"Yeah, but I'll get it."
"Why don't you borrow it from Papa?"
I almost spat my peanut down her cleavage. Borrow from him} I would rather have owed it to a Russian loan shark. Jean-Marie was truly like a shark—all smile, but with teeth that could pull off your limbs. Before he bought his stake in my tearoom, he was my boss at a Parisian food company, and if I'd learned one lesson from the experience, it was that you did not get into debt—financial or moral—with Monsieur Jean-Marie Martin.
"No need, I'll pay the fine," I repeated, hoping to kill die subject.
"But if I understand correctly, you actually have to win this competition to get enough money, no?" As I'd foreseen when I was with Benoit that day in the tearoom, behind Elodie's sympathy was a perverse desire to twist the knife and watch me squirm.
Alexa observed me carefully as I replied.
"Sure," I said. "If Britain wins, I'll be able to pay everything off at once."
"But you still haven't heard what these promotional events of yours are going to be?" Elodie said.
"No, but I will, don't worry."
"Maybe you should call and ask," Alexa said, inadvertently joining in the game of Let's Hassle Paul.
"I'll call tomorrow morning," I said, with Dalai Lama-like patience.
"Why don't you call now?" Elodie suggested. "You can leave a message for them to send you a text first thing in the morning."
"Excuse me, ladies," I said. To avoid yelling something unpleasant about French bosses" daughters sticking their cute noses way too deep into other people's business, I headed for the refuge of the men's room.
When I got to the bright lights of the gents', I realized that I was surprisingly drunk, on a head-spinning cocktail of alcohol and jetlag. I wasn't so bad that I felt the need to pee on my, or someone else's, shoes. I was just tipsy enough to have a conversation with the toilet door.
I should explain.
I know this isn't sexy, but when I'm drunk I sometimes sit down to pee. It's safer for all concerned. You have no aiming problems, there's no risk of accidentally flashing someone, and there's the added advantage that it takes the weight off your feet.
In this hotel, sitting down was even more inviting than usual because they had disposable toilet-seat covers. I had to work out how to get them out of the dispenser, which way around to put them on the seat, and then how to punch a hole in them without thrusting my fist into the water below, but after only four or five attempts and a bit of swearing I finally got the seat cover sorted out, and it did make sit-down peeing a much pleasanter business than in some bars I've been to.
Trouble was, as soon as I was seated, I noticed that the toilet door had been sawn off at the knee. Anyone could have looked under it and seen what I was up to. What was the idea of that, I wondered—some American need to "share your restroom experience"? The toilet version of a group hug?
And then I noticed that a gray-haired, denture-baring couple was grinning down at me. They were in formal evening wear and were ballroom dancing. This wasn't, I realized almost immediately, personal in-restroom entertainment. It was a framed advertising poster on the back of the door, demanding in large blue letters, ARE YOU EXPERIENCING ERECTILE ISSUES?
"No, not yet," I told the door. "But if you keep staring at me like that, I don't think I'll ever get a hard-on again."
"Are you OK in there, sir?" a deep male voice asked.
Below the door I could see a pair of sturdy ankles in shiny black shoes.
"Go away," I told the feet.
"Sir?" Now he was actually knocking on the door.
"Isn't there some amendment to your Constitution about a man's right to a few minutes' peace in the toilet?" I asked.
"Are you alone in there, sir?" the voice demanded.
"Just bend down half an inch and you can see for yourself."
"I beg your pardon, sir?"
"I said yes I am and I intend to stay that way."
"OK, I'll just wait in the lobby," he said, and the shoes disappeared. Thank God for that, I thought.
When I came out of the gents', there was only a security guard standing there, a chubby guy in a maroon blazer with a walkie-talkie on his lapel. I thought of mentioning that there was a weirdo cruising the men's room, but before I could explain, I was distracted by the distinct absence of Elodie and Alexa in the bar. They'd disappeared.
