Dream Paris (30 page)

“
Good luck, Anna!
”

We left the room, made our way down the carpeted corridor to the wide stairs that led to the lobby.

“Too late!” hissed Francis. I saw why. Down there, down in the wide lobby of the hotel I saw Kaolin speaking to four Pierrots.

THE COFFEE SELLER

W
E HURRIED BACK
down the corridor, now very conscious of the whizz-whizzing sound as the wire unreeled.

“Your backpack!” I said. “You’re still wearing your bloody backpack!”

“I can’t help it,” he said miserably. “They gave me my orders. Besides, I don’t think I can take it off any more.”

“Don’t be silly! Of course you can!”

“No! I don’t seem to know how.”

“What does that mean?”

But I knew what he meant, sort of. The Dream World had a way of getting into your head.

“This way,” he said, pushing open a plain door that was almost lost in the swirling colours of the wallpaper. “Service door!”

“They’ll just follow the wire!”

“We’ll just have to try and go faster than they can.”

We’d have to. Still, who was I to talk about strange behaviour? We were running away from a set of china dolls that my mother seemed to be helping to liberate from slavery and my stomach was lurching and popping with the contents of an eating competition. Who was I to complain about the fact that my companion was trailing a wire behind him?

We descended a steep stone staircase, the sound of our footsteps echoing from the bare walls. Round and down, down and round, running past hallways lined with linen baskets and bottles.

“No! This is the ground floor!”

Francis took my arm and stopped me from descending into the cellar. From down there I could hear the clatter of pans, the hiss of steam. A rich smell of stew came drifting up the stairs. After my earlier meal, the thought of eating anything made me feel queasy.

“This way!”

There was a metal door to my right. I pushed it and we tumbled out into the spicy night. We found ourselves in a long alley, by the overflowing bins. Two dogs shared a plate of spaghetti nearby, clearly out on a date together.

Francis held a finger to his mouth, he pointed down the alley to where two Pierrots were standing with their backs to us. I nodded in acknowledgement and we walked the other way, wire trailing along behind us.

“
There they go!
”

The voice sounded like sugar cubes plinking into an empty china cup. I heard the odd stop motion tap-tap of porcelain feet hurrying after us, overlaid by the slap of our own feet.

“Faster,” said Francis.

“I can’t! This dress!”

I pulled up the skirt to free my legs and we ran, trailing our route behind us, out of the far end of the alley and into a brightly lit street. A line of plane trees ran down one side, their branches hung with apples and oranges carved with lit faces like halloween pumpkins. The shop windows opposite the trees illuminated the scene, four Pierrots just happened to be driving by in their taxis. They all just happened to see us, they all just happened to turn in our direction at the same time.

We ran. There was a roar of engines and a taxi bounced onto the pavement before us and pulled to a halt.

A pair of Pierrots got out. Another taxi pulled up beside us.

“More behind us!” said Francis. “We’re surrounded!”

“
Quoi
?” A woman, sleeping unnoticed on the pavement looked up at the disturbance. She saw the Pierrots and recoiled in horror. “
Non
!
Non
!”

“What do we do?” I asked.

“We’re outnumbered,” said Francis. “We surrender. Go with them. Look for an opportunity to escape.”

One of the Pierrots reached forward, something dangling from its hands.

“Are those handcuffs?” I said. They were Dream handcuffs if so; the links of chain seemed to spell out words in the air, a binding contract.

“Anna, I’ll try and hold them off. I want you to run.”

Francis pushed his way forward, ready to fight.

And then… And then…

I saw a flicker of movement, I heard the screech of car tyres followed by the call of a friendly voice. One that I’d heard in the past; one I never expected to hear again.

“Miss Anna! At last! I’ve followed that wire through the city all day!”

I looked with increasing disbelief at our rescuer. Perhaps someday it will become something of a cliché to have the characters in a story rescued by an orange frog man in a beret and striped sweater driving a three-wheel coffee truck. Well, this cliché started here. Never have I been so glad to see a coffee salesman.

