Kurt Hummel tapped his finger anxiously against his shot glass, a habit he'd picked up as a young boy in Munich. He tapped his fingers on whatever he could - at present, a shot glass - when he became impatient. Right now, he wasn't just impatient; he was nervous too.
War had broken out just a few months earlier, in September. All Europe had been in crisis ever since, and now that sense of emergency had invaded The Blue Swan. Usually the nightclub, a small hole in the wall cabaret, managed to avoid the trials of the outside world - "leave your troubles outside," Santana Lopez, the MC, would proclaim each night to the same twenty people. This time, hwoever, it seemed the outside had creeped through the cracks in the walls and into the once jovial world of The Blue Swan.
So that was why Kurt was both impatient and nervous. Impatient because he needed his drink refilled and nervous because the world was going to hell in a handbasket.
Finally, he got a waiter's attention. "Ecusez-moi, monsieur, je voudrais commander une autre bouteille." The man, a frumpy little Parisian with a dark and crooked nose, huffed off to get Kurt another bottle of Schnapps.
Waiting for what seemed like an inordinately long amount of time for his Schnapps to arrive, Kurt tried to distract himself with the onstage entertainment. His effort to amuse himself was fruitless. The performer onstage was just a skanky girl, no more than nineteen, her eyelids heavy with false eyelashes and her teeth yellowed from too many cigarettes. Kurt caught her hooded eye and she winked at him. The German man remained unfazed. "Just a girl," he thought.
That was the problem with nightclub entertainment, Kurt mused to himself, still waiting for his Schnapps. It was always geared towards straight men. Always some girl, never very old, her face overdone with makeup, trying to entice men with some sultry cabaret performance. To be frank, it sickened Kurt. But then again, he'd never been one for women. Still, he thought, even if he had been straight he wouldn't have wanted any of those girls they put onstage in the nightclubs and cabarets of Paris. He would want someone classy and elegant - perhaps Wallis Simpson? But she would divorce if you asked her to pass the salt, plus now she was "in love" with the former King of England.
It was at that moment, thinking about the Duke of Windsor, that Kurt saw another man, younger than himself, sitting in the corner of the club. The man had austere eyebrows and his hair was haphazardly gelled back - both, incidentally, were flecked with various colours of paint - but it was his eyes that most interested Kurt. Even from this distance he could tell they must be beautiful. And though he now used them to gaze disinterestedly at the girl on the stage, Kurt could also tell that his were the sort of eyes that might be used to undress Venus herself and gaze upon her true and immortal form. In short, they were the eyes of an artist.
Resolving that the waiter had quit or otherwise decided not to bring Kurt his schnapps, the young man got up and walked to the corner table. When he arrived, the other man turned his gaze on Kurt.
"Bonjour," said Kurt.
"Bonjour," said the man, and even from that one word, Kurt could tell where he was from.
"You are British?" asked Kurt.
"Er, yes. And you're not French, are you?"
"No. I am from Munich," said Kurt in his tidy but strong German accent. Kurt knew six languages and spoke each with a perfect accent, expect for English. That was the only language that, for some reason, he could never quite master and never shake the German from.
"You're rather out of place here then. Aren't all you Krauts supposed to be gathering up in the Rhineland to take over Europe?" It was clear from the tone in which the Brit said this that he cared very little about German politics, but the xenophobia made Kurt smile all the same.
"I have been living here for several years." In truth, he no longer considered Germany his home, and was proud to call France his new country, but few people seemed to care about the alleigances of German expatriates these days.
"Oh, well then." The Brit turned his eyes back towards the stage, where a very short woman in a hideous sweater was singing an American song. Kurt looked expectantly to the Brit. After a moment he looked at Kurt and realised what he was waiting for. "Won't you sit?" he asked.
"Danke," said Kurt, sitting. "My name is Kurt Hummel."
"Blaine Anderson. What do you do, Herr Hummel?"
"I write for Le Temps."
