Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  July 9, 2000

  Paris

  Last night after dinner, David and I returned to the Hôtel Costes to have a drink in the lobby. He’s writing about the fashion shows and thought it might be a good idea to listen in on a few conversations. The bar, or series of bars, encircles the courtyard restaurant, and passing from one area to the next, I realized that I’d never seen such a good-looking group of people in my life. There were no exceptions. As David said, the place made the recent Prada and Gucci ads seem like documentary footage. This was a gene-pool convention, an ark of beauty. I felt ugly and uncomfortable, so we ran over to the Tuileries and shot pellet rifles, pretending the balloons were our own physical flaws. I won a dart gun and a deck of cards. David won a model airplane and then we walked around for a while. I got to come home, but David had to return to the hotel and pass through the lobby.

  July 13, 2000

  Paris

  All week David’s been imitating an Englishwoman who’s one of the editors of Harper’s Bazaar. I haven’t met her, but it’s a moneyed, self-satisfied accent that sounds pretty good to me. Every day he memorizes another perfect bit of dialogue that I force him to do over and over. Yesterday’s went something like this: “‘So of course again last year Yves offered me something from the collection. He thought I might like the wedding dress, but I much preferred the smo-king, which was brilliant. I mean, the line! It was like this!’ She holds out her hands and moves them up and down as though she were running them along the sides of my office trash can. ‘And I remember saying to Jean Paul—whom I adore because my husband’s name is Jean Paul—I said, “A cut like this could support an army, couldn’t it?”’”

  What makes the stories so funny is that they lead to nothing. The cut “could support an army.” What does that even mean?

  July 14, 2000

  Paris

  Yesterday afternoon Rakoff and I had lunch at Le Petit Saint Benoit. It was his first time, and my last. Once, with Steven, they were nice, but on every other occasion I’ve felt rushed and bullied by the staff. Yesterday we were waited on by a black-haired woman in her thirties who blamed Rakoff when the table she was yanking caught on the edge of her shoe. We were seated against the wall, meaning that when we eventually left, we had to inconvenience a total of seven other people. They really pack them in there and when the place is full you feel as if you’re eating on a plane. The bill came to 185 francs, and when Rakoff placed 205 francs on the tray, the waitress had a fit, insisting that he’d overpaid.

  “The extra,” he said, “the extra is…well, it’s for you.” He had to apologize for leaving a tip and basically beg to be forgiven.

  August 9, 2000

  La Bagotière

  I called Dad last night and he said, “If you’re riding a bike I’m hoping it has a big, wide seat, otherwise you’ll get testicular cancer like that Lance Armstrong.” I said I wouldn’t be riding a hundred miles a day for the next twenty years, and he told me it didn’t matter. “I want you to go out tomorrow and get yourself a nice big seat, damn it, and while you’re at it, you should have your prostate checked.”

  He said it as if the bike shop employed a full-time oncologist. We talked for about forty minutes and toward the end he launched into his Vote Republican speech. “Don’t pull a fast one and pretend that you know anything, because you don’t. You don’t have a clue about what’s going on in this country, so just do me a favor and vote for Bush.”

  Dad says Al Gore will tax his estate 55 percent and leave us with nothing. He refuses to die during a Democratic administration. It’s a point of principle. He asked about this and that and when I told him my book had been number two on the New York Times list he said, “Well, it’s nowhere near that now. I think on the Wall Street Journal list it’s either a nine or a ten.”

  I think I hurt his feelings with this book. Every time it’s mentioned he changes the subject and talks about the Republicans.

  August 10, 2000

  La Bagotière

  I started on the new play, knowing that what I’ve written will probably be thrown out by next week. Whenever I have nothing to say, I wind up with two characters talking over one another. Last night I was thinking about how I’ve always liked the supportive dialogue in Death of a Salesman. Biff says he’ll go into the sporting-goods business and his father interrupts and says, “Sporting goods! You’ll knock ’em dead,” or something along those lines. Every time Biff starts a sentence, his father interrupts to encourage him, and the effect is pathetic.

