeth. He was very small. In order for him to make eye contact with the bartender it was necessary for him to jerk his head straight back between his shoulders at an extreme angle, so that it looked almost as if he were watching an aero show or following the ascent of a carnival ride. The extraordinary effort this required caused his eyes to bug out of his head. When he tried to prop himself on the bar he had to raise his elbows almost up around his ears.

This man did not come into the bar often, but he lived in the neighborhood and would pass by daily on his walks with his dog. Each time, it seemed, he would be grinning hideously beneath a ragged cap and would wave to the bartender with a rolled-up copy of Paris Turf.

“This rain will likely cost me some money today,” the man said.

The bartender had moved behind the bar and was making a show of cleaning up. He shrugged at the man’s comment. “Soon enough you will not be losing any money for a few months,” he said.

The little man chuckled and grinned. “Oh, no,” he said, “I do not make a habit of losing money, I can assure you of that.”

The bartender rolled his eyes. He knew that the man was poor and did not play the horses. It was well known in the neighborhood that this fellow would go to a nearby café and swipe a copy of the day’s Paris Turf from a table out front. Many of the bartender’s regular customers liked to frequent the horse track, and they would tease the little man, calling out to him each afternoon as he passed the bar, “You there! Who do you like in the third race at Longchamp today?” The man would pause in the doorway, wave his finger, and trill, “Oh, no, pas moi! I’ll not make you such easy money!” And then he would smile knowingly and go on his way.

For a few moments nothing in the way of conversation passed between the bartender and his bothersome customer. The man made a distracting production of drinking his glass of wine. He would throw his head back from his shoulders with a jerk, take a noisy slurp of wine, smack his lips, sigh, and mutter loudly, “C’est bon! Ca me fait du bien!”

The bartender tried to ignore the man. Ordinarily at this time of the day he would have an opportunity to lock up the bar for a short period and go upstairs to his kitchen for something to eat.

When the man had finished his wine he leaned back on his stool and addressed the bartender.

“My friend,” he said, “how would you like to come by a nice sum of money?”

The bartender looked up from what he was doing. “I’m quite comfortable, thank you,” he said.

The man leaned back and squinted up at the bartender. “For a small sum I could give you a quite handsome return,” he said. “And only because you have been so kind to me on such a rainy day.”

The bartender said, “What do you have up your sleeve?”

The little man stroked his chin and swiveled his head back and forth between his hunched shoulders, his eyes darting wildly in different directions and his tongue making an odd clicking sound in his mouth. He leered at the bartender and put a stubby finger to his lips. “A secret,” he said in a mock whisper. “Between you and me. Only because you have been for so long such a good friend.”

The bartender leaned against the bar and stared across at the little customer struggling to keep his head afloat above the bar. Had just the one glass of wine gone to the fellow’s head, or had he been sitting home with the bottle all afternoon?

“Let’s hear what you have in mind,” he said.

“Tomorrow, as you may know, is the last day for the horses at Longchamp,” the man said. “I know of a horse that is sure to deliver at a very nice price, a most excellent price.” He cackled and in quick succession rapped his knuckles on the bar and then clapped his hands together excitedly. “Very much a sure thing,” he said, “and a devilish nice payoff for the man who puts his trust in me.”

“And how am I to know that I can trust you?” the bartender asked.

The man cackled again and rapped his knuckles wildly on the bar. “Oh, but you don’t!” he said. “That’s just the thing, you don’t!” He turned his palms upward and leaned away from the bar. “I am your friend,” he said. “I cannot hide from you. I live right here, just around the corner. You give me one hundred francs tonight, and tomorrow evening at this time I will have for you two thousand francs or I am not your old friend.”

The man chuckled and fetched his squirming little dog from the floor. “Here,” he said. “If my word is no good, you can have my dog, my little life.”

The bartender eyed the man. What a queer fellow he was. This, he thought, would be a ripping good story for the regular gang of customers tomorrow. The little man was staring at him and teetering excitedly at the edge of the bar, his dog paddling wildly in his arms. The bartender reached into the till and removed a note.

“Okay,” he said. “Here is my one hundred francs, and now you must leave so that I can go have my dinner. I expect to see you tomorrow or I will send someone for the dog.”

“Oh, you will,” the man said. “You shall see me tomorrow evening, on my word, and you may expect a nice surprise.” He pocketed the franc note, rapped his knuckles on the bar one final time, tossed his dog to the floor, and hurried, talking happily to himself, from the bar.

The bartender watched him hurry away into the rain and chuckled to himself. “I am a fool,” he said to the empty bar. He only hoped the ridiculous little fellow would not spend the money on the dog.

“So you let that crazy little bastard just walk out of here with your hundred francs?” the stonemason asked the bartender early the next evening. “I’ll have to remember you the next time I’m pinched for cash.” The others at the bar laughed and the bartender smiled and said, “He’s an odd character, there’s no doubt about that. I guess we’ll see how he’ll try to wiggle his way out of this jam.”

“That alone should be worth your hundred francs,” someone else said. “I only hope he comes along soon so I can be a witness.”

“And what will you do with the dog?” asked the man with the sick wife. “One hundred francs is not a bad price for a dog, provided it is not too old.”

“It is a little dog,” the bartender said, “and all the man has to his name. I don’t want to make any more jokes about the poor fellow. He considers me his friend.”

The stonemason snorted. “I’ll consider you my friend for considerably less than one hundred francs,” he said.

“I’ll consider you my friend for little more than a pack of cigarettes and a glass of wine,” the butcher said. Everyone laughed, and at that moment the bartender saw the little man and his dog hurry past on the opposite side of the street.

“Well,” the bartender said. “He has just gone past, just this moment, without stopping in, so I suppose that is the end of that nonsense.”

“Do you want me to go after him?” the stonemason asked. “I’ll get an explanation out of the sneaky little devil.”

“No, no,” said the bartender, and waved his hand in the direction of the open door. “Let the poor man go. I am done with it.”

“I wouldn’t let that thief get off so easily,” the butcher said. “Are you really going to allow him to take you for a fool?”

Just then the man reappeared, popping his head around the corner of the entryway and cackling with glee.

“You saw me!” he shouted as he burst into the bar. “I saw you spy me there across the street, and you thought to yourself, ‘Why, that hanged little dodger has thrown away my money on a nag!’ Oh, that was good! Sure enough, I had you there, did I not?” He pushed his way through the group of men and, whistling through his teeth, rapped on the bar and rubbed his chapped little hands together furiously. As the others looked on with disbelief, the man’s face took on a pinched, almost frightening expression.

After a moment the man composed himself sufficiently to address the bartender again. “First things first,” he said. “I should like a glass of that excellent wine.” He then removed from inside his enormous overcoat a rolled-up copy of Paris Turf, unfolded it to reveal a large quantity of notes, and proceeded to count out two thousand francs. With an exaggerated flourish he arranged the bills on the bar like a poker hand.

“There you have it, my friend,” he said. “There you have it! I told you it was a devilish good horse!” With a look of supreme satisfaction on his face the man crawled with considerable effort to the top of a bar stool and settled back to noisily drink his glass of wine.

The bartender, speechless, looked from the man to the two thousand francs on the bar. He looked across the bar to where the other customers were standing at some remove from the little fellow on his bar stool. The lot of them was staring, silent and wide-eyed, or scowling with disbelief at this unwelcome redemption.

The stonemason shook his head and muttered something under his breath. He then slapped some coins on the bar, and hurried out the door and into the night.