zse-zse
Gigi Sue has been stuck in neutral for over a week trying to generate a new name for herself. Her life coach is working on it, too… Supposedly.
Gigi has been ashamed of her given name since she can remember. When she makes senior partner she wants THE name for the door. Not that any but the senior partners would ever use her first name after her promotion. Her father was so taken by the movie “Gigi” and Leslie Caron that he named his button-nosed beauty “Gigi Sue” to honor the movie — and his mother Sue.
Gigi Sue is moderately pleased with most of the changes her life coach has made in her life, but she is becoming increasingly resistant to being completely made over. For instance, she still walks the nearly four miles every day to and from her penthouse condo to her job. Rain or shine. She’s done it for two years to keep her metabolism up. She’s not about to pay to ride a cab to work just so she can get to work in time to walk four miles on a treadmill in the firm’s health center. ¿To keep out of the sun? ¡¡¿To help restore a complexion she’s not had since she was nine years old?!! Nuh- uh!
On her way to and from work, she walks every day (Monday through Sunday) past francophonie, the pet store that sells exotic birds. Before they changed the name from Henri’s Birds, the store was always closed when she returned home. Francophonie now not only sells exotic birds, it has become a hotspot in the evenings for spreading French.
Since the beginning of the summer, the store has remained open until 11:00. Gigi Sue has often encountered Fabrice, Henri’s 16-year old son, an aspiring mime, charming a gaggle of pretty, rail-thin girls by teaching Molière, an African Grey parrot, French bon mots and clever come-ons. Fabrice is such an accomplished ventriloquist and has learned to mimic Molière’s voice so well the pretty girls can’t always tell which of the pair is courting them. Molière is quite clever at charming the prettier, petiter girls while making bland, but inoffensive statements about the bigger-boned ones. As a result, nearly all the girls who come to francophonie a second or third time are slender beauties.
Almost always, when Gigi Sue is able to get by before the store closes, She hovers at the edges of the scene — out front of the store under the fashionable orangish security lights — to study the African Grey. She’s learned from googling that Greys are not color blind. And Molière is particularly adept at colors. He never misses the eye colors of the girls he charms: vert, bleu clair, noisette, chocolat, violet, etc. Beyond his sharp eye for colors, it is obvious Molière is not an ordinary Grey. He’s smarter, and a bit of a flirt. He never fails to comment on the tan lines revealed by the V-neck tees, or how the redheads sunburned noses are made orange by the glow from the fashionable security lights.
Fabrice is definitely not sending Molière hand signals or throwing his voice just so Molière can distinguish among all the little tarts. Even so, it’s obvious somebody has taught Molière his French sweet-nothings and shown him pictures of women they should be used on.
Gigi Sue would never own a pet, but she must admit that the time she spends admiring Molière has become the most important part of her 12–16 hour rat race each day to get her name in gold on a partner’s door. She can feel the stress seeping all the way into the sidewalk through her thick-soled sneakers as she watches the francophonie street theater.
ONE MORNING SHE LEAVES HOME early to have time to ask Henri, francophonie’s owner, what he thinks of her name. First, she tells him — in French — that she likes the new name of his business, but offers that most people might think it a slur against the French. She rushes to add that she knows it’s the name of the worldwide community of people who speak French (So it wouldn’t be so obvious she’d come to talk about herself, she’d googled the name just that morning to see what the -phonie part of the new name of the store meant.), but that the hoi polloi or lumpen proletariat may focus on -phonie. She impresses him further by telling him she knows it was Onésime Reclus, brother of renowned French geographer Élisée, who coined francophonie.
Henri says, “Why, Mademoiselle I did not know these things. It is my friend, Minister of Affairs for Francophonie in Kinshasa of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who gave to us Molière. We are repaying his generosity by training Molière to be the Francophonie ambassador here.”
After finding out Henri is Belgian — and engaging in chitchat about Stanley and Livingston and King Leopold of the Belgian Congo — she finally poses the question of a suitable name to use for herself once she becomes a senior partner. When Henri hears the full story of her name he counsels her sharply: She should never think of changing her name. He launches into his best imitation of Maurice Chevalier singing “Thank Heaven For Little Girls” from the movie “Gigi.” He adds, “¿Perhaps, an understated pronunciation? ¿In the minuscular? ¿With the added flair of the hyphen?”
The way Henri pronounces her name starts her thinking of changing the spelling to Zse-Zse. Instead of changing the name altogether. The Zh will stop people from thinking her name is a stuttering plowman’s command to his mule to go right.
With or without the hyphen? she wonders as she walks on to work. As soon as she gets to work, she logs onto dictionary dot com to look up minuscular Molière.
She calls — and wakes a graphic artist friend — to commission several posters with subtle sexy scripts the size of the glass in the corner office door. Using zse-zse will twist her life coach’s nose when she sees it. Her life coach is adamant that G. Susannah ought to be Gigi Sue’s professional name.
How romantic is G. Susannah? Even g-susannah? Where could you go with such a dreary appellation if powerful clients started coming on to you? How many would even stop to ponder the minuscular?
No, it’s time for a little fun in her life. Blame it on her life coach. Her life coach is the one who has her doing things she’d never have thought of doing on the way up the ladder. They’ve lowered the slimming mirrors in her condo, except for the one in the foyer, so she can center her face in them without raising onto her tiptoes or wearing her two-inch heels about the house; they’ve hired a French maid to come in three times a week; they’ve made over her wardrobe; they have her wearing wraparound sunglasses on her walk to work, even on the cloudiest days: to battle crow’s feet and gator skin.
