Les Thugs / Entire Short Story

LES THUGS

It was a lime-green skateboard. It wasn’t a good skateboard. In fact, Kevin Goode decided it wicked sucked.

It was not as wide as a real skateboard. Also, a real skateboard was made out of wood, with good trucks and wide wheels that could be steered. Kevin skateboard was fiberglass, skinny, and . . . just steered sort of. It was a German skateboard, called a “Vul Kan,” purchased by his parents at the nearby Paris department store Prix Unique for “something” francs because they felt sorry for him. Perhaps the francs came out to twenty bucks.

He appreciated them going to that expense. But the Vul Kan really wasn’t worth it. It would have been better, much better, to use the money to ship something from home.

Now, back in the USA, Kevin had two bikes and a good skateboard. One bike was red with slicks, a banana seat and a sissy bar. This was a concoction he and his father made out of a junky frame and second-hand parts. The other bike was a black BMX bought brand new from Grandway. Kevin liked both bikes equally as much. He liked the red for its old chopper-ness, the BMX for its newness and ruggedness. And his skateboard went wherever he wanted, and didn’t look like a big piece of green soap.

The separation from his cool pained his heart.

No cool bikes, or cool skateboards, or cool TV, or cool anything, really, for Kevin in Saint Mandé, the eastern-most suburb of Paris, dix neuf cent swwwaaaaacent dix sept, or some such babble that made up the French year 1977 . . . There he was, eleven years old, with longish sandy hair (very cool in the USA) in Sears Toughskin jeans (didn’t exist in France except on him) Cincinnati Reds sweatshirt (the only one walking around in France) with an ugly, wobbly, not cool skateboard on wide sidewalks that had a coarse, textured surface that sent vibrations up into his Converse Chuck Taylor’s, making his feet tingle, then go numb. And many times the tiny, hard wheels would dive into a crevice in the walk and stop him dead. Or, trying to make a wicked turn, he’d just slip right off the board like it felt like dumping him.

If he had the red bike chopper, he could destroy France. But, en fain, France was destroying him.

“Ey, espion American!”

Kevin looked up from the sidewalk. He stopped the skateboard and flipped it up and grabbed it in the air.

“Comment ca vas?” Kevin said back. It was his “pal” Lucien, from school. Lucien was coming out of his sooty old stone apartment building, and Kevin just said how’s it going? the standard greeting he had mastered in his small list of French he’d mastered. But, alore, Lucien had told Kevin he was German, or “a German spy” as far as Kevin could understand it, and that French wasn’t his language, either.

Now, Kevin’s father, Jack Goode, said Lucien was certainly a French name. Jack also saw Lucien once at Kevin’s school, and said something to the effect that with Lucien’s shorts, black shoes and black socks, and the shaggy, garlic-smelling sweater Lucien always wore he was absolutely French.

And then, looking at Kevin very seriously, Lucien proceeded to say, as Kevin followed it, “Quand ill faut . . . tout . . . regard . . . picine . . . oiseaux” in his croaking voice, and Kevin pretty much gave up. Something about a bird getting trapped in the indoor swimming pool their school used.

What the hell did these kids talk about all the time? Kevin wondered. And why? The French kids just weren’t right in what concerned them. As far as he could tell, big deal birds in the pool. They didn’t know who Godzilla was. They never heard of him. Star Wars, a movie Kevin had been anticipating ever since he saw the picture of the gold robot and the guy with the black radiator face in Fangora, was playing in USA everywhere as he stood there, and it wasn’t even playing in Paris. Anywhere. His pal, (real pal) Charlie had seen it three times already. And that was weeks ago. Kevin found out in a letter that took two weeks to get to them . . .

Ahhhhh, that was civilization, Kevin thought. Seeing Star Wars three times. Not, most certainly not France of no Star Wars . . . no Godzilla, just birds in swimming pools.

Id i ots.

“Je pense que je vas, maintenant,” Kevin told Lucien in clunky French. A sort of “see ya, gotta scram.” It was getting late, the parents would be wondering where he went. For they did care. And really, because of that, Kevin cared what they thought. Except about not shipping at least one of the bikes to France.

“D’accord,” Lucien said, and then something about his mom was in the hospital, maybe working there, and he had to fix his own dinner, or something about his grandma fixes him dinner on Wednesday nights, and she is the most terrible cook, not like mama, but then he’s no mama’s boy.