  August 12, 2000

  La Bagotière

  It’s scary, but when riding my bike I tend to think of all the people who are too lazy to exercise. I’ve become the exact sort of person I hate. The least amount of effort makes me self-righteous and I decide that everyone else should suffer just as I do. I’d probably be a monster if I ever quit smoking.

  August 14, 2000

  La Bagotière

  Hugh went to Ségrie-Fontaine to see Jocelyn, who heard a rumor that I am retarded. It’s being spread by a woman in the village of Taillebois who’s seen me “looking at pictures and talking to myself.” “Il n’est pas normal,” she says.

  What she thinks are pictures are actually my index cards, and I’m testing myself on French vocabulary words, not having arguments with the little demons perched on my shoulders. The woman said that I’m not dangerous, which I guess is good. Apparently I’m one of those retarded people who can wander off for a few hours but still manage to find their way back home. “He always says hello,” the woman reported. “But still, he isn’t normal.”

  I’ve been dieting for two weeks now, and while my stomach feels a bit smaller, I seem to have lost the most amount of weight in my forehead. It’s tight as can be. I’m guessing the loss is due to the constant mental strain of thinking about food. Yesterday I rode my bike for two hours, winding up a few miles beyond La Forêt-Auvray. They have a nice square in front of the church and I sat down to have a cigarette. A group of English people had just left the restaurant and I listened to them make plans for the following morning. One woman seemed to know her way around better than the others and advised everyone that a trip to Caen would definitely cut into their day. She must have said the phrase “cut into the day” at least a dozen times. It was one of those occasions when it’s automatically assumed that you are French, so you can eavesdrop all you want without the speakers growing self-conscious. While on my ride I was passed by numerous cyclists and none of them returned my hello. This is sort of a relief, as it means I won’t have to say it anymore.

  August 19, 2000

  Alghero, Sardinia

  My suspicion that the four stars beside the name of the Hotel Carlos V were decorations turned out to be correct. Our room is large, with tile floors, clinical overhead lights, a plastic shower stall, and a little TV bolted to the wall. It’s air-conditioned, though, and there’s a nice terrace overlooking the good-sized pool and the sea. We went down for breakfast this morning and tried our luck with the hot drinks machine. The milk seems to be an optical illusion. It comes out of the spout but disappears as soon as it makes contact with the coffee. On leaving, we saw the Italians bringing their cups up to the bar—which is apparently what you need to do if you want a real latte.

  When Dario drove us into the city of Alghero, Hugh said, “Oh, it looks just like Mogadishu.” I haven’t been to Mogadishu, so to me it resembles Utah but with a beach. Manuela and Dario are in the next town over, staying at his parents’ place. It’s a boxy, one-story house set in a grove of olive trees. There’s greenery, but it’s all sage-colored. I’m used to the walls and hedges in France, and the landscape here strikes me as mean. It’s dry and dusty and full of things that can hurt you. Packs of wild German shepherds run around at night. There are lizards and snakes. Even the birds seem to have a chip on their shoulders.

  We went to the beach yesterday afternoon with Manuela, and it was packed, wall to wall. The crowd didn’t bother me. Rather, I enjoyed be
ing pressed against so many people. The women behind us, all in their fifties with dark, leathery skin, rattled on and I guessed they were trashing somebody. When people speak Italian, I always imagine that they’re either gossiping or relating the details of a close race. There were many women in bikinis, but no one was topless. A lot of the men wore tiny swimsuits. The water was warm (L’acqua era calda) and you could see to the bottom. I went out beyond the boats with Hugh but got dizzy and nauseated after the first two hundred feet. It’s the bobbing up and down that gets me.

  We went to the beach at around four thirty and stayed for three hours or so. At the snack bar I practiced my Italian. “Two bottles of water,” I said, learning as the man got them that it comes in a box. We’d worked fairly hard on our language lessons before arriving, but now it seems futile. I got to say la domicilia and la firma this morning while renting my bicycle. It’s a ten-speed with normal handlebars and I like it a lot. After paying, Hugh, Dario, and I went to buy a few things at the market. It was noticed that my bike light didn’t work and Hugh told me no less than fifteen times that I had to take it back and have the guy fix it.

