Merde Happens

by Stephen Clarke

As Alexa drove us even further south, I made my call.

  "Rodriguez," a Hispanic man answered.

  "Hi, it's Paul West."

  "Uh?"

  "Paul West? We're due to meet up this morning?" I felt that adopting the American way of giving out information as a series of questions might help the message get through. Especially because, as far as I could hear, I was competing for his attention with a massed salsa band.

  "Oh, yeah. Hey, no problem. You in Miami?"

  "No, about an hour north," I yelled above a trombone solo. "Where do you want to meet up?"

  "Oh. In an hour? Wow." Looking that far into the future seemed to be as painful as getting a nipple pierced. "Which way you coming in?"

  "From the north?" I pronounced this as a double question, as in, didn't you hear me using the word north earlier, and if you did, do you understand it?

  "Right. But you gonna go via downtown or drive along North Beach?" Which was also pronounced as a double question—are you stupid or do you just think I am?

  "Oh. I don't know. North Beach sounds good."

  "OK, meet me in South Beach. You know Ocean Drive?"

  "No, but I can find it."

  "OK, see you there."

  "Great. What number?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know?" This conversation was starting to make my undercarriage ache.

  "I'm not sure. There's a couple places I hang out. I'll be somewhere between Fourteenth and Tenth. Look out for a yellow Porsche Cayman S. You know the Cayman S?"

  "No. How many wheels does it have?"

  "Uh?"

  "No, I don't know the Cayman S. Doesn't it look like all other Porsches?"

  "Oh no, dude." With the salsa band as a backing track, he went on to describe his car's distinctive curves, its horsepower, its price, and the kind of women it attracted.

  "So you'll be sitting in the car?" I interrupted.

  "Ha, no, dude." Apparently, now that we'd steered the conversation on to cars and women, we were dudes together. "I'll be hangin at one of the cafes there." By his testicles from the ceiling, I hoped. "You in a Mini, right?" he asked.

  "Yes." I was flattered he'd remembered that much about me.

  "Cool. What engine she got?"

  I guessed a plausible number of horsepower.

  "Whoa. Cool. She's fast, uh?"

  "Yes." I invented a top speed that would have got me deported from America if I'd tried to use it.

  "Way to go!" This seemed to excite Jesus more than anything I'd said so far. "What color is she?"

  I gave a description of the car's red-blooded body and proud-to-be-British roof, trying to be more accurate than I had been with the horsepower.

  "You pay extra for the flag?"

  "No," I said, wishing we could end this shouted conversation about our respective vehicles, which was making Alexa sneer as women do when men start showing their testosterone in public.

  "I never saw one with a flag before. Least you be easy to spot. Later, dude."

  We cruised along the coast with the sun rising higher to our left and the flow of vehicles getting heavier at every junction. But to a northerner, even a minor traffic jam feels like heaven when the sun is out and everyone's driving in their shades. The Mini had been an interloper on the northern highways, but felt totally at home down here— Thelma was a sunshine girl, not a fog dweller.

  The road signs pointed to some intriguing places. What could there be at Hypoluxo, I wondered, a Greek brothel? Gumbo Limbo Nature Center sounded like an elephants' yoga park, and Boca Raton was obviously a hideous new name given to a town to discourage anyone else from moving there.

  But I could understand why people were flocking to Florida. Every other town was called something beach. Boynton Beach, Pompano Beach, Dania Beach. The road signs kept trying to entice us to turn and make for the ocean.

  It was after we did so, following the sign for Miami Beach, that we hit trouble.

  "Merde alors." Alexa braked suddenly, slowing to the pace of the dense traffic ahead of us. She started to laugh.

  I wanted to cry. The whole horizon was a mass of Minis. Solid tops and convertibles, new Minis with their raised rear haunches, old ones looking like egg boxes on toy wheels, Minis of every color in the paint-spray spectrum.

