Sam And Seydoux

A Story by Billy Stark

Sam, a stuck up stereotypical Englishman gets drunk in Paris and ends up at a local Coffee shop and meets a young girl named Seydoux.

There are many places it is acceptable to be lost. A jungle for instance or a crystal maze or your own imagination as I have done many times but Paris is a place that you should never get lost in. Getting lost in Paris will result in many horrible things, culture being violently thrust upon you, the beautiful smell of divine cheeses when all you really want to smell is the smell of a horribly overcooked or under cooked kebab. The thing I have saved for last is the worst of these things, people very often save the worst till last in the hope that they will never have to deal with the thing they have saved. But of course they have to deal with it, just as you if you get lost in Paris you will eventually have to deal with the last and the worst thing. A broken heart. A broken heart I am afraid is a common thing just as most horrible things common. Such as cabbage and boring people. A thing that is however common in Paris is street signs which is a very helpful thing. They are in both French and English so even the most stubborn of Englishman could not moan. Although I’m very sure they would try. As would I, french trying to facilitate my needs, wankers. However there was one Englishman in Paris that night who did not care the slightest what language the road signs were written in. Sam Lewis did not care if they were written in Arabic or in some fictional language that only people obsessed with trolls could read. Because of the simple fact that no matter what language they were written in he could not have read them at all. He couldn’t read anything due to the simple fact that he was to put it in a frank English term, pissed. Sam had been on a family holiday with his parents and his sister. This was until he realised that he was a grown up and completely sick of the boring things they were talking about. If he was back home in the colder suburbs he would have simply slipped off to his own apartment to watch a dozen hours of television. But as he was in Paris he decided to drink a dozen of bottles of wine. He had drank the first eleven at a French restaurant called, “Nous pisse dans votra vin”. Sam assumed it meant something to do with fine dining, wrongly of course but he was never corrected.
“Another bottle of your finest wine”, Sam announced loudly as he was slumped over the counter even though on second glance he realized that their was no one behind the counter.
“Hello, Bonjour le people”, Sam shouted in a pushy drunken way, the way he would often. I hate to speak bad of anyone, especially if there is a chance they can find out about me bad mouthing them. As Sam is a keen friend of mine and reads most of my short stories he will undoubtedly read this one about him. But I can not lie, Sam Lewis is a very stuck middle classed young man. He can be pushy, obnoxious and rude in all honesty. But he is a friend, so I will not speak ill of him. A drunken Sam is a very different animal all together.
“Hello Frenchians, people of Paris where is my alcohol. Doesn’t have to be wine, but I need something that will help”, he continued to slump over the counter. Then Sams last brain cell quickly sparked into life, it screamed at him a thought that was fueled by alcohol, devised by alcohol and endorsed by alcohol. Sam peered over the counter and checked both ways, the coast was clear. Sam’s hand slowly climbed over the counter and on top of the red wine. Slowly he lifted it up as if he was a crane on a toy grabbing game. But much like the toy grabbing game, he couldn’t quite get a grip on the bottle. It slipped, he tried this time after time after time. If it was a toy grabbing machine he would have lost at least five pounds. This grabber machine however almost cost him much more. As he completed another ill fated attempt to grab the bottle one of employees finally reared his head.
I am not going to sully the french language with what Sam has told me the man said to him. But I would like to put down as many facts about this night that I can. If you’re french, I apologize for the next couple of lines.
“Le man wha la doing la crazy, la crazy”, this of course is not accurate due to the eleven bottles that Sam had already drank. Now Sam knew that his last attempt at the grabber was now. He got his hand and grasped around the top of the wine bottle, the french men came closer screaming and running closer. He lifted it up further. As you can tell, the tension was building. Sam had finally gotten hold of the wine bottle, he got it in both hands. It was complete, it was done. If there was people in the restaurant they would have applauded and cheered but they weren’t. It was a silent victory but a victory none the less. Sam took his bottle of wine and ran out of the shop, now just as his battle with the wine had finished the real battle began.