Kevin and the Vul Kan finally made it back to the gates of the “flat.” Or whatever his parents had decided to call it that week. A part tement, with a French accent, was dropped. So they went onto flat, which Kevin thought sounded England English.

The flat was a nightmare, Kevin’s Kevin word. Why nightmare? ‘Cause it was, he had decided. The flat was a carriage house over the garage of a small Saint Mandé Mansion that had three fancy courtyards in the back. The entrepenuriste, or whatever he was called—the landlord . . . the executive who lived in the mansion—was Monsieur Du Farge. Or Monsieur Cut du Fromage. Or, M. Fart.

The Jackass was the name Kevin’s father gave him.

Kevin walked through big tall iron gates of the grounds, and closed them with a CLANK! Ne fais pas ca ovrear! Or something . . . Don’t make so much noise, American boy! M. Fart would say. But it didn’t seem like he was around. Just to check, Kevin pulled up the sleeve of his sweatshirt and farted loudly on his arm to scare some pigeons away.

Fart’s car was there, though. Kevin scooted around a shiny black Mercedes diesel sedan that leaked oil in great puddles on the cobblestones below it.

At the carriage house, Kevin opened the door to the apartment upstairs, pas locked, and he trekked up a steep staircase under one dim, bare bulb. The flat door was locked. Kevin had the klee.

No one was home.

“Hey, Mom . . . Dad . . . ?” he said into the small, empty hall.

He looked into the five by five-square kitchen with tiny, groaning fridge and a deep gray sink full of dishes. A tall skinny window overlooked the first of the courtyards below. A blimp was droning outside, overhead, mismatching the fridge in a wobbling pitch battle. It had some words crawling across the bottom of it advertising shampoo, or butter, Kevin wasn’t sure which.

Kevin checked his parent’s dark bedroom. Then he went peed in the water closet at the end of the hall. The toilet was in the closet! Tank high on the wall. Pull-chain, yank it . . . “ROOOOOOOAAAAERRRRRR” and the pee went out into the street for all he knew . . . out to that guy with the broom made of hay who’d turn on the hydrants and flush the gutter every day.

And onto into Kevin’s room, which was also the dining room, living room, and the room with the apparatus du television, which smelled like burning dirty diapers when it was on. It wasn’t on much. Only three channels. One night it played a John Wayne Western with a very high, girly-sounding French voice dubbed in for the Duke. It would have been funny, but it wasn’t.

What completed the flat as a real le nightmare, though, was the wallpaper of Kevin’s “room.” Red. Velvet? It was textured. He could run his hand across it and it was fuzzy, like the posters that glowed by black-light they sold in the “head shop” (his Father’s term) back home. Kevin called it red velvet wallpapeure. When the bare bulb “chandelier” was on at night, it made a 3D effect that would reveal weird shapes, like the pointed tops of the iron fence out front, in a more shiny red. But during the day, these “fleur de lease” were hard to see.

But just before bed, chandelier out, with the lights of the courtyards and the buildings rimming the block coming in through the tall, skinny French windows, three “fleur de lease” grouped together just the right way made very scary shadowy skulls on the wall looking down at him as he lay on in his hard little couch/bed.

Kevin was too old, onze ans, too old of course to be scared of fleuur de leeese fuzzy wallpaper skulls and dim bare bulb chandeliers and TV sets that smelled like burning dirty diapers and a droning blimp and a droning fridge and a roaring toilet in a closet . . . and he had no idea what was in the garage below, the Mercedes was always outside leaking (it didn’t go in the garage because it leaked) but then, there were the dreams of the catfish-face taxi, the Citroën, chasing him, and the gangs of Vietnamese moped riders (La Guerre est fini!) chasing him, the warm warm Coke (the fridge didn’t really work,) the bloody bloody hamburgers at the McDonalds on the Champs Elysee, the smell of garlic from all those armpits on the One Metro line subway cars with the smooth and squealing rubber tires, all the attendant horrors of his French school, the landlord’s grand-kids stoning a courtyard tortoise to death and blaming it on the American, the wallpaper . . . the wallpapeure.

A nightmare . . .

“Hi honey . . .” It was his mom, Karen Goode, behind Kevin in the hall as he stood in a trance outside his room. He hadn’t heard her come in.