The security guy must have seen that I wanted to tell him something, because he moved forward as if to speak to me, but I waved him away and went to ask the two women sitting in Elodie and Alexa's seats what they thought they were doing.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi," one of them answered. They both had long, wavy hair, and were dressed up for a glitzy night out in New York.
"You're not Alexa and Elodie," I said.
"No, I'm Lynda—with a y," one of them answered.
"With a j?"
"Yeah."
"And I'm Lisa," the other one said.
"With a 2?" I guessed.
"No, with an s."
"Ah." We were getting somewhere, but I didn't know where. "What happened to Alexa and Elodie?" I asked. They consulted each other blankly. "Alexa's my girlfriend, you see," I told them. "And Elodie—well, she's a sort of ex-girlfriend. I used to live with her in Paris. But now she lives in New York. She's, well, I suppose she's a kind of live-in party girl for this French rock-star hobbit guy. Anyway, she's got us a room at the Chelsea where the rock star has his groupie parties, and we're meant to be going back there after we've had dinner here, so I really need to find—"
"Excuse me, sir." The security guy, who'd been listening to our conversation, was now standing right behind me.
"This man is making improper suggestions," Lisa told him.
"No I'm not, I'm just looking for two girls."
"Get your coat, sir. I'm going to escort you from the building," he said. His hand was hovering within an inch of my shoulder, as if he didn't want to touch me but would if he had to.
I looked around the bar for moral support. Which was when I spotted Elodie and Alexa sitting about ten tables away, chatting like old buddies, their foreheads almost touching. "Ah, look," I told the security guy. "Those two girls over there."
"Come with me, please, sir." The hand was now clamped on my shoulder, rather painfully, too. Pinching a nerve. He began steering me toward the exit. "This kind of behavior may be acceptable in Europe, sir, but here in America we have standards." His face was flushed with moral outrage.
"Unhand me, I am a representative of Her Majesty," I informed him, and to prove that we Brits don't take attacks by foreign powers lightly, even if they are our allies, I shook myself free and made a dash for liberty.
I was only a few yards away from Alexa and Elodie when they suddenly soared upwards, along with all the other tables, and I found myself French kissing the carpet. There was also something or someone on my back, puffing unpleasantly hot breath down my neck.
"Paul?" A new voice was added to the clamor around me.
"Yes?"
"Why have you got a security man on your back?" It was Alexa.
"You know this gentleman?" the security guy asked.
"Yes," Elodie said. "He was with us. He just went to the bathroom."
The pressure on my back eased off, and while Elodie and Alexa explained who I was, I got slowly to my feet. On the way up, I noticed the shiny shoes.
"Hey, this is the guy who was trying to look under the door into my stall," I said.
But for some reason, neither Elodie, Alexa, nor the security man were interested in this invasion of my privacy. They seemed to come to an agreement, and I was allowed to accompany the girls to their new table.
At which point, the golden haze of Long Island wine in my brain lifted for a moment, and I saw where I'd gone wrong.
It was obvious, really. The central hub of the building, where the lifts and the toilets were, stayed stationary, and only die outer section of the bar revolved. So if you were
away from your seat for several minutes, like I had been, your table had moved round a few degrees from where you left it. And if you weren't drunk and jet-lagged, you probably figured this out as soon as you saw that your friends had vanished.
"Paul, bad things happen when you drink too much," Alexa lectured me. "I want you to promise you won't do it again on this trip."
"I promise," I said, but I might have slurred the s a little.
"God save the Queen," Elodie said, raising a glass of American champagne to Britain's chances of winning the World Tourism contest with such a geographically challenged drunk driver at the wheel.
6
It was four o'clock in the morning, and I was wide awake, wondering why I wasn't being served a reheated omelette by a flight attendant.
The radiators were hissing and puffing, generating enough heat to bake bread. The traffic was growling past in the street below, and the rain falling on the air-conditioning unit was amplified by the metal casing so that it sounded as if a rock drummer was rehearsing outside the window. There was no way I was going to get back to sleep.
