Merde Happens

by Stephen Clarke

"The whole setup was so chaotic," I said. "I think I just stopped taking the job seriously at some point."

  "It is a damage," Jake said. I translated this as a shame (dommage). "Where will you get the money for your almond?"

  It took me a few seconds to work out that he meant amende, the French word for fine.

  "I have a few other job leads," I said. "And one of my ex-girlfriends works in a bank. She might be able to get me a loan. But that wouldn't solve the problem of me being Mister Boring for Alexa."

  "You must surprise her, Paul. You know, buy a Superman costume, maybe? Then invite her to make love on a trapeze."

  "Yeah, neat idea, Jake." As usual, his advice concerning women ought to have been stamped with a mental-health warning.

  "I'll go to America soon, you know," he said. "To my mom, in Nevada. And I thought, we could meet ourselves."

  "Meet up? Yeah, except that even if I get the job, I'm not sure I'll be going to Nevada."

  "Me neither."

  "What?"

  Jake sighed deeply, and proceeded to wrestle his garbled way through a story about buying a plane ticket, then spotting a cheaper fare and canceling, only to get hammered so badly with the cancellation fee that he barely had enough left over for a dirt-cheap charter to Orlando. All in all, it was like listening to someone who'd received a baseball bat in his Christmas stocking and then spent all day hitting himself on the head with it.

  "But it's no problem, man," he concluded. "I'll trap a greyhound."

  "What?" He was planning to ride home on a dog?

  "You know, the bus."

  "Oh, right." Of course, attraper was "to catch" and greyhound was, well, Greyhound. He'd actually used the right American word for once.

  "I'm really—how d'you say—waiting with impatience?"

  "Looking forward?"

  "Yeah. I'm really, you know, waiting forward with impatience or whatever, to go to America, except for one thing."

  "What's that?"

  He inhaled. "The smoke, man. My friends in New York told me smoke is already extinct as the dodo there. Even at a rock concert, the atmos-fair is clean." He grimaced. He was a big fan of Paris rock gigs, where—for the moment at least— the air was so thick widi cigarette smoke that you could hardly make out die huge No Smoking signs on the walls.

  Jake took a long pull on the stump of his cigarette and pointed to a modern building across the street.

  "Regard," he said as the silhouette of a woman appeared at a curtainless window on the top floor. "Sometimes she does the cuisine in her lingerie. I'm sure she knows that people see her, but she takes off her clothes and she does the steak frites." He laughed. "Smoke and lingerie. Vive Paree. Who needs l'Amérique, uh?"

  6

  There are girls who let you rest on your laurels. Not Alexa. Telling her you loved her wasn't an open-ended contract meaning that you didn't need to say it again. It was more like buying yogurt—your vow of eternal love only stayed fresh for a few days before it had to be renewed.

  Similarly, you couldn't just say "I love you, darling" and hope that this would distract her when you announced, "Look, I think I cocked up the job interview, so I really don't hold out much hope of living the American dream in the near future."

  So on the night Alexa returned to Paris from Marseilles, I met her at the station and whisked her off in a taxi to one of her favorite restaurants.

  During the twenty-minute cab ride, I delivered a carefully edited account of my time in London. "How could they expect me to give coherent answers off the top of my head?" I pleaded. I knew that a French girl would sympathize with anyone having to answer silly questions from the US government. Wasn't it a French pilot who, when asked at JFK what he had in his suitcase, told an airport security man something along the lines of "A bomb, stupid." I think he's due out of Guantanamo soon.

  To my surprise, she laughed at my one-liner replies.

  "Well done, Paul," she said. "Who wants to go to America, anyway?" Which came as a bit of a shock. She was the one who'd wanted me to dash off on some manly quest for adventure in the first place. "You will find another job," she went on. "As I told you, you are an inventive guy. Do you feel inventive this evening?"

  She gave my trousers a playful, and only slightly painful, pinch, and suddenly I was no longer in the mood for a long-drawn-out banquet.

  "Are you sure you want to go to the restaurant?" I asked, my voice a half tone higher than normal.

