"Three of us will never fit in," I apologized.
"Allez, man," Jake urged. "She sauved your baggages."
"But you'll have bags, too, right?" I asked her. "There's not enough room in the car."
"I always travel light," Juliana said, handing over my precious backpack. "Hey, when you say 'car' you sound just like that guy from Boston who was with Alexa. You both say 'kah.' Funny, huh?"
"No, it's fucking not funny," I said.
"Sir." An official-sounding voice behind me cut off the anti-Bostonian, anti-French rant I was planning to start. "Did you know that it is a contravention of city law to go seminaked in the street and use obscene language in a public place?"
"You got anything left in that whiskey bottle, Jake?" I moaned. I might as well go for the full hat trick of crimes.
TO New Orleans
Hubble, Bubble, Toil, and Double Trouble
1
HI, Alexa, I'm really sorry, but I have no choice.
I've got to get to New Orleans for the next event, and as you haven't answered any of my calls, I've told Jake he can come with me. I wish we were going there together, just you and me. I mean, New Orleans. It'd be fantastic to drive there with you—Thelma and you are a team. I'm sure she prefers having you at the wheel. And don't forget we still have our bet going, about those ten types of maple syrup." I attempted a laugh, which didn't quite come off. "But it's nine o'clock now, and we have to leave. So, well, we're leaving. If you change your mind, I'll buy you a plane ticket. I'll come and get you at the airport. Just give me a call. I mean, Alexa, New Orleans. You'll love it.. ."
I stopped rambling. Long phone messages do no good. They never convince anyone of anything. They just make people think you're nuts or desperate.
"Good one, man," Jake told me.
"Yeah, and best not to mention me," Juliana said. She was right—I'd done it deliberately to avoid misunderstandings.
"More coffee, anyone?" Tony came out on to his patio with a fresh jug of pure Arabica.
The cop hadn't charged us with public nudity, swearing, or whiskey drinking. After all, even the sternest law-enforcement officer can understand why people might be upset, lacking clothes, and in need of a stiff drink when they've just escaped from a fire. That was what we told him—we'd been sleeping when the fire broke out. I was wet and sandy because in my initial panic I'd doused myself in the shower and then rolled in the ornamental garden. No way had I been disobeying city ordinances and beaching it after dark.
He let us go and went to help out at the fire. I made sure Elodie hadn't been hit by molten glass—I didn't really care about Jesus—and then called Tony. True to form, he had instantly offered to put us up. He'd even driven over to South Beach to escort us back to a leafy suburb called Coral Gables.
So Jake, Juliana, and I had slept on his three couches, and Thelma had had her first sleepover with a boyfriend—a whole night in a double garage with Tony's boyish blue Mini.
Now we were full of fresh fruit, pancakes, and coffee, and watching the sun climb ever higher over Tony's tropical back garden. His infinity pool was looking more inviting every second, but we had to leave.
"It's not your foot," Jake said, patting me on the shoulder.
"What?"
"All this, it's not your foot, man."
Now I got it—he was pronouncing "fault" like a Frenchman.
"It's not your fault, either," I told him. "It's that fucking Mike. I could see he fancied her when we were up in Boston. I bet he was the one who suggested meeting up in Miami. He went all-out to seduce her. He even rented a fucking convertible, the bastard."
"Oh, no, I was meaning the competition. The engineers," Jake said. Of course, to him, losing a woman was a bit like misplacing a T-shirt. You just went out and got another one. "It was the French. They bezzed you again."
"Bezzed?" Tony asked.
"It's French for screwed," I told him. "These engineers keep popping up all over the country. They've offered to save Boston from subsidence and Miami from getting washed away. They're blowing my events out of the water."
"Well, at least now you know your enemy," he said. "It's a big advantage. It's like when I got divorced." He rubbed his freshly clipped beard reflectively. "I knew my wife wanted the house. I didn't give a damn about it, but I fought like hell to hang on to it, and ended up with this place, my car, and even some of my money."
