Merde Happens

by Stephen Clarke

  "Sorry," the night porter said, "I don't think you can turn it down. And no one's ever complained before."

  Now you can't fob a customer off with that pathetic excuse. "Excuse me, there's a king cobra in my bathtub." "So? No one's complained before." The guy was just asking for trouble.

  After all, it was the day before my big Hollywood debut. I needed my sleep. So by my reasoning, I was perfectly enti-ded to take extreme individual action, like the cop in the diriller I'd seen. It was within my rights as a paving guest to go and unplug the ice machine.

  The management didn't agree.

  Two guys with white shirts, ties, and logoed name badges opened my door, poked me awake, and told me I was being thrown out.

  I felt like I'd just got off to sleep, but my bedside alarm said eight o'clock.

  "Coffee and wheat toast with orange marmalade, please," I said, but it didn't distract them.

  They whined on about a flood, damaged carpets, and a short circuit, all (they alleged) caused by a leaking ice machine. And wasn't I the one who'd called down to ask for the machine to be shut off?

  Yes, I said, but how could diey prove that I was also the one who'd unplugged the machine?

  Well, diey answered smugly, apart from the fact that they hadn't mentioned that the machine had been unplugged, no one else had ever complained before.

  Half an hour later, I was sitting in the Mini wondering what to do. I had the company credit card, so I could just drive around and find another hotel. These days, Suraya seemed to have forgotten about the budget constraints that had caused so much hassle back in New York. But then I saw a road sign pointing to Venice Beach, and I remembered— Elodie had said I was welcome to stay at Clint's fabulous house, hadn't she?

  Any port in a storm, and now that I knew my enemy, taking shelter in Elodie's port could even count as a useful bit of espionage.

  "You are welcome, Paul," she said when I called her. "You haven't lost the competition yet, but come. I am very good at consolation."

  4

  Elodie might have been a witch, but she certainly avoided living in a hovel. So far I'd seen her in her dad's apartment overlooking the chicest woodland in Paris, in her pied-a-terre at the heart of the Marais, and in Clint's department-store-size Manhattan hideout.

  This place beat the lot.

  It was a newish brick-red villa, a simple cuboid construction that would have looked mundane in a town like Miami. But it wasn't the building itself that was so impressive. It was the whole context.

  The villa stood on a wide canal lined with modestly sized houses, ranging from old cabins with leafy gardens to modern glass boxes that used up every inch of their building plot. The surviving old houses, often just wooden shacks with peeling paint and overgrown yards, seemed to be inviting architects to rip them down, and I guessed that it wouldn't be long before someone bought them and took up the challenge. The neighborhood was a life-size architecture catalog showing off all the best ways to create roof terraces, tinted glass facades, and sunken patios.

  Not that the area looked overdeveloped. The houses were small and overshadowed by the canal itself, a peaceful ribbon of clear, fish-infested water. Boats were moored here and there along the towpath—not megayachts but paddleboats and canoes. A white ibis was perched on the prow of a small punt, peering down into its liquid breakfast buffet.

  Clint's villa was one of the few new houses with a decent-size garden. It had orange trees, a rose bed, and a lawn with a set of teak dining furniture. I even saw a hummingbird buzzing from flower to flower on one of his shrubs. It was peaceful enough to hear the tiny bird. The only sounds were the distant hammering of workmen on a building site, a propeller plane overhead, and the tinkling of water in a small ornamental fountain.

  I went in through the garden gate and knocked on a crimson door that glistened in the sun as if its paint was still wet. It struck me that I'd come a very long way since I was banging on a similarly shiny front door in the Bronx.

  The door opened, and a young guy fell out into the garden.

  "Oh, sorry. Hey. Bye. Later." He mumbled a party mix of hello and goodbye noises, and jogged off down the canal path, stretching his arms and back.

  Elodie stepped out to watch him go. She was in a kimono, unmade-up, straight out of bed.

  "And don't forget the muffins!" she shouted.

  The departing guy raised an arm in acknowledgment.

  "That's Jerry," she explained to me.

  "He's not one of your French campaign team, then? He doesn't look like an engineer."

  Her face fought between blushing and laughing. "No, I found him at the beach last Christmas. He's an actor but he wants to be a waiter."

