| |
Chapter 24: Fame Wednesday morning was overcast and cold. Olney lay in bed, trying to go back to sleep. If he could just slip back to the comforting dream world, Maggie and Rhonda would surely go without him. But his body would not be still; it knew. He rolled over, forcing his sleepstuck eyes open. They scowled at the dirty window and the balconies of naked clotheslines beyond. The cords and their lonely pegs hummed in an Alpsian breeze straight from the killer snows of Mont Blanc. As happened so often, the first word to escape his lips upon greeting a new day was the renowned expletive: "Shit!" For today the frigid air would be chilling his and the bones of a hundred extras, all of them required to wear summer clothing. Olney's Hawaiian shirt, freshly ironed, hung on the closet door. Though worn only once -- to a Halloween party nearly a decade ago -- he had kept it all these years in suitcases and closets throughout the wide world. It's design was simple: white palm trees on a deep blue background. The stark contrast often brought to mind the illustrations in a book he'd loved as a child. Call it Courage, by Armstrong Sperry, was about a Polynesian boy of olden times who feared the sea. As he grew older, his shame became so great that he was forced, by his own decision, to face the fear or die in the attempt. Through harrowing encounters with the elements, with headhunters on strange islands, and with sharks and a monster octopus, the boy at length mastered his dread and became a man. Just as Olney had always hoped to do. The trouble was, Olney had never had to face sharks or octopi. And the only headhunters he'd ever met were the lipsticked kind who jellied his resolve while using him for a blotter. Furthermore, what hope had noble manhood when it was forced to make TV commercials for a lousy two hundred francs. Maggie was up already. Perky, she was. In the shower singing that silly children's song by Chantal Goya. Kali and Baibai had played the record incessantly in the weeks before leaving, and Maggie -- of course, she would -- came to love it as much as they did. Now she was singing the chorus over and over: Au château Nougatine, Olney watched the clock, timing her with an offended eye. She managed eight repetitions per minute. Rhonda, up first, had run out for croissants. Now she was back, making coffee. The smells of Jacques "Le Nectar" Vabre roused Olney at last from his fetal hidey-hole. He put on Gaston's bathrobe and repaired to he toilet. After a long impatient piss, he entered the steam pit of cheerful inanity. Though drugged of mind, fogged of eye and sick of song, he did his best to shave, while sacrificing yet another packet of Miss Helen to the steamy mirror. Maggie warbled on, unable to hear his protests over the noise of the shower. She even took to whistling the offensive tune. Disgusted, Olney stuck a few bits of Miss H. to the nicks on his chin and repaired once again to the WC. He dropped his pants and sat down. Are you kidding? sniped his bowels, unaccustomed to moving so early, we'll have a stroke! Olney sighed. Leaving the house without a hearty dump would ruin his day. He grunted hard, risking, or so it felt, the rupture of every duct below his navel. He picked up a recent copy of Hara-Kiri -- the magazine of satire favored by discerning French bowels. With intent to loosen his American counterparts by means of a belly laugh, he opened it randomly to a full page photograph of a woman parachutist who had just jumped. Spreadeagled and face down she viewed the sunny landscape below. Only problem was, her parachute was still tucked inside its case, while in her hand she held a bloodied tampon. The caption read: "Tampax Interdit Aux Femmes Paras ... Trop D'Acidents!" Olney laughed out loud, but his bowels stood firm, their mean little arms folded in defiance. Better give way, he ordered menacingly, if y'know what's good for ya! Nothing. He flipped further through the "journal bête et méchant." Aha! he crowed. Either drop your load now, or: "Pourquoi se brosser les dents," went the publicité, "et pas l'anus?" See that? A silver haired doctor, besmocked in hygiene-white, was pointing out the benefits of "Cutifrice" to an earnest young patient. The doctor spread a ribbon of the anal freshener on a nice bristly brush, say six, maybe seven inches long, and handed