  "What the fur?" I began, before seeing a banner that answered my question. One of the flood of Minis ahead was flying a flag which informed us that our path was blocked by the "Miaminis," obviously some kind of car fan club. They were hooting and swerving with self-delight, as if this might attract even more attention to them than the mere fact of being the biggest collection of small cars on the American continent. I wondered what the collective noun for this gathering should be. A nip of Minis? A buzz? No, I decided, a hobbit. It reminded me of a scene from one of the Lord of the Rings films, the army of hobbits rushing through a forest of giant trees—the trees here being the towering hotels that had sprung up beside the highway. We were now just one block back from the beach.

  "Here is who should organize your event," Alexa said, smiling across at the woman driver of an orange convertible Mini who was nodding her appreciation of our paint job.

  We were sucked into the herd, or hobbit, and in true American style, everyone was being overwhelmingly friendly. Drivers were waving, grinning, giving the thumbs up, all deliriously happy about being together.

  Alexa was right—these people would definitely have been more pro-English than my Hispanic Porsche driver. But if, as I suspected, they were planning to keep up the celebrations right down through South Beach, poor old Jesus was going to get one hell of a surprise. He'd be looking out for a single "unmissable" Mini and would end up staring over the heads of a tribe of them. Knowing my luck, the Mini parade would meet up with the Yellow Porsche Owners' Club, and we would be totally screwed.

  "Can't you speed up a bit and overtake them all?" I begged Alexa. One lane of the wide boulevard seemed to have been reserved for people who wanted to drive straight and slightly faster between bouts of swerving around.

  "Why not?" she said, and hit the accelerator.

  Wth Parisian effortlessness, she careered over to the right-hand lane, causing only three or four Mini drivers to slam on their brakes. Staying in the (relatively) fast track, we started to move past the pack. As we did so, drivers of the usual gigantic American personal vehicles flashed their lights in mock fury as they waited to get out of hotel parking lots, and a pair of old, bearded rabbis stared as if we were a visitation from either heaven or hell.

  We drove this way for a couple of miles, and my maps and guidebook suggested no way of branching off and getting ahead. It was one straight run along the boulevard to South Beach.

  "We're going to have to pull off and let them pass," I said. "I'll call Hay-zooss and tell him to ignore the first hundred Minis he sees."

  Suddenly a break in the tower blocks appeared on our left. It was a large parking lot set between two high-rise hotels. Alexa did some more French swerving and got us in without causing a major pileup. She found a space, turned the engine off, and we sat back, letting the cool ocean breeze wash over us.

  "Hey, bro," a voice said through my open window. I turned and looked into a hole. Fortunately, seeing a hole in midair was no more surreal than getting caught up in a hobbit of Minis, so I didn't faint when I realized that the hole was the barrel of a gun.

  A gun? A real, live gun? No, I couldn't believe it. It looked like a strangely shaped TV remote. It was the same silvery color and had similar stylish curves. It appeared much smaller in real life than the ones you see in the films, too. But then, I reasoned, so does Tom Cruise, and he's scary enough.

  "I want you car, bro," the gun owner said, his voice soft and calm. He was a handsome young black guy with pilot's sunglasses and smooth, light skin.

  "Our car?" I asked.

  "Yeah. Get out the car now."

  I looked across at Alexa, who was gazing into the barrel of the gun with exactly the same
expression of shocked disbelief as me.

  We got out, keeping our hands in view like they do in the films. Even the intellectual Alexa would have to admit that she'd learned something useful from American crime movies.

  "I can't believe you want this little car," I said. "Isn't it more profitable to take Hummers and Porsches and that kind of thing?"

  "Paul, please shut up," Alexa hissed.

  The dark sunglasses seemed to X-ray me.

  "No way, bro," the gunman finally said. "No one want that big shit no more, Hummers an shit. They use too much gas, you know wham sayin? Price of gas juss kill that muthfuckin bidness. Small cars and them new hybrids, they the way to go, you know wham sayin? No one want that big shit no more."

  "Right." I felt I ought to thank him for this lecture on eco-trends in the carjacking trade. "No chance of keeping our backpacks, is there?" I asked. "British passports probably aren't worth that much on the black market." His gun seemed to flinch. I definitely did. "Er, not that black market is in any way—"

  "Paul, please shut up." Alexa didn't care about the color of markets. She just wanted to survive.

