Rumor of Cortez

Adam, Role Model

52 Adam, Role Model I tried it once. Tuxedo. Cummerbund. Black tie. I clean up well for a new man. I like to mingle, share a program, a concerto, glass of champagne at the interval. One, jade eyes, said she’d leave her husband if I took her to the parade in Nice, La Bataille des Fleurs. Well, you know what that means. Flower tossing and families, soldiers, policemen, priests and punks—grubby youths—sneering and dirty. I set her up with Cain. As the papers promised, mimosa had newly bloomed. Military bands with massed bugles marched, skinny fox-faced girls in pretty dresses flung petals and flowers torn from floats. Nasturtiums grew wherever there was space enough and light, flowing like a bride’s train toward the rocky beach where a group of elderly Italians lived on grappa al mirtillo and anise cookies in one of the gazebos. But the language proved insurmountable. A sign on the beach warned of something—trawlers, strawberries, nudists—they couldn’t tell. In Corsica they washed and folded their few clothes, watched an Arab fill his writing pad from right to left with stems and curls while a young girl cut his silver hair and both drank thick coffee from cups with looped handles too small for the fingers of legends. ...