"Yeah," Juliana agreed. "Sure you've had an argument with Alexa, but you two will fix things up. You're made for each other. Anyone can see that. Right now, you got to prioritize. You got to make sure these engineers don't screw you again. From here on in, it's go Paul West, and go England. Whoo!" She delivered a series of cheerleader's whoops, as if her team had just scored the winning points at the World Series Super Bowl final or whatever Americans play at.
Normally, the cynical Brit in me would have cringed— it's all very well announcing that you're not going to let yourself be beaten, but when you're a lone guy in a Mini up against the steely might of the French engineering establishment, a few whoo-hoos don't solve all of your problems.
This time, though, I let Juliana's American optimism burst through my natural defenses. I think I might even have whooped.
She and Tony were right, I told myself. I'd lost Boston and Miami, but there were three more cities to go. If I won them, I'd win the competition and my all-important bonus. There was still everything to play for. I was going to come back from the dead and stuff the French, who—if I knew them at all—would be getting just a little bit too cocky for their own good. At two-zip, they'd be tempted to rest on their well-engineered laurels. They'd be off their guard and open to a surprise attack.
2
After a fond farewell to Saint Tony—who even fixed us up with a thermos of coffee—and a promise that he could call me anywhere, anytime, and I would be there with Thelma to save him, we drove west across the Everglades.
They were very well named, we decided. They seemed to glade on forever.
At any other time, I'd have loved to stop off and take an airboat tour through the mangroves, skimming over alligators' heads, but it was one of those days when I was doomed to keep my right foot pressed down and my eyes on the cars and trucks all around me.
It would have been a relaxing exercise, the minor challenges of overtaking and looking out for speed cops keeping my mind off my troubles. The problem was that dark thoughts about Alexa and Mike kept jolting me like potholes in the road. And having Jake in the passenger seat didn't help. Living in central Paris, it had been so long since he'd been in a car other than a taxi that he was friskier than a puppy in a biscuit shop. He poked in every compartment, pressed every button, and seemed determined to try out every radio station on the continent.
"If you go to jail, you'd better glue your butt shut," one talk-show host informed us.
"The Lord inhabits the praise of his people," yodeled an FM prophet.
"We accept no responsibility for injuries or damage caused by the prizes won on our station," breathed a woman at lightning speed.
"Jake, can't you just find some music and leave it there?" I pleaded.
"There's no music, man, it's all parler parler."
"America invented rock 'n' roll, there must be something. I need some road music. Cruising tunes."
"No, I know what you are needing." Jake smiled ominously, and began digging in the pocket of his cargo pants. "You must—how do we say? Get out of your head?"
"Take drugs, you mean?"
"No, no. Sublimate. You need posy!" He produced a small black notebook. "The posy of boddle air," he said.
It took me a second to understand what he meant.
"Baudelaire's poetry?"
"Yes. I am traducting them." He meant translating. "I will post them on a site Internet and educate the Americans to France's posy. Listen. It will help your mood." He flicked through the pages and I wondered whether it might not be less painful to jump out of the car.
"You kn
ow the poem 'Chevelure'?" Jake asked.
"No."
"Exactly. But listen. It is talking about the black hair of an exotic girl, maybe one like you, Juliana."
"Why thank you, Jake," she said. But the spell of his gallantry lasted only a millisecond before he began to read his translation.
"Oh fleece, sheeping to the collar," he intoned. "Oh curls, oh perfume, loaded with nonchalance. I get ardently drunk on the confused smells of coconut oil, mud, and tarmac."
He stopped. That, apparently, was it. Juliana wasn't looking quite so flattered any more.
"Magnifique, no? Listen to this one," Jake went on. "It is named 'Venus Belga.' I think it is on a Belgian prostitute." He took a deep breath. I took an even deeper one. "Here, the breasts of the smallest girls weigh several tons," he said. "But I don't need a big soft breast, I need it firm, or I turn into a Cossack."
