Frankie in Paris

by Shauna McGuiness

  She was visibly frustrated and a little pride-damaged.

  “Do you want to sit down for a minute? We aren’t really in any hurry... ” I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t hurt, but she was already limping away from me.

  Once reseated, Lulu took a Kleenex out of her bag and handed it to me. I dabbed my elbow and hissed. This brought back memories of falling off my bike when I was little. It seemed to sting so much more as an adult.

  ***

  Children must have some sort of coping mechanism for boo-boos: they hit their heads on things all day long and walk away like nothing happened. Sometimes they need a kiss from their mothers, but then they're fine. Whenever I banged my head on something, I felt like I needed to go to bed for the rest of the day. When did the change happen? Why do adults dwell on things that children just shrug away?

  I longed to be able to take the chip off my shoulder from this awful morning—and for a character bandage and an orange popsicle.

  ***

  “Here’s our exit. We really have to get off this time.” I sounded annoyed.

  “You know, you really will catch more flies with honey,” Lulu responded.

  “Can we please just get off the—” The doors shut, and we headed for the next stop. Again.

  The guy who had checked on us after our collapse was waiting for his ride when we debarked and then instantly embarked... again. He refused to make eye contact with me. I refused to make eye contact with Lulu. We went through the sliding doors.

  Again.

  When we finally made it back to the Rue de Napoleon, I was already standing and ready to exit—scowling at Lulu, who refused to stand until the train was completely stopped. I swear I heard applause as we stepped out.

  “Follow me. I will get us there. I promise.” I dragged her along the stones until we ended up in front of a large building with people practically piling on top of each other to get inside.

  “I think you’ve found it, dear.”

  I headed for the entrance, not bothering to check if she was following behind me.

  “You’ve found Napoleon!”

  “Hooray for dead Napoleon,” I quipped.

  “Be respectful, dear. He is a very famous man.”

  Zut alors! I turned slowly and glowered, “He was a very famous man. He’s dead now. I hope he’s worth it, because that was one hell of a ride.”

  “Good grief! Please try to be respectful!”

  “I’m sorry, Lulu. My elbow hurts, and I’m hungry.”

  “Hungry? You are always hungry!”

  The dusty tips of my boots marched inside the building.

  ***

  I wasn’t impressed. What looked like big, concrete coffins lay in a circle on the floor. Was I exhausted, or jaded... or what? It just wasn’t that interesting to me. Sitting on the lip of one of the platforms holding a tomb, I nibbled on a fingernail.

  Restlessly kicking my heel, I checked out all the tourists. I wondered how many of them had been sent out with a professional date the previous evening. My guess was none. Zero. Zip. Only poor little me had been offered out to whichever eye-brow-pierced-foreign man accepted the deal.

  In my heart, I knew that no one had actually accepted the offer, and I had been safe all along. I was just too hot, pissed, and homesick to recognize it.

  My fingers tasted like a salt lick, but I didn’t care—my teeth continued their assault on my cuticles. Not paying attention to where Lulu had wandered was a major mistake because she had disappeared, yet again.

  “Lulu?” I called, semi-quietly, my voice sounding hollow in the enormous room. I didn’t get an answer, and I was past the point of minding my manners.

  “Lu Day? Lulu!” I shouted from the top of my lungs.

  “Madame, you must come wiz us.” A man in what looked like a navy blue security uniform appeared from thin air and pinched my sore elbow.

  “Wait, what is this all about?” In my distress, my words refused to translate into French.

  “S'il vous plaît,” he sighed, “come wiz me.”

  Pulling me off my pedestal, he led me down a long hallway into a tiny room. The room held a small card table, two chairs, and Lulu. She was studying her many rings and did not look up when I entered the tiny room.

  “What is going on?”

  “Zees woman stole from our faceeleetee.”

  What could she possibly have stolen from the facility? There were huge stone tombs, and that was about it!

  “What did she steal?” The “she” in question still didn’t look up from her hands.

  “Dirt.”

  “Dirt?”

