Me Talk Pretty One Day (18 page)

Okay, I thought, but how?

The card reported the amount of water used every year in hotel laundry rooms and suggested that, in having my sheets and towels changed on a daily basis, I was taking this precious water directly from the cupped hands of a dehydrated child. I noticed there was no similar plea encouraging me to conserve the hot water that came with my fifteen-dollar pot of room-service tea, but that apparently was a different kind of water. I found an identical SAVE THE PLANET card in each of my subsequent hotel rooms, and it got on my nerves in no time. I don’t mind reusing a towel, but if they’re charging that much for a hotel, I want my sheets changed every day. If I’d felt like sharing my bed with trillions of dead skin cells, I would have stayed at home or spent the night with friends. I was never the one paying for the room, but still, I resent being made to feel guilty for requesting a service an expensive hotel is generally expected to perform.

Pandas and rain forests are never mentioned when it comes to the millions of people taking joyrides in their Range Rovers. Rather, it’s the little things we’re strong-armed into conserving. At a chain coffee bar in San Francisco, I saw a sign near the cream counter that read NAPKINS COME FROM TREES - CONSERVE! In case you missed the first sign, there was a second one two feet away, reading YOU WASTE NAPKINS - YOU WASTE TREES!!! The cups, of course, are also made of paper, yet there’s no mention of the mighty redwood when you order your four-dollar coffee. The guilt applies only to those things that are being given away for free. Were they to charge you ten cents per napkin, they would undoubtedly make them much thinner so you’d need to waste even more in order to fight back the piping hot geyser forever spouting from the little hole conveniently located in the lid of your cup.

Traveling across the United States, it’s easy to see why Americans are often thought of as stupid. At the San Diego Zoo, right near the primate habitats, there’s a display featuring half a dozen life-size gorillas made out of bronze. Posted nearby is a sign reading CAUTION: GORILLA STATUES MAY BE HOT. Everywhere you turn, the obvious is being stated. CANNON MAY BE LOUD. MOVING SIDEWALK IS ABOUT TO END. To people who don’t run around suing one another, such signs suggest a crippling lack of intelligence. Place bronze statues beneath the southern California sun, and of course they’re going to get hot. Cannons are supposed to be loud, that’s their claim to fame, and - like it or not - the moving sidewalk is bound to end sooner or later. It’s hard trying to explain a country whose motto has become You can’t claim I didn’t warn you. What can you say about the family who is suing the railroad after their drunk son was killed walking on the tracks? Trains don’t normally sneak up on people. Unless they’ve derailed, you pretty much know where to find them. The young man wasn’t deaf and blind. No one had tied him to the tracks, so what’s there to sue about?

While at a loss to explain some things, I take great joy in explaining others. After returning from my trip, I went to my regular place to have my hair cut. They’d given me a shampoo and I was sitting with a towel on my head when Pascal, the shop owner, handed me a popular French gossip magazine featuring a story on Jodie Foster and her new baby. Pascal, who speaks English, is “aped over Jodie Foster” and owns all her movies on videotape. His dream is to frost her tips while asking behind-the-scenes questions about Sommersby.

“I’ve been looking at this one photo,” he said, “but there is something here that I am not making out.”

He pointed to a picture of the actress walking down a California beach with an unidentified friend who held the baby against her chest. A large dog ran just ahead of the women and splashed in the surf.

“I can see that Jodie Foster is holding in one hand a leash,” Pascal said. “But what is it she is carrying in the other hand? I have asked many people, but nobody knows for sure.”

I brought the magazine close to my face and studied it for a moment. “Well,” I said, “she appears to be carrying a plastic bag of dog shit.”

“Go out of here, you nut.” He seemed almost angry. “Jodie Foster is the biggest star. She won an Academy Award two times, so why would she like to carry a bag that is full of shit? Nobody would do that but a crazy person.” He called to his four employees. “Get over here and listen to what he’s saying, the crazy nut.”