  When he started in for the sixteenth time I said, “OK, you can stop talking now.” This doesn’t mean “shut up,” exactly—well, yes, I guess it does. I went back to the bike shop and used the word torcia. The kid was very nice and fixed it so that now the light cannot be turned off. I wanted to say something while he was working, ask a question, make a comment, but I don’t know the words for that kind of thing. It made me remember when I first came to France and learned to point out the objects in the room. Still, though, I guess the little bit I know is better than none at all.

  August 20, 2000

  Alghero

  I sat in a lounge chair yesterday afternoon and got a tan on my forehead. Today I’ll try to get one on my back and chest. I’m the color of a French chicken and really stand out here. The people surrounding the pool are impossibly brown. They arrive in the morning and roast until six at night, pausing every now and then to bob around in the water. I haven’t seen anyone use sunscreen. Neither have I seen anyone with a burn. I guess it’s their skin. What little tan I get will start to peel within a few days, so the only souvenir of my vacation will be the scrapes and bruises I sustained during last night’s bike accident.

  According to the Herald Tribune, millions of Italians returned from their vacations yesterday. Alghero seemed a little less full this afternoon, but it was by no means empty. It was my job to find a place for lunch, so after riding around for a while I settled on a restaurant called Mazzini. It wasn’t fancy. In the corner a TV played dubbed American soap operas. People always complain that the French are rude, but I’ve found the Italians to be much colder than Parisians. The hotel desk clerks are nice, but in the stores and cafés, they’ve all been blustery.

  Our waitress acted as though we’d singled her out for some terrible punishment, but then we noticed that she treated everyone the same way. She was maybe twenty years old, pretty. At the next table a group of three workingmen attacked huge plates of spaghetti and mussels, followed by big cuts of grilled meat. I ordered a seafood antipasto followed by what I thought was spaghetti and octopus. Pulpa sounds to me like it ought to be an octopus. I think the waitress made a mistake, as what I received was a plate of red-sauced spaghetti heaped with crabs. They were small—the size of a fifty-cent piece—and each one had been hacked in two. One normally doesn’t eat the entire crab, and besides that, these were hard, with shells. I guessed they’d just been used to flavor the sauce.

  Hugh tried picking apart some of the tiny claws, but it was too much effort for the stingy reward. Still, though, it was good. A table full of sailors came in during The Bold and the Beautiful and were followed by a young couple whose hand-holding suggested they might be on vacation. We were the only Americans except for the people on TV.

  August 24, 2000

  Paris

  Yesterday morning Hugh and I watched an Italian man go for a swim with his dog, a yellow Lab with bruised-looking teats. He’d just come out of the water and was standing on the rocks when a second man confronted him and said, I imagine, that animals were forbidden on the beach. The two men argued back and forth, and then the second guy stomped off and returned ten minutes later with a scroll. I’m guessing it was the town charter. He unrolled it, but the first man was unimpressed and the subsequent argument lasted for half an hour. What amazed me was the second guy’s tenacity. I’m not sure what reaction he was hoping for, but he seemed determined to get it.

  August 29, 2000

  La Bagotière

  In search of a bicycle, Hugh and I went to Super Sport in Flers. The store is situated in an ugly industrial park on the outskirts of town. The lighting was harsh and fell on rack after rack of cheap sweatshirts and ugly nylon tracksuits. They didn’t have much in the way of bikes and had I been more patient we would have left and visited one of the shops in town. It was Monday, though, and everything else was closed. I wanted something right away, so after trying out a Raleigh five-speed (merchandise is not allowed to leave the store, so I was reduced to tooling up and down the aisles like a bear in the circus), I settled on a Gitane seven-speed with normal handlebars. It wasn’t expensive, $300, but leaving the store I felt I’d betrayed the bike I already own. If I’d gotten new tires and brake pads for it, I would have been fine. What are called modernizations on the more recent models seem nothing more than an attempt by the manufacturers to save money. The current fenders and foot pedals are made out of plastic, as are the gear wheels and air pumps. In a fire my new bike would melt into a puddle. It came with a front and rear light, but I don’t imagine they’ll last long. The seats and handlebars are so easily adjustable that they loosen at the slightest provocation, and I worry I’ll have to carry a tool set at all times. The chain came off before I left Flers, and I think it’s going to take me a while to master the gears. I don’t mean to sound so down on it. I guess I just feel guilty.

