Pardon My French

by Allen Johnson

  “I’m here to see the apartment,” I sang out.

  “Oh, I’m sorry Monsieur Johnson …”

  The room went dark for a moment. I saw myself on the beach, a bony derelict with a scruffy beard, leathery sunbaked skin, and sandals carved out of driftwood. Nita was cooking hermit crabs for the third time this week over an open fire. But tonight was a special night. Tonight, we would invite Annette for dinner, and I would take her out to the water’s edge and strangle her in the surf!

  “The apartment is already rented. Someone took it sight unseen. You didn’t have it reserved.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I didn’t have it reserved’? I had it reserved, I had it reserved.” Turning to Nita, “Didn’t I have it reserved? Tell me I had it reserved!”

  “What does having a reservation mean?” Nita asked calmly. (I hate it when my wife is calm in the middle of a disaster.)

  “You must pay the agent’s fee in advance,” Annette said coolly.

  “But you said nothing about that!” I howled, the blue veins in my neck throbbing. “You said that we would have first rights to seeing the apartment. Remember!”

  “And, yes, you would have had first rights,” Annette said. “Only, the people who took the apartment did not see the apartment. They took it sight unseen.”

  “But, but, but … why didn’t you tell us it had been rented? We have been waiting for two weeks for this apartment.”

  Annette’s smile was a slit of bewilderment. “We are very busy here, Monsieur Johnson,” she said in a tone that made me want to smack her.

  “Let’s go,” Nita said in English, recognizing my symptoms for internal hemorrhaging.

  I looked at Nita as she guided me to the door. “I’m not happy,” I whimpered. “I’m not happy at all. That was our apartment.”

  “I know dear.”

  “I really wanted that apartment.”

  “Yes, sweetheart.”

  “But she gave it to someone else.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “After she promised that she would give it to us.”

  “That’s right, honey.”

  “I … I can’t believe she did that. That wasn’t very nice.”

  “No, it wasn’t. She’s not a nice woman.”

  So the search continued. Day after day, one agent after the other told us that nothing was available. Then, on a whispered lead from a friend, we called Marlon Apartments.

  “Oh yes,” a woman said. “Your friend called us, and we do have an apartment for you. It’s a two-floor apartment overlooking the port on one side and the sea on the other. Would you like to see it?”

  I practically leapt through the phone line. “Yes, we would like to see it! We would like to see it very much. When can we see it?”

  “Right away,” the woman said.

  “Great,” I said. “We can be there in five minutes. You won’t rent it between now and then, right?”

  “No, we won’t rent it in the next five minutes.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes, I promise,” the woman said.

  In five minutes we were in the Marlon Apartments office, both of us panting like a pair of Labrador retrievers. Ten minutes later, we were walking through the apartment. There were a few problems. The front door was swollen with moisture and would only open to a forty-five-degree angle; the television didn’t work; and the awning over the terrace was broken. But it was roomy, and the view was terrific. I immediately put on my “close-the-deal” face while Nita was skipping from room to room, singing, “I love it, I absolutely love it.”

  I pulled Nita off to the side. “Try to control your enthusiasm for a minute,” I whispered, “so I can close this deal within our budget.”

  That’s one of the differences between Nita and me. When Nita sees something she likes, she makes puppy squealing noises. She may as well open up her purse and say, “Take whatever you want. Would you like my car keys? How about my 401(k) account number? My shoes are brand new; they’d be lovely with your dress; would you like them?”

  I, on the other hand, look for leverage: little faults that I can use during negotiation. There were the problems with the front door, the television, and the awning. All that was immediately evident. But there was also no garage and no private parking. I would have to fend for myself on the bustling narrow streets of Carnon—a real problem in a French resort town during the high season.

  As I wandered through the apartment, I started to chronicle the litany of problems. “Hmmm, the elevator is a little small, don’t you think; the wallpaper in the bathroom is rather garish, wouldn’t you agree; the sun will probably wake me up in the morning. There’s that to think about, you know.”

  Finally, I turned to the agent with my hard-boiled business face attached. As a seasoned and wily negotiator, this would be my pièce de résistance. All I had to do was make sure my voice would not crack like a kazoo out of sheer excitement. “So, there are the problems with the door, the television, and the awning,” I began.

  “I can’t imagine that the proprietor would want to do anything about that,” the agent said.

  “But surely we should be able to open the front door,” I said, already mentally giving in on the television and the awning.

  “I don’t know,” the agent said.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, my voice becoming more kazoo-like by the minute. “Could we do this? Could you call the proprietor and see what he is willing to do? But while we are waiting for his response, you must promise not to rent the apartment. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Say, ‘I promise.’”

  “Pardon?”

  “Say, ‘I promise I won’t rent the apartment to anyone else.’”

  The agent looked at me strangely and then smiled. “Bon,” she said, “I promise.”

  “Will you call today?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When will I hear from you?”

  The French hate this kind of pressure, but I was in no mood to be culturally sensitive. I wanted the apartment—even with a front door that only opened halfway.

  “You will hear from me tonight or tomorrow at the latest,” the agent said. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The agent did not call of course. Not that night, not the next morning, not the next day. So I called.