Alexa had thrown off the covers and was slumbering soundly, lying on her side, naked and unaware of my gaze. I took a few minutes to enjoy the curves of her, the soft cusps of flesh clutched between her arms, die deliriously rounded arch rising up from her waist, over her hip and down to her outer thigh. The small shadow that looked like an arrow pointing between her legs.
I was tempted to film her so that she'd discover the footage while viewing her politically active students.
But no, that would have been an abuse of her trust in me. And I didn't know how to work the camera, anyway.
Lying there in the semidarkness, I remembered why I'd gone into the revolving hotel's bathroom. It had been to get away from Elodie's merciless questioning about the promotional events. But she was right, I now decided. I really needed to know, at least about Boston.
I calculated transadantic time differences and went to sit on another toilet.
"Hello Mister West Visitor Resources Britain Serena speaking how may I help you?" It came out as one singsong sentence.
This was a hotline number I'd been given by Jack Tyler. I'd never actually met this phone operator whose job it was to guide me through the next phase of my life. We'd spoken once, e-mailed three or four rimes. To me she was just a name, Serena. Serena Hart. A cute name and a pleasant, silky voice.
"Hi, Serena. Yes, you can help me. I'm really hoping you'll be able to give me the details of the Boston event."
"I sent you an e-mail with a local contact number for the gentleman who is co-organizing it with you. Didn't you get it?"
"No." Oops. I'd been too busy drinking to read my mail. "I haven't been able to get online recently. So what's the event, then?"
"A tea party."
"You're joking. A Boston tea party?"
"Yes."
Whoever said that Britain had run out of original thinkers?
7
Alexa announced the next morning that she wanted to devote the day to socialism. Not to redistributing wealth or nationalizing America's banks, which would have taken far more than one day, but just to finding some socialism.
We'd eaten pancakes and bacon at a diner on the corner of Twenty-third Street, and emerged full of the goodwill that a massive breakfast always brings.
Right there on the corner, standing in the weak sunlight, was a woman of about fifty. She was wearing a thick duffel coat, a balaclava, and enormous mittens, all in shades of red. She looked like a giant raspberry. She was shaking a cash box and holding a large placard which showed men huddling in a doorway against the cold.
"Spare a thought and a dollar for your fellow man? Give some cash to the less fortunate?" she was asking passersby. It sounded pretty socialist to me.
Alexa and I each stuffed a dollar into the tin.
"Can I interview you for a film about the American lifestyle?" Alexa asked.
"Why, yes," the woman said, suddenly looking less frozen.
Alexa opened up her camera and pointed it into the woman's face.
"You are wearing red and collecting money for the poor. Does this mean you are a socialist?"
The woman looked as if the red was going to drain out of her duffel coat.
"A socialist? You mean a communist? No!"
"In that case, why are you collecting for the poor?"
"Out of Christian charity, of course. Helping my fellow man. I'm a volunteer at the shelter over on Twentieth Street."
"But is it not better to change the system so that they can help themselves?"
"The system? What system?"
"The capitalist system."
Again, the woman blanched. It was as if capitalist was a rude word that you couldn't say in polite society.
"Why, no, it's not the rich people's fault that the homeless are homeless," she said. "There are some wealthy people who make very generous donations to the shelter, you know." She gave her money box a shake.
"But if the rich weren't so rich, maybe the poor would have more money, and a home and a job?"
"Oh no." The woman smiled at the absurdity of the idea. "A lot of these people can't hold down a job. They have drink problems, mental problems. We had a discussion at the shelter the other day. Someone was saying maybe there's a homelessness gene."
"A homelessness gene?"
"Yes, you know, maybe some people are genetically predestined to end up on the streets. They're inclined toward alcoholism and mental instability, so they're naturally more liable than others to end up homeless. So all we can do is make their life more comfortable."
"Maybe you can give them genetically modified soup?"
