GOOD AMERICANS GO TO PARIS WHEN THEY DIE by Howard Waldman Page A

at
the Embassy in those days. Margie is one of the telephone
operators, pretty in a wholesome mid-western way, corn-flower blue
eyes, corn-tassel blonde hair, off an Iowa farm like himself and
Methodist too and inevitably he’ll end up by marrying her, which he
doesn’t suspect at the time because of Louise behind the flowers
and whom he soon gets to know away from the flowers.
     
    In the drab corridor Louis goes on thinking, in
guilt and longing, of his first knowledge of Louise in the
hotel-room and the unassumed consequences of that knowledge. A
crazy notion occurs to him. (Why crazy, though? Isn’t he already in
the middle of a crazy miracle?) If by a second much better crazy
miracle he was returned to the Paris of his twenty-fifth year (he’s
been given the body for it), couldn’t he keep that bouquet for the
slim honey-blonde girl at quitting time instead of going back with
it to the Embassy and giving it to his unsatisfactory future wife?
Change the future and the wife that way? Couldn’t that be done?
     
    In a grave relapse from
spirituality Maggie remembers long-ago times out there enjoying
herself greatly and being greatly enjoyed. Margaret again, she
banishes those scandalous memories. Maybe it’s the golden domes
that remind her of the jewelry shop. The domes are the same color
as the ring they caught her with (just a single tiny diamond for
all that fuss). The director arrives and they convoy her into his
office. She weeps with convincing despair. I’ll lose my job.
They’ll expel me from France. I’m American. He understands English
and speaks it with a half-French half-Oxford accent, very
distinguished. His office is full of books, classics she guesses,
because leather-bound and behind glass. He looks like he’s read
them all. He wants to know what she does for a living. Surely not
stealing jewelry? Artistic dancing, sir. Where, if I may ask? At
the Cabaret
Arc-en-Ciel ,
she says, embarrassed, and adds: a little like ballet but free
style. Please. I’ll lose my job. Please, please.
    I don’t know what I should do, he says,
staring down at his desk. She says she’ll do anything, anything at
all, if he withdraws the charges. She expects him to announce the
price and his price is hers. It’s no problem; on the contrary, he’s
young with curly gold hair, not balding and fattish like Guy, no
problem at all. But instead, he talks about America and the war his
father died in and how the Americans helped save France in 1917-18.
He measures her by that heroic standard. How could an American
young lady possibly do a thing like that? He makes her feel like a
traitor. It’s a sickness, sir, something-mania they call it, I see
something nice and I have to have it for a while. Just hold it for
a while. I would have brought it back, sir, I swear I would have.
Tears come again with hardly any effort. She knows they enhance her
green eyes. He stares down at the desk.
    Finally he says she can go. She blinks. He
reaches for the pile of letters and opens the first one as though
she’d already gone. “You may go,” he repeats, without looking at
her. “Charges will be withdrawn.” He’s intent on the letter. Maggie
goes, thankful but offended.
    The next day, Saturday evening,
he’s there at the Cabaret Arc-en-Ciel . The spotlight is blinding but she can see him at
the table way back in the rear, staring down at it as he’d stared
down at his desk. She feels offended again and ashamed of her
dance. Ignoring the wailing signal of the clarinet, she omits the
final split-second flourish of the fans that gives the customers
total exposure. Most of them applaud anyhow, even if some protest.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t look up. Soon he’s gone. Guy is angry. How
come she forgot the climax and disappointed the customers like
that? Later they leave by the side entrance. Guy’s arm is around
her waist, his hand near her groin. Steered toward the taxi-stand
on the avenue, she sees the jeweler seated at the