"The newspaper?" The look of surprise on Blaine's face showed Kurt had already surpseed his expectations before even explaining what he did at the paper.
"Ja. I write the collumn on art."
"You're that Kurt Hummel?"
"Ja. Why Do you read my column?"
The look of excitement on Blaine's face wore off suddenly. "Sometimes," he said.
Kurt was surprised by all this. He'd been living in Paris for three years and writing for Le Temps just as long and never before had he met anyone who actually read his collumn.
"Tell me, Blaine Anderson, what is it you do?"
Blaine face fel even more, if it was possible. "I try to paint. Usually I fail miserably. Sometimes I have a startling success, but I always wake up and discover that I hate it. Most of my time I spend walking around Paris looking for inspiration." He said the word like it was fabled gold, often talked about but never realised, and shrugged. "I lead the life of an artist."
"It sounds interesting," Kurt said, sincerely.
"Not really," said Blaine taking a swig from his beer tankard. "Usually I have to get drunk just to stay interested in the world."
Moderate applause broke out in the audience. The short girl in the hideous sweater had just finished singing, and was now running offstage to change, Kurt assumed, for her next number.
"She is good," Kurt remarked, waiting to see Blaine's response. It was muted, if it was there at all.
"I suppose."
"And pretty, yes?"
Blaine snorted at that one. "I couldn't speak on that one. She's not my type."
"Who might be your type?" Kurt asked.
"Someone stronger, and smarter, possibly foreign."
"Maybe a German girl?"
"Maybe," Blaine said coyly. "Or maybe just a German."
"Is that an offer?" Kurt teased.
Blaine laughed. "It is if you want it to be."
Here, Blaine stood, suddenly. He looked down at Kurt, a strange look in his beautiful eyes. "75 Rue de Cardinal Lemoine. Any time you like."
The Briton dropped some notes on the table and pulled a ratty grey coat around him. He glanced once more towards Kurt. A smile broke his lips for just a few moments before it was gone, and soon Blaine followed its lead.
Kurt sat in the corner of the room, and thought about what had just happened. He decided it was a good thing, and took a mental note of the address. He stood, finally, and pulled on his own coat. Before he left, Kurt stopped by his usual table. The bottle of Schnapps still wasn't there. Deciding to make a complaint to the Jew manager, Kurt left money for his drinks and stepped out into the city.
The January air was chilly. The city was unusually quiet, for Paris. The hush of both winter and fast-approaching war pressed down on the people and made them lower their voices to talk and laugh and carry on their lives.
A gust of cold air made Kurt draw his coat tighter. So far, 1940 seemed a pretty bad year.
But then again, there was a stranger waiting in his apartment for Kurt to appear, and a cabaret to return to the next night, and the promise of the city was no lesser than when it had nourished Hugo and Wilde and all the Lost Generation. So Kurt walked deeper into the night.
Author's Note: I felt maybe this story should have some level of explanation, and the summary just wasn't cutting it, so here is a more in-depth piece.
This story takes place during the period immediately preceding and following the Second World War. Although it will certainly move around a bit geographically, it takes place mainly in Paris, and is centred at The Blue Swan, a fictional cabaret in Paris. Things you can expect to see: singing (it's Glee, right?), Americans, Germans, French people, chorus girls, alcoholism, smoking, artists, humour (I like to think I'm funny, but maybe it's not so), and the occasional bit of drama. Things you cannot expect to see: smut. (I cannot write it, and if I could, I would not.)
Should you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Please do not contact me about any of these things: spelling/grammatical errors, errors in my French/German/Spanish/Portuguese/Italian/English, and historical errors. I promise to try to get all of these things as accurate as possible but, in the end, I am merely human, and will make mistakes. Hopefully I'll see them, but I don't want you guys to worry about them, so put on your imagination caps and think of it as an alternate universe. (Oh, hey, that's a funny thing . . .)
If you've made it this far, you must either have enjoyed my writing or (more likely) you must be an incredibly nice person. Either way, thank you very much.