This next hour Sam could not give me any information on, all he remembered seeing were the Eiffel Tower in the distance and then blackness. In his drunken state he had collapsed on a street corner with his head hitting the curb, hard. I know this not from his memory but from the large scar that is still on the back of Sams head today. Sam was slowly picked up and dragged into a warmer place, he was not entirely sure where he was being taken at the time but I now know that he had been taken to a Coffee shop.
“Hello, wakey wakey. Kid wake up”, said a voice which was faintly tinted with a french accent. Sam’s eyes began to flutter awake, but even he knew that they were blood shot.
“Home”, he whispered in a dreary voice, but instead of a sympathetic hug which is what he wanted, or a taxi road to England that was prepaid for so he wouldn’t lose any money. Sam however was awaken quite vigorously, he is not sure how he was awaken. He believed at first that he was slapped by a large piece of fish and he continued to believe this for many many years. I however fount out how he was awaken by a dear friend of mine and the person who woke him, Seydoux. It was very ordinary how she woke him in a matter of fact, she simply shook him awake.
“What, what is going on?”, Sam said with his eyes fluttering to life.
“Ah, an Englishman drunken slumped in the room. How cliche”, said Seydoux as Sam flicked to life.
“And I suppose that you French never get drunk”, Sam said as he fully regained his bearings. Seydoux pushed his shoulders so he returned to the cold floor that she had dragged him too.
“I’m sorry that was rude”, Sam said, he felt himself being lifted on to a chair and finally get a proper look at Seydoux. Seydoux was impossibly tall with long blonde flowing hair, she was wearing a pink ribbon in her hair.
“Coffee or Tea”, Seydoux asked as her eyes checked Sams for signs of life.
“Tea”, Sam said, whilst Seydoux began to smile slightly. “What are you laughing at?”, Sam asked as Seydoux’s smile began to widen again.
“Nothing, just that I asked an Englishman if he wanted tea or coffee. That is such a stupid question don’t you think”, Seydoux smiled and Sam didn’t think it was a stupid question at all but when he saw the large smile spread across her face, he couldn’t help nut smile. Even then he thought she had a gorgeous smile. As a dear friend I knew this was the moment that a broken heart could not be avoided.
“What is your name?”, Seydoux asked as she passed Sam a cup of tea.
“Sam Lewis and yours?”, he said smiling as he looked at her.
“Seydoux”, Seydoux said. There was a silence in the room for a moment or two, but it was not a uncomfortable silence. It was just a calming silence, they both just looked at each other for a second or two.
“What brings you to the gutter outside of my shop anyway?”, Seydoux asked as she warmed herself by drinking a cup of coffee that she had made for herself.
“Well I was here with my parents and then I got sick of my parents. So I asked my parents then it was a blur, there was a grabber and lots of wine and then there was that tower thing”, apologies to France for my dear friend.
“You seem the type of person that has someone apologize for them when they speak”, Seydoux was very pleased when she met me.
“You’d be very pleased to meet a friend of mine”, Sam said, correctly.
“Don’t you find these parts of conversations to be dull and tiresome”, Said Seydoux with a dull and tiresome look on his face.
“I don’t know what you mean”, with a don’t know look on his face.
“We both don’t care about we are talking about, we would much rather skip to the interesting things about each other”, Seydoux had always been very bored with normal life and normal conversations.