  "Yes. Didn't your mother tell you that you must feed a girl before you—" she pulled my ear close to her mouth and whispered.

  "No, she never mentioned mat," I said. "Mum used to tell me to scrub my fingernails before a date, but that's about all."

  "Ah, you Anglo-Saxons, you think it is more important to be hygienic than romantic. Anyway, you have not asked me how I did in Marseilles. Does my work interest you so little?" We were back in yogurt-renewal territory again.

  I got the driver to drop us off on the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, part of the network of wide avenues that were carved through medieval Paris in the nineteenth century to allow troops to march around the city and quell rebellions.

  A few yards down a side street was a traditional Parisian dining hall, where the food was OK rather than spectacular, but where getting a table on a Friday night, even for an early dinner at around seven thirty, took all our self-assertion skills. The restaurant was set back from the street in a courtyard, most of which was taken up with a typically Parisian mixture of queue and riot. Things were even more congested than usual because a large group of tourists had arrived just as two people were looking around for a safe place to leave their bikes.

  Parisians always assume that they take priority over groups of tourists, so Alexa and I shoved our way through to the bright lights around the restaurant's revolving doors, where the maitre d', a middle-aged guy in a blue suit, was putting on his show.

  "Une table pour quatre!" he announced.

  At this point it was up to the first group of four in the queue to speak up and lunge forward. Two Parisian couples in thick woolen overcoats did just that, leaving a foursome of American tourists frowning about whether they had let themselves get bypassed.

  A bearded, middle-aged guy in an Austrian-style green feathered hat was hovering by the door. "I called to reserve," he said discreetly.

  "You called to reserve?" die maitre d' guffawed. The whole crowd listened expectantly. "Not at this restaurant, monsieur," he went on. "We don't reserve. Maybe you called the McDo on the boulevard?"

  There was laughter and applause.

  "How long for a table for two?" I asked. I'd always found that it was best to introduce yourself to the guy in charge. You were less likely to lose your place hi the queue if he'd seen you. It also meant that for the time it took to ask the question you were semi-legitimately at the front of the line.

  "Dix minutes," he said. At any other restaurant, this could mean anything up to an hour, but here we knew that the staff kept things moving.

  The maitre d' stepped back inside for a moment, and through the partially steamed-up windows we saw him jeering at a table-load of backpacker types, or rather hassling the waiter in charge of their section of the restaurant.

  "Allez, dessert, coffee, bill! We don't charge enough to let them sit there all night."

  He came back outside. "Where do they think they are?" he asked his audience. "La Tour d'Argent?"

  This earned more laughter from the crowd. La Tour d'Argent is the kind of restaurant that gives credit card companies indigestion.

  A waiter gave a signal from inside and the maitre d' called out again.

  "Six! Who asked for a table for six?"

  There was a cheer from the middle of the scrum and a bunch of people moved forward. The maitre d' counted them as they approached.

  "Wait, you are only five."

  "Yes, the sixth is on his way," a woman said, giving him the full benefit of a glorious lipstick smile.

  "Sorry. Full tables only.
Any more sixes? No? Who doesn't mind sharing? A four and a two?"

  "Two," I said, thrusting my arm around Alexa's shoulder to prove that we were both here.

  "Allez, les deux amoureux," the maitre d' said, and we were in.

  My first impressions were of a warm, gratin-cheese fug and a contented hum of conversation. We marched down the aisle with that warm feeling of having been admitted into an exclusive club. There were at least a hundred tables—all of them occupied—arranged in long lateral rows, like a canteen. Quite a canteen, though, decorated with high framed mirrors and a bizarre romantic mural of a classical French garden that was being buzzed by a World War One airplane.

  We squeezed into the two seats nearest a low wooden partition, and a few moments later we were joined by the American foursome who'd been overtaken in the queue earlier. They nodded and wished us bonsoir as they took off their whitewater rafters' anoraks. It was easy to see which couple was which—one pair had let their hair go gray, the others were clearly sharing the same bottle of jet-black dye.

