“Money, money, money! I require money so that I may see her again! I must pay to have my heart tortured. Isn’t it ironic, Bonadventure? The romantic Poet must put his fingers into a filthy purse before he can wash them in the pure source of his mistress. She is very exact. ‘Cash first.’ And into the lamae lockbox it goes, franc after filthy franc. And all because my mistress is a prostitute, and I am discerning enough to require the professional touch in all my personal matters. My tailor–the best. My barber–a master with his little snippers, his oils and talc. My mistress–a prostitute! It is too late to regret my sensitive nature now; that Rubicon I have skated across far too long ago, that Jordan I have boiled in for far too long already to change now, or even wish that I had a desire to change. No, no. If I am a scoundrel, if I am a saint, I need the same thing: money!”
We walked the Rue Flambeau. It was late afternoon, and the paving stones shone out as if gilded in horse piss. Knowing how much Charles hated to rely on such a recourse, but seeing no other option myself, I was about to suggest to him his usual method of procuring extra capital. The golden ore of my own trust fund was simply not liquid enough to support more than one islet of leisure and indifference; namely myself.
“Write to your half-brother, Alphonse.”
Baudelaire scowled, but gave no other indication that he had heard me. I watched an ambidextrous boy kill one bird with two stones in the distance.
“I have already written to Alphonse–for the last time! It is not that, not at all. That is not the difficulty, despite the manner in which the mauling knocks of the debt collectors trouble my contemplation at all hours. The difficulty…”
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Is tonight.”
Now, I scowled. “What is difficult about tonight?”
“I must see her tonight.”
We came upon the bird the boy had killed; its bright eyes had been mashed to the consistency of blueberries in a burnt muffin. Baudelaire lifted it up in one palm and addressed himself, and all of his ‘difficulties,’ to the murdered starling.
“Warm,” he noted. “But what animates its chaff is fled.” Baudelaire’s aspect, as they say, darkened. “You are like me,” he told the starling, “when I am denied the sight of Jeanne. We seem toasty as loaves, but we are dead.”
Needless to say, I advanced him the money he needed on the assurance that Alphonse’s 50 francs was to come first to me, and only then to his other necessities. After a curt nod of thanks, he said to me, as he pocketed the money:
“How alike the pair of you are! My friend and my mistress, Bonadventure and Jeanne. Both prostitutes!”
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