Young and Revolting: The Continental Journals of Nick Twisp (13 page)

SUNDAY, June 13 — Wife arrived home late last night. No kiss again. She slept late, then took a bath with her back to me. To keep up my image, François feigned indifference to these slights. When I returned from walking Maurice, she was eating a cheese omelet and reading some Frog newspaper.

“
How’s your omelet?” I asked, pouring myself a cup of coffee.

“
Very good. The cheese grater is working well.”

“
Glad to hear it.”

Sheeni went back to reading her paper.

“
How was your museum hopping yesterday?” I inquired.

“
Very informative. We went to the Musée Carnavalet. Vijay has a true appreciation for the history and culture of France.”

Yeah, I thought, and so did the victims of the guillotine—right before the blade came hurtling down.

“
That’s nice,” I replied. “Any news from home?”

“
Like what?”

“
I don’t know. How’s his sister?”

“
Not good. Apparently Trent had an affair with your Sonya Klummplatz. Things must be very bad between them if Apurva can’t even offer enough distractions to keep Trent away from your old girlfriend.”

A low blow. In fact, Trent only met with Sonya in order to extract from her the location of Sheeni’s prison-camp unwed mothers’ home. This truth I had to withhold lest Sheeni interpret his valiant sacrifice as proof of Trent’s continuing regard for her. I decided on a different tack.

“
Well, Trent’s had the hots for Sonya for some time.”

“
Since when?” she demanded.

“
I don’t know. A long time. That’s what he told me.”

“
I don’t believe it.”

“
Then why did he dance with her so many times at the Christmas dance? And why was Sonya so upset when she found him alone in that hot tub with Apurva? The guy betrayed her.”

“
Trent Preston is not a chubby chaser!”

“
Hey, whatever. Facts are facts. The interpretation I leave up to you. What shall we do today, darling?”

“
You can do whatever you like. I’m meeting Vijay at one.”

Married life. Some days it’s no worse than a little mechanized scrotum-squeezing by the Spanish Inquisition.

9:15 p.m. Instead of staying home and feeling suicidal, I went with Reina to help prepare her circus caravan for her summer tour. We packed her station wagon with cleaning supplies, a picnic lunch, and her talkative babies, then drove south through heavy weekend traffic to Vitry-sur-Seine, a nondescript suburb. Her caravan was stored in the fenced yard of a trucking company. Fairly big (about 25 feet long), but more lightly constructed than American trailers, it featured flamboyant European curves and a tasteful interior done in a light-grained fake wood. There was a dining lounge in front, then a compact kitchen, followed by the usual midget bathroom with large closet opposite, and a cozy bedroom in back. Modestly sized for full-time living, but Reina had toured happily in it for many years with her father and late brother.

“
Wherever did you all sleep?” I asked.

“
Papa and Dusan shared the bedroom; I slept up front here on the convertible sofa. Circus people don’t expect much privacy. We were quite comfortable, though sometimes I dreamed of having my own room in a real house. We’ve been storing it here since the accident, and I’m afraid I’ve rather neglected it.”

While I pumped up the four flat tires with a hand pump, Reina got to work cleaning the dusty interior. Her chatty birds watched us from their cages on the tailgate of the Mercedes. Alas, no hose was available, so I filled a bucket from a hose bib near the loading dock and gave a sponge bath to the caravan’s dingy exterior. Paris may be the City of Light, but there’s plenty of industrial grit in its air.

We ate our lunch of salad, savory mushroom tart, and red wine inside at the small dining table. The wine went to my head and I soon unloaded on Reina all my marital woes. She listened with concern and mulled over my predicament.

“
Well, it doesn’t sound like she has a romantic interest in this fellow,” Reina remarked.

“
You don’t think so?”

“
Not from what you’ve told me, Rick. It may be she was feeling lonely and is enjoying the company of a familiar person from home. But she’s not being very considerate of you.”

“
Well, that’s sort of typical.”

“
I don’t know your wife, Rick, but I imagine that moving to a new country, and being newly married, and expecting a baby can be quite stressful.”