  "Isn't that the wrong way round?" I asked.

  "Yes, I guess he just wants to be different. That's the trouble with these Californians. They all want to be different, but they're all the same."

  Typical Elodie, I thought. Always has to be superior to everyone.

  I had breakfast on a terrace that caught the morning sun but was hidden from potential snoopers by a row of gigantic plant pots. Which was lucky because despite the cool breeze, Elodie insisted on lounging around with her kimono strategically arranged to drive any watching men insane.

  Moi, for example. I mean, I knew how manipulative she was, and that seduction was like a PlayStation game to her— totally without consequences. But seeing her do her Basic Instinct act was hard for a poor relationship refugee like myself to bear. I was here to uncover her secrets, but I'd have told her all mine in an instant. I'd even have made some up just to please her. The French government wouldn't have to build a Guantanamo to brutalize information out of their suspects—they could just send Elodie in to interview them, and the most hardened terrorists would start singing like canaries.

  I did my best to focus my attention on the muffins and coffee that Jerry was laying out on the table. He fussed about, fed Elodie chunks of banana-and-pecan muffin and called her babe, while she pumped me for the lowdown on Las Vegas. I wasn't surprised when my moral stand over the Uzi made her laugh. Of course, to her, getting thrown out of a city for refusing to lower your ethical standards for five seconds was completely absurd.

  "It was the straw that broke the camel's back," I said.

  "What?" She didn't know the idiom. Maybe, I thought, she didn't have limits. I tried to explain the concept of even the largest pack animal feeling overloaded.

  "In French we say it's the drop that—how do you say it?—overspilled the vase," Elodie said.

  "But that's different," I objected. "One drop will just spill out of the vase, it won't break it."

  Elodie screamed with laughter and clapped her hands.

  "This is wonderful, Paul. You have become French. You are more capable of arguing about the way of explaining something than discussing the real problem." She flashed me another glimpse of her thighs as a reward, then spoiled everything by adding, "I really think Alexa was wrong to ditch you."

  "Ditch me?" Now she was the one with some explaining to do.

  "In Las Vegas. She called me asking where you had spent the night and I said I didn't know. You had left in the middle of Clint's concert, and disappeared."

  "But I went back to the hotel—she wasn't there."

  "No, she was angry because you went out for the evening without her, and she took a different room in the hotel. Don't you understand women at all? You were supposed to go and find her. Stupid Englishman."

  Talking about hotel rooms seemed to give her an idea.

  "Cheri," she said to Jerry, "I think I'll have my next cup of coffee in bed. Will you bring it to me?"

  She stood up and stretched erotically. I thought she might even throw off the kimono to save time in the bedroom.

  "You can relax here before the ceremony," she told me. "Clint won't bother you."

  "Clint's here?"

  "Oh yes, somewhere. I don't think he knows he has a garden, though. Or maybe he's forgotten how to get out here. He
spends his time in the basement. It's where he has his pardees."

  She went in through the French windows, and then popped her head out again.

  "Oh, by the way, Papa will be here for lunch. He will be happy to see you."

  5

  There are people who could cause a riot in paradise. The angels would be up there on their clouds, strumming on their harps, and one troublemaker could goad them into ripping each other's wings off. The problem was that Elodie and her dad Jean-Marie were both that type of person. And Tyler was the kind of guy who'd make angels throw their harps at him in frustration. All in all, it was probably inevitable that our lunch in paradise would turn into a war.

  Objectively, things couldn't have been more perfect. Here we all were, sitting in February sunlight that was strong enough to make us feel glad to be alive, but not so harsh that you needed to worry about sunblock. We were in one of the most peaceful gardens on the American Pacific coast—even the workmen had shut up now, and all we could hear was the artificial fountain, a distant whoosh of traffic no more intrusive than a bubbling river, and, yes, the hummingbird that had returned for lunch.

  The food was excellent. The Mexican cook had laid on a Californian feast of salads and fresh fish, and Jerry was giving an Oscar-winning performance in his role as wannabe waiter. He was keeping the golden Napa Valley wine flowing, too, which might have been part of the problem.

  The other lunchers were Elodie, myself, Clint, Jean-Marie, and Jack Tyler.