“Mr Monagan! What on earth…?”

“Miss Anna, get in!”

Mr Monagan had pulled his tiny coffee truck right alongside us. I clambered inside the cabin and pressed up close against Mr Monagan’s hot body. I could smell coffee, but only just.

“I can’t fit in with this pack on!” shouted Francis.

“Then hang on as tight as you can!”

There are more controls in a Dream Paris vehicle than you get in our world. I counted five pedals, two things that looked like handbrakes and at least ten control stalks bristling from the steering oval. As I watched Mr Monagan pulled two levers, rotated a wheel, pushed a button and then stamped down with both feet… and we were away.

Down the wide streets of downtown Dream Paris, Francis hanging both out of the cabin and on for dear life.

“Slow down! Mr Monagan, slow down! Francis will lose his grip!”

“I can’t, Miss Anna! We have to lose our pursuers!”

I looked in one of the many mirrors that festooned the cabin. The vehicle was equipped not only with rear view mirrors, but side view mirrors, forward view mirrors, under floor mirrors, slow glass mirrors that showed the view from two weeks ago and four vanity mirrors for applying lipstick and checking the back of your head. I had multiple views of the coffin shaped taxi cabs that followed us, that zoomed up and down from side-streets, that were coming head-on towards us.

“We can’t lose all those cabs!” I said. “Even if we did, we’re trailing a wire behind us that they can easily follow!”

“That won’t matter!” called Mr Monagan, wrenching on the wheel and sending us spinning around the corner on two wheels.

“I’ll try and get to the
Champs-Élysées
, we should really be able to pick up some speed there!”

“What about Francis?”

He wasn’t listening.

We raced through the Dream Paris streets, swerving to the left, diving down roads to the right, roaring beneath the legs of a small Eiffel Tower lit up in bone-white and marrow-pink. I could hear the whizz of the wire, I caught the occasional glimpse of the chasing cabs. We spun around the tiniest little roundabout, nothing more than a circle of stones around a plane tree. People sat in dapples of moonlight around the perimeter, burning oranges with pumpkin smiles on their tables. I grabbed hold of Francis’s jacket as he was flung outwards.

“Mr Monagan! You’re going too fast!”

“I’m sorry, Miss Anna! I need to get ahead of…”

We shot past the front of a black cab that had appeared from a side street, missing its nose by inches.

“… that cab!”

I looked at Mr Monagan, at the sure way with which he handled the controls. Everything in the cab was clean and well cared for; the leather of the olive green seats looked as if it was well oiled, the dials on the dashboard were carefully polished. Mr Monagan’s arms and feet were in constant motion, pressing pedals, releasing levers, tapping buttons, turning handles. We zig-zagged around another couple of corners, just ahead of the ever-present black cabs that tried to cut us off, and then we were out onto a wide boulevard, heading towards an emerald-wrapped Eiffel Tower bathed in the Dream moonlight, and Mr Monagan floored it. Francis leaned forward as far as he could into the cab, his knuckles white on the doorframe.

“How do you know this… person?” he asked.

“Mr Monagan came to my house, back when Dream London was at its height. He helped out the Cartel.”

“The Cartel? Was that an organisation of orange frogs?”

“Man! Mr Monagan is a man!” He liked to be called that, I remembered. “No, the Cartel was a group of sad old men who were trying to cling onto some of their former power. My father was one of them.”

“Okay.”

“What
are
you doing here, Mr Monagan?” I asked.

Mr Monagan seemed quite relaxed as he drove, weaving in and out of the Dream Paris traffic that careered down the wide boulevard. A recursive weave. A taxi pulled out in front of us, and Mr Monagan sent the truck into a long three-hundred-and-sixty-degree skid, neatly turning us around the nose of it.

