"What do you mean you don't have a birthday?"
"Jack, you're completely naïve." Simone huffed. He was testing her patience.
"How old are you then?"
"About thirty."
"You don't know?"
"One often doesn't when you don't know your parents."
"What are you doing." her thought for a moment, "August 17th?"
"Pissing around during the day and then working after supper. What makes it different than any other day?"
"Good. August 17th you're turning thirty." Jack folded his arms. Why it was a rule of normal life to have a birthday in Jack's strange little world, she didn't know.
Jack skipped out of the brothel like it was the general store back home. Nothing seemed to ever wave him.
Simone sat back down on the old armchair. He was a persistent little devil, but he brought out the maternal instincts in her that a prostitute rarely gets to exhibit. She knew has soon as he brought up the suggestion. Simone LeClerc, the nobody from nowhere, was going to have her own birthday, like anybody really needs that. It was just fluff.
***
"Hey, Fabri!" Jack ran down the street after his best friend. "Hey, Fabri!" Fabrizio turned around wiping the sweat from his brow; the Paris heat was getting to him.
"How can you run like that in this heat?"
"I have a great idea!"
"Oh, now I see." Fabri smiled. "This idea, what is it?"
"We're giving Simone a birthday and I have the best idea for a present. Call a meeting together with Marie, Pierre, and Jean." Jack started walking backwards toward his next destination.
"Where you going?"
"I've got to do a little shopping to do so we can make Simone's present!"
"Don't spend all of our money!" Fabri called out to him.
"What money?" Jack put his arms out.
"Exactly!"
***
Jack waited at the bar for about ten minutes everybody was late. He spent most of that time chatting up crazy Madame Bijoux. Everyone one else tended to keep his or her distance from her. Jack rather liked her. True, she was strange, maybe even delusional, but somehow inspirational. Everything about her was just a little bit sad, but she made him want to dream big.
Jack still peeked over his shoulder through the smoky haze and dim orange light waiting for his friends, he zoned out and listened to the chatter and clanking of glasses. He couldn't wait to tell everyone about his big plan and Jack rarely passed up social opportunities, but he was starting to feel sleepy. Where were they? Late as usual most likely.
"Was is this great birthday idea of yours?" Jack turned around to see Pierre.
"Only you can say 'birthday' in a cynical tone."
"Are telling us this idea or not? I've been building up excitement, I don't want to get disappointed." said Jean.
"Alright, alright," Jack said, "what's the one major thing Simone is missing?"
"Décorum." Marie guessed.
"No, something that any moron would notice the instant they saw her."
"Then am I right?" Marie teased.
"No." Pierre, "no. That is very stupid." Fabrizio had a feeling all along, but didn't want to say anything.
"See?" Jack reached down, placing some tools and a wooden leg of an armchair on the bar. "We cut this to the right size, make some other adjustments. and voila, a wooden leg. She'll get around easier and won't have as many back problems when she gets older."
"Jack," Pierre put his hand on Jack's shoulder, "people like Simone don't worry about getting old. They worry about surviving."
"Porquoi pas? I think we should do it. We all want to survive. Why not make life worth our while? If she learns to walk with a fake leg instead of a crutch, daily activities will become easier, and if gets to have that one stupid day a year that we all have to have people think of her a little more it might be nice."
There was a long silence. Simone had no people, no birthday; nobody really knew where she came from. The streets of Paris they assumed, product of an orphanage? She wasn't a young kid with everything to think about. But she wasn't old. If she had anything she had a chance. Why give her a day just for her?
"We will all spilt however much that cost and will all plan a party." Marie agreed.
Jack nodded and smiled at her. Marie was always to rescue when it came to kind gestures. Right then Simone walked in. Jack quickly tossed the chair leg and tools under his stool.
"Bon soir!" She waved her hand childishly. "Why is everyone so early?"
"No reason." Jack shrugged.
The bartender slid a glass down the bar to a customer. It spilled in his lap.
"Arg! Nein!"
"I can see how that connects to his lousy throwing arm." Jack bit his lip. Adolf turned around. He heard him. "Look, I'm sorry, alright? I didn't mean any harm." Adolf still looked pretty unhappy as he approached him.
"You do not say that to me."
"Hey, listen. What do you have to be insulted by me? I'm seventeen and I look like I'm practically in kindergarten." He took a sip of his drink trying to promote that it was no big deal. Adolf kept staring him down. Jack looked up at him, slowly and sheepishly spitting his beer back into the glass, but never losing eye contact.