it to the young man. Get it, chèrs amis? "Enfoncez!" said the good doctor, "brossez!" Ha-ha, said the grunting defecatant, ho-ho. In the last frame, the wise doctor and his contented client looked out to a consumer society of assholes: "Matin et soir. Un grand pas dans l'hygiène corporelle." Ok, good buddies, barked Olney, move! And so they did. "Coffee's ready," Rhonda called from the kitchen. "Everyone, à table." Olney zipped up, emerging from his ordeal a better man. "It's about time," Maggie said impatiently from the bedroom. "I wouldn't go in there just yet," he cautioned. "Can't wait," said she, skipping to the loo. "I'll be out in a sec." "Try Hara-Kiri if there's any trouble with you-know-what," he offered from his side of the closed door, and sped to the kitchen. "Morning Rhon -- " Olney's greeting was goosed to a gasp by the young film star's costume: skimpy white halter, ice-blue jogging shorts, and those Reeboks, O Lloyd. She looked up from the coffee maker in time to catch him giving her a frankly slaverous once over. "Good morning, you sly old devil." Rippling through her airy reply was a tendril of thrilling possibility. "You must be freezing, poor thing," said O. He wanted to warm her in his arms, to blow his warm breath on each and every tantalizing goosebump of her designer flesh. He heard the toilet flush. "No, it's warm in the apartment," said the universe's favorite model. "Look, I've bought us butter croissants for breakfast. Two each. You can have one of mine if -- " "Where's my wallet?" cried Maggie from the living room. "I can't find it anywhere." "Oh, no," gibbered O. The warm sexual wave between them burst on the rocks of exasperation. He ran from the kitchen to find Maggie heaving floor pillows over her shoulder. "This is no time to lose your wallet, for Christ's sake!" "I'm sure I haven't lost it, I just can't find it," she said, rummaging in the hall closet. "Don't soil yourself, Garkle," she added loathsomely, "if that's still possible." "Well, Jesus, you sounded like a raped banshee. Why is it you always lose something vital at times like these? You're a walking cause for a heart attack. We've got to leave in thirty minutes. Find the wallet!" "Yeah, well while I'm looking, don't forget your shower." "Oh, shit!" He sped to the bathroom. When he emerged, the wallet was still missing. Rhonda grabbed a palm tree on his sleeve. "Have some coffee, Olney, go smoke a cigarette." Grumbling, he retreated to the kitchen and its calm eddies of comforting aromas. Now that the morning was here he felt like a fool. How embarrassing to be seen on the winter streets of Paris in a pair of white pants (bought yesterday at Tati's for a prix choc), Gaston's ludicrous boots, and a Hawaiian shirt. God! Olney decided to skip breakfast to save his shirt and new pants from potential disaster. He sat down with a black coffee and lit a cigarette, listening to the women chattering from room to room. Goddamn girl is aging me. Count on her to fuck things up at the last minute. How could she lose her wallet? Or did she lose it on purpose? Sense something extracurricular passing between me and Rhonda ... probably fuck that up too. She's put on that dress, though. Dainty yellow print makes her look pale and vulnerable, innocent. Ummm. "Found it," she called from the bedroom. The search and rescue team rushed to the kitchen for quick cups and nibbles, Olney giving in at last to the lesser joys of undunked and flaky croissants. They were so disappointing he ate his two and only one each of theirs. §§§ Rhonda was the guide on their first trip on the R.E.R., the Regional Express Network connecting Paris and the suburbs. They métroed to Les Halles, there descending deeper than ever into the unterwegs of the city. Ultra-modern order marked their progress down escalators and along gigantic corridors painted in brilliant pastels. They took the A2 train, which sped them swiftly to Joinville le Pont. Above ground, under the same sky but in a different world, the arriving extras were first separated from other French commuters, then herded together, and finally packed into several busses. "Where are they taking us?" Olney hissed into Maggie's ear. He pressed his nose against a smudgy window as the bus made its way in a sad rain to the famous Studios Billancourt. They were marched through the foreboding