The French are known for many things. But one thing that they have never been known for is their, well, kindness. At least not toward anyone who isn’t their own kind. Having lived in Paris for the past five years, Charlie knew something about the distinctive French brand of hauteur. And usually, it was best exemplified by the garçons of cafés. Although garçon is a highly outdated and rather offensive term to use, in this case, it suited the waiter in question. As far as Charlie was concerned, he deserved that level of demeanment and more after what happened.

Right from the outset, it was easy for Charlie to appraise him as one of those “career waiters” who was, from the looks of it, over halfway through that career by now. Maybe that was part of what spurred his general malaise and disinterest in the needs of the café’s patrons (side note: a café that could also be called a restaurant, it toed that line depending on the hour of the day). Least of all patrons, like Charlie, who weren’t French. Because even though he spoke well enough, a true Frenchie could always separate the real from the fake (the wheat from the chaff, as it were). The real from the wannabe Frenchies whose accent would never be able to convey the same perfection as a native tongue. As it was with Charlie’s leaden langue. His tongue, to the French ear, was utterly wooden.

So it was that, right from the get-go, Charlie was on the “lesser than” (a bona fide French person) list with this waiter. A waiter who, in his mind, he would refer to as bêcheur, which loosely translates, in some scenarios, to “stuck-up person.” And oh, how stuck-up and snooty Bêcheur was as he barely contained his disdain for Charlie’s simple order—un café allongé—at the peak of the lunch hour. Clearly, Bêcheur was hoping that Charlie would rack up a higher bill for the restaurant—not that it would make a difference, in the end, to Bêcheur’s bottom line. He would still get his usual rate. Though certainly not a pourboire from Charlie. No, no. That was the last thing Bêcheur deserved. Especially after what happened with the umbrella.

For, you see, Charlie was automatically relegated to the outdoor seating area, as though Bêcheur had automatically sized him up as someone who wasn’t worth a damn because his order wasn’t going to be burgeoning. And while, during warm weather, the outdoor seating area was a desirable, sought-after location for dining and drinking, in the fall months that had recently descended upon Paris, it was much less so. Hence, the majority of the restaurant’s clientele being packed inside at the moment, while only the errant coffee drinkers were banished to the outside like bastard children. Charlie, according to Bêcheur, was one such bastard child.

Even so, it didn’t bother him to be seated outside—not at first, anyway. In fact, part of the whole reason he enjoyed stopping into a café at this hour was because the streets were particularly bustling with people coming and going on their lunch breaks. In other words, it was prime people-watching hour. And it would have been perfectly lovely and enjoyable to do so were it not for the fact that, almost immediately upon being seated (or rather, steered over to a remote chair like a dirty peasant—or, to use a more severe analogy, a Jew being prodded onto a boxcar), the wind picked up at an accelerated rate. Nay, an almost alarming rate. Even so, against his better judgment, Charlie conceded to “parking” there. He was too invested in the idea of sitting a spell and drinking a coffee not to. And while it occurred to him to ask to be seated inside instead, Bêcheur was so quick to abandon him at the “table for exiles” that he could barely get enough of a word in edgewise to even order his drink.

Once he did, it was subsequently delivered in such a rough, slapdash manner that the coffee sloshed over the edge and onto the saucer, which, for once, made itself useful by catching the “resin.” Although Charlie knew that was what it was technically for, for the most part he despised saucers. Found them superfluous. Almost as superfluous as this waiter, who had all the warmth of an AI robot arm serving him his shit. In fact, an AI robot arm would have been far warmer and less grudging. But at least Bêcheur was “generous” enough to supplement the coffee with a glass of water. One that, by the time the nearby umbrella, which shouldn’t have been up in the first place in such windblown weather, crashed to the floor before hitting Charlie’s table and knocking the empty water glass down with it, whereupon one of the numerous glass shards entered Charlie’s exposed foot (yes, he was wearing sandals in the fall, likely another tipoff to Bêcheur that he wasn’t French). Specifically, his pinkie toe. Which, of course, made his “complaint” about gushing blood from the side of it feel even more “pussy” from Bêcheur’s perspective.

Indeed, Bêcheur was so unfazed by the sight of the overturned umbrella and verre brisé that Charlie actually had to flag him down, violently waving his arms and shouting, “Excusez-moi!,” in order to demand a Band-Aid. In response, Bêcheur looked him up and down like he was the human manifestation of a boil, so disgusting was Charlie to the very core of his being. And, naturally, before Bêcheur bothered to grab Charlie the smallest, most useless bandage possibly ever created, he was certain to first grab another waiter to help him take the umbrella out of sight and close it up so that the same thing wouldn’t happen again to some other poor, unsuspecting sap. Chanceux pour l’autre personne. Meanwhile, Charlie was literally bleeding out. Pinkie toe or not, there was a lot of fucking blood now dripping onto and staining his sandal.

Even so, Bêcheur regarded him like the biggest lily-livered baby of all time as he slowly, stingily dropped the Band-Aid onto the table, in the same degrading manner a john might pay a prostitute. Bêcheur then ignored Charlie entirely, not even offering so much as a tout va bien? by way of acknowledging his pain. To be sure, it was as though even the mere expression of pain was an inconvenience to Bêcheur. Well, not as much of an inconvenience as it was going to be after Charlie left a little cadeau for Bêcheur on the chair. For, prior to leaving the café entirely, he went inside and downstairs to use the bathroom, squeezing out a turd that was “right-sized” enough to put into one of the sandwich bags he had left over in his backpack from a “to-go lunch” he brought for a picnic in Luxembourg the day prior. He thanked himself internally for being so “messy”—in other words, too lazy to ever bother cleaning out his backpack of such things that might later be useful. Because, really, you never know when you might need a plastic zipper bag. One that, with the merde now inside of it, he then placed into the backpack anew to hide this human-made offense as he returned to the table, where the check had been slapped down.

Waiting for the right moment when no one was looking, he carefully removed the bag, unsealed the “zipper” on it and dropped the shit right onto the seat. When he looked around him again to check if anyone saw, he realized the only person paying any attention to him was a homeless man across the street who gave him a knowing smile of approval. Charlie then completed his coup de grâce by sticking a five euro bill into the shit as his way of paying the tab. He would be damned if Bêcheur was “too cool” to notice that. Alas, he couldn’t risk lingering there to find out, promptly dashing off into the street after completing this “in a pinch” (though more like “in a squeeze-out”) revenge.