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

bedded on crushed ice and seaweed. Think of me here when
you squeeze lemon-juice on them. Or minced shallots with vinegar,
that’s even better. Enjoy yourselves while you can. After the
second exit there’s no second awakening, ever, ever.”
    The stern-faced female functionary
returns.
    “What are you doing here?” she says to the
male functionary. Her distaste is undisguised. “Keeping up my
English and admiring beauty,” he says impudently. She threatens to
report him again for speaking to Arrivals.
    In deliberate self-caricature, he pouts,
flounces over to the door and addresses a limp-wristed bye-bye to
Louis. Before he closes the door he sticks out a long gray tongue
at his hierarchical superior’s back.
    “You must dress immediately,” she commands
the materialized duo. “You cannot remain here. The cleaning girl
will be cleaning your rooms shortly. You will wait in the Common
Room opposite this room. The Prefect has informed me that he will
be coming to greet you all officially. That seldom happens. It is a
great honor. Try to be worthy of it.”
    She leaves.

 
     
    Chapter 9
     
    Rules And Regulations
     
    Shyly, back to back, Seymour and Louis unpin
their loin-towels and pull on their new clothes. They find
themselves clad in obsolete garb, a little too insistently typical,
as in a period-film where the clothing as well as the props (like
spittoons for 1900 and tommy-guns for the thirties) are calculated
to inform the most dull-witted of the spectators where they stand
time-wise. Seymour had d**d in 1980 but is now attired in a
turtleneck sweater and corduroy cuffed trousers of archaic 1950
cut. Louis had d**d in 1927 but is tricked out in a
turn-of-the-century costume with tight trousers, narrow lapels, a
string tie. He’d worn something vaguely similar during his sojourn
in Paris when he wasn’t wearing his Marine uniform. Apparently the
functionaries in charge of the costume wardrobe hadn’t been able to
come up with a Marine uniform for him.
    Both of the men are happy at their garb. It
gives reality to a possible transfer to the Paris of their youth
and reunion with their lost sweethearts.
    But then they start reading the graffiti,
mainly bitter, that covers the blistered gray walls. A century of
other Americans of questionable goodness had wound up here in
Administrative Suspension and had waited. Very few of the graffiti
bear signatures or even initials, potentially incriminating, given
the nature of the remarks on their hosts. But there’s nearly always
the scratched date, the supposed date in most cases, because
followed by a question mark. It’s as though the inscribers had been
here so long they’d lost count of the years.
    Only four more centuries to
go ,” announces one
inscription. Surely an exaggeration. But how about:
“ Here seven
fucking years. Fuck Prefuck de Hautecloque. (1929?) ” Was
that one an exaggeration? And this: “ To those who died waiting for Paris: RIP.
(1962?) ” Certain
graffiti express bitterness toward the host country. Seymour makes
out: “ The
French fight with their feet and fuck with their faces.
(1918?) ” and
“ French Food
Sucks! (1998?) ”
Pathetic, this one: “ I was killed on Omaha Beach in 1944 to liberate
France and this is how the bastards thank me!
(1953?) ”
    There’s a scattering of tarred rectangles. Louis and
Seymour assume even worse insults to France and the French. The
notion doesn’t occur to them (yet) that what has been carefully
censored are vital messages to future generations of
administratively suspended Americans.
    Not all the graffiti address the problem
of quasi-incarceration. There’s the inevitable “ Conroy was here.
(1945?) ” There are a few
arrow-pierced hearts with initials. The initials of lost and
yearned-for firm-breasted Paris sweethearts, as for Seymour and
Louis? Or faithful evocation of dumpy widowed wives?
    Other graffiti are political in nature.
The slogans urge and denounce on these alien walls