“I saw you skateboarding away, I was calling out to you. You were off in your own world.”

Karen Goode was smiling, holding a bag of groceries and a baguette. She kissed him on his forehead. France seemed to agree with mom, though. Her blond hair was in a bob that seemed to come out of fashion magazines, and she raved about the lipstick she found that she couldn’t get back home. She even bought new glasses, which Kevin thought looked too big and funny at first, until he saw some other people wearing them, including a picture of the actress Sofia Loren. He decided that worked, in a way that he couldn’t really explain.

“How were your adventures?” she said. She went into the kitchen, pushed some of the stuff around in there to make room for the bag and the bread.

“That skateboard is too crummy, Mom. Can we pleeeeeeeeze try and get the red bike here. I’d even leave it. Sell it for big bucks, I bet. They never saw anything like it here.”

“We’ll talk to your father about it. Again.”

She came out of the kitchen, stood in the little hallway with him, and sighed. “You know how he is about these kind of things.”

“I’m serious, Mom. It would more than make up for the shipping cost . . . I bet I could get a hundred dollars for it.”

Mom smiled at him. “A hundred dollars?”

“Yeah.”

“I just don’t think they like American stuff here, Kevin.”

“That’s what they want you to think. I was teaching a couple guys some baseball the other day.”

“You were?”

“Though they throw like girls, here. I think that’s why they couldn’t throw grenades and lost France to the Germans.”

His mom laughed. “You should tell your father that. That’s a good theory.” And she seemed to mean it.

“Kev, I’ll tell you . . .” his father said, later. The three of them were sitting at the little table under the bare bulb chandelier, eating couscous with some kind of cooked black meat, and the baguette with sweet butter. His father glowered over the table. He was a big man, with a big black beard, puffy black hair and thick, black-rimmed glasses. “. . . The shipping on the red bike is actually going to run about two hundred and fifty dollars.”

Kevin just looked at him, shrank back in his seat a little. “I’ll . . . pay . . . I’ll pay you back.”

“Errrr. I know you would if you could.” Jack leaned back into his chair, pulled a thin cigar from his shirt pocket and lit it. Kevin’s mom topped off her glass of red wine, and shrugged at Kevin.

“Two fifty, and it would take five to six weeks to get here,” Jack continued.

“Two hundred and fifty, we could buy a bike here for that,” Karen said.

“And what, ship it back home to add to the flock of bikes?”

“Uh . . . yeah . . .” Kevin said, and then kind of realized where it was going.

“Skateboard here. Bike in Ohio. That’s kind of the way it’s got to be . . .” The smoke roiled around Jack. “Sorry about it, Kev.”

Kevin didn’t say anything. He just looked at his “stew.” The couscous, fine. The meat, beat. The Coke . . . warm. The smoke, he was used to it. Kevin wondered if he could sell the skateboard when he got home. The green Vul Kan had lame trucks, metric he was sure, that wouldn’t change over to the big American wheels, and it was shaped to only go one way. Sure, he could sell the Vul Kan, but not in America. Kids there knew what sucked. Like disco . . . sucked. Like France . . . wicked sucked.

And the Wednesday was over. There was no school on Wednesday. It was Thursday, and back to school. Saturday, of course, there was school for half the day. But not Wednesday.

And what he said every Thursday morning, and Saturday morning “What the hell is this, go to school on Saturday?” Kevin said this to the catfish face Citroën car at the curbside, then “You’re ugly, buddy.”

An old woman putting out some trash was looking at him, scowling. She had very curly gray hair, and was wearing a bright blue apron.

“How do you goddamn do?” Kevin said to her, in English, and smiled his biggest smile.

Her scowl lifted a little. She nodded.

“Nice goddamn day, eh?”

She nodded back to him, now perhaps a glint of it dawning on her what was really going on.

And Kevin was down the block, and didn’t look back. The thrill of the exchange got him going, but he was really crossing the line, and knew it. And he was getting worse at this, or better, depending on who was watching. If it were his friends at home, he was the champ. But, well . . .

Kevin arrived at the tall iron gates to the school. More iron gates, these shutting out the world from the inside of a school made out of chubby black stone blocks. The gates remained open until precisely 7:30 AM, and then slammed shut, so if you were late by a minute, you had to walk around the building and have someone buzz you in. One day, a month or so ago, Kevin was ten minutes late, and no one answered the buzzer, so he turned around and went home.

