A white girl walks by Benoît with a huge Galeries Lafayette shopping bag in hand while wearing a t-shirt that reads: “Take the risk or you’ll lose the chance.” Benoît laughs to himself, and she probably thinks he’s somehow “coming on” to her just because he happens to be smiling in her direction. This is what he loathed about coming to this part of Paris. Seeing people like this. So self-satisfied. So certain that they had “made it” in this life because of their “chutzpah,” not their privilege. He thought about stopping her in her tracks and telling her this, concluded by ripping the t-shirt right off her small-titted chest. But he doesn’t. You can’t reason with people like that. You can’t change their minds once they’re so dogmatically convinced of something. This girl was convinced perhaps that she had taken a risk by coming to Paris when, in all likelihood, that decision had been subsidized by her progenitors.

More and more, this was the only type of girl Benoît kept seeing in the town he increasingly felt out of place in. Though he had been born and raised here—specifically, in the tenth arrondissement, near the Gare de l’Est—he did not feel “at home” the more the years went by. For all the “shock and awe” about the “element” that orbited Gare de l’Est, it was one of the last places in Paris that still seemed real to Benoît. Maybe he was more at ease among those who were Black like him—even if Benoît had the benefit of being “the right kind” of Black. That is to say, he was light-skinned. Compared to the African migrants and refugees that tended to gravitate toward this train station, Benoît felt positively white. It was only when he ventured out to areas like the ninth or the first, where dumb bitches ran rampant—blissfully unaware of their dumb bitchery—that he saw himself as “so Black.”

The only reason Benoît had been forced into this hellacious nexus of privilege and false self-importance was because he had landed another job. This time at a restaurant called, of all things, Les Bienheureux. Although he was hesitant to take on the role of “garçon,” he knew his financial situation didn’t allow for much of a choice in the matter. His mother, Aimée, had recently tripped down the stairs leading to their apartment and badly injured her leg. At sixty years old, that wasn’t easy to recover from, and she needed time to heal before even thinking of returning to her job at the supermarket.

Benoît had been the only son of three to stay in Paris and look after their mother. The others, Thierry and Bastien, had fled to London and Barcelona, respectively. When Benoît thought too much about their betrayal, it made his blood boil. After everything their mother had sacrificed to come to France, how could they be so cruel and cold as to abandon her in her old age? Benoît would never. As the oldest, he supposed the responsibility of caring for her fell “naturally” onto his shoulders. Though it was starting to feel less natural as he found himself thrust into the soulless abyss of the “Tourist Heaven” iteration of Paris. The parts where wannabe “it” girls and “influencers” showed no shame about having their pictures and videos taken as many times as necessary to get the perfect “authentic” shot. It was enough to make Benoît want to retch. Not discreetly in some alleyway, but right on their “stealth wealth” sneakers. Needless to say, a “street rat” like Benoît would never get away with such behavior. His “ilk” was constantly forced to practice “restraint,” to never act “out of turn.” His first day on the job at Les Bienheureux, the tests of such restraint were pushed to the limit.

It started with an American woman, whose face was packed to the gills with collagen. She sat at a prime table during a peak hour despite being on her own. When Benoît suggested she move her hyaluronic acid-packed body elsewhere—in his most “subtle” manner, to be sure—she didn’t so much as register what he was trying to intimate. Instead, she remained firmly parked. A little beacon of entitlement in her oversized sunglasses, wide-brimmed black straw hat and a white dress with black polka dots that showcased far more cleavage than what Benoît wanted to see. It was apparent that she viewed herself in a certain way that those with more objectivity did not. But, again, a person like that can’t have their mind changed. Least of all about themselves.

Like the absurd shopping bag girl he had seen on the way to Les Bienheureux, Wide-Brim probably imagined she had taken some “big risk” in her life to get here. But one look at her and Benoît could tell her fortune had come from a father or a husband (presently, ex-husband)—or both. People like that could never understand what a real risk was. Like the one his own mother had taken on immigrating to France…and all for Benoît to “live the dream” of waiting tables. Feigning sycophantic behavior for people who were constantly surrounded by such behavior all their lives, and in every scenario. They paid good money to live in a bubble, and heaven forbid anyone should burst it.

By the end of his shift, however, Benoît was ready to do just that. His patience had worn thin in the wake of so many customers modeled after Wide-Brim’s “personality” and aesthetic treating him like a peon. He was no stranger to thankless jobs, of course, but this was the first time he had ever worked in an environment that so exclusively catered to both the rich and tourists playing at being rich. At least in past jobs, the clientele had treated him as an equal. Or, at the bare minimum, not like a turd to be stepped on and generally abused. So yes, Benoît’s headspace was pushed into a dark corner, one might say, when he finally decided it was his obligation to burst their bubble. “Take the risk or you’ll lose the chance,” right? And Benoît really didn’t want to lose this one.

Thus, when the last errant stragglers in the restaurant refused to leave, to understand that the establishment had closed an hour ago, he took to picking up a stack of plates, approaching the center of the dining area and smashing them indiscriminately—the shards bouncing off the ground and flying everywhere. Some into the faces and eyes of the “untouchables.” But oh, how Benoît had touched them now. Rattled them well proper. And you know what? It was worth the risk. That white bitch with the shopping bag had not been wrong. Maybe that’s what had surprised Benoît most of all about today. Not the loss of a job he very much needed or his subsequent arrest for assault.