  "Yeah, listen to your girlfriend, bro. Shut the fuck up. I'm getting patient here."

  I guessed that he meant "wzpatient," but I wasn't going to quibble about his accent.

  "Right. Sorry. There's not much petrol—I mean, gas— left, but—"

  "Shut the fuck up, bro."

  The carjacker was just about to take possession of his new vehicle at last when a mournful wailing sound cut through the blustering wind. All three of us turned as the sound grew stronger, and we two males uttered a simultaneous "Holy shit." We even—I think—bonded in a moment of shared bemusement.

  Like the cavalry ambling confidently over the horizon in an old western, a column of hooting Minis was advancing slowly toward us between the rows of parked cars. The Miamini banner was flying high above a gleaming blue Cooper S. One of the cars in the front row was identical to ours—red with a Union Jack roof—but a vintage model. The father rescuing his lost son.

  The carjacker looked from the oncoming Minis to me, from his gun to the oncoming cars again. "Fuck dat shit," he said. He sprinted away across the parking lot and jumped into a black SUV that immediately screeched off north. The carjacker hadn't extended his eco-principles to his getaway car, I noted. Presumably for getaway cars the priority was power rather than fuel consumption.

  Our backs were slapped, our hands shaken, and Alexa received a hug from the woman who had been driving the orange convertible. We were assured that the police would be called, the "no-good motherfucker" would be caught, and that Florida wasn't usually like this.

  "Except for the sun, that is," a guy with a neatly clipped beard chipped in. He was wearing a T-shirt with an English pound note on the front. He introduced himself as Tony, the president of Miamini. "Like Blair, right?" He said this with a huge smile on his face, as if it was the best thing in the world to share a name with a British politician.

  "A 1968 racing-green Austin Mini saw you were in trouble and we all came back to help out," the orange-convertible woman said.

  "What a great year that was," I told her.

  Standing in the wind tunnel between the two big hotels, Alexa and I told our life stories, retraced our route from New York, and pleaded ignorance about the age and exact model number of our car.

  "It's not a standard model, though, right?" Tony asked me. "That flag, I mean?"

  He was stroking his chin like an antiques expert who's found suspiciously new-looking hinges on a supposedly medieval trunk.

  "No, we got it painted on in New York."

  "You'd have done better getting the standard flag livery."

  "You can get it standard?"

  "Oh yeah. Didn't you know?" Tony said, pleased to impart this vital information.

  Another bloody cock-up by Visitor Bloody Resources Bloody Britain, I thought. Well done, Tyler.

  "Yours is wrong, see," Tony said.

  "No, it can't be. I had to get it repainted because they did it wrong the first time."

  "Sorry, but it is. You have to look at the flag from the viewpoint of the driver as he gets in the car. That's when it should be the right way up. But yours is upside-down when you go to open the driver door. Look." As if to show me, he bent down and gripped the door handle, gazing theatrically across the painted roof as he did so. "Upside-down. You're a Brit, surely you noticed that?"

  An audience of three or four other Mini drivers nodded and hummed at his wisdom. Of course, like 99.9 percent of Brits I have no idea which way up our flag should be. How typical, I thought, that Britain should have the only flag in the world that can provoke an argument about whether it's the right way up or not. Even the Australians don't have that problem, and their whole bloody country's upside-down.

  "Maybe they painted it that way because I'm English, and they expected I'd be driving from the passenger seat," I said.

  They all laughed at the eccentric notion that cars should have steering wheels on the right, and then the police turned up and things got serious.

  The cops were two surprisingly skinny white guys with crew cuts and the cleanest uniforms, shiniest belts, and biggest guns I'd ever seen in my life. They wore walkie-talkies clipped high on their shoulders as if they needed to be in constant contact with their collarbones.

  They talked Alexa and me through our meeting with die carjacker. Their questions made me feel as if it was our fault for leaving our windows open. And when they heard that we hadn't reserved any accommodation in Miami, I thought they were going to take us up to die state line and dump us in Alabama.

