The Dud Avocado (20 page)

“The hell you are,” said the Ancient. “You are a prisoner of the world. You’d better get yourself over to the American Embassy first thing in the morning or you’re going to be in some real trouble.”

The next morning turned out to be the coldest of the year. I had to put on practically all the clothes I owned before daring to go out into it. When I arrived at the Select for my morning coffee I saw Bradley Slater, that compulsive reader, waving me frantically over to his table with an old copy of the
New Yorker
. Word had got around that I was going to the Embassy, and he was eager to accompany me. He hadn’t been across the river in weeks—it would make a nice outing for him. By the time I’d finished my coffee I was surprised to find there were so many members of the Hard Core to whom the prospect of Crossing the Seine made a pleasant break in their otherwise strict routine of café sitting. Both Beards, I remember, went along.

“In rowdy high spirits,” is a good description of that gallant little band arriving at the Embassy in the teeth of a howling gale. It had been an eventful journey. We had lost our way a number of times, had boarded several false buses, had been practically
blown and frozen to death, but in the end we had succeeded. The Canteen at Gander in a blizzard could hardly have been a more welcome sight to the rescued pilot and his crew than the reception room of the Embassy to us. We stomped about in our boots, exhaling streams of frozen breath, rubbing red hands together and clapping each other on the back. Had cups of hot chocolate been distributed, we would have been pleased but not surprised.

After thawing out a bit we were ready to confront—or rather I should say
affront
, since they all looked shocked—the Passport Section: a large room divided in half by a wooden railing with benches of huddled people on one side, and officials and their typists on the other. It was very, very quiet; even the typewriters seemed to have mutes. I leaned over the railing to the Official Side and told a muted typist that I had lost my passport. She whispered back that the Man in Charge would see me in my turn. I looked over to where she was pointing and smiled at a stern gray-haired man with pince-nez seated behind an enormous desk. He looked away. I went over to the benches and began huddling with my friends and the other huddlers. Judging by the number of them there before us, I was prepared to wait several hours. It was my turn much faster than I expected. Rather astonished, I set off toward the Man in Charge and then quite unaccountably somewhere between approaching his desk and actually getting there, my spirits sank. He was eying me steadily through those damn pince-nez. Rabbit to snake, I kept on walking toward him; he kept on eying me. What he was seeing so steadily and so whole, I suddenly realized, was probably not calculated to inspire confidence. Proofed against wind and weather, I was a bundle of old clothes topped in old coats and toed in old boots, while, in direct contrast to all this shab, my hair was still that striking shade of pink I was telling you about earlier, and my face a startling white death-mask relieved only by some heavy black work around the eyes—an effect I thought pretty exciting—though I could see it wasn’t having that effect on him. It wasn’t exciting him, I mean.

“I’ve lost my passport,” I said to him when I felt my knees touching his desk.

The Man in Charge swiveled away from me in his chair and looked at a poster on the wall of happy natives dancing around a village in Switzerland. He seemed lost in thought.

“Where did you lose it?” he finally asked me.

“If I knew it wouldn’t be lost, would it?” I replied facetiously.

“I see.” He seemed very sorry. “I don’t know,” he mourned, “if you young people realize in what a serious predicament you put the United States government with your carelessness.”

I tried to cheer him up. “Oh now, it can’t be as bad as all that. I mean look—I’ve reported this—well—practically immediately, so how could anyone else use it, if that’s what you’re worrying about?”

“Forgive me,” old Pince-Nez cut in smoothly. “Forgive me, but we have only your word
when
you lost it, and the same applies as to
how
, doesn’t it?” And he gave me a long sad smile that said if he’d heard I’d sold it for a consignment of marijuana, it would in no way be taxing his credulity.

“Sold it!” I exclaimed suddenly. “You think I’ve sold it, don’t you!” I called out to my friends on the benches, “Hey come here, he thinks I’ve
sold
it!”

Beard Bubbly was the first one over. “But didn’t you sell it?” he asked me innocently. “I remember your telling me they get double the price for baby actresses outside American Express these days—” and then of course they all joined in and there was a lot more of the same.