Gigi Sue has remained her own woman — a singular pilgrim she thinks of herself as — on a few things. Although the skin on her arms all the way up to and past her elbows is scaly and developing ugly brown patches, on her weekday walks to work she has started to wear the Ralph Lauren short-sleeved walking shirt she discovered at the outlet store to contrast with her Monday through Sunday chartreuse thick-soled Chucks. She writes off her ugly arms to her obsession about washing dishes by hand and scrubbing her bathtub twice a week with a chlorine bleach containing cleanser — things she isn’t about to give up. She doesn’t trust the maid to get her dishes or tub clean.
In the office she keeps her hands shiny with an amber lotion and wears a suit coat to hide her arms. Always.
She wears thick-soled Chucks so she doesn’t have to buy them so often. A long time ago, when she was at the bottom of the firm’s ladder, she asked herself, What good would it do to look good on the way to work when she never encounters anyone she’d want to impress?
ONE WEDNESDAY MORNING, AS SHE passes the pet store, Molière is sitting out front in a cage dangling from a stand. He greets her, “Bonjour, Mesdames!” Being addressed in French — and in the plural to boot — makes her feel pretty and witty and gay all the way to work. All day long she uses the royal We at work to celebrate her plurality. She begins to think of herself as a plural pilgrim.
Early Thursday, she thinks about Molière when she is putting on her makeup and wonders why he thought yesterday she was a Madam instead of a Mademoiselle. She thinks it must be her scaly arms so she wears a long-sleeved blouse.
Molière greets her again, “Bonjour, Mesdames!” The rest of the way to work she studies her posture and gait and glances at herself in windows she passes.
On Friday she chucks — and wonders before she does it she will be first person to chuck Chucks — her thick-soled Chucks in favor of a pair of Gucci flats. She sets aside the canvas shopping bag in which she usually totes her lunch and other essentials in favor of a Gucci satchel to match her flats. She gets several steps past Molière before he says, “Bonjour, Mesdames!” Was he wounded she didn’t say good morning? Or did he even recognize her at first?
Wondering who this new lady could be? What IS it with the plural? Two good to believe? — she smiles inwardly at her pun. Is my confidence blinding the messieur(s)? — she thinks of Fabrice, too.
That evening she goes to her hairperson to get her hair cut and shaped. She sleeps with her head inside a hatbox stuffed with Styrofoam peanuts to keep from crushing her curls. Saturday morning she tweaks her hair, applies the frosted plum lip gloss, dusts up her cheekbones, powders her nose even though she knows it’ll probably be streaky before she gets to the pet store, puts on her wraparound sunglasses, and starts for her door.
She glances in the mirror in her foyer as she unbolts her door and from what she can see through the sunglasses thinks, ¿The sunglasses!!! She also sees her face is reflected back at her from too high in the mirror, which reminds her she’s wearing her thick-soled Chucks, which reminds her she has forgotten to accessorize with Gucci.
By the time she finishes accessorizing and putting her old person’s sunglasses back into her sunglass drawer, she finds she is running late for work. She practically runs — as much as her too-big Guccis will permit lifting instead of sliding her feet — to the pet store. Being that it’s Saturday, Fabrice is out front arranging displays and sweeping the sidewalk. He smiles and says “Mesdames” on his way into the store.
Molière doesn’t say anything when Gigi Sue walks on past, so she backs up and walks past again. Still nothing. On her third trip past, Molière says in French, “Morning lady, you’re short, you’re big as two, and you’re ugly as sin.”
Even though she knows it’ll make her late — the Managing Partner comes in Saturdays just to see who comes in early — she hunts down Fabrice to tell him about her almost-week-long history with Molière calling her Mesdames, and that today he’d said, “You’re short, you’re big as two, and you’re ugly as sin.”
She mimicked the bird’s voice so well that — for a brief moment — Fabrice thought Molière had thrown his voice.
Before he thinks, Fabrice says, “¿And? I can assure you that weight and beauty are relative rather than actual to a Grey.”
She shouts, “Short!” before calming… “He also said short.”
By this time Henri has come out of the back room. After finding out about the commotion, he says in French, “Come by here Monday, Mademoiselle, and you’ll get the firsthand look at what francophonie does to re-educate smart-tongued Greys.”
MONDAY SHE DRESSES EARLY — AND exactly as she had Saturday — notes in the foyer mirror her eyes are lower since she has her Gucci flats on, and hums “zse-zse” as she walks to the elevator. She stops several times to snip flowers poking through fences with the secateurs she has transferred from her canvas tote to her Gucci bag. As she’s approaching francophonie, she plucks from the centerpiece of her nosegay, a long-stemmed yellow rose and puts it over her left ear, the ear facing the shop.
At francophonie, she stops in front of Molière. He tries to hide his head under his wing. Most of his head has been shaved and his tail feathers clipped. A gauze patch taped over his right eye has slid up enough to reveal the eye is bloodshot. When he again turns his head to look at her with his left eye, he nods and says, “Mademoiselle zse-zse…” and looks down at his feet without finishing his thought.
She walks on a few steps. She turns to look back. The parrot has taken his head from under his wing and is watching her. His good eye seems to be watering. She pats the rose above her left ear and steps back to stand in front of Molière. Again he says, “Mademoiselle zse-zse…” and looks down at his feet and puts his face under his wing. She cocks her head and waits, but he keeps his head under his wing without properly finishing his apology.
Finally, she steps onward toward work. But it’s just not enough. She thinks to hell with the Managing Partner and enters the store to fetch Henri. He comes out to stand beside Molière. When Henri strokes and whispers sternly to him, Molière’s head emerges from under his wing. He cocks his good eye toward Henri to read his lips and body language. His good eye begins watering.
Molière straightens to his full height, glances warily once more over his shoulder at Henri, and turns back to say, “Mademoiselle zse-zse… You’re shor– Oh , you know the rest.”
