Chapter 8: Les Dutronc

As karma would have it, Heathrow was dealing with yet another terrorist threat. Their flight was diverted to Bishop's Stortford, some thirty miles from London.

"I could care less." Olney spoke in clipped monotones. "Fuck caring and the rosy red rectum it rode in on. When the next catastrophe comes, you just watch, I won't care about that either. Even if our traveller's cheques were to suddenly leap from our pockets and run for their lives, I wouldn't care. Why, I wouldn't even--"

"Olney, stop gibbering and help me get this baggage on the bus. Let's at least try for a seat."

"A seat? Hah! There won't be any seats. And even if there are, we won't be able to sit on them because they'll be reserved or broken or full of barf from the last busload of puking twits. I wouldn't sit in this bus if the Queen offered me a million pounds wrapped in her knickers. I'm never sitting down again. I'm gonna stand till I--"

"Shut up."

The ride to London soothed Maggie's nerves. Olney was sprawled over two seats, trying to sleep.

"Look, Olney, the houses have thatched rooves."

"The plural of roof is 'roofs' and if I had the artillery I'd blow 'em all to hell."

"Don't they remind you of all the children's books you grew up with?"

"I never grew up, and children's books oughta be torn to shreds, along with the children that read 'em."

"I'm so glad we came to Europe."

§§§

The delays forced them to stay overnight in London.

"Just what I'd hoped for from the start," Olney announced. "Why don't we throw these bags away and go get drunk. Then we can hack each other to death in some chuck-laden alley, eh? What say."

They chose a hotel near Charing Cross, to be near their getaway train the next day. For an exorbitant price they were given a room with two single beds, both humped in the middle. "How can this be?" Olney wailed. "Beds sag in the middle. What is wrong with this country?" There was a shower--"well, at least!"--with very little water pressure, to which they applied themselves with grunts and curses for nearly an hour. Their entertainment needs were met by a black and white TV and a view of an alley. The window from which Olney peered--"there it is, the hacking ground"--was hardly bigger than Pan Am's. When it was finally time for sleep, they pushed the beds, both on wheels, against a wall. Maggie snuggled in on the side of the hump next to the wall, leaving a smirking Olney to inherit the expansive valley between humps. As karma so often has it, Olney's triumph soon turned to disaster. The wheels, which made it easy to move the beds against the wall, made it equally easy for them to separate. The outer bed kept slipping away and Olney spent the night holding on for dear life as he cursed it dearly.

It took the next day and evening to reach Paris.

A pleasant train to Folkestone was followed by the cartoon skim over the Channel in a fluttery, rubber-skirted Hovercraft. From Calais they took another train, this one not so pleasant; the car was packed with drunken British soccer fans ready to devastate the opposition from St. Etienne. "Allez les Verts" posters were torn down at every stop along the way. The beer flowed and Olney kept trying to think of a way to bum one or five. By the time they reached the Gare du Nord he felt five days overdue for a ten-day bender.

Ten p.m.

Sleep, real sleep, had eluded them for weeks, it seemed. Olney left Maggie to guard their belongings while he went in search of a telephone. Time to contact Les Dutronc.

He couldn't believe his luck when he found a whole bank of phones, and not one in use. Things were looking up. They were in Paris, weren't they? The city where everything worked once you accepted it might not. Suddenly light-hearted, he began whistling a Julien Clerc tune he'd heard everywhere in Europe a few years back. He dropped his coins in the slot and switched to singing. "Ma préférence est Gaston et Subji Dutronc," he improvised, waiting for something to happen. The coins popped back. He tried again. The coins popped back. "Very well," he said stoically, and moved to another phone. It happily accepted his monnaie but connected him to a sample of white noise. He cursed richly and moved to the next phone. Got through to a wrong number. Tried again. The coins popped back. Feeling hot and prickly all over, he moved to "morceau of merde" number four. This time he tried calling the operator. "Merveilleux," he cried, hearing a voice on the other end. Unfortunately, the voice sounded as if it were coming all the way from Teheran. "Comment?" yelled the voice. "Dutronc!" Olney yelled, "Gaston Dutronc!" White noise answered from the howling surface of Venus. "Diabolical!" he fumed. Olney was doubly infuriated because he'd had no trouble at all with pay phones while in Teheran. After travelling for a week to get there, a week which included little sleep and practically no food since Istanbul, a night of ceaseless fight or flight responses in the primordial city of Erzurum, innumerable rides in too many broken down vehicles across the demi-moraine of Eastern Turkey beneath the shadow of Ararat, and then along the weird strip of modern highway through redbrick towns looking to be from anywhere but Iran, he had finally arrived in Teheran. Gaunt but clear-minded from the ordeal, he looked in his address book for that phone number the German doper had given him at the Mars Hotel in Istanbul, stepped up to a public phone box, dropped a farcical looking coin into a random slot and dialled Aziz and Sons, renowned hoteliers in cheap rates for tourists who toked.