"I liked the beginning, but it kind of tailed off at the end," I said.
"That's what France is supposed to be famous for?" Juliana asked. "Sorry, Jake, no disrespect, but it's, like, shit." Which was one of the most accurate bits of reviewing I'd ever heard. "Paul needs something soothing, Jake." She leaned forward between the front seats, keyed in a radio frequency, and found Lauryn Hill singing about dumping her man. Fantastic voice, great tune, but touchy subject.
"Paul? You want me to take over the driving?" Juliana asked.
"No, I'm fine, thanks."
"But you've got your eyes closed."
Juliana had been behind the wheel for three straight hours. American women clearly had no problems "assuming" the driving. We were making good time, and were up in northern Florida, in a mist so thick it looked like airborne ice cream.
I was in the back with the luggage, trying to find a comfortable position for my legs, and doing my best to shake off the black cloud that had taken up residence in my soul.
Checking my messages didn't help.
"Bravo, Paul," was all Jack Tyler had to say. He'd obviously heard about the debacle in Miami.
And there was still nothing at all from Alexa.
Perhaps, I thought, because she couldn't get through. My phone was totally clogged up with texts and voice mail from weirdos raving about my knees, thighs, and other bits of my body I would have preferred to keep to myself. By the time I'd deleted them all, my battery was running low—in all senses of the expression.
So maybe it wasn't the best time to call Alexa. And it definitely wasn't the best time for her to answer at last.
"I don't get it, Alexa. What went wrong?" I asked.
"I don't know." At least she sounded sad about it.
"I would have stayed in Miami, but I have to get to New Orleans. You understand that?"
"Perhaps that's the problem," she said. "I thought we would be simply traveling together. You would do your job, I would film, it was going to be—you know—equitable."
"Equal? But it was—is. I never stopped you filming."
"No, but everything was chaos—the tea party, the dancing. It wasn't what I dreamed of."
"But that's what traveling is all about. The unexpected. It's a road trip, not a guided tour."
"Yes, I know, and I love that idea, but it was all too . .."
"Too what?"
I never found out, because the combination of low battery and being encased in a bucket of fog cut us off.
"Shit!" I shouted.
"Oh man," Juliana said. "Tonight, we're going to do something about those blues of yours."
3
Our hotel was on the outskirts of Panama City. No, not the one with a canal. Even with me map-reading the last leg, we hadn't come that far off course. We were on the fringes of its namesake in Florida, up on the Gulf of Mexico.
Juliana had worked in Panama, and drove us away from the huddle of buildings around the highway intersection and into what she called the beach-party zone. The road to the zone made gaudy Miami seem as subdued as a classical French garden. Restaurants disguised as log cabins and medieval castles yelled at us to sample their megalithic portions. Every third shop seemed to be a drive-in beach supermarket selling towels emblazoned with sports team logos, Dixie flags, and seminaked women.
We hit the beachfront strip and cruised by—or sometimes through—the gigantic hotels. Many of them had expanded across the road, or moved their parking lots there, and built overhead walkways to ferry their guests into the lobby without the inconvenience of going outdoors. The hotels looked brand-new, as if last year someone had had a brainstorm—I know, I'll build a resort—and hired all the world's builders to get it instantly done.
After a mile or so, things got low-rise again, and Juliana pulled into a beachside parking lot.
"Here?" Jake asked. We were outside a restaurant whose name is a slang word for women's breasts and whose staff are reputedly recruited for their bra size. I knew what Jake meant. I never thought a woman would suggest coming here. If this was American feminism, I approved.
"Sure. I worked here over spring break last year. I want to see if any of my friends are still around."
The decor was wooden benches and TV screens, the music was fist-pumping rock, and the only male staff were three young guys in T-shirts and baseball caps. They appeared to be doing the cooking, but were, I hoped, only standing in while the real chefs had a menu conference.
Not that the customers came here because of the menu.