  "Can I see your passport, Sir? Madam?" cop number one asked. He looked exacdy like his buddy except diat he had a short pink scar on his cheek and bigger biceps.

  "What is the motive of your visit to Miami, Sir?" asked cop number two.

  Motive, I thought. Now they really think we're criminals.

  "I work for the British tourist authority," I said. "I'm here to do a promotional event."

  "But tJiese are tourist visas," the one widi die scar and the biceps said.

  Both sets of police eyebrows were raised. They'd got me now.

  "I'm not getting paid dollars or arrything," I said. "I'm not working for an American company and taking an American's job."

  "But you're working on a tourist visa."

  It's not my fault, I wanted to say for die umpteenth time on this trip. Tyler had told me that I didn't have time for die hassle of getting a work visa. And now, thanks to him, I was going to get deported and lose everything.

  Luckily we had backup. The other Mini owners were there to plead for clemency, offer us and our car places to stay, and give contact details in case the cops needed help identifying the carjacker.

  After half an hour, we were told we were free to go. I felt as if I'd been acquitted of murder.

  Though by this time I was afraid Jesus would have given up on us. No problem, Tony told me. He went over to his car to make a phone call, and a couple of minutes later he returned with his beaming smile covering half his face.

  "Yellow Porsche Cayman S parked up on the corner of Ocean Drive and Eleventh," he said. "Owner has been identified and informed of your imminent arrival. There will be a cream 1980 Clubman in a slot two cars behind the Porsche. As you approach, it will move away and leave you free to park."

  This guy should have been organizing not only my event in Miami but the whole tour of the USA, I decided. He'd have written me a schedule accurate to the last millisecond. I'd tell him the exact size of soundproofed bed I wanted in each town, and the room would be found. In fact, he was so much more pro-British than any Englishman I'd ever met that he deserved to have my job. I really ought to call Suraya and tell her I was outsourcing myself.

  5

  I took over the wheel for our final mile, and as I drove into South Beach with my escort of excitable Minis, my first thought was, hey, they've painted my Great Aunt Caroline's bu
ilding a funny color. She used to live in a block of flats near Wembley Stadium, the only art deco building in a sea of suburbia.

  This, though, was a whole art deco city. Practically every building looked like the upper decks of an ocean liner stranded on the beach. What's more, they'd raided the paint catalog and splashed colors about with no regard for matching tones and subtle combinations. It was Cape May on cocaine. Purple porticos above blood-orange doors, coral-pink window frames curving around deep-blue corners, green plaster waves etched into yellow facades. And those were just the small hotels. Beachside, the same themes were repeated on ten- or fifteen-story towers, making the oceanfront look like a display of gigantic colored meringues.

  It was no lifeless architecture museum, either. Everyone and everything seemed to be in "look at me" mode. The proportion of open-top cars and customized pickups had suddenly shot up. Hip, tanned people stepped out of the art; deco buildings and looked around as if they were expecting to be filmed. Tightly clothed butts of both sexes swayed along the sidewalks. You could almost hear the daiquiris being mixed in the hotel bars. This place, I decided, was going to be fun.

  "Franchement, Paul." Alexa was shaking her head.

  Franchement, or "frankly," is France's most serious way of expressing disapproval. If someone lets their dog poo on your new Chanel shoes, franchement is what you'll say before you kick the dog and smear the merde on the owner. It implies total disbelief at their lack of savoir vivre.

  "Franchement," she continued, "we were almost shot because of you."

  Ah yes, the gun and all that. The buzz of arriving in sundrenched South Beach had almost made me forget about the bad things in life. And we hadn't actually set eyes on the ocean yet, so it was lucky she'd reminded me now. I knew from experience that as soon as I spotted my first blue, swimmable wave, all negative thoughts would be washed from my mind.

  "Sorry," I said. "It was just my way of panicking."

  "This country, it is all so ... so precarious." Precarious is another of France's worst insults. The French are so used to jobs for life and general prosperity that anything precarious scares them to death. Whereas of course every job in the USA and the UK is so precarious that we take instability in our stride.