Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    An American Airman in Paris: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
    An American Airman in Paris: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
    An American Airman in Paris: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    An American Airman in Paris: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War

    By Beatriz Williams

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams introduces Octavian Rofrano, from her forthcoming new novel, A Certain Age, in this short story about a lonely American pilot in 1920s Paris and those he’s never forgotten.

    Octavian Rofrano has never met the girl whose photograph was his constant companion through the long days and nights of the Great War. The promises he made to himself and that far-away image in the silence of his cockpit have never left him, but the anguish and loneliness of post-Armistice Paris has crept into his bones. One night, Octavian finally decides to lose himself in the sad beauty the City of Lights offers, but as reminders of that 11th day of November fill his mind, can he let go of past hopes or does the promise of salvation still have a hold on him?

    Originally published in the moving collection Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and The Great War, this e-book also includes an excerpt from Williams’ new novel, A Certain Age, coming in June 2016. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 17, 2016
    ISBN9780062476586
    An American Airman in Paris: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
    Author

    Beatriz Williams

    Beatriz Williams is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels, including The Beach at Summerly, Our Woman in Moscow, and The Summer Wives, as well as four other novels cowritten with Lauren Willig and Karen White. A native of Seattle, she graduated from Stanford University and earned an MBA in finance from Columbia University. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.

    Read more from Beatriz Williams

    Related to An American Airman in Paris

    Related ebooks

    Historical Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Women Of Bletchley Part I: The Bombe Operator

      Jan 24, 2019

      Although it was shrouded in secrecy for decades, the codebreaking work of Bletchley Park is now recognised as an extraordinary wartime achievement. Prodigiously talented cryptanalysts devised various methods to decipher Axis communications. This prod

      11 min read

    • Article

      Life In Wartime: Women Dominate A Quartet Of World War II Novels

      Aug 25, 2021

      The 4 best recent novels set during World War II show the ingenuity of women who put everything on the line to defeat the Nazis.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Pursuit Of Love: Why Are We Still So Obsessed With The Mitford Sisters?

      May 11, 2021

      Is there any greater example of the Problematic Fave than the Mitford sisters? They were posh, gossipy, fabulous, stylish and politically extreme. Were a couple of them – let’s just say it – outrageously right-wing? Yes. But are we still – myself inc

      6 min read

    • Article

      Sad Farewell

      Jul 2, 2021

      FOR readers there’s a real poignancy to seeing The Missing Sister by Lucinda Riley at the top of the SA fiction bestseller list because it’s the last book that will be released by the much-loved Northern Irish author. Riley’s family recently announce

      1 min read

    • Article

      March Fiction

      Feb 15, 2022

      Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson (Century, £20) In 2018 the ever-prolific James Patterson got together with Bill Clinton to write the best-selling The President Is Missing: a novel that combined Clinton’s insider knowledge with Patter

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz

      Jan 27, 2021

      The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz
      4 min read

    • Article

      Best-sellers

      Feb 25, 2018

      Rankings for hard-cover books sold in Southern California, as reported by selected book stores: ___ Fiction 1."The Great Alone," by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's: $28.99) A family discovers it is in peril after the father, a returning Vietnam War POW,

      1 min read

    • Article

      Paris Was Yesterday

      Mar 10, 2021

      THE lane between the farm and the village was still half underwater, so my husband, jabbed weeks ago, insisted on driving me to the village hall in his pickup truck. We loaded up like an old couple going on a day trip to the seaside, me with a Thermo

      4 min read

    • Article

      Typewriter

      Aug 2, 2021

      Chère Madame. Vous ne vous rappelleriez pas de moi, mais de ma part… Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap… She flicks the return bar – PING – and her fingers fall back into rhythm. Catherine’s French comes as naturally as the movement of her

      5 min read

    • Article

      Pickpocket

      Jun 1, 2020

      Pickpocket
      7 min read

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Gold Coast

      Sep 6, 2022

      The Gold Coast
      35 min read

    • Article

      Another Passionless Day

      May 23, 2017

      Another Passionless Day
      2 min read

    • Article

      FLICKERS APR Books

      Sep 1, 2019

      FLICKERS APR Books
      16 min read

    • Article

      The Madness of Venice

      Apr 2, 2018

      1. I lived in Venice for two years, and I hated it. In conversations I used euphemisms and turns of phrase (among my favorite either you love it or hate it! and it’s a… difficult city), but I was lying through my teeth. I fucking hated it

      10 min read

    • Article

      Passion Killer

      May 17, 2021

      Passion Killer
      2 min read

    • Article

      Such, Such Were The Goys

      Aug 26, 2021

      Such, Such Were The Goys
      6 min read

    • Article

      Only a Fragrance

      Sep 1, 2022

      Only a Fragrance
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for An American Airman in Paris

    4.5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      An American Airman in Paris - Beatriz Williams

      Contents

      An American Airman in Paris

      Buy Link to Fall of Poppies

      An Excerpt from A Certain Age

      About the Author

      Also by Beatriz Williams

      Credits

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      An American Airman in Paris

      Paris. Mid-April 1920

      HE CAME TO HARRY’S TO DRINK, NOT TO FIND A WOMAN, BUT sometimes the one just naturally leads to the other, doesn’t it? Sometimes you haven’t got a choice.