Home a few hours later, that is.

Aujourdui, the gates were closing just as he slipped in. And right then, he knew he forgot something . . . caiher, ruler, pencils, forgot something, but he just couldn’t figure out what it was, and he went into the dusty slate courtyard with a vague feeling of dread. Everybody was up in class by now. The courtyard empty of the ferocious soccer game that happened before school . . . “Kids hyped on all that café-au-lait,” his father said, finally consenting let Kevin drink warm Coke for breakfast.

Kevin skipped up the stairway to his fifth grade class, and flung open the closed door.

“Hellowww Jaaaaak,” most of the class said. Monsieur Blanc, the “professeur,” was smiling. He seemed in a good mood.

Today.

“Caio,” he said back, and took his seat. Kevin’s name, of course, was not Jaaaaak.

Bit it was, for now. Kevin Jacques (Jaaaack) Goode of Columbus Ohio, an American youth of superior bike jumping, rocket building, street hockey, and even art, sat to take his place as the class . . . as the fool, object de regard, or . . . class retard, mille neuf cent sox in the pants dizzz sept, or some other such way of saying 1977 in Saint Mandé France, the right leaning suburb of Paris.

Kevin sat on the upper right side of a big U of desks that went around the room. There were two rows of double desks in the middle of the room, and then about fifteen desks making the U around them. Where Kevin sat made him closest to the teacher, M. Blanc (White.) who usually stood in the front right part of the room. Kevin looked directly across the room to Lucien, the “German spy.” Beside Kevin was Michelle, tall, curly, with wide-spaced blue eyes. Thick wrists. Kevin liked Michelle, but had a problem with Michelle. Was he a girl or a boy? If Michelle was a boy, he seemed girly. If she was a girl, she was boyly. Michelle took of his shirt when he played soccer, but . . . Kevin was almost certain Michelle was a girl. The more he got to know her, going on two months now, with his hoarse voice, strong arms . . . Tomate said Michelle was a girl.

Tomate (Tomato) sat in the seat right in front of Kevin, the top of the first desk row. He was thin, stretched out, clumsy, and liked to laugh a barking “Wha ha ha ha!” and slap his desk. Tomato wasn’t his real name, Kevin didn’t know what it was. He heard it, couldn’t pronounce it, and forgot it.

But then, the whole stupid class didn’t really know his name, either. Kevin Jacques Goode. Jacques was the name of his godfather he hadn’t met yet. He was a Corsican soccer player who got his parents out of some kind of jam when they were in France before Kevin was born. Kevin’s father was a Fullbright Fellow, whatever that really was, and was working on a history book that was going to help him get an associate professor job, (it did) but . . . there was some mention of gypsies, and belly dancers, and running out of money, and perhaps, crime. His parents never told Kevin really when went on. All he knew was this Corsican Jacques saved his parents, apparently, and the deal was they had to name their first-born son after him. So, since he was going to a French school, why not use his French middle name . . . call me Jacques, mes amis. So that’s what he and his parents told the teacher . . . Mister Blanco White.

The French would have none of that.

All Americans are named Jack.

“Comment ca vas, Jaaaack?” asked Michelle next to him, smiling. She was sweating from the morning soccer.

“Bein, poutetre . . .”

WHACK WHACK WHACK! went Missiouuuur Blanc’s pencil on his lectern, the beginning of the day, the lessons, the le blah blah droning . . .

Oh boy. Some days were worse than others.

Kevin was a tuner-outer, really. It was a skill he perfected in Ohio. They’d even tested him, but determined that he didn’t need drugs, he wasn’t learning disabled, or hyper, he just needed to “apply himself better.” But anybody would tune out in a French school. Understanding every fifth word, if that, soon Kevin Jaaaack was gone. Not a good combination . . . a school so boring it couldn’t even be understood.

“Eeeeh, Jaaaack?” Missiouuuur Blanc was moving in on him. “La Chien, dit, Chien . . .”

And M. Blanc got down to an almost kneeling position, and began with “Wooof Woof, La Chien, elle dit Wooooof.”

And the class le laughed.