In trying to communicate why an Academy Award-winning actress might walk down the beach carrying a plastic bag full of dog feces, I got the sort of lump in my throat that other people might get while singing their national anthem. It was the pride one can feel only when, far from home and surrounded by a captive audience, you are called upon to explain what is undoubtedly the single greatest thing about your country.

“Well,” I said, “It goes like this …”

Picka Poeketoni

IT WAS JULY, and Hugh and I were taking the Paris Métro from our neighborhood to a store where we hoped to buy a good deal of burlap. The store was located on the other side of town, and the trip involved taking one train and then switching to another. During the summer months a great number of American vacationers can be found riding the Métro, and their voices tend to carry. It’s something I hadn’t noticed until leaving home, but we are a loud people. The trumpeting elephants of the human race. Questions, observations, the locations of blisters and rashes - everything is delivered as though it were an announcement.

On the first of our two trains I listened to a quartet of college-age Texans who sat beneath a sign instructing passengers to surrender their folding seats and stand should the foyer of the train become too crowded. The foyer of the train quickly became too crowded, and while the others stood to make more room, the young Texans remained seated and raised their voices in order to continue their debate, the topic being “Which is a better city, Houston or Paris?” It was a hot afternoon, and the subject of air-conditioning came into play. Houston had it, Paris did not. Houston also had ice cubes, tacos, plenty of free parking, and something called a Sonic Burger. Things were not looking good for Paris, which lost valuable points every time the train stopped to accept more passengers. The crowds packed in, surrounding the seated Texans and reducing them to four disembodied voices. From the far corner of the car, one of them shouted that they were tired and dirty and ready to catch the next plane home. The voice was weary and hopeless, and I identified completely. It was the same way I’d felt on my last visit to Houston.

Hugh and I disembarked to the strains of “Texas, Our Texas” and boarded our second train, where an American couple in their late forties stood hugging the floor-to-ceiling support pole. There’s no sign saying so, but such poles are not considered private. They’re put there for everyone’s use. You don’t treat it like a fireman’s pole; rather, you grasp it with one hand and stand back at a respectable distance. It’s not all that difficult to figure out, even if you come from a town without any public transportation.

The train left the station, and needing something to hold on to, I wedged my hand between the American couple and grabbed the pole at waist level. The man turned to the woman, saying, “Peeeeew, can you smell that? That is pure French, baby.” He removed one of his hands from the pole and waved it back and forth in front of his face. “Yes indeed,” he said. “This little froggy is ripe.”

It took a moment to realize he was talking about me.

The woman wrinkled her nose. “Golly Pete!” she said, “Do they all smell this bad?”

“It’s pretty typical,” the man said. “I’m willing to bet that our little friend here hasn’t had a bath in a good two weeks. I mean, Jesus Christ, someone should hang a deodorizer around this guy’s neck.”

The woman laughed, saying, “You crack me up, Martin. I swear you do.”

It’s a common mistake for vacationing Americans to assume that everyone around them is French and therefore speaks no English whatsoever. These two didn’t seem like exceptionally mean people. Back home they probably would have had the decency to whisper, but here they felt free to say whatever they wanted, face-to-face and in a normal tone of voice. It was the same way someone might talk in front of a building or a painting they found particularly unpleasant. An experienced traveler could have told by looking at my shoes that I wasn’t French. And even if I were French, it’s not as if English is some mysterious tribal dialect spoken only by anthropologists and a small population of cannibals. They happen to teach English in schools all over the world. There are no eligibility requirements. Anyone can learn it. Even people who reportedly smell bad despite the fact that they’ve just taken a bath and are wearing clean clothes.

Because they had used the tiresome word froggy and complained about my odor, I was now licensed to hate this couple as much as I wanted. This made me happy, as I’d wanted to hate them from the moment I’d entered the subway car and seen them hugging the pole. Unleashed by their insults, I was now free to criticize Martin’s clothing: the pleated denim shorts, the baseball cap, the T-shirt advertising a San Diego pizza restaurant. Sunglasses hung from his neck on a fluorescent cable, and the couple’s bright new his-and-her sneakers suggested that they might be headed somewhere dressy for dinner. Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you’ve come to mow its lawns.