She told me a story about when she was very very young, she had been at her mothers birthday party and people began to talk about taxes and how amazing the bread tasted. Seydoux however had become incredibly interested in the french revolution at the time would only talk about that.
“Seydoux don’t you think this bread is delicious?”, said her aunt who Seydoux had always fount tiresome, so her response was something completely different.
“What do you think Bonaparte would be doing if we didn’t have a revolution, I think maybe he would have been Pharmacist”, this of course is ridicolous because we all know Napoleon would have been an Librarian but of course Seydoux was very young so her incorrectness can be excused. But Sam of course had a very similar view to small talk if not this story would end very abruptly.
“I hate it too”, Sam said in return. He quizzed his own brain in search of what he really wanted to know about Seydoux,
“What do you wanna do when you’re older?”, Sam asked Seydoux who immediately laughed at what he had said.
“I already am old, I know you’re what sixteen, seventeen”, she said looking at Sam’s hairless face.
“I’m eighteen”, he said stubbornly.
“Eighteen, I’m very sorry. But I am twenty-five now, my life is over and all I have is this terrible coffee shop”, her eyes began to glaze over as she spoke. Sam noticed immediately that she was going to cry but pretended not too. If he didn’t notice, he knew she wouldn’t cry. She of course didn’t cry, I have known Seydoux for many, many years now and not even when she was in labor have I seen her cry.
“You might need to change your question Sam”, Seydoux said, taking another sip of her coffee and taking a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it.
“You’re not allowed to smoke inside Seydoux”, Sam said, concerned by the smoke filling up the coffee station.
“This is France, no one cares. Now don’t change the subject, you have to change your question”, Seydoux demanded as if she was testing what Sam would say.
“What did you want to be when you were younger?”, this was when Seydoux did something that I had never seen her do before. She cried, but apparently this was still the correct thing for Sam to say. It had been very long since Seydoux had cried and she would never cry again after this but a good cry was exactly what Seydoux needed.
“Oh my god Seydoux, I am sorry”, this was somewhat of a surprise aswell, before this point in his life, Sam had never said sorry before.
“No, no I was hoping you’d say that”, Seydoux said rubbing the tears away from her eyes. She smiled a little when her eyes were dry again.
“I wanted to be a writer but things just seemed to get in the way”,
“I have a dear friend who wants to be a writer, I feel like you should meeting him instead of me”, Sam noticed something on Seydoux’s hand when he finishing speaking.
“Writers never seem to get on when they meet”, Seydoux said incorrectly, “But maybe I am not a writer so we should be fine, but like I said life gets in the way”. Sam didn’t know what to say at this moment, he knew what he wanted to say but he was fearing that he would have to apologize after. But he knew Seydoux hated boring conversations as much as him.
“Divorced?”, Sam said pointing at his own wedding finger, gesturing the pale ring shape that Seydoux had around her own finger.
“Widowed, he was my neighbor when I was five. He moved away when I was ten and I fount him again when we were sixteen. He died last year on his birthday”, Seydoux’s eyes didn’t well up like they did before. It was as if she had hardened herself to this conversation, as if in the year without her husband she had become immune to the mention of him.
“Do you miss him?”, Sam said, looking like he was going to cry for Seydoux.
“Terribly”, Seydoux said.
“Do you still love him?”, Sam asked, finally feeling a tear roll down his face.
“Always”, She said as she allowed a single tear to sweep down her face.
The two of them shared a solitary moment with each other, as if they were the only people in the world. Seydoux lifted a necklace that she was wearing to put it in full view to Sam, on it was a band of gold that was still shiny as if she scrubbed it everyday, some days even twice. Sam did not comment on the ring, just as Seydoux didn’t want him too.
“I think you should stay here tonight, on my floor. I want to make sure you don’t get your head caved in on the streets of Paris”, Seydoux said, stashing her necklace back down her top.
“No,no. I am not that drunk anymore”, Seydoux smiled, clearly he was still very very pissed. As his eyes continued to wander around the room, although he stands by the fact that he was not drunk, just letting his eyes wander over Seydoux. The question of if he was drunk or not though quickly became irrelevant when blood began to pour from the back of his head down onto his neck. At first he touched the back of his head expecting that water had dripped onto his head but when he saw his blood covered hand he became dreary almost instantly.
“Look at you, come here”, Seydoux said, grabbing a tissue and moving around the table to hold the tissue to the back of Sam’s head. Now once again this is a part of the story that Sam knows nothing about, he blacked out almost immediately after seeing his own blood. It wasn’t the proudest moment in Sam’s life. If he he knew what I know what happened in these hours then he would be even more embarrassed. But I have made a solemn vow to Seydoux that I will not tell him what happened or tell anyone else what happened. So I am afraid, this hour is left up to your imagination. But I can tell you that he awoke with a bandage around his head tucked up in a pink quilt.
“My head is killing Am I dead?”, Sam said, his voice more croaky then it had been the night before.
“If you were dead then your head wouldn’t still hurt would it”, Seydoux said very correctly. This was the first time that Sam noticed the color of Seydoux’s eyes, they were midnight black. They pierced Sam as he lay down.
“Come on hurry up, you have to go home to the cold and horrible land of England”, Seydoux said shaking Sam as she had done the day before.
“Why what time is it?”, Sam said, sitting up in bed after the hands of Seydoux finally let go of his shoulders.
“It is Midday. And your family are waiting at the Eiffel Tower”, Sam shot up out of bed at the thought of his family waiting for him.
“How do you know that? You’ve spoken to my family? How?”, he looked frightened at the thought of the Seydoux having a boring conversation with his family.
“Yes aren’t they dull. Your father couldn’t help but scream about his new daisies to me, he’s painfully dull”, Seydoux said smiling although Sam didn’t join her this time.
“He’s not my father”, Sam said abruptly and without expanding.
“I’m sorry”, Seydoux said, putting her hand on the arm of Sam.
“Me too, anyway like you said. I better be going”, it was at this point that the two of them shared their only uncomfortable silence. They both walked down the stairs back to the coffee shop and Seydoux would have let Sam leave the shop without another word if a question hadn’t slipped into her head.
“Sam”, she said and waited for Sam to turn around.
“Yes Seydoux”,
“My question, what do you want to be when you’re older?”, Seydoux said smiling, Sam couldn’t help but smile with her this time.
“Happy”, he said in response as she leaned into hug him.
“Goodbye Seydoux”, he said as he hugged her.
“Goodbye Sam”, I will admit that I am very jealous of Sam for meeting Seydoux first. And I am almost entirely certain if I had been there I would have fallen in love with immediately just as Sam had. But, he couldn’t stay. He thought about it, telling her he lived her. Seydoux would never have said anything to this, she would have simply shut the door and I know this from experience. Sam had to find his family and return home but no matter what happened, Seydoux remained the love of his life.