  “Oui. She eez a thief.”

  “I don’t understand what you are saying.” Although my grandmother had taken extra bags of pretzels from the airplane, I truly didn’t believe that she was a thief. And I didn’t quite understand how someone could steal dirt.

  “Do you want to tell her, or should I?” Putting his hands on the table and leaning really close to her face, he was practically yelling.

  “I just thought it would be nice to have a souvenir from Napoleon’s tomb. I didn’t think that anyone would mind.”

  “What did you do?” I still didn’t get what was going on, but I did get a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t just the remaining snail meat digesting.

  “Zees woman scraped dust off of zee tomb! She was desecrating one of our great monumentals!” Monumentals? Is that even a word?

  She opened up one of her hands and revealed a small tube. It must have come from her purse. It looked like a container from one of those teensy eyeglasses screwdriver kits that you can get at any drugstore. It rolled off of her palm, onto the table, while Lulu looked on, terrified. I picked up the tube, shook it, and looked inside. It was maybe one-tenth full of powdery dirt. Damn.

  “Are you serious?” I was probably twenty times more terrified than Lulu looked, but figured that my classical theater training had to come in handy for something. I rolled the tube back toward the scared little old lady in the folding chair.

  “Oui. I am totally serious. This eez against zee law and eet eez incroi- incred- incredibly deesreespectful.” He was having trouble translating incroyable into “incredible” and it almost sent me into a huge set of nervous giggles.

  Keep it together, Frankie!

  I tried to find a way out of this frightening situation.

  For the life of me, I couldn’t even figure out how my gift could benefit us at this point. There really wasn’t anything that I could have used it for to help us.

  A small black camera near the ceiling told me that we were being filmed—and God knew the last thing we needed was for someone to see footage of the crazy, dirt stealing, freaky Telekinetic Americans. I wondered what the French equivalent of Area 51 might be. We’d never get home alive: If I died, Rich would be so pissed at me!

  "She was so young," Alicia would weep, standing next to Rich under a sea of open black umbrellas.

  "She had so much to live for." Rich would stare at my coffin, devastated, as it lowered into to the ground—red long-stemmed roses spilling off the lid into the dark abyss below ...

  Lulu flipped the dark glasses over her specs and looked down at her fantastically sparkly hands.

  Crap. Damn. Aha!

  I smoothed my skirt over my hips like I had seen girls in movies do, but had never done myself. Pulling my shoulders way back, I sauntered over to the guard, using the flattering red sweater to my benefit, silently praying that I wouldn’t trip over my own toes, as I had earlier.

  I licked my bottom lip and pouted. “Please don’t be offended. She didn’t realize that this was bad. We didn’t mean to be bad.”

  Putting a hand on his shoulder, I almost shuddered in disgust. I was disgusted with myself, mostly. He didn’t seem to mind much.

  “In America, I don’t believe it is against the law to steal dirt, so we just didn’t know.”

  We damn well did know. Let’s see someone try to scrape of
f a part of the Lincoln Monument and find out what would happen.

  Batting my eyelashes and feeling instantly ashamed, I convinced myself that this was the biggest scene of my acting career. I was a character: the dangerous, over-sexed twenty-year-old. Merde.

  I added a little bit of a southern accent to the mix, since I knew that most people who were not from America thought we all spoke like that. “Ah am sure you will realahze that we were just mahndin’ our own business, not knowin’ that dirt stealin’ doesn’t sit well with the Frayanch people.” I looked up at him with a face that I hoped looked like the doe-eyed girls whom I had drawn on the plane.

  “I weel need to file a report.” He shrugged, sounding alarmingly like The Inspector from the Pink Panther cartoons. Grabbing his arm, I pulled him to one of the corners of the shoebox room.

  “Look, here’s the deal.” I struggled to maintain my southern drawl. “She is mentally unstable. Nuts. Carazay. I am havin’ trouble just keepin’ track of her. This was her wish—to come to beautiful Pay-ree, Frayance. She wanted to come before she can no longer travel. Comprenez vous?” It was a dumb lie, but it seemed to strike a chord within my stressed-out confidant.