“Shut up,” I said, when I saw how old Pince-Nez was taking this. “They’re only kidding, of course,” I told him exasperatedly, and I tried to explain how after Opening Night, in the general hoopla of celebration, I’d gone to a lot of different places and that I could have lost it at any one of them. The entire Hard Core expedition was clustered around me by now, nodding and shoving and shouting “Yeah, that’s true, Gorce, that’s so true!” at every opportunity during the narrative, in an effort to strengthen my case.

When I finished the Man in Charge looked at all of us. “I’m glad I’ve got you all here together to state the official position,” he said at last. “It must be brought home to you people that as long as an American passport is at large and unaccounted for
your country has been placed in grave peril——” Lost, sold or stolen, it seemed, they could never be sure that at that very moment it wasn’t working its way back to the States to do irreparable harm and so on, and so on—and then the blow came— “Therefore the American Embassy in Paris,” he said quite calmly, “is not authorized to issue you another regular passport. We can, however, issue you one which will return you directly to the States.”

“Not on your sweet life,” I said.

“Then I suggest you apply immediately to Washington for a new one, stating exactly how you happened to discover that it was—hmm—missing, though honestly I can’t hold out much hope as to the outcome. However, my secretary, Miss Bowen, will type it out if you like.”

“How long will it take Washington to decide?”

“Some time, I’m afraid—six months——”

“Six months! But I want one right now. Suppose I should want to go to some other country?” This was my second encounter in France with the law, and it was not mellowing me any. “I see what I should have done,” I snapped, “I should have told you I’d thrown it in the fire. It wouldn’t be at large then. I suppose it would have been all right then!”

I regretted the words the moment they flew out of my mouth, and looking at those bright glasses flashing into the silence around us, I knew he was going to make me regret them even more.

“I beg your pardon?” He said it mildly enough, but with a persistence that was forcing me either to repeat my outburst or back down. I backed down.

“Isn’t there
any
other sort of passport you can give until Washington issues me a new one?” I pleaded. “Please, I’ll be much more careful next time, I promise.”

“I have already stated the official position.”

“But can’t you at least give me something to prove who I am? I mean I don’t even have a driving license or anything like that.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About six months.”

“You’ll have your carte d’identité, then.”

“Oh hell, I never got around to getting it.”

“Yes. Well I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about
that
” he said, dismissing me.

Rather surprisingly it was Bradley Slater who jumped in. “This is outrageous!” he shouted. “I never heard of such a thing. You can’t let Sally Jay wander around without any means of identification.” And he banged his fist on the desk to show he knew how to do those things. “She
demands
another passport immediately. You can’t stop her. It’s her
right
as an American citizen.”

I could see by his triumphant smile that old Pince-Nez had us there too. “An American passport is a
privilege
, not a ‘right’,” he said. “The sooner you people learn that, the better. It may be,” he continued, in a frenzy of satisfaction that was at last beginning to crack through his officialdom, “it may be, let us hope, that Washington has at last ceased its weary tolerance of these Left Bank irresponsibles who are forever losing their passports, their money and their minds, and is growing understandably chary of reissuing new ones again for use as shopping lists and toilet paper. Good day. Miss Bowen, will you please attend to this young lady? Meanwhile I advise you to leave no stone unturned to recover that passport.”

I went to Miss Bowen and stated the facts as gently as I knew how, and as I turned around to leave I looked at those patient huddlers on the benches who had hardly moved, and a horrible irony hit me: they wanted so badly to get into the States; I wanted so badly to stay out.

I sat down that afternoon and thought very, very hard. Then I rang up Larry.

“Larry, listen, I’ve lost my passport.”

“Who
is
this?”

French phone or not that was a blow. “Sally Jay. Sally Jay
Gorce
in case there are two.”

“Well, hello. Hello darling.…”

“What’ll I do?”

“Better look for it. How did it happen, anyway?”

“That’s just it, I don’t know. I’ve been over it and over it and I figure it must have been sometime Opening Night with the Contessa and her zoo. I mean that was the last time I saw it— you know, when I smashed my mirror at the queer joint.”