But this was Paris.

He gave up and went back to Maggie. She sat on a suitcase. Her eyes were closed; a cigarette was about to burn her fingers.

"Hey, wake up," he said, shaking her roughly. "God is an asshole, as usual. Not one fucking phone worked."

"Don't tell me."

"S'true."

"Think the letter ever reached them?"

"Hah."

Olney's letter--special delivery, after all--had been en route for more than a week. But! Was that enough time for the Canadian Postal System to do its job? He was certain the letter was nowhere near Paris, or even in France. For that matter it was probably still sitting in the sorting room in Vancouver, the posties off watching a hockey game while discussing the next strike.

What to do?

Our straggling heroes wandered around the station, their cognitive faculties straining for resolution in the midst of an international crush of waifs and strays who had lost their quays and couldn't go home without them. For the moment Olney and Maggie had no home. Did they dare chance it and go to the apartment unannounced?

They did.

§§§

Gaston and Subji Dutronc peered out of their fourth floor door at the frazzled and ptotic twosome. "Qui est-ce?" the compact Madame Dutronc inquired hesitantly. "C'est nous," came the timid, masculine reply, "Olney et Maggie." Subji's head shot over the threshold, followed by Gaston's behind her (attached to a bloody long neck, Olney intimated with a gasping side-eye to Maggie. But not as long as yours, she anteed with a side-eye back).

"Mais ... c'est pas possible." Madame Dutronc clutched at herself. "We have never expected you. To our exprès no forthcoming reply has yet come."

"We're fine," Olney said, trying to help the flustered woman. "Are you well?"

"Gaston," she turned to her husband. "C'est lui, le phénoméne your sister has so much told us of." She turned back to Olney with a beaming smile, round and full of sub-continental warmth. "Come in, come in both of you. Frédérique has often filled us of your bizarre exploits until her face would go blue, and here you are in the vivid flesh." Which she pinched.

Gaston helped Olney with the baggage while Subji gave Maggie an eye-popping hug. "You are with the crazy man, jeune héroine," she sang in her Bengali lilt. "And is it satisfactory living with such un vrai bohème comme lui?" Maggie kept nodding her head like a wooden heron bobbing for cigarettes.

"Bon," continued Subji Dutronc when they were inside, "my honesty commits me to tell you that although Gaston has two friends who would immolate themselves to get this apartment, and I myself know of two couples from India who have beseeched us with tears in their letters to relieve them of the grande angoisse of searching high and low for suitable quarters after their predicted arrival--" She stopped short, noticing the stunned expressions of her guests. "Oh, do sit down, sit down, my dears, I am so happy to make your acquaintance on our doorstep even though it is presque minuit, mon Dieu."

They caved in on the nearest chairs, which resembled the little round cartoon seats found in Mickey Mouse cartoons. "Aïe!" Olney yelped, as the chair promptly dumped him. Maggie found herself on the floor too. "Oh, mes chèrs, chèrs amis," exclaimed Madame Dutronc with glee. "You must sit on these comfort seats with care. They belong to our children and were rubberised very poorly, I'm afraid. Gaston, will we have some wine?" Olney wanted to answer for him. Nothing could have made him happier than a gigantic glass of alcohol of any type or quality. Even Shlibovitz! "Vous voulez boire un coup?" Madame Dutronc then asked them, confusing languages but reading his mind.

"We would love to," Olney replied firmly. They settled comfortably on the floor, with Subji beside them. Her husband brought a labelless bottle of red wine and four glasses.

"Welcome to Paris," said Gaston Dutronc. He was a tall, sinewy Parisian with gentle manner and relaxed voice. By contrast, his wife was a round, petite Bengali with large animated eyes and an excitable temperament. They were both professional artists: Subji a painter of some note in Europe, Gaston a free-lance photographer whose work brought in enough money to live well and holiday once a year in India. Their two children, both girls, were asleep.

"Alors, speak to us of your plans," said the South East Indian pepperpot. "Will you rent our apartment? As I was saying earlier, because of your somewhat notorious background and because you will write a great novel, we like you better than the others. Of course they too are the very best of people, but not artistes." Olney had taken a quick gulp of wine. Now he lit his first French cigarette, a Gauloise offered by Gaston. Ecstasy was at hand.

"Well--"

"But really, is it within the grasp of your finances to stay here?" she cut in, impatient to speed through the business at hand. "Can you afford the reasonable sum of francs 2000 per month? Of course that includes the telephone and heating and water and the use of our clothes washer. And the location is extremely convenient."