  He looked toward my grandmother, who did indeed look like she was legally losing her mental faculties. Taking my hand, he gazed into my eyes. I used the pointer finger on my other hand to make a circular motion around my ear, to emphasize my grandmother’s state.

  “I am truly sorry, Mademoiselle. Eet eez a sad story. I weel forgive you, eef you leave immediately and do not return. Eef you return to zees place, you weel be arrested at once.”

  “Deal!” I almost squealed, but stayed in character and held out a limp hand for a handshake.

  “Eef you sink you might be free zees evening, I would like to take you to dinner—" He shook my hand gently and if possible, sensually.

  “Ah really have to be watchin’ out for her... "

  Slowly nodding his head, he held the door open for us.

  ***

  Exiting the building really felt as long as walking down the famous seventeen-mile drive in Monterey, but when we finally stepped outside, Lulu opened up her hand. The cylinder of Napoleon’s dead dirt was nestled within the creases of her paw. She cackled like a cartoon villain and let it drop into her purse. Un-freaking-believable.

  “Lulu, you are going to get us arrested. My mother will kill you!”

  “We won’t be arrested if you can keep charming guards like that! I might try to get some of the dust off of the Venus de Milo! I think I have an old contact lens case in here somewhere—” She began to dig through her purse.

  “Stop it! This is serious! I can’t whore myself out to every authority that hauls you off to a little museum closet!” I knew that I hadn’t really whored myself out to anyone, but it sure sounded melodramatic. Also, it made the previous evening's almost-happenings seem so totally ironic!

  “Let’s go to The Louvre.” She marched purposefully toward the Metro station.

  “Wait!” I called, and she stopped in her tracks, turning toward me.

  “Please promise that there will be no stealing at The Louvre. Please. I don’t think I can do that again. Really, Lulu.”

  “Alright, dear.” She put her left hand over her heart. “I promise. I will look but not touch.”

  Good Lord, this is like babysitting a four-year-old. Why couldn’t she buy a freaking postcard or a keychain, like the rest of the adult world?

  9

  The Lovely Louvre—or Not

  We passed by the Venus de Milo on the way to see what I really do believe to be Da Vinci’s self-portrait. Venus was large and smooth and white. She was awe-inspiring, even without arms. I paused to let Lulu take my picture in front of her, supposing that there should be some sort of record of our trip to The Louvre.

  The bare breasts were sure to remind me of our time at The Lido.

  ***

  Walking down hallways full of centuries of fine art, I recognized some of the pieces—but most of it was a mystery. It was then that I realized that my fascination with the arts does not inch too far away from things that can be performed on the stage.

  I was looking at all these creations that were priceless and hung in a place of great honor and couldn’t help thinking that it was more fun looking at the psychedelic animal cartoon sketches on the folders that I still bought for my schoolwork. The artist's name was Lisa Frank, I think. She drew unicorns, mostly—some kittens and puppies with huge eyes, but they were all pink or purple.

  There must be something missing in my DNA which made me wish I could be eating a sandwich instead of viewing these honored paintings. Turkey and cheddar, preferably.

  Dozens, maybe hundreds of people sat on the benches which lined the center of each gallery. Some just sat in wonder, but many of them tried a hand at copying the colors and shapes that decorated the walls of the museum. From what I could see, there was a lot of talent in the building and not just displayed for your viewing pleasure. I was way more interested in what was on those notepads than the original images.

  Something was definitely wrong with me.

  ***

  The Mona Lisa was much smaller than I had imagined. The canvas appeared to be about twenty by thirty inches. After all the years of so much hype, I thought the painting would be enormous; hanging from floor to ceiling and stretching for many feet across the room. After careful inspection, I didn’t think she was happy or sad. She just looked constipated to me. Or stressed-out.

  I probably had that same look on my face, waiting to see what my insane grandmother was going to do next.