Kevin didn’t know what the hell was going on at all, now. He just smiled, trying to recover. Dogs don’t say “woof,” they say “Bark bark.” And you don’t say “Eeeeeiiii” when you hit your damn thumb with a hammer, you say “OUCH!” French idiot.

Kevin kept smiling on the outside.

And then, Michelle said something that sounded like “Jack has horses in America, isn’t that right?”

Kevin had never even ridden a horse.

And Vincent, (VanScaunt) sitting next to Tomate, with his wry grin and his thick black eyebrows, said, “Michelle likes the horses, oh, he likes the horses.”

And . . . alas, Kevin had seen it all before, M. Blanc’s back of hand moved through the air like a big bird and got Vincent on the side of the head.

“C’est suffi-cent, alore!” Blanc said.

And Vincent said “Eeeeeiiiiii.”

Kevin hated it when the whole class looked at him, now putting his mastery of the French word for dog even in question, and was glad for Vincent’s whacking just to distract them long enough to move on. The Chein thing was really embarrassing because it seemed like the third time it happened to him. Dog, car, plane, cat, horse, would come up in a lesson, one way or another, and he’d find M. Blanc barking or meowing beside him.

So most of the class thought he was that stupid.

Not those in his immediate circle, the five kids in the class who seemed to like him (all troublemakers,) just the rest of them. Certainly the guys who sat straight up, and looked straight ahead, unsmiling, unflinching, and the guy next to him, who did the same, pole up his butt, with his notebook, ruler, pencil, marker all laid out in a specific way on the desk, each the same . . . they’d sneer at Kevin in the very same way, too. Or they’d whisper behind his back. Kevin was ready to take one out, maybe two, in a fight. He lacked the nerve, really. Would Tomate get in and defend him when lez fussy guys all ganged up on him? Who would? Michelle?

Lunch was a bad time.

It was in line . . . going into the cafeteria . . . that he realized what he forgot. His lunch payment. Alain, some tall guy with a drooping chin who worked at the school, stood in front of the cafeteria and read off the names of those who paid their lunch, and, alore, it was Kevin and the other foreign kid who didn’t.

What do the French do with those poor sops who didn’t bring their lunch payment? (It paid for a month and was big francs.) Why, the French humiliate them by putting them at a special table off to the side of the cavernous old lunchroom, and serve them bread and water.

Regular lunch was a four course catered affair with weirdoes in aprons brining . . . some kind of sauce on potatoes, then a little piece of tough smelly meat, then some sort of custard in a bowl, and finally a little salad. And only water to drink. No milk. No chocolate milk. No Seven-Up bien sur.

Kevin, embarrassed to be at the “no pay” table or whatever they called it, again, actually didn’t mind the bread and water at all. And before Kevin could sit down, the foreign kid had his bread polished off, but didn’t touch the water.

He nodded to Kevin, smiled, and flashed him a peace sign as Kevin sat. The Kid was in the fourth grade, and certainly not French. At first Kevin thought he was Chinese, but just generally figured he was probably from Vietnam, like the moped gangs.

The exchanged how do you do’s . . . they’d spoken a little bit before, and the kid even knew a little English, it had seemed. The kid’s name sounded like “Ma Tay Oh Cha Lata something.” So . . . Marty.

“Marty . . .”

“Yaaak.”

Marty was small, really small. His hands were half the size of Kevin’s. Kevin could see the veins in his arms, a combination of being really skinny and having tough little muscles. His eyes were deep brown and always a little watery. His black hair was longer than Kevin’s, even.

And, in halting French . . . “You can call me Kevin, Marty.”

“Ke vin?” He understood.

“Yeah,” Kevin said in English.

“You Kevin,” Marty said in English. “Yeah.”

“How much English you know?”

“Me?” Marty pointed to himself with a thumb. “Fuck you.”

Kevin laughed so hard he was half off the back of his bench seat. It was a huge laugh that filled the whole cafeteria, and all the heads turned to him, le chien woof woof, and a tear formed in Kevin’s eye.

“Hey, fuck you, Marty . . .” Kevin said, laughing.

“Hey, fuck you . . . Ke vin.” Marty smiled. Kevin split his bread in half, gave Marty the half and it was gone fast.

Kevin leaned over the table. “And fuck school, too. Especially this one full of ugly fuckers.”

“Yeah, fuck you school,” Marty said.