gates to a muddy compound between barrack-like buildings and told to wait. Soon they were joined by more busloads of Americans. As their number grew, they milled around in the cold, wintry air, speaking in hushed whispers. The vapors of their shallow breathing mingled with the smoke from cigarettes that dangled from their mouths. Olney jammed his hands into the pockets of his tattered, synthetic peacoat; stubble grew on his face by the minute. When he could stand it no longer, he turned to his beloved Maggie, so frail in her summer dress and worn old duffle coat. "We're going to be gassed," he said. "Shut up, Olney." Rhonda came running over from one of the squat ugly buildings. Olney's heart nearly broke from the sight of her, so young, so rosefresh, so doomed. The dear girl was putting on such a brave face in this, the atrocity camp of her last hours. "It's happened at last," he whispered to Maggie. "The world has joined forces to exterminate Americans." "Come on, you guys," Rhonda said cheerily, "they're serving lunch. Let's get seats." "My God, it's our last supper," Olney wailed. "And me in a thrift store Hawaiian shirt." The lunchroom contained some twenty tables at which the hungry extras were fed ample portions of steak-frites with wine and three kinds of dessert. Olney dropped one or the other utensil as often as he could to get a glimpse of Rhonda's legs. The cut of her jogging shorts revealed most of a milky hip that begged to be fondled or licked or something. Ah, sweet death, he thought. How erotic it all is. Bellies full, they were herded into a large hanger-like building. Spotlights glared from rafters near the ceiling. Olney looked around mournfully. "Well, this is it, Poot, the end of the road." He kissed her grimacing face. "Believe me, your name will be the last word to escape my dying lips. But listen, before quitting this mortal coil, why don't we ask Rhonda to join us for a capital round of lovemaking. We can find a nice quiet corner -- oof!" Maggie sank her little fist into his breaking-down lunch. "Tout le monde, attention!" came the voice of a man with a megaphone. "Averaybody must line up directly en face de moi, ze smallaire een front et ze largaire derrière." "What's he mean by that?" Olney demanded. Maggie was about to explain, but Olney wasn't through: "'Smallaire,' 'largaire.' Is he calling us aire heads?" She dropped it. "You must not group togezzaire biologiquement. Soyez mixte, according to size, s'il vous plait." Olney: "One: I cannot believe he's using a megaphone, and two: We're being separated, darling. I feel cold already." "Au revoir, salope." "Mais non, chèrie. As I've told you so often -- " He reached out to touch her and lovingly correct her French, but the rifle butt of a man's hand gently directed him to the rear of the group. "Vous êtes trop grand, monsieur," the man said in response to Olney's outraged expression. Some one hundred young and eager Americans -- among them a few Canadians, Australians, Italians, French and the odd Suédois -- scrambled to casually fit themselves into four long rows, each dressed as if it were an August afternoon on the sidewalks of New York. Halfway across the "avenue" in front of them, a convertible Cadillac was poised and waiting for a three-member crew to pull it by ropes across the floor. Sitting atop the back seat, a very distinguished couple -- Mr. and Mrs. American Dream -- prepared to receive the adulation of the extras. The man had the appearance of a benign billionaire, while his "wife" regarded the throng with the look a lady who lunches, and often. Maggie stood in the front row with the smaller admirers, while gangly types like Olney brought up the rear. Rhonda stood in the row in front of him, five or six people to his left. By the time he managed to get behind her, some crude hippie-type was already chatting her up. "Buzz off," Olney was about to say, when the man with the megaphone started crackling again. "Attention! Ladies and gentleman, soyez bienvenue à Studios Billancourt. Aujourd'hui nous avons un spot très facile à faire. Avec même ze meeneemoom du bon pot you weel be away to your favorite bar before midi sonne. Now. Eef-uh you weel look closely above vos têtes you weel see some man sitting upon ze raftaires. Next to each men eez un large bucket en plastique. Zeze buckets en plastiques