The bad news came when Jack stood up. Adolf was a little too closer and he jostled him a little standing up. Angrily, he grabbed Jack by the collar.
"Whoa!" Jack's feet slid out from under him. He kicked and scrambled as he was lifted. "This is not good." he said to himself. Jack freed himself from Adolf's grip and shoved Adolf shoved back. Jack pushed to the ground.
"Don't tempt me." Jack pointed at him and turned around, walking past his friends with open mouths.
Adolf couldn't let this humiliation stand. He jumped on Jack's back and Jack came surging forward, taking a chair with him.
Jack grabbed him and they began rolling around on the floor with growling and shouting.
"Non, garcons!" Marie waved her arms.
"Hit him on the left! He's open!" Jean shouted.
"Finish him!" yelled Pierre.
As swings were thrown left and right Simone and Fabrizio's heads moved with them with all matter of "oh's" and "ow's."
Jack finally rolled on top of him and began punching him alternately on either cheek. Adolf jolted him off and scrambled for the door. Jack didn't run after him. He sat up on his knees with heels under his rear. He wiped a stream of blood from the corner of his mouth.
"I think this battle goes to the US." Pierre turned to Jean.
"Hey, Jackie, you alright?" Simone put her hands on his shoulders. Jack leaned over placing his palms on the floor.
"Yeah," he said, "I'm alright."
"Go home, buddy?" Fabri lifted his friend's arm gently, in the same manner Jack had always done for everyone else.
"Yeah." He nodded as his friends gathered around to help him up and walk him home. Pierre grabbed the wood and tools on his way out.
***
After the fight Jack wasn't quite so lenient with the peculiar Austrian boy. Always shaking his head and saying "I hate that guy." Whenever someone would mention his name. Fabrizio testified to the end of his short days that he was the only person Jack really didn't like.
Life carried on as normal for the next day or two. Simone, Jack, and Fabrizio spent most of their afternoons in the park. The boys would run and around and act like silly seventeen year-olds and Simone would sit on the bench and clap. She wouldn't be benched for much longer. Every night after work and the gatherings in the bar, Fabri and Jack would go home to their little garret and work on Simone's new leg.
"Hey, race with us!" Jack grabbed her hand.
"How? I'm not going to look like Hop-Along Hooker out there." She folded her arms laughing. "I cannot run! Impossible!"
"Alright," Jack shrugged, "have it your way." He picked her up and swung her around on his back.
"Put me down, stupid American!"
"Ready to race, Fabri?"
"You have a bit of a handicap, no?"
"Just a little challenge. Some athletes do it in training."
"Lifting thirty pounds I see, but thirty year old hookers is different thing."
"Down! Down!" Simone cracked, pounding Jack in the back.
"Ready?" Jack checked.
"One." said the boys, "two.three!" They ran off. Fabrizio, who was not carrying a one hundred and thirty pound woman on his back, won the race. Jack spun around in a circle just to drive Simone crazy-who was in pain with laughter.
After the park Jack went to work at the café. Fabrizio and Jean left early. Jean went off to seek out Catherine-a girl he took out that wanted little to do with him. Fabrizio probably went home to sleep.
Jack was wiping down the kitchen and whistling as usual. Besides being bloodied by that sniveling little bastard it was a good week that only promised to get better as Simone's birthday approached.
"Bon soir." A voice cooed to him. Jack turned around to see Vianne. She strolled over to him at the sink tossing her stringy blonde hair, and swaying her perfect hips.
"Hello, Vianne." Here was girl he and his best friend had been pining over for months. He wasn't stupid. He knew what she was thinking by the look in her eyes.
"I heard about your fight."
"Yeah, well.I don't fight really.at all."
"I heard you taught him a lesson.I heard you were so brave." She leaned forward showing cleavage.
*Come on, Dawson, you've seen a pair of those before. What makes hers so different?*
"Yeah, well I." She came closer. Teasingly pulling at his shirt.
"We never get chance to talk much, but I see you everyday."
Jack took a few things into consideration. His best friend would be angry and jealous and above all: hurt. Then he thought about the women in his romantic life. He knew at this point he wasn't going to go back to Chippewa Falls and marry Judy and live a normal life. And that girl he had thought up in his head.thinking that there was a perfect girl out there, but he knew Vianne wasn't it.
But she drove him crazy! His mouth would go dry, he would begin to sweat.and something else would to start to happen.