  Alexa and I ordered an aperitif of two coupes de champagne and came to a tacit decision to speak French together to ensure a little privacy.

  "Look at them reading their guidebook. I bet they don't even know which country they are visiting," Alexa said.

  "I think they probably do. All this French food on the menu ..."

  "You know what I mean, Paul. They think that Paris is France, and that France is full of artists and champagne bottles."

  I didn't dare remind her that she was a photographer who'd just ordered a glass of the house bubbly.

  "So you really are not sad that I have no more American dreams?" I asked.

  "Oh no, I don't want to go there and condone their corrupt system. And I know you'll find a way of paying your fine and keeping your share of the cafe."

  We clinked glasses and drank to her optimism.

  "Er, excusez? Nous sommes American. Vous, er? Translate the menu pour nous, si voo play?"

  We turned to see four sets of perfect transatlantic teeth glinting at us.

  I intervened before Alexa could growl out some jibe about cultural colonialists being unable to decipher menus that didn't have pictures of hamburgers on them.

  "How can I help?" I asked.

  "Oh, you speak such wonderful English," the gray-haired woman said.

  "Sank you," I said, remembering I was supposed to be French.

  "Where did you learn it?" she asked.

  "From ze Ollywood feelms," I improvised.

  "Wow, that's amazing." The jet-black woman flapped her heavily made-up eyelashes at me.

  "Yes, any-sing zat is a line from Ollywood feelm, I say wiz ze perfect accent. Go ahead punk, make my day. You talkin' to me? Hasta la vista, baby."

  Signs of skepticism were emanating from the gray-haired side of the American table, but the jet-blacks were totally sold on the idea of Hollywood as an educational tool.

  "And where does that line, 'How can I help,' come from?" asked Mrs. Jet.

  "Austin Powers Deux?" I hazarded.

  "Oh, Paul," Alexa interrupted. "He's English."

  This got a huge laugh. Whether it was at my joke or simply that the notion of being English was inherently comic, I don't know.

  To my astonishment, Alexa then proceeded to run the Americans through the starters and main courses, patiently explaining how each item was prepared, and warning about the possible inclusion of garlic or strange animal parts. I helped out whenever Alexa's explanations got a bit too technical, and when the waiter returned we were all ready to order. He scribbled his notes directly onto the paper tablecloths, and disappeared again.

  "Merci, mam'sell," the jet-black guy said, making Alexa flinch slightly. You don't call a French feminist "mademoiselle."

  "You're welcome, sir," she said, with only the tiniest clenching of her teeth.

  "Paris is the most beautiful city in the world," the gray-haired guy announced.

  "Except for Venice," his wife disagreed.

  "And Sydney," the jet-black woman suggested.

  The gray-haired guy valiantly kept his smile in place, but his eyes were hinting that maybe the wives should have been left in America.

  "It's definitely Paris for me, too," the jet-black guy said. "You see, you mustn't imagine that all Americans are anti-French. It's not true."

  "At our golf club, we got French patisseries on the breakfast bar instead of Danish," his wife reminded him,

  "Not that we have anything against the Danes," the gray-haired guy chipped in. "Europe's the most beautiful continent in the world."

  "Except for Asia," his wife pitched in.

  The food came, and we returned to the privacy of our own conversations. I asked Alexa—in French—why she'd been so helpful toward our globalizing neighbors.

  "Oh, as individuals, Americans can be the nicest people on earth," she said, "and these ones seem to be willing to learn about French culture. There is a lot to learn, of course." Her implication being, compared to the superficiality of American culture. "From the sound of it, the most complicated cookery technique they know is lighting the barbecue."

  "I think that is—" I couldn't think of the French word. "Un peu . . . unfair?"

  "You know what I mean, Paul. They don't really respect other cultures except as tourist attractions. All they care about is defending their own culture. Their globalization is—"

  Her political speech was cut off by a buzzing in my pocket.

  "Sorry, I should have switched it off," I said. I pulled out my phone and saw that the call was coming from a London number. "Probably bad news about the job."

  "Well, answer it, then," she said.

