GOOD AMERICANS GO TO PARIS WHEN THEY DIE by Howard Waldman

limps past them, gasping hard as though her shopping bag
and mop and broom and scoop and empty pail weigh a ton. Despite his
wet leg Seymour is glad for her that the pail is lighter now.
     
    Turnkey leads the way past the spreading
pool of dirty water. Dust has already settled on the moist swathes
left by the mop. Or maybe she’s done as poor a job on the corridor
as on the toilets and will be reported for that too.
    Closely escorted by the silent flics , the Five
trudge on, their pace regulated by the clunk-jangle of the pitching
and tossing turnkey. More turns, left turns, right turns, more
obscure staircases, long flights up, long flights down. More long
corridors, some windy, most stagnant.
    How long? How long?

 
     
    Chapter 7
     
    Here Now, There Then
     
    They turn again.
    A window on the world outside dazzles
them.
    They halt before it.
    Certain details differ for the transfixed
onlookers but all of them see the essential blue sky arching over
golden domes and white facades, white bridges arching over the
celebrated river.
    They see gay striped shop-awnings, yellow
and white and red and blue stripes tempered with white stripes.
    Max doesn’t, but the others see slow lovers
advancing along the tree-shaded cobble-stoned quays.
    They see bright summer-clad couples sipping
at sidewalk café tables.
    The distant onlookers thirst for those green
and amber drinks and the world the colored drinks belong to. Except
for Max, tears spring to their eyes. They are profoundly thankful
for what they see. It’s only later that they’ll wonder if the sight
of once-possessed things isn’t punishment.
    The clump-jangle goes on ahead but the
Five remain like statues before the window. A flic behind them commands: “ Avancez. Y a rien à
voir. Du
brouillard. ” Max wants
to know what the cop (the so-called cop) said. Helen tells him: “He
says there’s nothing to see. Just fog. He wants us to go
on.”
    They go on reluctantly, herded past the
window into a stretch of more gray blistered walls with illegible
graffiti.
    But they cling to the torturing blessed
vision. Except for Max, who has never been in the celebrated city
before, they are all back there again, in space and in time, in the
city of their twenty-fifth year.
     
    The clopping of the orthopedic shoe
accelerates into the clopping of hooves on wooden paving blocks,
the jangle of the keys into harness jangling and Louis Forster sees
the elegant carriages, not yet horseless, thronging the avenue. He
sees the archaic manure droppings and imagines he can smell the
rural fragrance that will be replaced by exhaust fumes in a decade
or so. Louis sees flights of pigeons in the blue sky, no trace of
the square rigid-winged aeroplanes that will buzz in the skies of
Louis’ middle-aged future.
    And there, the elegant flower-shop where for
months he’s pretended to admire seasonal flowers in the display
window: first daffodils like gay yellow telephones and then tulips,
red like her cheeks when she catches his gaze on her, for his gaze
is focused past the flowers on one of the three florists,
honey-blonde and slim, more graceful than all the flowers in the
world, and then, finally, one June day (roses displayed now), he
summons up courage and pushes the door open, another jangle, the
bell, the three aproned girls twittering in French no more
comprehensible to him than the twittering of the two love-birds in
the great gilded cage and Louise (he is Louis and she is Louise,
he’ll say to her later and say it couldn’t be coincidence) smiles
shyly and in lovely fragmented English counsels his bouquet and
later tells him she was jealous of the girl the bouquet was for,
not knowing then that it was a pretext.
    A pretext. Once outside the shop what can he
do with a bouquet? He takes it back to the Embassy.
    They wink and poke their elbows in his ribs.
“Margie,” they guess and say. So he gives it to Margie. He’s
already gone out with her. There aren’t many female employees