  “The proprietor is not in,” the agent said.

  “Can you call again?” I insisted.

  “No, we have already left a message.”

  “But if you called again …”

  Suddenly the agent’s voice had the nip of dry ice. “No, Monsieur Johnson. We will let you know as soon as we hear from him.”

  “But you will not rent out the apartment in the meantime.”

  “No, we will not rent the apartment.”

  A day later, still no call. Two days later Nita and I decided to revisit Marlon Apartments in person.

  “Ah, Monsieur Johnson,” the agent said. “We have bad news.”

  The room went dark. It is morning on the beach. We are recovering from a torrential midnight thunderstorm. Nita is drying out our sleeping bags over a skein of driftwood. I notice something out of place washed ashore and walk to the water’s edge to investigate. It is the front page of Le Monde. There is a hint of a smile on my lips as my eyes narrow to read the headline: MYSTERIOUS SERIAL KILLER SLAYS ANOTHER REAL ESTATE AGENT.

  “You see, the proprietor has decided to give the apartment to his son for the year while he is at the university. Sorry.”

  Aaarrrgg.

  Nita and I step out into the sunshine.

  “I don’t know what to do at this point,” I said truthfully. “We have stayed with the Ducros for a month. They’ve been wonderful, but we can’t abuse their kindness for much longer. It’s just not fair to them.”

  “I know,” Nita said quietly.

  I said nothing for a long moment. “All right, this is a long shot, but what if we went back to Seaside Rentals. Maybe something has
opened up in the last week.”

  “You mean Annette?” Nita asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I didn’t think you would ever go back there again.”

  “At this point I don’t have a choice. I’ll do whatever it takes to find an apartment.”

  Nita and I got in the car and drove to Seaside Rentals.

  Annette greeted us the moment we stepped into the agency. “Bonjour Madame Johnson, Monsieur Johnson.”

  Contrary to French protocol, I launched right into business. I was still angry with Annette but decided to marshal my rancor—anything for an apartment.

  “Annette, we still have not found an apartment,” I said, with just a soupçon of wretchedness in my voice. “We have looked everywhere. There is nothing. Has anything opened up since we last saw you?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Annette said, “something has become available. It was originally reserved for another couple, but they have had some difficulty with financing.”

  I didn’t have the slightest sympathy for the economically challenged renters. At this point, sauve-qui-peut (every man for himself) was my motto.

  “It is small,” Annette said. “Only one bedroom, but it is directly on the beach.”

  A soft zephyr of hope caressed the back of my neck. “Could we see it?” I asked timidly, sure that the apartment must be either underwater or overrun by a band of drug addicts with untidy bathroom etiquette.

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  Ten minutes later, Annette opened the door to a third-floor apartment. It was indeed small, just 460 square feet. There are men in New York City, who wear lavender suits and pinky rings, who have cars with more square footage. But the walls were white, the terra-cotta tile smooth and clean, the draperies, tablecloth, and bedspread Provençal. There was a good-sized bedroom with room enough to make the bed—no gymnastic maneuvering required. The room had a wall-to-wall window that offered a view of two-story holiday apartments across the street, a canal, and the 2,100-foot mountain, Pic Saint Loup, on the horizon.

  The bathroom was small with poor lighting and no drawers or cabinets for storage, but the tub doubled as a shower, which is critical for me. (There is something about sitting in a porcelain tub of dirty water that gives me the creepy-crawlies.) The kitchen was compact but had cabinets replete with three frying pans, white dishes, and aluminum silverware. A range, an oven, and a half-fridge completed the kitchen.

  The living room featured a generous day bed, a fourteen-inch television (important for learning French), a telephone jack (indispensable for chatting with French friends and communicating with folks back home via email), a round pine dining room table, and three French impressionistic prints.

  All that was fine, even admirable, but the crowning feature was the balcony, a six-by-ten-foot surface that overlooked the beach, sunbathers, and the Mediterranean Sea. The sky was cloudless, the sea turquoise blue, interrupted only by the distant crescent sheets of canvas of a hundred sailing boats. And then there was the sound—the waves breaking softly on the shore, like the sound of lovers whispering tenderly in the night.

  Nita and I looked at each other and smiled. “We’ll take it,” we said in one voice, not thinking once about the price ($568 a month, including garage).

  It was then that the French bureaucracy kicked in with a vengeance.

  We drove back to the agency, sat down, and started the paperwork. Annette clicked off the documents that were required:

  • Formal application

  • Confirmation of apartment insurance

  • A canceled bank check

  • Two photocopies of two separate identification cards

  • Marriage certificate

  • Salary pay stubs for the last three months

  • Most recent tax statement

  • A letter from my employer confirming my employment

  Daunting, to say the least. I took in a deep breath, opened a two-inch portfolio of certificates, licenses, and applications reserved for just this kind of French torture and unleashed the longest French sentence of my career as a francophone. “I am self-employed,” I said, “but I do have an attestation from my American bank—translated into French by an approved embassy translator and stamped by the French Consulate in San Francisco—confirming that no less than eighteen hundred dollars will be deposited into my French bank account each month, the exact sum required by the Consulate to obtain a long-stay visa. Will that be sufficient for proof of income?” Breath.