  "Hello? Mr. West?" asked a woman with a strong Yorkshire accent.

  "Speaking."

  "Oh, hi there. Lucy Marsh from Visitor Resources: Britain. Am I disturbing you?"

  "Well, I am in a restaurant..."

  "Sorry, I know it's late, but I've stayed on myself because I need to get your file complete before the weekend."

  "My file?"

  "Yes, Mr. Tyler omitted to ask you a few questions during your interview. He should have given you the Britishness test."

  "What? But I am, British; it's written on my passport."

  Alexa was staring at me with a mixture of amusement and alarm. It must have sounded as if I was about to lose my nationality.

  "Yes, but there are a few questions we need to ask you if you're going to represent Britain abroad. Have you got five minutes?"

  "Five minutes?" I said this more as an apology to Alexa than to the woman in London. Alexa shrugged, why not? "OK, but maybe I'd better nip outside."

  I clambered into the aisle as I fielded the first question.

  "Can you name the two sons of Prince Charles and Princess Diana?"

  "Of course," I said. "William and Harry."

  "Right. Good. Can you name the prime minister?"

  "Depends, is it the same one as yesterday?" I said, squeezing past the maitre d' into the courtyard.

  "Oh, vous abandonnez votre table?" he asked.

  "Non, non, une minute," I assured him.

  The courtyard was totally jammed with people now, so there was nowhere I was going to get some peace and quiet. Anyway, wasn't this conversation pointless? Hadn't Tyler told everyone I was a cross-dressing subversive?

  I named the PM anyway.

  "Right, good," Lucy said. "Can you explain the basic rules of cricket to an American?"

  "No way." I'd tried this before with French people, but it was like explaining how to yodel underwater. They didn't see the point.

  "Well you've got to give it a go, just so I can tick the box."

  "OK, how about, cricket is like baseball except that there are two batters and two pitchers on the field at any one time, and cricketers don't wear silly knickerbockers."

  A couple of French guys in the queue were listening in and started to mime incomprehension.

  "Fair enough," Lucy said. "M
aybe I'll pretend I didn't hear the bit about the knickerbockers, though. Now can you sing the first verse of the national anthem?"

  "Why? Is there a second?"

  She laughed. "I guess there must be, but God knows what it is, so just the first will be OK. And I'm afraid I need you to sing it—not recite it."

  "So you're only hiring people who can sing? Aren't you discriminating against the tone deaf?"

  "We need to be sure that you won't make a fool of yourself if you have to sing the national anthem," my examiner told me. "You know how terrible it looks when they do close-ups of football players before an international and they don't know the words."

  "But you're making it sound as if I'm actually in with a chance. I thought I blew it with Mr. Tyler."

  "Oh no. He may have seemed a little . . . subdued. It's because of—" She broke off and I got the impression she was looking over her shoulder to see if anyone was listening "—his medication. That's probably why he left your file incomplete."

  "Ah."

  "And from what I can see, you're on a shortlist of one. Sing for your supper and you've got the job, I reckon."

  There was a moment when I almost chickened out. But I've never been one to deliberately screw up a job interview, and I really needed the money, so I closed my eyes and launched into the opening line. Pretty softly, I must admit, so that only the two guys who'd been teasing me about cricket began to wonder whether I was having a mental breakdown.

  But then I heard someone joining in. Behind the two Frenchmen, there was a clutch of studenty Americans in ski jackets and woolen hats.

  "God Bless America," one of them was crooning. Of course, in 1776 they kicked out our government but they kept the tune of our national anthem.

  I had to raise my voice. "Send her victorious," I demanded, just as the two French guys struck up the opening words of the Marseillaise. "Happy and glorious," I boomed, as loudly as if I was trying to bring Queen Victoria back from the dead. "Long to reign over us, God save our Queeeeen."

  I got a cheer from a British contingent at the edge of the crowd, and suddenly felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. What is it about national anthems? At that moment there was nothing in the world I wanted more than to go out and give the Yanks and the Frogs a damn good thrashing at cricket. An especially appealing prospect given that they didn't understand the rules.