“Shouldn’t have done that, Gorce. Seven years bad luck.”

“That’s not so funny. There’s a jerk at the Embassy who thinks I’ve
sold
it. Do you think it could possibly have been stolen? The trouble is there are too many suspects. I can’t go around accusing everyone.”

“How do you mean too many?”

“Well, it might have been that Lesbian, for instance. My God, she was dying to get to the States, she even told me so herself. Or Crazy Eyes. I haven’t seen him or his sister around lately, so that looks pretty suspicious—though he’d have had to have done it by osmosis, because I didn’t go near him that night—at least I don’t think I did. Or take Boofie—he’s the type who goes in for what’s laughingly known as living by his wits, and he’s always in trouble with the authorities, or at least he was in Italy anyway. Or those dreadful brats, or the King of Lithuania, or whoever the hell he was, or even the Contessa for all I know. She hates my guts. And then there’s a wild possibility it could just be the French painter I went over to see the next afternoon, though I’m dead sure I didn’t take that particular handbag. In fact everyone but you.”

“Why not me? I’m a little hurt not to be in such distinguished company.”

“Well, you were the one who found it and gave it
back
to me.”

“By God, so I did.”

“What I wanted to ask you was—oh Lord, this is going to be embarrassing—what I wanted to ask you is that although I remember up to the Rotonde and the champagne distinctly that evening, it begins to cloud over a bit after that. I mean where else did we go?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Would I be asking you?”

“Well, let’s see. I’m not too clear myself, but it seems to me
there were a couple of other bars—some places near your hotel—would that be possible?”

“It would indeed. Oh Christ, this is hopeless. I’ll never get to the bottom of it. And that man at the Embassy is so awful.”

“Want me to go over there with you? I might be some help. Let’s see what I can do.”

“No. Some of my friends have tried already and made it worse.”

“Start pulling some strings from the outside.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“And don’t despair. It’ll probably turn up. Sorry I haven’t been around to see the show, I’ve been too busy on another project—I’ve got to know Dertu and his puppets—it’s fascinating! But I’m coming around in a couple of days to see how you’re all making out. I won’t tell you when, so stay on your toes.”

“Sure. Well—sorry to have bothered——”

“Bye, Gorce. Take it easy, child.” Click.

“Bye.” Bang. That was me.

I went to the O.K. and the Villa Villa and the one next door. Nothing. I went to Shugie’s. Shugie didn’t even remember seeing me that night. Just as well, I thought, I must have been in wonderful shape.

I had thought of Uncle Roger almost from the very beginning. Uncle Roger was the one person I could count on to get the thing straightened out. But unfortunately it was in our agreement that I wasn’t to get in touch with him for two years.

So I did something I almost never do; I wrote to my mother and my father. It was a most unusual step for me to take. However, when they got over their surprise at not being surprised to find me in another scrape, they pulled themselves together and rallied their forces and yes, I must admit it, they really did their very level best. Mother, in San Francisco, where she owns and operates a cosmetic firm, began contacting powerful senators (whose letters, postcards and wires to the Paris Embassy were alt Kafkaesquely rerouted to that powerful Man in Charge, who flung them back scornfully, assuring me that they would not “constitute official recognition”); while Daddy, who, after a
series of failures in love and finance, got religion, and now edits a Jesuit magazine out in Brooklyn, uncovered for me forgotten Embassy officials in forgotten rooms overlooking the Avenue Gabriel, where I sometimes spent fruitless but pleasant afternoons having tea and looking out at the chestnut trees.

Then I got busy myself. Almost daily for two months I bombarded Washington with angry, pleading, and servile letters. I spoke of the career aspect—it was essential for a promising young actress to be able to travel; I spoke of the educational and cultural aspect—it was monstrous for a girl of my age to be prevented from visiting the art monuments of the world; I even spoke of the patriotic aspect—it was heartbreaking as a citizen of our great country to be denied so important an identification with her beloved land. Nothing doing. They would consider the case in their own sweet time.