“So, Mom, that Vietnamese kid is really cool,” Kevin said to her. They were on the Paris One subway, on their way out and about underground to do a bit of book shopping, destination, some shop near Notre Dame that sold books that were in English.

“That’s good, then,” she said.

“Now, I’m not saying that the French school will work out, but he’s okay.”

They were on a wait-and-see program about the “French” school. It was a private school. Catholic. There was an American school somewhere way far far away deep in Paris. It was very expensive, and they really didn’t have the money. The French school was two hundred a month, and another fifty for the lunch. The American school was thousands. School is school, Kevin thought. It was bad anywhere. But free in Ohio.

French idiots.

“He even speaks a little English. All swear words.”

Karen smiled down at him. “You might even make a friend for life here . . . you never know.”

It was an interesting concept. One that Kevin really didn’t care one way or another. Though the idea of such a person like Marty in that school made some difference about how he felt about it. A seat opened up on the subway, and they both took it. The Metro had a gentle rocking motion, and that was about it. No clanging or banging most of the old red car Metros, just a whiiiiish noise. Like the future should be, Kevin thought. Whiiiiisshing through tunnels, lights streaking by. Out the widow, another subway floated by, going about the same speed, this one a clanging red car line. Kevin looked out at les Français, met the eyes of a bearded old man in the other train for a moment, then the red car line began to sink below them, and a wall came up and the train disappeared.

Later, when Kevin and Karen Goode came up out of the Metro stop . . . like with the Eiffel Tower, the ghostly basilica of Sacré Coeur, and the gigantic castle mansion of Hotel Des Invalides war museum . . . the gothic cathedral of Notre Dame hovered there before them, not looking real. The scale was huge, and the round stained glass window in the middle huger, and Kevin just stared up at it with its spider arms coming out of its sides. "Cool!" he said.

Then they went into the musty, old-smelling bookstore called Shakespeare and Co. Kevin went right for sci-fi, which was all in a cramped back room. He found a fat paperback that looked good, sitting prominently on a table in a field of others. The book was written by a certain Samuel R. Delaney, Fall of the Towers Trilogy, three books in one. It had a spaceship on the cover covered with weeds. He liked the cover. Had no idea what was inside it, just liked the idea, too, that there seemed to be a lot of whatever the story was.

After his mom bought it for him, walking back out on the sidewalk, he opened the Samuel R. Delaney book in the middle. And there was some kind of sex scene. Whoops. Oh well.

But at least it was in English.

Le School wasn’t going that well at all.

Being a little older in Ohio, it always seemed he had an edge on the other kids, but Kevin had started fifth grade French-style at the end of August, and now it was going on the end of October and he was getting “progress” reports. Or, not progress reports. He wasn’t making progress in his French instruction. In fact, the only thing he was good at was math. Sort of.

“Of course, what did they expect, anyway?” Jack Goode said, puffing a pipe and reading the New York Times at their living room bedroom dining room table. The advertisement blimp was droning outside, selling Nestlé crackers today.

“Kevin’s French is getting really good, I’m kind of cheesed about this, too,” Karen said, holding the “progress” report by the edges so it flopped over onto the table.

Kevin was a little embarrassed, but really, just mad at the French. He was fiddling with the TV, trying to get one of the three channels, but the picture started to roll up into itself like a fainting eyeball.

“I gotta take the back off this, guys,” Kevin said, not looking at them. “The horizontal hold needs adjustment.”

Then, looking, he caught his parents glancing at each other.

“I’m serious, there is something wrong with this . . . its tubes.”

“Kevin, the voltage in France is twice that of back home,” his father said, “if you hit the wrong part with the screwdriver it would kill you.”

“Ahhh, it’s not going to kill me, Dad.” Kevin whacked the top of the TV. Then one more whack, and the thing went dead.

“Well, that’s that, then,” Karen said, and lit a cigarette and let it dangle with her maroon lipstick lips, and Kevin decided his mother had never seemed more like a movie star.

“C’est la Guerre.” Jack leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. The blimp was very loud now. “Let’s a get a really good RCA console when we get home, and get rid of that old one. Because we’re American, and we can.”

The next day, landlord Monsieur Du Fart was yelling at the bottom of the flat’s stairs, and the veins were popping out of his light gray forehead.