  Annette narrowed her eyes, looked at me, looked at the stack of documents, and said, “Oui, that will be sufficient, but you must have the rest of the documents.”

  “Oh, I do,” I said, maybe a little too anxiously. “I do, I do. There is this and this and this too,” I said, peeling out the required documents. I was beginning to feel a bit smug.

  “But …”

  I knew it, I just knew it. Of course our papers were not in order. I could see it coming. “You think you can get away with this?” she would say, the ashes tumbling from a cigarette stub at the corner of her mouth. “Ha, and again, ha! Maybe you would like me to get the directrice, Madame Paininzeebutt, and have her work you over. She knows how to deal with people like you. She can do things with ordinary kitchen utensils that will make you wish you had been born a lizard.”

  “But,” Annette said, “you must pay now for the agency fee, the first month rent, and an additional two months security deposit. That comes to, let me see …” Annette began mumbling to herself as she worked the calculations, converting from francs to euros. “Yes,” she finally said, “that will be two thousand and sixty euros, eighty centimes.”

  “Fine,” I said in an instant, unfolding a wad of traveler’s checks.

  “Mais non,” Annette said, with an apologetic smile, “we do not accept traveler’s checks.”

  “Mais non,” I said, hinging on sarcasm. “Then, here is my Visa card. You do accept Visa?”

  “Ah ça, je ne sais pas—that, I don’t know,” Annette said. “I will have to ask Madame la Directrice Paininzeebutt.”

  Annette rose slowly from her chair and moved to a hidden office in the back of the building, visibly reluctant to disturb the directrice. I gave Nita a crooked smile—an I-don’t-know-if-this-is-going-to-fly kind of a look.

  A moment later, less than a moment later, Annette was back. “Sorry,” she said, settling into her chair. “We cannot accept Visa cards from foreigners. If you were French, yes, but you are American, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, looking at my watch. “Fine, I will go to the bank and get the money.”

  “I will stay here,” my wife volunteered.

  I looked Annette straight in the eyes. “But you must promise not to rent the apartment to someone else while I’m gone.”

  “Bien sûr,” Annette said. “Certainly. After all, your wife will be here to protect your interests.”

  “Yes she will. Please remember that,” I said with the sinister tone of Vinnie the Fish, the mob bookie, citing the consequences of a late payment.

  With that I swept out of the agency and rushed off to the bank in Pérols, which was just a few minutes away.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” I said to the bank clerk, remembering my French manners. I waited obediently for him to return the greeting while the clock took on the tempo of the slowest adagio imaginable.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” he finally said.

  Okay, I thought, that’s done. Now let’s do some business. “I need to cash two thousand euros in traveler’s checks,” I said. “Today, right now,” I added for emphasis.

  “Impossible,” the bank clerk said. “Tomorrow, perhaps, but not today.”

  Okay, okay, okay. I’m all right. I’m calm. I’m in control. This is not going to be a problem for me. Every day in every way, I’m getting better and better. I love myself. I love the French. We are all God’s children, one with the universe, and at peace with the world.

  “And why the hell not?”
I demanded.

  “Because,” the bank clerk said, infuriatingly calm, “we have insufficient funds. I can give you five hundred euros, but that is all.”

  “But I need two thousand euros.”

  “Eh oui,” the bank clerk said, throwing up both hands.

  Yeah, I’ve got your “Eh oui” right here buster. Fine, I thought to myself, as I spun on my heels and barreled out the door. I’ll go to the cash machine and draw out enough for the agent’s fee and then pay off the rest the next day. There was an ATM right around the corner. I put in my card and punched in my code.

  INCORRECT CODE the machine flashed back.

  What do you mean “incorrect code”? I punched in my numbers again. Okay, I’m in. I tapped in the sum, €500. The machine instructed me to validate the request, but which button was the arrow pointing to? I wasn’t sure. The letters on the buttons were worn off. So, I guessed.

  INVALID TRANSACTION the machine shouted back at me in big impertinent block letters. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR BANK ADMINISTRATOR.

  Somewhere, in a place far away, the setting sun turns the sky an evanescent golden hue. Bluebirds sing “tweet, tweet, tweet” as they glide in a synchronized ballet across God’s canopy. The children are laughing. Little girls in pink dresses play double Dutch while boys in striped T-shirts and worn high-top tennis shoes draw a circle in the soft blanket of sand for a friendly game of marbles.

  There is a place like that somewhere in the universe. As for me, I was a breath away from doing battle with an ATM. The only thing that stopped me was the image of me sharing a French prison cell with Jean-Luke DuScarface, the serial mother rapist.

  Reluctantly—agonizingly reluctantly—I returned to the bank. Three women with big purses were ahead of me. The second hand on the big clock on the wall clicked my life away. Then, a mind-bending eternity later, it was finally my turn.

  “I’ll take your offer to exchange five hundred euros in traveler’s checks,” I said immediately.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” the bank clerk said.

  Right. “Bonjour, monsieur,” I said. “I’ll take the five hundred euros.”