contain what een both our languages aire called confettis. When ze man zey teep zaire buckets et ze confettis begin to fall, two szings weel occur en même temps." ("We're going to be machine-gunned while the confetti falls," Olney cooed fanatically into Rhonda's ear. "They're filming a precedent-making event for American-haters the world over." Rhonda giggled and rolled her eyes. "You're crazy, Olney." "Yeah," agreed the hippie, "ah believe yr right.") "One," the megaphone went on. "Z'automobile weel be pulled forwaird. Two. At zees instant-uh you must-uh...." He groped for the right word. "Comme on dit ... hein?" He turned to catch the word being thrown by the grip. "Ah, yais-uh. You moost-uh leap forwaird avec une joie bruyante pendent que vous hurlez bruyamment votre approval de notre grandes vedettes. Essayez de jouer as eef-uh you weer at an parade een wheech un dignitaire whom you love weeth all your-uh heart weer just szen passing by. But," he cautioned, pacing back and forth, "you may not go beyond ze ligne blanche weech has been mark-ed on ze floor here en face de moi." Necks, some shapely, some squat, craned to look, while many mouths were busy translating. "We hope to feenish vairey queekly, but zaire aire many ingredients weech must be absolument pairefect. Aftaire we have done you may collect votre argent in ze lunch room. At szat time you weel feed of café et brioches. Szank you vairey much." Olney's neighbor turned to him during the ensuing preparations. "Hey, are you paranoid, man? Heck, they're paying us a two hundred frenchies just to stand around and shout. That's love, man!" Olney looked in the eyes of the Thing from Another Time. "They should be paying us just to breathe," he said. "Instead, they intend to exhaust us with a withered carrot representing a few measly livres and then feed us buns baked in botulism, in order, in reality, to film one hundred formerly vibrant young Americans writhing to death." His jugular bulged with joy while his hand crept rapturously around Rhonda's waist. "Hey-but-no-but-wow, man, what a scenario. You snortin' coke 'r are you a meth-head?" "My septum and nervous system are intact," Olney said pompously. Rhonda half-heartedly tried to wriggle away, but Olney deftly cupped a breast, pinching ever-so-lightly an already erect nipple: a simple command issued at a primary level. He was the Hawaiian Knight who had slain the unkempt infidel. She shifted her weight back to the foot nearest him. Megaphone barked: "Attention! Premier prise!" Confetti dropped, the cameraman -- high up on a giraffe behind the automobile -- rolled 'em, three husky young men grabbed their ropes and pulled the car forward and the statesman and his wife waved to the crowd of American well-wishers who surged forward, gesticulating and shouting. And then from off-camera, the grip, a nerd-like jeune homme, let fly a streamer of toilet paper in the direction of the Eminent man's wife. She reached to accept, but it failed to clear the windshield. The extras, to a person, howled with laughter. "Coupez!" boomed the Megaphone. "Merde," it added, with professional self-loathing. Maggie ran gleefully back to Olney and Rhonda. "I was right! I was right!" "This is an insult," roared Olney for the benefit of the hippie, who said: "Hey, this commercial's about shit paper. Wow! Hey, I don't use the stuff, myself, man. I been to India and I always wash up with my right hand, like they do." "Your right hand?" Olney bellowed. "Ecoutez, messieurs-dames," croon-crackled the Megaphone. "We weel try once again. Cessez de rire, je vous en prie. You aire being pay-ed du bon fric for your time, and we weesh to feenish as soon as posseeble. Maintenant we weel attempt encore to make ze vrai pairefection. Averaybody to szair places, allez." The Cadillac, meanwhile, had been pushed back and the confetti swept up. Titters receded among the extras. "Attention! Deuxième prise!" Confetti dropped, the cameraman rolled 'em, the car inched forward, the exuberant crowd roared and pressed toward the white line, the Man of the Hour waved magnanimously, the grip let go the toilet paper, the Woman of the Year reached out and with a yelp nearly dislocated her shoulder as it went sailing over her head. "Coupez!" Megaphone walked over to the sweating grip. They conferred heatedly over the efficacy of the