  ***

  Standing for a moment, I tried to appreciate the ancient painting hanging behind safety glass. Why had so many poems and songs been written about her? She had a gigantic forehead. Her hair was kind of stringy and mousy. And she looked like she didn’t quite know the response to the math problem that her teacher had sprung on her in front of the class. Even her outfit was drab. Some people came all the way to Paris just to see her!

  What a tease that Mona was! She draws them in and says, “Ha-ha, you thought you were going to see what all that fuss was about, didn’t you?” At least I could say that I had seen her.

  Maybe I would decide to sound all cultured and say something like, “She was beautiful, of course. That face! So enigmatic: I couldn’t tell if she wanted to laugh or cry! Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius! A genius, I tell you!” I was an actress, after all.

  People couldn’t go around saying that the most famous painting on the planet was a disappointment, but I felt a bit cheated.

  “Well,” Lulu asked, “what do you think?”

  “I dunno yet.”

  “I think she looks a little confused. Or annoyed. That’s it: the Mona Lisa looks annoyed.” The painting’s twin no longer adorned her head. I couldn’t remember when it had gone, but I was glad.

  Funny, but Lulu was right. The Mona Lisa looked annoyed. Why hadn’t I noticed when I was staring into her face on the Metro? Perhaps it was the way that her visage stretched out when she was wrapped around Lulu’s white hair. What had she been so ticked off about? Was she truly Da Vinci's self-portrait, as I'd seen once on a documentary?

  Maybe I was just now figuring out a hidden secret of some kind: Leonardo Da Vinci had been annoyed with himself! Probably not. In any case, I really needed something to eat.

  “Lulu, I’m really hungry and I need some pop.”

  “Alright, let’s see if they serve anything here.”

  “Okay.” I kicked the toe of my boots at something that looked like dust. If I tried to remove it from the building, I'd most likely end up with some serious security issues.

  ***

  After lots of horrible translating on my part, we found our way to a café inside The Louvre. Though my stomach told me that I was starving to death, I was still way too stressed to eat anything. Lulu ordered a croissant. I'd lost count of how many she had ingested so far, but it was reasonable to assume t
hat she was eventually going to turn into one.

  I told her that I needed to use the restroom. It seemed like a simple request. I guess I had forgotten about the last time I left her alone in a museum type setting so I could visit the lady's room.

  Reapplying my lipstick, once I'd used the facilities and washed my hands, I stared at my impossibly greasy bangs and heard, “Grow, damn you!" in my head. It was in English.

  Lulu was sitting where I had left her: in a tourist café, at The Louvre, in Paris. Only she wasn’t alone. An old woman—with the face of a dual-purpose eating utensil—sat with her. And a redhead. An awful, satanic-looking, freckly redhead. My stomach turned like I’d just finished an extra large helping of escargots.

  Sighing for the seventy thousandth time since arriving in this country, I walked in their direction.

  “Look who I found, dear.”

  Ginny sat with her cane between her knees. She was wearing a khaki, men’s button-up shirt and a long skirt, which looked as though it was made of watercolor handkerchiefs.

  Her granddaughter was slouched in the chair next to her, with her feet up on the table, wearing a miniskirt and black, twelve-holed Doc Marten boots.

  “Nice kicks,” I grumbled.

  She looked up at me, and I noticed that her eyes were bloodshot. They almost looked like a rabbit’s, they were so red. How convenient; now they matched her hair!

  “Come with me to the gift shop,” she said, as she jumped up from her seat.

  ***

  Dragging me past the gift shop, she led me outside onto a little patio area.

  “Do you have any cigarettes?” she asked.

  “Uh, no, I don’t smoke.”

  “You should try it sometime. It’s a great stress reliever?”

  “I like my lungs, thanks.”

  “For God's sakes, do you have to be so freaking flip?” she hollered in my face.

  Me? Flip? She began sobbing and slid down the wall onto the ground. Long ribbons of snot collected on her upper lip, and she wiped them away with her hands. Her nails had been painted black and were chipped and bitten to the quick.