  Now call me slow, but it took me a few seconds to realize that there was something decidedly odd about the fact that those last two should show up together, in the same limo. It pushed back the boundaries of coincidence just a bit too far. Besides, there was no such thing as coincidence where Jean-Marie was concerned. If he walked out of his apartment one day with a suit that happened to be exactly the same gray as a cloud passing overhead, then either he or the cloud was up to something, or more likely they were in cahoots.

  Today he was wearing slippery mercury gray, with his favorite salmon-pink shirt as crease-free as if it was being constantly ironed from the inside, and his silk tie apparently immune to any danger of getting splashed by salad dressing. His hair was slicked back off a permatanned forehead. Next to him, floppy-haired Tyler looked a total slob, his jacket baggy and his shirt rumpled round his midriff.

  "Don't tell me you're involved in the French campaign, too?" I asked Jean-Marie.

  "Yes," he said, giving me his most charming—and least trustworthy—smile. "When Elodie told me that she was going to be, how do you say, implicated in the World Tourism competition, naturally I decided that I must help. I am her father, after all."

  He was also a born liar, a sneaky French politician, and someone who had a lot to gain if I didn't manage to pay off my fine and was forced to sell my half of the cafe to him. But I didn't think it polite to question his motives and darken the sunny ambience.

  "Yes, Papa will help me get a job after the competition, when we have won. Right, Papa?"

  "Naturally, cherie," he said, and planted a paternal kiss on her forehead. A touching scene, I thought, like the king and princess cobra deciding who was going to set a trap in my bathtub.

  Tyler left it to Jean-Marie to explain that the two of them had spent the morning at a meeting for all the heads of the different countries' campaigns. Jean-Marie had invited his British rival to lunch when he'd heard that I was staying at the house.

  Clint—still dressed as a miniature leather Elvis— thought he was back in Las Vegas, and was keeping us amused by regularly asking Elodie when he was due onstage. Every time she told him he'd done the show, he'd say, "OK, babe, less pardee!" and try to find his way into the house. And each time he'd fail to find a door—or one that he could remember how to open—and come back to the table until he got another urge to sing and/or party.

  "It's a fantastic house," Tyler congratulated Jean-Marie as if he and not Clint was the host. He slurred the word fantastic slightly. The sun, wine, and jetlag seemed to be getting to him. That and his medication. I figured that this combination had to be the reason why he hadn't immediately started whining at me about Las Vegas. Unless he was trying to save British face in front of these foreigners and was waiting until we were alone to rant at me for screwing up the deal with Larry Corelli. He did seem nervy. He was licking his teeth even more restlessly than when I'd last seen him in London.

  "The house is unique," Elodie said. "If you look carefully, you will see that there are no ninety-degree angles at all. You know it was designed by California's only blind architect?"

  The scary thing was, I don't think she was joking.

  "I hear that you are an exile here, Paul," Jean-Marie said. "You had to quit your hotel and were—what is the word— expulsed from Las Vegas?"

  I examined him for signs that he was taking the piss about the gun shop. But no, he was looking at me with what I can only describe with a French word—bonhomie. It was impossible to believe that he wished me anything but good luck and happiness. I guessed that that was how the smiling cobra looked to its hypnotized prey.

  "I think they were mad at me in Las Vegas because I wasn't losing enough," I said. "I managed to get away when I was only eighty dollars down. My own money," I emphasized for Tyler's sake.

  "I hope you did not..." Jean-Marie mimed putting money on the table, and looked to Elodie for linguistic support.

  "Gamble? Bet?" she guessed.

  "Yes. I hope you did not gamble on Britain for the ceremony," he said.

  "You think I should have bet on France?"

  We laughed, and the exchange would probably have been passed off as gentle jousting between opponents if Jack Tyler hadn't mumbled something into his glass of wine.

  "Not much point in that, either," he said.

  I didn't pick up on it, but Elodie was on to him in a flash.

  "What did he say?" she asked Jean-Marie in French.

  Jean-Marie shrugged ignorance, which is usually a Frenchman's most reliable means of defense. If a Parisian shrugged hard enough, he could convince a nuclear missile that it wasn't worth landing on the city. Elodie, though, had progressed way beyond mere nuclear-war tactics and kept up her offense.

  "Why did he say that, Papa?"