weight being used. ("You use your right hand?" repeated Olney in the back row, acting now to desecrate the body of the slain simpleton. "W'll, yeah," began the withering corpse.) Megaphone, stabbing at his pockets to produce the needed item, any item, came up with keys and a limp wad of money. The grip searched high and low for a solution. Finally a jeune fille vendredi timidly offered a box of assorted paper clips. Megaphone gesticulated angry reassurance to the grip who fell to the task with a new end of the pale lavender objet d'art-har-har. "Attention! Troisième prise!" Man, machine, and shallow venture dropped, rolled, pulled, roared, surged, waved, propelled and reached. This time the toilet paper fell in the front seat, the Magnate's wife nearly toppling over head first. "Coupez!" Megaphone called for a ten minute break. The Peerless One and his grande dame slipped out a side door while the masses broke into little pockets of likemindedness. Olney and Maggie lit up. Olney inhaled deeply. It tasted like the first cigarette after a week of interrogation at the hands of fundamentalist forces. "You'd think she would be embarrassed," said Maggie. "Is she really supposed to catch it?" Rhonda wondered. "They can't be serious." "Who cares?" outraged Olney. "I heard she's getting good money to be a damn fool," said the hippie through his clipped, cuntlike beard. "A thousand francs," Maggie informed him, while pinching Olney. "Will you stop with the pinching and punching all the time? I'm becoming an internal mass of intestinal and muscular contusions. As for that rent money, well just look at them. Even without make-up they look the part. Professionals, obviously. You still don't think we had a chance, do you?" "We'll never know, will we?" "Yeah, but she looks like Diana, Princess of Wales, for Christ's sake. And you look like Raggedy-Ann." "And he looks like a slick marionette. Like you." The hippie: "Hey, come to think of it, you're a dead ringer for Howdy -- " Rhonda cut in: "There'll probably be a voice-over when she catches it. 'La gloire est de vous, avec Merde d'Or.'" The hippie laughed until he choked. "Quick," Olney feigned alarm. "Someone get the Drano. He's swallowing his beard." Rhonda, aside: "Why are you always on his back?" "Yeah," Maggie overheard, "you used to have hair down to your cosnyx." "That's coccyx," said Olney, avoiding the question. "I should be doing research at the British Library instead of wasting my time on this asswipe ad. What crap!" "Bullshit!" Maggie confirmed, "you haven't written a word and all you do at the library is look at school girls." Well, she finally managed to bring it up in front of Rhonda. And with an imperfect stranger around, to boot. "Do you mean by your remark that I look at their little wrists and up their dresses?" That's it, bring it out in the open. "Just remember, stumblestick, I'm not bailing you out. You can rot in your mean little cell." "Ho-ho-ho, they'll never catch me!" He drew out the last word, raising eyebrows to the top of his skull with a face-stretching look of sheer insanity. Hippie to Rhonda: "Hey, this guy is really crackers, huh." "Buzz off," she counseled, turning on a diminutive Reebok. "Attention!" Sudden rising of sneakered and loafered peasantry. "Averaybody to szair place." Maggie bounded for the front lines while Olney fitted in behind Rhonda. "Say, Rhonda, I'm gonna surprise Maggie for her birthday tonight with cake and cognac. Why don't you join us?" "Just might," said Naughty Two-shoes, her big blue eyes sizzling his viande to a piping hot morsel of giddy tumefaction. "Alors. Quatrième prise!" On the fourth take the toilet paper was weighted with three paper clips: a baby size, a mama size, and a papa size. It landed on the Loved One's forehead, causing her to shriek. On the fifth take three mama size clips were calculated to give the proper rise. It overflew by several metres. On the sixth take a confetti bucket slipped from the grasp of a tottering crewman and fell to the floor, barely missing Her Grandness, who screamed. On the seventh take the end-leaf of the toilet paper, equipped with three papa size clips, separated from the streamer and flew straight into the mouth of Her Global Goodness, causing her to fall backwards in a fit of choking. On the eighth take a rope broke, pullman hurtling head over