And what about his inexperience? Sure, he had messed around with girls before, but he had never gone all the way. He knew he wasn't a Wisconsin farm boy anymore. He'd been living in the big bad world now for two years. And something very good was offering herself to him. P He was a seventeen year-old boy and despite everything telling him no there was something bigger.
Sex.
He had a chance and more importantly he Iwanted/I it. So he let it happen.in the back pantry.
***
He wanted to feel bad. He was a jerk for what he did to his friend. Fabri wouldn't have done it to him. Would he? But it was an experience like none other. He had been inside a woman. For the first time since he was a young boy he didn't draw or even look at his art for days. He had found the ultimate expression of passion: making love.
His next problem was that Vianne was done with him and out looking for another boy to adore and seduce. *French women,* he thought, *sometimes.* He swore if he ever got over Vianne he would stay away from French girls.
Walking home a few days later. Someone tapped him on the back. When he turned around he was socked right in the face before he could see who it was.
He expected to see Adolf wanting another challenge. But he found someone quite different when he got up.
"What the hell did you do that for?!"
"You knew I liked her, too, bastardo!"
"Fair's fair! She wanted me, alright! You're just mad because you're a virgin and I'm not." He'd been hit in the face too many times this week. Sweet little Jack could only spit venom now.
"I wouldn't do this to you! You betrayed me!"
"I wouldn't go knocking you in the face!" Jack pushed Fabrizio to the ground. "Unless I was provoked!"
"Bastardo!" He punched him again and Jack punched back.
"You'd be getting a lot more of those if it weren't for me, Fabrizio ICorbo/I!"
"I hate you!" He pushed him.
"If it weren't for me you'd probably be dead! You're old man would've killed you by now!"
"Paolo is NOT mi padre! .And you lured me away from my family and my home.you can go to hell." Fabrizio stalked away.
Jack stood there, steaming. With a burst of rage lunged himself at his best friend and confidant taking them both to the ground.
Fabrizio raised his arm to punch him again when someone grabbed it and ripped it away. He fell back and so did the newcomer. Only having one leg, it was hard to balance.
"One of you bastards help me up!" Simone yelled. Fabrizio pulled her up and she ripped her arm from his hand as soon as she was planted and she yanked her crutch from Jack.
"Sit down!" She pointed to the bench. "Maintenant!"
"He started it." Fabrizio grumbled.
"Hey, if you-"
"Shut up! Both of you! Why would you do this?!"
"Bastardo slept with Vianne."
"He isn't the first young man to give into temptation, it is no crime. Two months she won't mean a thing to either of you. A fist fight isn't going to unscrew her." Jack was about to open his mouth. "And you," she pointed to him, "saying those terrible things. You're lucky for the family you had, don't pick on others who aren't as lucky. How terrible! The both of you!"
Neither boy looked at the other. Their arms were folded and their faces bloodied.
"And to have a friendship like you have. To give that up over some hussy. To have what you two have when I was your age, what I'd give!" She seemed hurt. "You both need to wake and realize. Either that or kill each other now.nothing is worth this.this anger against your best friend.go home and clean yourselves up. I'm not working this out for you."
She hobbled off in frustration and left the boys to their own devices. The only distraction from the quiet air we're curious and appalled onlookers watching the boys who had caused such an uproar.
"I-I'm sorry." Jack whispered, barely audible. Fabrizio didn't or unfold his arms for close to a minute.
"It's alright.I think I get all of that off mi chest." He turned and cracked a weak smile. "You look bad."
"You don't exactly look dashing and debonair yourself."
"Go home?"
"I guess."
"A few moments ago I wanted to kill you, eh?"
"Same here."
"We work on the leg tomorrow? Maybe finish?"
"Yeah, I think so."
***
The boys finished Simone's leg the next day and gave it to her at her birthday party. The party was appropriately held on the third floor of the brothel where Jack solicited every whore to be a model for him. And this time was actually not looking for anything else but art.but of course no one really believed him.
The party had presents and cake and singing.Simone smiled through all of this.which she claimed before to be stupid.
Simone protested the leg at first (which had a big red ribbon tied around it) but they we're able to get it on her after an hour. She agreed to try it for a while. Once she was used to it she never used to crutch again- although she still walked rather strangely. Also with Simone's usual attire of a bandana and big hoop earrings she looked even more like a pirate, earning her the nickname of "Peg Leg" by Jack.
Life stayed quiet and happy, although still quirky, on their side of Paris for another year.
