It was late, even for a Parisian evening, as the three American students stumbled out of the smoky bar near the Bois de Vincennes. Their laughter echoed off the cobblestones, mixing with the dim glow of the streetlights. The weight of their conversation, heavy with intoxicated opinions and slurred words, floated over their boozy chatter. They had spent the evening in a haze of smoke, insipid French beer and half-remembered history lessons, each one trying to outdo the other in a mix of grand theories about America’s role in the world.
“Man, can you believe the nerve of Nixon?” Ken the most serious of the trio, slurred out, leaning against a lamppost. “I mean, he’s just bombing the hell out of those people, and we’re supposed to accept it and cheer?”
Vince, the half-French son of the French ambassador to Haute-Volta, grinned. His thick accent was more pronounced now, the product of both alcohol and a conflicted identity. “You American guys always so passionate about these things, huh? It’s not so black and white.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if your government didn’t—” Ken’s sentence was cut off by a hiccup, and he waved his hand dismissively.
Vince, who usually spent his summers in New York with his American mother, stood up straighter. “The Metro’s closed. I’ll get us a cab.”
The other two nodded instinctively, barely catching his words through the fog of their drunkenness. Vince hailed the cab, and they all piled in, ignoring the obvious constrast between the world of boisterous youth and the still of the Paris night.
“104 Rue de Vaugirard, s’il vous plaît. Près de la Tour Montparnasse”
“Ah, donc vous êtes étudiants en sciences-po, n’est-ce pas ?”
“Ah, oui,” Vince slurred nonchalantly.
The journey was unremarkable at first, their laughter and talk continuing in fits and spurts in the backseat, the cab bouncing along the streets of suburban Paris. The driver, a stocky man in his fifties, hardly seemed to acknowledge them, his eyes fixed straight ahead. He didn’t join in the conversation. The streets blurred together as they ventured further into the night, but the students hardly noticed. Their conversation danced between politics and philosophy, mostly lost in translation. They were on autopilot, consumed by their intoxication and misguided confidence.
It wasn’t until the cab made a sharp turn and the tires screeched on the wet asphalt that they looked up. The car came to a sudden stop. The suddenness of it jolted them, and they all leaned forward.
“Connards americains. Sors d’ici, bordel,” the driver shouted, his voice harsh and filled with a palpable anger.
“What the hell?” Ken said, blinking in confusion. “What did he say? We’re not there yet.”
The driver didn’t respond. His eyes were wide, filled with something fierce, something dangerous.
Vince, still at half wits but attempting to read the situation, spoke up. “Où sommes-nous? Ce n’est pas le bon chemin.”
“Sortez!” the driver repeated, his face grim and twisted in a mix of hatred and disgust.
With no other choice, the students stumbled out of the cab, their brains still struggling to process the situation. They stood on the side of an unfamiliar road, the cab quickly speeding away, disappearing into the night. The air was crisp and cold, and as their senses began to sharpen, they realized something was wrong.
“Where the hell are we?” Sal, the quiet one of the group, asked.
They were surrounded by dark fields, an eerie quiet hanging over the small town. Not a single person was in sight. It was 3 a.m., and the streets were utterly deserted.
They turned in circles, trying to make sense of their surroundings. They could see a few distant street lamps, but they illuminated nothing recognizable. No Paris landmarks, no familiar buildings, just empty, darkened roads and low houses. It was as if the world had simply dropped them here, out of reach of the city they’d known.
“We’ve got to wait until morning,” Vince said, his voice low, strained. “No one is awake, no one will help us in the dark.”
“I’ll kill that cab driver,” Ken muttered, frustrated and angry, though the fury didn’t seem to fully match his current state of inebriation.
“Well, at least he didn’t charge us.” Sal muttered bringing all to a faint chuckle.
After several minutes of silent wandering, they huddled under the small overhang of a nearby house, trying to shield themselves from the biting wind. They sat there, taking turns dozing off in discomfort, every now and then waking up to the sound of distant animals or the occasional creak of a window shutter. The night stretched on, their exhaustion growing with each passing hour.
As dawn finally began to break, the sleepy town started to come alive. A few elderly women appeared, dragging their carts down the streets. The students approached one of them cautiously, not sure how to explain their predicament. But the woman simply raised an eyebrow at their disheveled appearance and pointed in the direction of a train station.
The students made their way to the station, still unsure of what had happened during the night, and unsure what to think of their cab ride. As they sat on a bench waiting for the first train back to Paris, they began to piece together fragments of the night. They thought of the driver, his angry tone, and the words he’d spat out. “Get out of here.”
Sal squinted, trying to understand. “Maybe he was one of those leftists or communists. You know, people who hate Americans because of Vietnam.”
Vince frowned, the weight of his father’s history creeping into his thoughts. “Or maybe he was a war veteran. I mean, he looked like he’d seen things… He might’ve fought in Indochina. A lot of French vets aren’t too fond of Americans, especially not now. Not after what’s happening in Vietnam.”
Ken nodded slowly, considering. “Could be. Either way, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“It’s dark and nobody’s around, “Sal interjected.
“Well, we’re just going to have to wait here for the first train to Paris,” Ken responded.
As the first train rumbled into the station, the trio climbed aboard, exhausted, confused, and still wrestling with the mystery of the night. They had learned something, maybe more than they could understand at the moment. France, with all its romantic ideals and rebellious history, was a place full of complexities they hadn’t fully grasped. But that night, they learned a lesson they would never forget: you never know who’s driving the cab, or where you’ll end up.
© 1972, Kenneth Koziol. All rights reserved.