"We--"

Subji laughed sonorously. "Mes enfants! Que je suis si content de vous voir. Mais ... excusez moi, your French is in what condition?"

"Maggie can't speak a word and I'm fuzzy after all these years."

"I will speak English then, although I yearn to speak Bengali. Ah, Gaston. We are going so soon. I cannot wait! But where was I? Oh, yes. You cannot possibly have concluded that only just tonight we were suffering your silence as disinterest in our proposal. With grave sorrow we searched for Gaston's prized Australian corked hat in order to place within it the names of the others. You see, while they are nice people, they are même temps frivolous with their talents." Olney gulped back the rest of his wine. "But to be frank, you are almost part of the family. Frédérique never ceases to exploit your history to us. She loves you very much." Turning to Maggie, she quickly added: "As does her husband, Xavier. But my dear, I am so happy you wish to reste chez nous."

"I--"

"As to arrangements in the interim--"

"Subji," Gaston interrupted, stressing the second syllable with gentle exasperation. "Can't you see they are completely finished from travelling such a long way. Let them relax." His English was impeccable, though he spoke it with an East Indian accent. "You must be very tired," he said to his guests. Maggie crossed her eyes and lolled her tongue in case there were any doubts. Subji tittered.

Olney then related the ordeals of their voyage. Madame Dutronc gasped, clutched her breast, rolled her eyes and vented a Berlitz appendix of heartfelt expressions: "Ma foi!" "Ohhh-là-là!" "C'est affreux!" "What a nasty business!" "Mais non!" The last negation came barrelling en vitesse out of a gravel pit at the back of her throat, signalling, at least to Olney, that she was in danger of losing her voice to incipient hysteria.

Maggie had come alive with the wine. She smoked one of Subji's filtered Gitanes. "But it was worse than that," she said, tickled by the over-reactive woman's explosions of dismay. "I'm not kidding, one of the stewardesses ran screaming down the aisle when she saw all those fire trucks below."

"Oh, Ma-ghee-yuh."

"And people were weeping and one man vomited and--"

"Come on Maggie, quit telling fibs." Olney's turn to butt in. "She's putting you on, Subji."

"Naughty girl."

"Well, now you are here, safe and sound," said Gaston. "You must have some rest." In the coming weeks, he would prove the only calming influence in the pre-holiday household.

"Apropos," resumed Subji Dutronc, "as I was saying earlier, en c'qui concerne the interim arrangements--mais enfin, did we arrive at your decision?"

"I think," Olney said, "that we are here because, yes, we want to sublet your apartment very much."

"Bravo!" cried Subji. "Now. Malheureusement, we are not presently sure of our date of departure and I am désolé but you cannot stay here until then. We are not the most organized of families and between then and now Gaston and I are certain to have the worst disputes in all of Paris." She rolled her bucolic eyes at her husband. "Pire que ça, you may not stay here even this night, for tomorrow morning at eight hours sharp I am expecting a gentleman from Berne, Suisse, who will discuss the important purchase of some of my paintings--but you must come to view them soon. I will stand up now and call to a nearby hotel and we will fix you there, d'accord?" Olney had come to love his little spot on the floor. Some of his best sleeps had been on similar surfaces.

"Of course, we understand," he said bravely. Well, what was another little walk on solid wintry ground, after a flight over two continents and the dread Atlantic. Maggie looked ready to walk the next mile. He gave her a loving look.

They made small talk with Gaston while Subji dialled and wheedled. It was nearly midnight and most hotels in their arrondissement had closed. At last she found a receptive voice.

"It is nearby, Dieu parmi nous, and although they were very hesitant you have only a tiny promenade before you. We are so fortunate."

"Fantastic," Olney said in his flattest Americanese.

"We're happy," added Maggie. And in fact they were. To be alone at the end of the road in a nice hotel bed with all business taken care of was the one plus they hadn't counted on.

"You must come to supper as soon as you have rejuvenated yourselves," Gaston said, afflicted with Subji's language.

"Yes, I will make you an expert evening of the best cooking from Bengal. And don't forget I leave you all of my spices to use to their utter depletion."

As Olney and Maggie shuffled out the door with their suitcases-- packed with just what, he could not remember ... oh, yes, Maggie had filled them with rocks--Subji bade them an effusive good night.

"Chère mademoiselle, I think you are the little jewel-bee in the bonnet of our own cinglé en résidence, non? Je vous adore tous les deux. Allez, bon soir."

"A bientôt," Gaston said sheepishly.

§§§

Chapter 9: Hotel Deuil

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