"Jack, you're completely naïve." Simone huffed. He was testing her patience.
"How old are you then?"
"About thirty."
"You don't know?"
"One often doesn't when you don't know your parents."
"What are you doing." her thought for a moment, "August 17th?"
"Pissing around during the day and then working after supper. What makes it different than any other day?"
"Good. August 17th you're turning thirty." Jack folded his arms. Why it was a rule of normal life to have a birthday in Jack's strange little world, she didn't know.
Jack skipped out of the brothel like it was the general store back home. Nothing seemed to ever wave him.
Simone sat back down on the old armchair. He was a persistent little devil, but he brought out the maternal instincts in her that a prostitute rarely gets to exhibit. She knew has soon as he brought up the suggestion. Simone LeClerc, the nobody from nowhere, was going to have her own birthday, like anybody really needs that. It was just fluff.
***
"Hey, Fabri!" Jack ran down the street after his best friend. "Hey, Fabri!" Fabrizio turned around wiping the sweat from his brow; the Paris heat was getting to him.
"How can you run like that in this heat?"
"I have a great idea!"
"Oh, now I see." Fabri smiled. "This idea, what is it?"
"We're giving Simone a birthday and I have the best idea for a present. Call a meeting together with Marie, Pierre, and Jean." Jack started walking backwards toward his next destination.
"Where you going?"
"I've got to do a little shopping to do so we can make Simone's present!"
"Don't spend all of our money!" Fabri called out to him.
"What money?" Jack put his arms out.
"Exactly!"
***
Jack waited at the bar for about ten minutes everybody was late. He spent most of that time chatting up crazy Madame Bijoux. Everyone one else tended to keep his or her distance from her. Jack rather liked her. True, she was strange, maybe even delusional, but somehow inspirational. Everything about her was just a little bit sad, but she made him want to dream big.
Jack still peeked over his shoulder through the smoky haze and dim orange light waiting for his friends, he zoned out and listened to the chatter and clanking of glasses. He couldn't wait to tell everyone about his big plan and Jack rarely passed up social opportunities, but he was starting to feel sleepy. Where were they? Late as usual most likely.
"Was is this great birthday idea of yours?" Jack turned around to see Pierre.
"Only you can say 'birthday' in a cynical tone."
"Are telling us this idea or not? I've been building up excitement, I don't want to get disappointed." said Jean.
"Alright, alright," Jack said, "what's the one major thing Simone is missing?"
"Décorum." Marie guessed.
"No, something that any moron would notice the instant they saw her."
"Then am I right?" Marie teased.
"No." Pierre, "no. That is very stupid." Fabrizio had a feeling all along, but didn't want to say anything.
"See?" Jack reached down, placing some tools and a wooden leg of an armchair on the bar. "We cut this to the right size, make some other adjustments. and voila, a wooden leg. She'll get around easier and won't have as many back problems when she gets older."
"Jack," Pierre put his hand on Jack's shoulder, "people like Simone don't worry about getting old. They worry about surviving."
"Porquoi pas? I think we should do it. We all want to survive. Why not make life worth our while? If she learns to walk with a fake leg instead of a crutch, daily activities will become easier, and if gets to have that one stupid day a year that we all have to have people think of her a little more it might be nice."
There was a long silence. Simone had no people, no birthday; nobody really knew where she came from. The streets of Paris they assumed, product of an orphanage? She wasn't a young kid with everything to think about. But she wasn't old. If she had anything she had a chance. Why give her a day just for her?
"We will all spilt however much that cost and will all plan a party." Marie agreed.
Jack nodded and smiled at her. Marie was always to rescue when it came to kind gestures. Right then Simone walked in. Jack quickly tossed the chair leg and tools under his stool.
"Bon soir!" She waved her hand childishly. "Why is everyone so early?"
"No reason." Jack shrugged.
The bartender slid a glass down the bar to a customer. It spilled in his lap.
"Arg! Nein!"
"I can see how that connects to his lousy throwing arm." Jack bit his lip. Adolf turned around. He heard him. "Look, I'm sorry, alright? I didn't mean any harm." Adolf still looked pretty unhappy as he approached him.
"You do not say that to me."
"Hey, listen. What do you have to be insulted by me? I'm seventeen and I look like I'm practically in kindergarten." He took a sip of his drink trying to promote that it was no big deal. Adolf kept staring him down. Jack looked up at him, slowly and sheepishly spitting his beer back into the glass, but never losing eye contact.