"Pardon?"
"Soup that will cure their genetic problem, so they can become rich entrepreneurs."
I realized that Alexa's film was going to be a lot more fun than I'd thought. The woman was staring at her, trying to work out exactly how much irony was floating around in the air between them.
"Are you mocking me, young lady?" she finally asked. "Because if you are, you're being very uncharitable. Very un-Christian."
"Oh no," Alexa said, looking positively angelic. "I have just arrived here and I am trying to understand America. It's a fascinating country, isn't it?"
The woman's cheeks glowed as red as her balaclava.
"Oh, yes, it's the greatest country in the world." She smiled and began shaking her cash box again.
As we walked away, Alexa declared the interview a total success. She'd even managed to get the woman to sign a release form allowing her to use the footage on TV
"What's all that stuff about America being fascinating?" I asked her. "You were having me on, weren't you?"
Alexa laughed. "Oh no, it is a technique I got from Michael Moore. You know, the documentary maker? He criticizes America, says it is totally corrupt and stuff, and then every few minutes he says 'It's a great country, isn't it?' and everyone is reassured and they let him say what he wants. If they think you are anti-American they will stop talking to you."
"But aren't you anti-American?"
"Oh no, it's a fascinating country." She giggled all the way to die subway station.
8
Early the next morning, during the taxi drive a hundred or so blocks north, I observed the New York drivers whose road space I was about to share. As so much of their driving was done in long straight hauls, it seemed mainly to consist of lane swapping, a sort of inability to stay in a monogamous relationship with the line of cars in front of you. Is the lane on the far side of the street moving half a mile an hour faster? OK, as soon as there's a two-inch gap I'll pull across and get honked at. They were conditions that favored the Mini, I figured. A short, nippy car would be ideal for queue-jumping.
My fingers were twitching to get hold of the wheel.
Dwight the mechanic was there as arranged, buffing up the impossibly scarlet doors on the Mini that was crouching in the middle of his workshop. It was ready to
spring out of the door and into action.
"Beautiful, ain't she?" Dwight said.
"Wow, yes, she is," said Alexa.
"Oh shit," I said.
"What's the problem? You didn't want a convertible in this weather, did you?" Dwight was inviting us to laugh with him, but it was a nervous laugh. He could tell that something major was up.
"What's that flag?" I had to go and touch it to make sure it was really painted on. Surely he was going to peel it off and tell me it was a joke? But no, it was a perfect paint job, with the stripes of color spreading across the whole car roof. Only trouble was, they were the wrong stripes. He had painted an American flag, but with a minuscule Union Jack in the top left-hand corner instead of the stars.
"It's the Union Flag, just like they asked for," Dwight said.
"That's called the Union Flag?"
"Yeah, the Grand Union Flag, in fact. Kind of neat, joining up the English and the American flag like that, huh?"
"But I'm not supposed to be doing any joining up. I'm supposed to be Team Britain. You might as well have put die French Tricolor in the other corner and dotted a few Chinese stars around."
"Hey, man, I just did what they told me to do." Dwight ducked into his office—a windowed compartment at the far end of the workshop—and returned with a sheet of paper, a printout that he'd grafittied with phone numbers and a shopping list of paint colors, but which was still legible enough for me to see that he was right. Serena had sent him an e-mail asking him to paint a Union Flag on the roof instead of a Union Jack. And / was the one who'd had to take a Britishness test.
"Does it matter?" Alexa asked. "It is a good symbol. The small Englishman in one corner of the USA."
"Yeah, that's right," Dwight agreed, with all the excess enthusiasm of a man who doesn't want to redo a paint job.
"Excuse me, there's someone I have to shout at." I was already speed-dialing Serena.
"Hello Mister West Visitor Resources Britain Serena speaking how may I help you?"
"Nyaarrgh."
"Sorry?"
"What I mean is, how could you ask for die wrong flag to be painted on top of the Mini?"