The girls were rushing around carrying loaded trays that would have given most men a slipped disk. They weren't sex objects so much as laborers with cleavage. Some of them were pretty, but they were too overworked to give off any kind of sexual vibe. Except, that is, for a Hispanic with classic beauty-queen features who had been excused tray duty and whose job was to pout at everyone who came in from the parking lot before showing them to a table.
"Table for three?" I said.
We followed the beauty queen to a bench with a view of the parking lot, and I noticed what it was that kept all the waitresses safe from sexual harassment. Not a security guard or a notice reminding clients of the penalties for molestation. No, it was the tights. All the girls were wearing flesh-colored tights under their shorts, a thick coating of sheeny nylon that was about as sexy as a hairnet. It was like covering their faces with a bank robber's stocking. I got an unsavory flashback of the London madwoman's gusset.
"You used to wear these?" I asked Juliana.
"Oh yeah. It killed me. My skin couldn't breathe." Her skin was certainly breathing now. Her legs were open to the fresh air as far as the upper thigh, thanks to the leather skirt I'd first seen her wearing when she was working at the Clearview. "Does Katrina still work here? Or Dawn? Or April?" Juliana asked our waitress, a tiny blonde with pasty foundation the color of her tights.
"No, I'm sorry," she replied, and rushed back into the fray.
We three amigos clinked beer glasses.
"To being alive," Juliana said. "We escaped from a fire, remember?"
Jake, the cause of the blaze, looked suitably abashed.
"And to you two, for letting me butt in on your date," I said.
"I don't know if this counts as a date," Juliana said.
"Why not?" Jake was horrified at the idea that their evening together might be downgraded.
"I'll just ask if anyone knows where my pals have got to." Juliana went to talk to the hostess by the door. While she was gone, Jake hit me with a bombshell.
"We're not bezzing," he said gloomily.
"You're not sleeping together?" I didn't believe him. He'd had several close nocturnal encounters with this incredibly sexy woman—incredibly sexual woman—who had a body designed by a team of drooling schoolboys and a skirt as short as an American's summer holiday, and he hadn't slept with her? "She was in the shower at the Clearview," I said. "And the two of you weren't exactly fully clothed when you started the fire."
"Sure, she is OK to make out. But we never ..."
"Wow."
"It's the merde, man. I had forgotten.
In Paris, it is not like this. You go to the bar, you go to bed. You eat the dinner, you bez. But these Americaines, they want to date. And you don't get nothing before the third date."
"Wow."
"Is that all you'll say for the rest of the night?"
I laughed. Poor Jake. He was in a worse state than me.
"Why the long face, Jake?" Juliana had returned from her scouting expedition. "Oh, I get it. You been having a guy talk?"
"Yeah," Jake confessed. "Can't we count this as our third date? Allez, Juliana."
He was direct, I had to give him that.
"Third? I'm still not sure that setting fire to a hotel counts as a second date."
As we ate fried catfish and a logjam of fries, she explained the complexities of the American dating system. First date, it seemed, was like a job interview. You went out and interrogated each other about your potential.
"Potential?" I asked.
"Yeah, like how much you're going to be earning in ten years' time and how many years you want to work before you have kids. That kind of stuff."
"Romantic." It made me think of Alexa's fixation about what dreams I had in life. And worse, it reminded me that unless I won this competition and my bonus, I had no potential at all.
"And what will you be earning in ten years' time?" I asked Juliana.
"Depends how well I do at school." She licked her lips of barbecue sauce.
"School?"
"Yeah, that's why I want to go to Vegas. Didn't Jake tell you? I been saving up and now I want to enroll for a master's."
"In what?" Lip licking, I would have suggested. She was ready to tackle a doctorate in that.
"Cheerleading."
I blew it. I was probably supposed to ask, "Classic or freestyle?" But I laughed, and she looked hurt. I thought she was making a joke about her great figure, playing up to male expectations. It was as if a guy had just said he was going to do a Ph.D. in darts.
Merde Happens Page 19