The bad news came when Jack stood up. Adolf was a little too closer and he jostled him a little standing up. Angrily, he grabbed Jack by the collar.
"Whoa!" Jack's feet slid out from under him. He kicked and scrambled as he was lifted. "This is not good." he said to himself. Jack freed himself from Adolf's grip and shoved Adolf shoved back. Jack pushed to the ground.
"Don't tempt me." Jack pointed at him and turned around, walking past his friends with open mouths.
Adolf couldn't let this humiliation stand. He jumped on Jack's back and Jack came surging forward, taking a chair with him.
Jack grabbed him and they began rolling around on the floor with growling and shouting.
"Non, garcons!" Marie waved her arms.
"Hit him on the left! He's open!" Jean shouted.
"Finish him!" yelled Pierre.
As swings were thrown left and right Simone and Fabrizio's heads moved with them with all matter of "oh's" and "ow's."
Jack finally rolled on top of him and began punching him alternately on either cheek. Adolf jolted him off and scrambled for the door. Jack didn't run after him. He sat up on his knees with heels under his rear. He wiped a stream of blood from the corner of his mouth.
"I think this battle goes to the US." Pierre turned to Jean.
"Hey, Jackie, you alright?" Simone put her hands on his shoulders. Jack leaned over placing his palms on the floor.
"Yeah," he said, "I'm alright."
"Go home, buddy?" Fabri lifted his friend's arm gently, in the same manner Jack had always done for everyone else.
"Yeah." He nodded as his friends gathered around to help him up and walk him home. Pierre grabbed the wood and tools on his way out.
***
After the fight Jack wasn't quite so lenient with the peculiar Austrian boy. Always shaking his head and saying "I hate that guy." Whenever someone would mention his name. Fabrizio testified to the end of his short days that he was the only person Jack really didn't like.
Life carried on as normal for the next day or two. Simone, Jack, and Fabrizio spent most of their afternoons in the park. The boys would run and around and act like silly seventeen year-olds and Simone would sit on the bench and clap. She wouldn't be benched for much longer. Every night after work and the gatherings in the bar, Fabri and Jack would go home to their little garret and work on Simone's new leg.
"Hey, race with us!" Jack grabbed her hand.
"How? I'm not going to look like Hop-Along Hooker out there." She folded her arms laughing. "I cannot run! Impossible!"
"Alright," Jack shrugged, "have it your way." He picked her up and swung her around on his back.
"Put me down, stupid American!"
"Ready to race, Fabri?"
"You have a bit of a handicap, no?"
"Just a little challenge. Some athletes do it in training."
"Lifting thirty pounds I see, but thirty year old hookers is different thing."
"Down! Down!" Simone cracked, pounding Jack in the back.
"Ready?" Jack checked.
"One." said the boys, "two.three!" They ran off. Fabrizio, who was not carrying a one hundred and thirty pound woman on his back, won the race. Jack spun around in a circle just to drive Simone crazy-who was in pain with laughter.
After the park Jack went to work at the café. Fabrizio and Jean left early. Jean went off to seek out Catherine-a girl he took out that wanted little to do with him. Fabrizio probably went home to sleep.
Jack was wiping down the kitchen and whistling as usual. Besides being bloodied by that sniveling little bastard it was a good week that only promised to get better as Simone's birthday approached.
"Bon soir." A voice cooed to him. Jack turned around to see Vianne. She strolled over to him at the sink tossing her stringy blonde hair, and swaying her perfect hips.
"Hello, Vianne." Here was girl he and his best friend had been pining over for months. He wasn't stupid. He knew what she was thinking by the look in her eyes.
"I heard about your fight."
"Yeah, well.I don't fight really.at all."
"I heard you taught him a lesson.I heard you were so brave." She leaned forward showing cleavage.
*Come on, Dawson, you've seen a pair of those before. What makes hers so different?*
"Yeah, well I." She came closer. Teasingly pulling at his shirt.
"We never get chance to talk much, but I see you everyday."
Jack took a few things into consideration. His best friend would be angry and jealous and above all: hurt. Then he thought about the women in his romantic life. He knew at this point he wasn't going to go back to Chippewa Falls and marry Judy and live a normal life. And that girl he had thought up in his head.thinking that there was a perfect girl out there, but he knew Vianne wasn't it.
But she drove him crazy! His mouth would go dry, he would begin to sweat.and something else would to start to happen.