“
You think I should cut her some slack?”

“
I think there’s too much cheap advice being offered in this world, Rick. When I was ill from my accident, everyone kept telling me what I should do. It became quite tiresome. People should do what feels right to them. But I’m sure your wife loves and values you. How could she not?”

A welcome affirmation that seemed to apply equally well to my companion. In a dusty apron and with her hair tied up in an old scarf, she was still infinitely desirable. The trucking yard was deserted on Sunday; we were profoundly alone together; the cozy bed in the back bedroom beckoned from only a few steps away. I reined in François’s alcohol-inflamed impulses and wondered morosely if Sheeni was in similar proximity to a tempting bed. Would Vijay stoop to seducing the pregnant wife of his worst enemy? Do Republicans vote for tax cuts?

I spent the afternoon in even closer proximity to the bedroom and my employer. I helped Reina assemble and mount shelves in the hallway closet to hold her birdcages. She held, I drilled and screwed. Very tight quarters, very close bodily contact, very enticing bodily scents. Couples have gone on entire honeymoons and not experienced such intimacy. The shelf system had been engineered in France, so naturally its assembly defied all notions of logic. Exasperated by the mystery hardware, silly from the wine, we gave way to fits of giggling. It’s very hard to gauge the location of a bracket when you’re laughing like an idiot just one-half centimeter from someone who smelled that good.

10:15 p.m. For a change, my wife got home before I did. She looked up from her book when I entered.

“
Where have you been?” she inquired coldly.

“
Out. What’s this?”

Something new had been tacked up on the wall by the door. It was a document, written by hand in some blotchy brown ink, and signed in a bold script by one Vijay Joshi.

“
As you can see,” said Sheeni, “it’s Vijay’s signed declaration that he has never betrayed me. He wrote it in his own blood.”

Yuck. Leave it to the vegetarian pacifists to start the bloodletting.

“
It was an act of magnificent courage,” added Sheeni.

“
But rather poor taste,” I replied. “I hope he sliced deeply into his jugular.”

My wife was not amused. She gave me the cold shoulder. Fortunately for all concerned, François did not grab any large German knives and reply in kind to these provocations.

MONDAY, June 14 — No check from my sister! The $10,000 extortion rebate should have arrived by now. Meanwhile, my so- called wife is off again with you know who. How much longer can life go on kicking Rick S. Hunter in the balls? Nick Twisp I could understand, but suave Rick’s not the sort of guy to take this grief lying down. Performed my slave concierge duties today with notable lack of enthusiasm. Fellows in my emotional state should not be asked to haul out the debris from other people’s weekend frolics. Snarled at several tenants, dumped trash cans on curb in disorderly row, neglected to mop lobby, and directed offensive French gesture at passerby who pointed indignantly at fresh Maurice deposit on sidewalk. Today’s language project: learn the French for “Up yours!”

TUESDAY, June 15 — At last, a friendly female voice. Too bad it had to be Connie Krusinowski phoning at 2:00 a.m. with momentous news. Trustworthy, nonviolent felon Paul Saunders has been sprung from jail. To recover from the traumas of imprisonment, he has accepted her invitation to accompany her on a luxury getaway.

“
That’s nice,” I yawned from my closet toilet perch. “Are you two off to Palm Springs?” “Hardly, Rick. I have to get Paulo to an extremely romantic location far away from Lacey and your lousy sister. We’re coming to Paris.”

“
You’re what!?”

“
We’re arriving on Friday. I think when Paulo sees how happily married his sister is, he’ll pop the question for sure.”

Quickly disabusing Connie of that notion, I filled her in on the whole ugly story.

“
This is awful, Rick. She hasn’t spoken to you for days?”

“
Not much. The last thing she said to me this evening was: ‘Don’t touch me, you repulsive degenerate’.”

“
Oh dear. And you have no proof that you didn’t betray her?”

“
Well, no.”

“
Why not? Oh, I see.”

“
At the time it seemed like the best course for all parties, Connie. And I did disguise my voice to sound like Vijay.”