  "I don't know," her dad said. "You know these Anglais and their so-called sense of humor." For once in his life he looked almost flustered. Tyler, meanwhile, was staring fixedly into his wineglass with those lazy eyes of his.

  "Then why are you acting bizarre? You're bizarre." Elodie sat back as if to get a better look at Jean-Marie.

  "It's nothing, nothing." Her dad was almost pleading her to let the subject drop now, which was like rolling over and offering her your jugular.

  "No, you must tell me," she ordered him. "If there's a problem, I have the right to know. I have been working hard on this campaign while you have been lazing around back in Paris, making sure you are on the committee so you get your free trip to sunny California."

  "Ah, so that's how you see things, is it?"

  Elodie had successfully goaded Jean-Marie into losing his temper.

  They proceeded to have a long row in French, which had Jean-Marie throwing his arms above his head to express that his daughter was being naive, and Elodie alternately gaping in horror and spitting venom. They were speaking at Uzi speed, and I struggled to follow.

  "Me, lazing about?" he seemed to be saying. "Who do you think arranged for those engineers to extend their visit?"

  "Huh, you're only doing this to get a foot on the political ladder," Elodie countered. "And what about my bonus if we win, will I get that?"

  "Think yourself lucky you're getting a job. Do you know how many French kids are on the employment scrap heap at twenty-five?"

  They started hammering out the issue of the bonus, and things got especially nasty. My French was sinking under the weight of so much concentration, but when they finally ran out of breath, I had understood enough to want to empty a bottle of wine
over Elodie's head.

  "You gave Alexa's photos to the website, didn't you?" I accused her.

  "What?" Elodie hardly seemed to have heard. She was still charged up with the adrenaline of yelling at her dad.

  "And you tried to persuade Alexa to sue Visitor Resources, didn't you?" Now I was getting charged up, too. "I bet you even got that guy from Toulouse to mess up my tea party."

  "Yes, yes, yes," Elodie hissed, letting off a surplus of pent-up steam. "And yes, I got Jerry to sabotage your car in New Orleans."

  "Jerry?" I turned and saw the actor doing a very bad mime of guilty regret.

  "You would have done the same to me if you'd known my plans," Elodie said.

  "What?" I did my best to look affronted, though I wondered if she was right. How far would I have gone to win my bonus? "I wouldn't have sabotaged your car," I said. "You could have got me killed."

  "No, I told him to do it safely," Elodie said. "I didn't want you to have an accident. And it was a kind of om-ahj, really."

  "What?" Like turning a lion into a hearth rug was a hunter's idea of respect.

  "Yes, it was because I really thought you could win the campaign. I wanted to win for myself. I didn't know. . ." She mimed strangling her dad and Tyler.

  "Know what?" I asked.

  "Oh, franchement, Paul, didn't Alexa teach you any French?" she snapped. "Have you understood a word of what's going on?"

  "I understand that you tried to screw up my events, yes. Even though you knew I had to win to save my share in the tearoom. Bloody hell, compared to you, Lady Macbeth was a guardian angel."

  Elodie gave a stifled scream of despair and turned to Tyler.

  "You must tell him," she commanded. Everyone looked at the slouching Englishman—even Clint, who didn't seem to know or care what planet he was on.

  "Tell me what?" I asked, but Tyler seemed incapable of eye contact with anything other than the remains of a sliced pineapple.

  "You British really are pathetic," Jean-Marie said. "Why can't you do things the French way? We know that the worst thing you can do to a person in politics or business is tell them that you have, how you say, screwed them. We French, we are the masters of silent diplomacy, and people respect us for this. We screw people, but we don't humiliate diem. We do not tell the world they have been screwed." He seemed to have fallen in love with the word. "OK, French is not die language of international negotiation, but we are conquering the world in front of you Anglos. So yes, we have made the deals in Boston, in Miami, in New Orleans. Our engineers will help Las Vegas with its water supply and Los Angeles with forest-fire control. We have done all this, and have, er, will have ..." His English broke down, but only temporarily. "We would have accepted our defeat in the vote discreedy, with grace, and guarded the secret, not like you." He gave Tyler a sneer that would have persuaded an eighteenth-century English gentleman to go out and commit honorable suicide. Tyler, though, was in silent communion with his wineglass.