And what about his inexperience? Sure, he had messed around with girls before, but he had never gone all the way. He knew he wasn't a Wisconsin farm boy anymore. He'd been living in the big bad world now for two years. And something very good was offering herself to him. P He was a seventeen year-old boy and despite everything telling him no there was something bigger.
Sex.
He had a chance and more importantly he Iwanted/I it. So he let it happen.in the back pantry.
***
He wanted to feel bad. He was a jerk for what he did to his friend. Fabri wouldn't have done it to him. Would he? But it was an experience like none other. He had been inside a woman. For the first time since he was a young boy he didn't draw or even look at his art for days. He had found the ultimate expression of passion: making love.
His next problem was that Vianne was done with him and out looking for another boy to adore and seduce. *French women,* he thought, *sometimes.* He swore if he ever got over Vianne he would stay away from French girls.
Walking home a few days later. Someone tapped him on the back. When he turned around he was socked right in the face before he could see who it was.
He expected to see Adolf wanting another challenge. But he found someone quite different when he got up.
"What the hell did you do that for?!"
"You knew I liked her, too, bastardo!"
"Fair's fair! She wanted me, alright! You're just mad because you're a virgin and I'm not." He'd been hit in the face too many times this week. Sweet little Jack could only spit venom now.
"I wouldn't do this to you! You betrayed me!"
"I wouldn't go knocking you in the face!" Jack pushed Fabrizio to the ground. "Unless I was provoked!"
"Bastardo!" He punched him again and Jack punched back.
"You'd be getting a lot more of those if it weren't for me, Fabrizio ICorbo/I!"
"I hate you!" He pushed him.
"If it weren't for me you'd probably be dead! You're old man would've killed you by now!"
"Paolo is NOT mi padre! .And you lured me away from my family and my home.you can go to hell." Fabrizio stalked away.
Jack stood there, steaming. With a burst of rage lunged himself at his best friend and confidant taking them both to the ground.
Fabrizio raised his arm to punch him again when someone grabbed it and ripped it away. He fell back and so did the newcomer. Only having one leg, it was hard to balance.
"One of you bastards help me up!" Simone yelled. Fabrizio pulled her up and she ripped her arm from his hand as soon as she was planted and she yanked her crutch from Jack.
"Sit down!" She pointed to the bench. "Maintenant!"
"He started it." Fabrizio grumbled.
"Hey, if you-"
"Shut up! Both of you! Why would you do this?!"
"Bastardo slept with Vianne."
"He isn't the first young man to give into temptation, it is no crime. Two months she won't mean a thing to either of you. A fist fight isn't going to unscrew her." Jack was about to open his mouth. "And you," she pointed to him, "saying those terrible things. You're lucky for the family you had, don't pick on others who aren't as lucky. How terrible! The both of you!"
Neither boy looked at the other. Their arms were folded and their faces bloodied.
"And to have a friendship like you have. To give that up over some hussy. To have what you two have when I was your age, what I'd give!" She seemed hurt. "You both need to wake and realize. Either that or kill each other now.nothing is worth this.this anger against your best friend.go home and clean yourselves up. I'm not working this out for you."
She hobbled off in frustration and left the boys to their own devices. The only distraction from the quiet air we're curious and appalled onlookers watching the boys who had caused such an uproar.
"I-I'm sorry." Jack whispered, barely audible. Fabrizio didn't or unfold his arms for close to a minute.
"It's alright.I think I get all of that off mi chest." He turned and cracked a weak smile. "You look bad."
"You don't exactly look dashing and debonair yourself."
"Go home?"
"I guess."
"A few moments ago I wanted to kill you, eh?"
"Same here."
"We work on the leg tomorrow? Maybe finish?"
"Yeah, I think so."
***
The boys finished Simone's leg the next day and gave it to her at her birthday party. The party was appropriately held on the third floor of the brothel where Jack solicited every whore to be a model for him. And this time was actually not looking for anything else but art.but of course no one really believed him.
The party had presents and cake and singing.Simone smiled through all of this.which she claimed before to be stupid.
Simone protested the leg at first (which had a big red ribbon tied around it) but they we're able to get it on her after an hour. She agreed to try it for a while. Once she was used to it she never used to crutch again- although she still walked rather strangely. Also with Simone's usual attire of a bandana and big hoop earrings she looked even more like a pirate, earning her the nickname of "Peg Leg" by Jack.
Life stayed quiet and happy, although still quirky, on their side of Paris for another year.