“
I understand perfectly, Rick. Well, we’ll have to get her away from that interfering Indian.”

“
I’ve been thinking of nudging him off the Eiffel Tower—the uppermost platform.”

“
Why don’t you wait on that, Rick? I’ll see what I can do from my end.”

“
OK, Connie. How’s the Dogo-Lacey matchmaking going?”

“
Not good, Rick. I’ve contrived to bring them together, but Dogo isn’t rising to the bait. That guy always has his own agenda. He’s furious because my mother is considering becoming a patron to your father. Why didn’t you mention that the creep was a novelist?”

“
He’s not. His one and only magnum opus is stalled permanently on page 12.”

“
Well, my mother is thinking of underwriting his latest project. It’s to be the definitive chihuahua novel. He’s already moved into her guest room and produced some sort of outline.”

At least one Twisp was getting ahead in his writing career. Go Dad!

4:45 p.m. No check from my sister! If it doesn’t arrive by tomorrow, I’ll be forced to call her and whisper anonymous voodoo baby curses into the phone. After I rudely snubbed Alphonse’s pidgin- English request to wash his Twingo (for a measly E2!), his girlfriend came out and invited me on an afternoon stroll. While we walked arm-in-arm down the boulevard Raspail in the warm sunshine, I explained to Babette why everybody’s favorite janitor suddenly has evolved into the Grouch that Spurned Paris. She was most sympathetic and assured me that it is universally agreed that the first year of marriage is the toughest. I said I would be thrilled just to make it through the first two months without a major homicide. To place my marital woes in perspective, Babette suggested a visit to one of our district’s more unusual tourist attractions. We paid our E5, walked down spiral steps into deep subterranean gloom, switched on our rented flashlights, and took an extended amble through the Catacombs of Paris. These are ancient limestone quarries piled high with the bleached bones (and scary skulls) of six million long-deceased Parisians. Even in François’s most sadistic Vijay reveries, I had never conceived of death on such a massive scale. Gallery after gallery of skeletal remains heaped in great mounds—creatively fenced in by pickets of long thighbones. Quite overwhelming. Our fellow tourists, I noticed, spoke in hushed tones. Only a few dared to chuckle at the macabre signs offering quotations such as “Happy is he who always has the hour of his death in front of his eyes, and readies himself every day to die.” My companion seemed to take these sentiments to heart.

“
When the daily annoyances build up, this is my refuge,” commented Babette. “I suppose you find that rather ghoulish?”

“
Not unless you bring home souvenirs.”

“
You can’t, Rick. Everyone is searched upon leaving.”

Damn. There went my plan to swipe a rib bone, bloody it up, and present it to my wife as a self-amputated gesture of sincerity.

“
All these people had problems,” she added. “They loved, they suffered, and now look where they are.”

“
You are advocating suicide?”

“
Not at all, Rick. Just the opposite in fact. Life is a gift, and we must treasure our time here. In the end, as all those around us discovered, our days here are all too short.”

A comforting philosophy, I suppose. But one inconsistency troubled me. Why was she wasting her precious time keeping company with that cad Alphonse?

WEDNESDAY, June 16 — Another unsettling breakfast table chat. Sometimes I think I was better off when my wife only spoke to me in French. According to Sheeni, Vijay has divulged that a contract has been placed on my life.

“
Oh, that’s just a silly rumor,” I scoffed. “Your father is not that criminally inclined.”

“
I think I know my father,” she replied. “He is not a man of reason. You have crossed him many times. You have stolen his only daughter.”

“
Well, he can have her back.”

This jest drew no laugh. My Love studied me coldly.

I coughed and went on. “You have some reason to believe this allegation?”

“
I can tell you what Vijay told me. My father recently visited Dominic DeFalco at his concrete plant. A dispatcher there named Mertice Palmquist listened in on their conversation over the desk intercom. They were discussing how to locate and cause great bodily injury to someone named Rick S. Hunter. She relayed the details of this conversation to Trent, who told Apurva, who told Vijay.”