GOOD AMERICANS GO TO PARIS WHEN THEY DIE (51 page)

He asks the question anxiously, which is
nice, she thinks.

“Better too.”

They get up and stroll down the street,
going nowhere in particular. She carries the tripod again. The sun
is very hot. For relief they go inside a grimy scaffolded
church.

It’s as dank and gloomy as a cellar. They
think it’s empty till they hear a violent snore. A bearded old man
is slumped in a side pew. His high-buttoned black shoes stand in
the aisle. They hold it in. It’s improper to laugh in a church.
Both of them move about, looking at niched saints and grimy
oil-paintings of martyrdoms and resurrections. A withered flower
from a marriage or a funeral lies on the flagstones. The altar is
draped in protective canvas. Scaffolding rises about a fissure in
the wall.

They both start shivering and sneezing. They
hope it’s the dankness of this place and not more symptoms of the
illness they share. When they turn to leave they see the old man
padding silently to the exit. His shoes still stand in the aisle.
“Oh God,” she says. She picks them up and they both hurry out. The
old man has disappeared. She goes back inside, places the shoes in
the aisle and returns to the church steps where Seymour is
waiting.

They stand there blinking in the nice warm
sunshine, their faces strained with what resembles grief. Then they
can’t hold it in any more and burst out laughing, uncontrollable
laughter, weeping from it. When they recover, he says:

“I’m starving. I don’t know your name.”

“Helen. I’m starving too. The restaurants
must be closed.”

They buy two golden-crusted
baguettes
, cold
cuts, black olives, green olives, tomatoes, a bag of black cherries
and a bottle of good wine to celebrate their recovery. They walk
all the way back to the Seine, a good place to picnic, exchanging
information about themselves, talking about books and music, each
trying to impress the other and succeeding.

They cross the Île de la Cité, going by
the
Conciergerie
,
the
Palais
de Justice
and their
point of departure, the
Préfecture de Police
. They cross the
Pont Saint Michel
, stroll along the quay and finally sit on the low
parapet with the Seine directly below and devour the
food.

Barges push upstream past them. In the
burnished blue sky flights of pigeons swoop down and settle in the
riverside trees and then rise again. Enlaced couples stroll by.
They finish the wine. He turns to her, still a little anxious.

“How are you feeling, Helen?”

“I’m feeling fine, Seymour. How about
you?”

“Well … maybe not too bad. No, better. Much
better. Maybe it was all a false alarm. Where do you want to go
now?”

“It’s nice just sitting here. We’ve had a
long day.”

“Yes, a long day,” he says.

They sit there for a long time, looking at
the barges and the flights of pigeons and the enlaced couples going
by. When the shadow of the Prefecture and the
Conciergerie
, that disaffected prison, begins to
encroach on them they get up and join those other couples strolling
along the river in the sunshine.

The End

OTHER BOOKS BY HOWARD
WALDMAN

LIKE THE SUN
AT EIGHT IN THE MORNING

At twenty-four, Philip Richmond is vaguely
dissatisfied at his bookish and girl-shy identity. He goes to Paris
on a research project and finds the city on the brink of
revolution. He encounters two girls, one a lovely defiant
participant in the revolt, the other, plain, scholarly, and
serious, practically his female double. His choice will either be a
rupture with or a confirmation of his unsatisfactory
identity.
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THE SEVENTH
CANDIDATE

Edmund Lorz’s firm,
Ideal Poster
, effaces obscene graffiti from subway
advertising posters. A newly-hired operator, endowed with
frightening almost superhuman skills, slowly dominates his
employer’s life and that of his secretary.

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TIME
TRAVAIL

Harvey Morgenstern’s wierd machine
searches the past to resurrect a lost love--at the peril of his
life.
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BACK THERE

The Lauriers’ tumble-down country place is
just thirty miles but, in terms of comfort, a century from Paris.
Harry, the New York photographer, calls it paradise and photographs
it all, among other things, the Model T parts holding down the
flimsy roof and the marvellously archaic well and scythe. And, of
course, his mysterious sweetheart and her family. The Lauriers
assume that Harry will soon become a member of that family. But
divorced Harry, allergic to any commitment other than artistic, is
convinced that marriage spells the death of love. Aren’t things
already perfect in this paradise? He goes on photographing it.
Someone said, though, that all paradises are lost paradises. Will
Harry finally understand that love, not art, is the major
commitment?

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