The man named Martin was in the process of showing the woman what he referred to as “my Paris.” He looked at the subway map and announced that at some point during their stay, he’d maybe take her to the Louvre, which he pronounced as having two distinct syllables. Loov-rah. I’m hardly qualified to belittle anyone else’s pronunciation, but he was setting himself up by acting like such an expert. “Yeah,” he said, letting out a breath, “I thought we might head over there some day this week and do some nosing around. It’s not for everyone, but something tells me you might like it.”

People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American. France isn’t even my country, but there I was, deciding that these people needed to be sent back home, preferably in chains. In disliking them, I was forced to recognize my own pretension, and that made me hate them even more. The train took a curve, and when I moved my hand farther up the pole, the man turned to the woman, saying, “Carol - hey, Carol, watch out. That guy’s going after your wallet.”

“What?”

“Your wallet,” Martin said. “That joker’s trying to steal your wallet. Move your pocketbook to the front where he can’t get at it.”

She froze, and he repeated himself, barking, “The front. Move your pocketbook around to the front. Do it now. The guy’s a pickpocket.”

The woman named Carol grabbed for the strap on her shoulder and moved her pocketbook so that it now rested on her stomach. “Wow,” she said. “I sure didn’t see that coming.”

“Well, you’ve never been to Paris before, but let that be a lesson to you.” Martin glared at me, his eyes narrowed to slits. “This city is full of stinkpots like our little friend here. Let your guard down, and they’ll take you for everything you’ve got.”

Now I was a stinkpot and a thief. It occurred to me to say something, but I thought it might be better to wait and see what he came up with next. Another few minutes, and he might have decided I was a crack dealer or a white slaver. Besides, if I said something at this point, he probably would have apologized, and I wasn’t interested in that. His embarrassment would have pleased me, but once he recovered, there would be that awkward period that sometimes culminates in a handshake. I didn’t want to touch these people’s hands or see things from their point of view, I just wanted to continue hating them. So I kept my mouth shut and stared off into space.

The train stopped at the next station. Passengers got off, and Carol and Martin moved to occupy two folding seats located beside the door. I thought they might ease on to another topic, but Martin was on a roll now; and there was no stopping him. “It was some shithead like him that stole my wallet on my last trip to Paris,” he said, nodding his head in my direction. “He got me on the subway - came up from behind, and I never felt a thing. Cash, credit cards, driver’s license: poof - all of it gone, just like that.”

I pictured a Scoreboard reading MARTY O STINKPOTS I, and clenched my fist in support of the home team.

“What you’ve got to understand is that these creeps are practiced professionals,” he said. “I mean, they’ve really got it down to an art, if you can call that an art form.”

“I wouldn’t call it an art form,” Carol said. “Art is beautiful, but taking people’s wallets … that stinks, in my opinion.”

“You’ve got that right,” Martin said. “The thing is that these jokers usually work in pairs.” He squinted toward the opposite end of the train. “Odds are that he’s probably got a partner somewhere on this subway car.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” he said. “They usually time it so that one of them clips your wallet just as the train pulls into the station. The other guy’s job is to run interference and trip you up once you catch wind of what’s going on. Then the train stops, the doors open, and they disappear into the crowd. If Stinky there had gotten his way, he’d probably be halfway to Timbuktu by now. I mean, make no mistake, these guys are fast.”

I’m not the sort of person normally mistaken for being fast and well-coordinated, and because of this, I found Martin’s assumption to be oddly flattering. Stealing wallets was nothing to be proud of, but I like being thought of as cunning and professional. I’d been up until 4 A.M. the night before, reading a book about recluse spiders, but to him the circles beneath my eyes likely reflected a long evening spent snatching flies out of the air, or whatever it is that pickpockets do for practice.

“The meatball,” he said. “Look at him, just standing there waiting for his next victim. If I had my way, he’d be picking pockets with his teeth. An eye for an eye, that’s what I say. Someone ought to chop the guy’s hands off and feed them to the dogs.”

Oh, I thought, but first you’ll have to catch me.