“Ah, Miss Anna!” said Mr Monagan, as relaxed as if he were sitting at home in an armchair, despite the busy movement of hands and feet. “Given the choice, I would have remained in Dream London, but when the end of that city came about I realised I had to move elsewhere. I was sitting in a café near Belltower End when I had my idea… Excuse me…” – he sent us on a long drift around a corner and then floored it once more – “I’d enjoyed a drink called ‘coffee’ in Dream London. Have you heard of the drink?”

“We served it when you came to our house.”

“Oh, yes! I remember, so you did! Delicious, I thought. Very strong, as I remember, Miss Anna! Very strong indeed! Perhaps, and I don’t wish you to think that I’m being rude, perhaps a little too strong?”

“Everyone has their own tastes, Mr Monagan.”

He clashed the gears, sent us skidding around a Morris column advertising
Le Jazz Hot
. I reached out and took hold of Francis’s jumper.

“Thank you!”

“Indeed they do, Anna. Well, it occurred to me that perhaps other people might enjoy drinking coffee. People in other cities. And so the idea grew and grew within me. And then one day I saw this truck, and I knew what I must do! I bought this coffee truck and a supply of coffee, and I took the road from Dream London, following my dream!”

“That’s good to hear, Mr Monagan!”

“Thank you! And as I travelled, I perfected my recipe. I believe that my brew is unique. A very subtle blend of flavours.”

He kissed his fingers, the truck veering to the left as he did so.

“And so I came here to Dream Paris! I have been selling coffee to the Dream Parisians these past few months!”

I remembered Mr Monagan from his brief stay in our house. He had thought that a plain omelette was a little too spicy; he coughed and spluttered when drinking a glass of flat soda water. And this was a man who believed that his coffee was a subtle blend of favours? I didn’t want to pry, I knew I shouldn’t ask…

But I couldn’t help myself.

“… so, what do the Parisians think of your coffee, Mr Monagan?”

I wished I hadn’t asked. He looked like was going to cry.

“… I think that they’re slowly coming round to it, Miss Anna.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to distract him from driving.

“After all, the last woman who drank it didn’t spit it out directly. She merely shivered. She even pretended to swallow it.”

“That’s good, is it?”

“I saw her spit it out into her handkerchief.”

“And that’s an improvement on normal behaviour?”

“Well, at least she didn’t swear at me. Or try to punch me. Or force me to drink the coffee myself.”

“Well, it’s a step in the right direction.”

“Nor did she try and let all the coffee out of my machines, or try to drive my truck into the Seine. She didn’t gain three thousand, six hundred and twenty-two signatures on a petition demanding I be kicked out of Dream Paris. So, yes, I think I’m beginning to make progress…”

Francis, who had been following this with a confused expression, pointed to a mirror.

“The Pierrots are still there.”

“And there are more of them ahead of us, Mr Francis,” observed Mr Monagan. I, too, had seen the wall of taxis heading towards us. “But they are too late. Perhaps, Miss Anna, you would hold on to Mr Francis…”

And his hands and feet became another blur of motion as he sent the coffee van into a long, long skid. Dream Paris slid past in a riot of lights and fruit faces and then we lurched forward, swallowed up by a great arch that spanned the road.

“Is that the
Arc de Triomphe
?” I said.

“The
Arc de Complicité
. Now, I must warn you, Miss Anna, you may find this unnerving…”

‘Unnerving’ was an understatement. We were looking out into infinity.

“
What… ?
” I gasped.

“The
Champs-Élysées
,” said Mr Monagan.

“Whuh…”

It was like the world ran out, like the road ran from the edge of the Earth and out into space. Before us, everything was light and blackness. There was no substance. The sides of the road seemed to enclose nothingness, converging on a point somewhere beyond infinity.

“What are we driving on?” I asked.

“Oh, the road is still there,” said Mr Monagan. “It’s just that here, if they can’t sell it, they don’t bother to display it.”

“Turn around! It’s making me feel ill!”

‘Ill’ wasn’t the right word. Something about the view ahead disagreed with me on a fundamental level. Things simply weren’t right here…