Rendezvous Eighteenth

Cousin Cash Comes to Paris What can I tell you? Ricky Jenks was the family embarrassment. The fat kid. The bed wetter. The C student who broke your heart because you just knew he could do better. If only he would "apply' himself. Laughable athlete. Luckless with girls. Not that he lacked talent. He was a naturally gifted pianist. That, in any event, was what Ricky's parents always said, as if to excuse all his obvious shortcomings. Whatever modicum of artistry Ricky Jenks possessed, he was by no means a musical prodigy. In most families, Ricky's ordinary imperfections might not have been a badge of shame. But he was the progeny of one of the fabulous Pendleton sisters of Norris, New Jersey: three famously smart and ambitious black beauties who all married "well' and prided themselves on breeding "well' the next generation, the blessed black children of the 1960s, who would be trained to stake their claim in mainstream American society. Ricky's kid sister grew up to be a judge in Miami. All of his cousins were prominent in their fields as well. Ricky, on the brink of 39, knew he was considered a bit of a fuckup. Back in America, anyway. But Ricky, despite all his ostensible privileges, felt he'd been dealt a pretty weak hand in life. He figured he had made the best of the raw human material he had to work with. Ricky Jenks was not a proud man, nor did he suffer from self-pity. Yet he always found it somehow fitting that the place where he felt most at home in this world was called the Street of the Martyrs. April in Paris, 1999, had been typically dreary: leaden gray skies, a chill wind blowing spitty drizzle in your face. May tends to be the truly beautiful month in this town, the time when the sun reappears and the cafes fling open their doors, round-top tables and rattan chairs taking over the sidewalks. "This song should have been called 'May in Paris,'' Ricky Jenks often said before launching into his rendition of the famous standard at the creperie where he played piano. "But 'April' scans better.' The sun was shining boldly, though, on this last Thursday morning in April, filling Ricky's studio apartment with brassy yellow light. The tall narrow windows were open wide. Ricky sat in a chair, wearing a T-shirt and gym shorts, tiny cup of fierce espresso in hand, his bare, chubby knees pressed against the intricately wrought little iron railing over the window ledge, looking out on the rue des Martyrs, a steep, mile-long street that climbed through Paris's northern precincts. Ricky's building, number 176, was smack in the middle of a precipitously inclined stretch of Martyrs. At the bottom of his block was an intersection where the neighborhood of Pigalle, the neon-bathed commercial sleaze district, boasting round-the-clock peep shows, leather underwear shops and the International Erotic Museum, bordered the neighborhood of Barbes, a buzzing network of African and Arab communities. At the top of Ricky's block was Montmartre, the hilly, cobblestoned neighborhood that combined a bohemian grit with a village-like quaintness tourists found irresistible. The main boulevard of Pigalle and the whole of Barbes and Montmartre were the three key regions of Paris's sprawling Eighteenth Arrondissement, a city within a city: eccentric, hard-bitten, robustly alive. The telephone rang but Ricky had no intention of answering it. Fatima groaned. Ricky turned and saw only a tumult of jet-black hair poking out amid the white sheets and pillows on the sofa bed. The phone rang a second time and now the sheets undulated in the bold late- morning sunshine. There would be one more ring before the answering machine clicked on. Ricky hated disturbing Fatima's sleep but he couldn't bring himself to pick up the phone. The caller had either dialed the wrong number or was someone Ricky wouldn't feel like talking to. No true friend of Ricky Jenks would phone him before eleven in the morning. The third ring. Fatima grumbleLamar, Jake is the author of 'Rendezvous Eighteenth', published 2005 under ISBN 9780312336059 and ISBN 0312336055.