      Besides, you’re in Paris! You’re in Paris, in a smoky establishment not far from the Opéra, surrounded by souls in a similar state of reckless desperation, and who can resist that fug of inevitability? Sex hangs in the air, thick and musky, and it tastes like Scotch whisky. Nearly irresistible.

      Octavian lights another cigarette, gestures for another drink, and considers the array of bottles on the wall before him, for example. Plenty of choice there, right? Except that there isn’t. It’s all an illusion. A fellow’s got to drink something, or he’ll die. You can choose what to drink, but you can’t choose whether to drink.

      All right. Maybe you can, if you try hard enough. If you care hard enough. Octavian has always believed in choice. Hasn’t self-control been the guiding principle of his life? Until this moment, on this particular night, he’s resisted that barbaric impulse to copulate, in the manner of his broken-down compatriots, with whatever lady happens to look fairest in the hazy glow of a quarter liter of decent Scotch whisky and a half dozen smokes. In fact, Octavian’s abstinence has made him a legend. A religious idol, almost, except for that inconvenient absence of outward religion. J.C., his friends started calling him, way back in the middle of a Paris leave two years ago, and it stuck.

      Now, J.C., says Jack Marmot, plopping sloppily on the stool next door, just tell me what you think of that bird over there, talking to Dashwood. A real doll, ain’t she?

      Octavian squints between the bodies until he finds Dashwood, and then the woman furled up next to him, lush and sleek-skinned, holding a slender Gauloises in one hand and a highball in the other. Her lips are dark, her hair is short and curling. Underneath a sheer black dress, her breasts are enchantingly visible.

      He returns his attention to his drink and tips it back between his lips. Sure. A real doll.

      Jack leans close. Do me a favor, J.C. I want to see this before I die. Why don’t you just drag your handsome mug over there and relieve Dashwood of his responsibilities? He don’t deserve a doll like that.

      He’s welcome to her.

      Aw, what is it with you, J.C.? You don’t like girls?

      I like girls, all right. Just not that kind of girl.

      You gotta girl back home, J.C.?

      Nope.

      Jack finishes his drink and signals the bartender. On account of I got to talking to an old buddy of yours, name of Peterson—

      He’s not a buddy of mine.

      Says he knows you, though.

      Octavian pulls out the packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and fiddles the dwindling contents. I guess we know each other.

      Anyway, Peterson says you got a girl back home, pretty girl. You kept her picture in your wallet. In your pocket, every time you went up on patrol.

      He said that, did he?

      Yep. True or false?

      I guess that’s true.

      The bartender arrives. Refills the glasses, without a word. Jack waits in drunken patience, mesmerized by the delicate flow of whisky against the black waistcoat of its source. When every drop is safely delivered, and Jack has clinked the careful edge of his glass with the edge of Octavian’s glass, he returns to the subject of the photograph in Octavian’s wallet. Because who doesn’t want to hear more about someone’s girl back home?

      So? What’s the story? What happened to her?

      Nothing happened to her, that I know of.

      "All right. So what happened to you, J.C.?"

      Octavian doesn’t reply to that. What a question!—What happened to you?—as if it’s not obvious what’s happened to him. What’s happened to all of them. Why it’s impossible to return to an unspoiled America, to an unspoiled girl. Why they are smoking and drinking and fornicating in Paris, instead of returning home to nice clean lives and nice clean wives.

      He shrugs instead. Shrugs and lifts his drink, examining the bottom of the glass, as if expecting to find some kind of message. The cigarette burns implacably between the first two fingers of his right hand.

      But Jack, it seems, will not be denied. You still got that snap? he asks, reaching in his pocket for his own identically smashed packet of pungent French cigarettes.

      This time, Octavian decides to answer him. Why not? The existence of that photograph doesn’t make a difference anymore. But at some point between the instant of opening his mouth and the instant of making voice, the smoke parts to his left and a woman inserts herself in the crack, very close, smelling of perfume and muscular Turkish tobacco, the scent of Paris. And gin. And something else, beneath it all: something salty and perspiring that sends the hot blood rushing where it shouldn’t. She places a hand on the back of his neck—an interesting choice, and more pleasurable than Octavian expects—and bends right next to his

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1