heels, yelping. On the ninth take the TP was weighted with a popsicle stick and three papa size clips and deftly slung underhand. It slammed into the ear of Her Eternal Feminine, one of the clip tips scratching her lobe. "God damnit!" she cursed in English. On the tenth take one of the extras tripped and fell, causing four others to domino the breath out of him. On the eleventh take Megaphone failed to retreat in time. Tripping over the nearest Cadillac-pulling rope, he fell forward and nearly throttled himself on the third. "Coupez!" he croaked furiously from the floor. Maggie to the back row: "Think it'll ever end?" Olney to anybody: "I cannot believe this. Someone, get me a gun." Hippie to his shoe: "It's a drag all right." Rhonda to Olney: "After all this, the cognac's on me." Megaphone called for a half hour break. The weary cast was served coffee, and the brioches were brought in early. Lounging listlessly and smoking drearily the gallant one hundred moped in silence while the grip and Megaphone sat together in perspiratory defeat. Off in a dressing room, The Embodiment of Feminine Grace and Glory was being pampered and remaquillaged while His High Mucky-Muck looked on. The day grew long. Rain pelted the muddy compound. Olney's white pants were filthy. The hippie asked for Rhonda's phone number. She told him to eat his socks. No one nearby could take their eyes off her legs. Some wanly contemplated an immense orgy. Others fell asleep. At length the Great Ones returned and Megaphone gathered his wits. He strode to his usual place. "Mesdames et messieurs, boys et geerls," he began passionately, "we must now gazsaire toute de notre puissance. Zees-uh time we weel ween. Cette fois il faut que nous vaincrons totalement ce malheur infernal qu'a descendé avec son drapeau noir sur nos cranes incliné." Five score Americans cheered, if not his poetic content, the vigorous delivery. Surely, the moment was at hand. "Attention! Douzième prise! Moteur!" Olney: "Aux barricades!" Rhonda: "Au nom de Dieu!" Maggie: "Banzai!" Hippie: "Yahoo-oo-oo!" Whipped to a frenzy, the band of "Americans for Merde d'Or" surged forward as one, croaking and squeaking their undying allegiance to clean bottoms. Her All-Universe Quintessential Aphrodite Divine, visage eurekan with radiance, rode the ropepulled Cadillac of Destiny. Standing raptly on the pleated leatherette, her wounded creature resonated with an ecstatic vision of the-very-best-to-you. His Utmost waved feeblegreatly, bestowing his struck persona on the horde-amoeba below. The confetti floated more intensely than it did at the end of World War II. The Cadillac rolled smoothly from the efforts of the three bent and joyous chosen. And then! With bolts of lightning issuing from all-seeing eyes, Her Namelessness reached out and caught the lavender streamer of State-of-the-Art sphincter smear sent her by the will of Grip the Surrogate God. "On a gagné!" shouted Megaphone. Roared then the exalted one hundred. The gripperman, starheaded from species-boosting stress, succumbed to syncope. Olney hugged the nearest body of Christ, coincidentally Rhonda's, and shouted unto the foule: "An Oscar Maier weiner to one and all!" Maggie came running back for a hug of her own, only to find her hugger, that bold Olney, still gladhanding a putative communion with the flesh of Rhonda Madonna. She turned defiantly to the massed celebrantery and to the hippie in particular. Her motive? The twining of their limbs for givethanks but nothanks, buster Garkle. But the hippie in turn turned away, the blanche of disaster on his waferlike cheek ... fella'd wet his pants in all the hoopla. §§§ On the R.E.R. back, Olney, like the "no-one-nearby" of the day's despond, was unable to take his eyes off Rhonda's legs, the tantalus-tongued little she showed him through occasional partings of her long overcoat. Maggie stared out the window at herself staring out the window. It was her birthday, after all, but she felt old and lonely and very brittle. Twenty-eight, today. A scary, pore-widening age. And that Rhonda, who was staying for dinner now, looked perfect. Maggie curled up in her seat. Alone with the company of her sagging thoughts, she fell asleep to the hissing monotony of the electric train. And the hippie went wee wee wee all the way wherever. §§§ Chapter 25: A Cad's Karmuppance |