  The lines at Super Sport were long and slow. Families were buying back-to-school clothes and every few minutes the cashier had to leave her post and answer the ringing telephone behind another register. I had to go to the bathroom, so while Hugh headed home in the car, I rode to a McDonald’s located at the far end of the industrial park. I’d occasionally eat at one in Paris, but the second time I was laughed at by the counter help, I stopped going. I guess I’d been saying something wrong, but to my mind, Big Mac is an American term and should be pronounced as such. At the Flers McDonald’s, I ordered a filter coffee, which is hard to find in France. It was five o’clock, the place was practically empty, and the girl behind the counter was exceedingly pleasant. They were offering the McDonald’s Maxi Best Special: a Royal Cheese, large fries, and the soda of your choice for 37 francs—a little over $5—which would be expensive for the States. Inside the Flers McDonald’s, there were local newspapers mounted on bamboo canes.

  There were display cases offering a clear view of the latest toys, but there were no ashtrays. In order to smoke, one had to step out onto the playground. A family sat on the far end of the slide, both the parents and the teenagers puffing away. I’d been there for a few minutes when the counter girl ran out with their orders. In America you’d have to stand by the register and wait, but I guess in Flers they’re willing to come to you. The family received their Maxi Best Specials and regarded them while they finished their cigarettes. The industrial park emptied and, beyond the fence, cars passed on the way home from work.

  This being France, I know I’m supposed to sit in cafés with thimble-size cups of espresso. I’m supposed to return day after day until the owner finally consents to shake my hand and ask how it’s going. But I couldn’t have been happier than I was at my ugly little McDonald’s. It was the coffee I wanted, with no fear that the waiter would ignore me. I paid immediately and didn’t have to beg for my check. Plus I got to watch a toddler whiz down a slide onto a carpet of cigarette butts. I’m thinking that I mi
ght make that McDonald’s my place.

  October 8, 2000

  Paris

  Steven Barclay told me that the building our new apartment is in was the original site of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Hugh looked it up on his computer and found pictures of her and various literary celebrities standing before what is now the ground-floor hair salon. I’ve never been terribly interested in that crowd, but still it’s impressive that James Joyce stood drunk and probably peed in our stairway. Hugh is thinking we can exploit our location and make money renting out our apartment under the name Finnegans Sleep.

  October 12, 2000

  New York

  The general agreement is that I’ve lost too much weight. For me, the process has been gradual, but for those I haven’t seen in a while, the change is drastic. People who hadn’t been told about my diet probably imagine that I have either AIDS or cancer—which is a pretty good definition of bad weight loss. Andy couldn’t bring himself to look me in the eye. It’s as if I’ve had a disfiguring accident and everyone’s trying to pretend they don’t notice it. It’s not the reaction I’d expected at all.

  I went to Little, Brown and talked to H., who filled me in on the new Kevyn Aucoin book. The other night, just before his appearance at Barnes and Noble, he called saying he’d need a bodyguard. He’s not snippy but says these things in all sincerity. He needed the bodyguard in case the NRA decided to retaliate for a remark he’d made in a Time Out interview. To him it made perfect sense that the National Rifle Association might send a hit man to kill Cher’s makeup artist; his political views are too extreme and sooner or later the Republicans will have to silence him. H. denied the request for a bodyguard, so Kevyn hired his own. He’s going next week to his hometown in Louisiana and called to demand that Little, Brown arrange to award him the keys to the city. The keys to the city don’t really count if you have to ask for them yourself, but H. went ahead and wrote to the mayor. Last night Kevyn was supposed to be at Bendel’s from five to nine and decided to show up at around eight. I love hearing about this guy.