Cynara, Come Home!

“She can never do this again,” said Montalvo, “and our big mistake? We should have gotten that padlock at the hardware store, and locked the gate of her apartment house. Nobody goes in or out—especially out—with suitcases!”

“I totally agree,” I said, “Imagine, just upping herself off to France, on the flimsy excuse that her husband is whole-French and her daughter is half-French. Remember how they told you, in grade school, that they hoped you’d brought enough for the whole class—when they caught you eating candy? Well, it’s the same thing: she can’t go anywhere—especially for a month—unless she takes everybody with her…”

It’s been a long month without Lady, the owner of the café, who generally mothers or sisters us as needed. Oh, and in the case of Mary Anne, her 70-something-year old neighbor, Lady even daughters her. So all of the creative verbdom, which she does so well, has left us bereft, in her absence. And we’ve been chafing without her, and now that she’s set to return, will we be reft again?  

“It was an unexcused absence, and that can’t be allowed to pass without consequences,” I tell Montalvo. “She should never be allowed to do this again.”

“And you know,” I continued, “if she were really going to be all French about it, she’d close all the businesses and we’d ALL be on vacation.” So we total it all up, and discover that it’s easily twelve people who would be trailing along with her—rather, being her distinguished guests—in France.

“It might slightly defeat the purpose of a vacation,” I told Montalvo, “to be bumping into all the people you’ve been bumping around with for the last two years, which is why I think it’s imperative—she has to rent a chateau.”

“Marc?”

OK—time for a bit of architectural enrichment. Google comes through with this:

“You gonna put fifteen people in that?” I ask him. “Remember when I told you, ‘less is more’ and you didn’t believe me? Well, in this case you were definitely right….”

So now we’re on the track of the perfect French chateau, which of course reminds me of Dorothy Parker’s perfect red rose; we take a little detour through poetry:

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.


All tenderly his messenger he chose;


Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -


One perfect rose.



I knew the language of the floweret;


'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'


Love long has taken for his amulet


One perfect rose.



Why is it no one ever sent me yet


One perfect limousine, do you suppose?


Ah no, it's always just my luck to get


One perfect rose.

“More iambic fucking pentameter,” remarked Montalvo, “except for the last line in all the stanzas…”

“You are not as you were under the reign of the good Cynara,” I tell him, needing to elevate things a bit from Dorothy Parker. So I derail that line by telling him that Parker had such fulminant writer’s block that her husband took to putting a human hair on the keyboard of her typewriter. As I remember it, it could be there, undisturbed, for months, though Parker swore that the nightly martinis were just recompense for a day slapping away at the keyboard….

Right, time to return to our French lodgings….

Montalvo proposes this:

“Still rather modest,” I told him. “The point, after all, is that you want volitional, not involitional, bumping into people. Try this….”

“Motherfuck,” he says, “they let Niggahs in there?”

“Lady will tell them,” I say. “Hey, and imagine drinking sherry before dinner here….”

“The staff will have to be sent away on paid vacations,“ I said, “since Mr. Fernández will insist on an English staff. And of course, you’ll have to know the service names of all the staff….”

“Hunh?”

“What do we call the chauffeur?”

“His name?”

“Wrong—the chauffeur is always ‘James.’”

“Hey, you can’t do that!”

“Oh, they love it,” I tell him. “And the upstairs maid?”

“No clue….”

“Daisy,” I tell him, “and the downstairs maid?”

“No idea,” he says.

“Exactly—no one cares about the downstairs maid, so she has no name!”

“But that’s terrible,” cries Montalvo. “You can’t be changing around the names of people!”

Reality sets in—how many cups of coffee will we have to sell to get a chateau for a month? We set aside the idea for a moment, and consider other plans….

“Maybe we should move everything around,” said Montalvo. “We’ll put the coffee shop in the gift shop, and vice versa. Then, when she comes back, we’ll act like nothing happened, and look at her funny, and say, ‘well of course it’s always been here. I mean, if you hadn’t been away so long….’”

“Too much work,” I told him. “And besides, she’s coming back today. Hey, what if we closed all the stores, put the hurricane shutter up, and posted big notices—OUT OF BUSINESS, LIQUIDATION!”

“EVERYTHING MUST GO!”

“On the gift shop, we put “REPOSSESSED!”

“Right, and on the café, we put ‘CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH!’”

“And of course,” I mused, “We could write one of those notices to our devoted customers, thanking them for their patronage—that is, all the moolah they dropped over the years—and saying that we’ll never forget them….”

“Better yet, we go out and get one of those big black ribbons—very much in the Spanish style—and put it on the door, with the sign below it: Marc Newhouse, 1956-2014. Hah! She’ll be sorry then!”

“Don’t tempt providence,” I tell him. And that’s when I tell him…

…“We are not as we were under the reign of the good Cynara!”  
 

   Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae

LAST night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine


There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed


Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;


And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,


Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head: 


I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. 



All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,


Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;


Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet; 


But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, 


When I awoke and found the dawn was gray: 


I have been faithful to you, Cynara! in my fashion. 



I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, 


Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,


Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind; 


But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,


Yea, all the time, because the dance was long; 


I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.



I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, 


But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, 


Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;


And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, 


Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:


I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.



Ernest Dowson