Karen was at the foot of the stairs, at the door. Kevin was hiding upstairs around the wall in the hall, the door open, peeking around the corner, and he overhead M. Fart saying something in French to the effect “that kid, he was the one that broke the television wasn’t he! . . . He is a very destructive kid, he killed (murdered?) my tortoise, children don’t belong touching technology, you should something about something here is huh? and you, the parents, the parents, my god, it is always the parents that this something blah blah, if he were my child he would be (whipped or beaten?) to blah blah huh?,” and then, a whole bunch of words he’d never heard before that sounded like M. Fart was choking on the waxy stuff that surrounds a big wheel of cheese.

Finally, in perfect French, Karen Goode said “Kevin knows how to operate a Television, Monsieur Du Farge. Any American kid does. It’s old, and perhaps needs some repair.”

Fart just looked at her. “Well, of course, now it does, does it not? You will be charged for the repair, of course.”

“Of course,” Karen said. “I expected no different.”

No TV. Kevin read.

He read his Samuel R. Delaney until it appeared in his dreams . . . A thriving city full of really weird people, and empty city—its twin—fading in and out of reality with a radiation belt between them, and somewhere beyond that a forest, with a prince raised in that forest for his triumphant return to the city, or the empty city—perhaps ran by robots, once, and also, a far-off war fought in tubes, where the person fighting saw it all without leaving the tube, and could very well die in the tube if he was killed.

Kevin’s brain started feeling like it was going to explode. All the new experiences . . . and now, the wild sci-fi book. If he wasn’t going to get Star Wars, at least he got Samuel R. Delaney.

And on his walk to school, that warm, late-fall day, there was something new about the way laundry was hanging from the window in a passing courtyard, something different with the sounds of clanging pots, running water, and vibrant French merde merde cursing from inside an open window.

Kevin suddenly stopped, looked up, and watched the elegant, triangular Concorde super-sonic jet fly overhead. He watched it until his neck cramped up, and it was gone, but it’s roar could be heard for a while.

The catfish-face Citroën had started to make sense, he decided, as he passed it. The French tried to make a Corvette taxi, maybe. Good for them! Kevin finally kind of felt he owed this feeling of observation, of a big kind of new interconnectedness, to that Samuel R. Delaney, whoever he was.

But on that day, they were waiting for him.

Kevin came in though the school gate, a little early perhaps, and the soccer game was in full swing. It was the fourth and fifth grade, and Marty the Vietnamese kid was scoring all over the place. Kevin stopped to watch him. Marty gave him the thumbs up . . .

They were waiting for him. They came over to Kevin, two of the guys from his class with poles up their butts. They were not in the game, today. One was Steph, blond, blue eyes, the other Hercule, short black hair and squinty eyes.

Steph said “Tu est bête.”

Hercule said “Tu est singe stupide.”

(Something like You’re ugly/stupid, you’re an ugly/stupid monkey.)

Rage boiled up in Kevin. Also, fear, tugging at his stomach. It was going to be a fight. It had to be a fight.

“Fuck your mamma, and your papa, and your little dog too, shit face,” Kevin told them in English.

“Comment? Maman! Papa!” they both grumbled, and to the effect, “You don’t say bad things about Maman.”

And the first fist came at him, from Steph, too fast to block, and Kevin reeled, tripping and falling, and he was down, tasting the salt and iron of blood on his teeth.

Both Steph and Hercule were on top of him, Hercule holding him down and Steph punching him in the stomach. The forth or fifth punch knocked the wind out of him, Kevin gasped for breath, and he saw his mouth blood on Steph’s fist, and his blood on the tiles below him. One of Kevin’s arms broke free and he gave Hercule a huge “WHACK” on the bottom of his chin . . . Hercule’s teeth make a snapping sound.

Then, right from holding him down, and hovering above him . . . Hercule disappeared.

Then, there was a blur . . . just a blur of a small sneaker. Steph flipped backward and was suddenly lying four feet away.

Kevin got up.

Hercule was lying on the courtyard tiles, blood gushing from his nose. Steph was lying in a fetal position, moaning. Kevin spit blood, and for a moment it didn’t make sense what he saw.

Between them, standing all by himself, was Marty in a karate stance, glancing sharply at Steph, back to Hercule, to Steph, then Hercule.

The crowd had gathered around the fight, and were just staring at Marty, at Kevin, Marty.

Marty put his hands down, un-tensed.

“Hey . . . uh, geeez, thanks Marty!” Kevin said in English. “Wow. Karate!”

“Guung Fu, Ke vin.” Marty grinned very wide, and made a super fancy motion with his arms until his fingers were curled like scary claws. “It Gung Fu.”

After some hubbub and an incoherent lecture by Professeurr Blanc about the fighting, and some ice and paper towels on Kevin’s cut lip, (the Frencies didn’t get in trouble about attacking Kevin, but Marty had a note sent home . . .) and a long and boring day, Marty came over to the flat that afternoon.

No one was home. Jack was at the Bibliothèque Nationale doing research, and Karen was taking a class on French literature at the Sorbonne, according to the “where we are” little chalkboard in the kitchen. Kevin erased “school” under his name with the back of his hand.

Kevin didn’t mind being a latch-key kid in France. He knew it’d be fine if Marty came over, too. In fact, whatever he thought would be fine . . . about doing anything, and whatever anyone had to say about it, too bad.

“So,” Kevin said, waving his arms around in a kind of mock tour guide. “Zee living room bedroom dining room,” he said in a fake French accent.

“Peachy,” Marty said. Kevin laughed.

“The crapper’s in the closet.”

Marty just looked at him like “what?”

“Dooouble vay say, dans le closet.”

“C’est troglodyte, les Français,” Marty said, smiling.

Kevin had to run that one over a few times in his head. Was Marty saying the French were . . . cave people?

“Anyway, Marty, our TV is broken.” Kevin waved at the inert set. “I think we sound try and fix it.”

Marty looked at Kevin like “what?” Then, he slowly nodded.

“Oh, let me get you a Coke and some chips. What kind of host am I?”

Kevin went into the little kitchen, Marty following. Kevin opened the fridge, handed Marty a bottle of Coke, took one for himself, closed the fridge. He popped the top off on a bottle opener screwed into the kitchen wall. Marty did the same.

The both stood in the kitchen, Marty looking around, then peering out into the courtyard.

“Hey, merci for saving my butt, Marty.”

“You very welcome.”

A pause. “You like France?” Kevin asked him.

“Like France? No.”

“Was Vietnam better?” Kevin tore open a brown bag with the weird French potato chips and held the open bag to Marty. Marty grabbed a handful.

“Vietnam better. People better home. Food . . . it good.”

“How long have you been here, in France?”

“In France, one year. We live Australia, two year.”

“Ahhh, that’s why you speak English so well!”

“Mmmm. That why.”

“Did you like Australia? See any kangaroos?”

“Big kangaroos. Yeah.” He held up his hand high as far as his arm would reach. “Big.”

“So, like, did you see any war in Vietnam?”

“Mmmmm. Vietnam, we live . . .” and Marty looked out into the three courtyards. “In house like . . . mmmmmm.” Marty thumbed outside the window, across the courtyard to M. Fart’s mansion.

“A big house?”

“We live in big house. We . . . servants.”

“You were servants?”

“We have servants.”

“Ohhhhh. You’re rich people.” Kevin got it. “You had to run away.”

Marty nodded. “That right. House taken away. That war.” Long pause. “Killed Father.”

“Oh. Shit. That’s terrible,” Kevin said. “Oh man.”

“I see it, too. Communist kill him.”

“Fucking commies,” Kevin said, and took a big swig of his Coke.

Marty nodded. “Fucking commies.”

“My dad said the sun’s setting on them, anyway.”

“Sun set?”

“Communism’s wrong. It doesn’t allow for peoples’ innate motivation to succeed. That’s what my dad said.”

“Where is Dad?”

“He’s at the library, researching for a book he’s writing. You’ll meet them, Dad and Mom.”

“Where brother or sister?”

“Just me. Only child.”

Marty shook his head, laughed a little again. “Just you!”

“How many brothers and sisters you have?”

“I have three sister, and three brother.”

“Wow.”

Both their Cokes were almost gone. Kevin reached in, grabbed a couple more. Got the tops off them, handed one to Marty.

“So . . . you fix TV?”

“I’m gonna fix this TV, Marty.”

Kevin grabbed a screwdriver from one of the kitchen drawers, and his Coke, and the chips, and they both went back into the living room dining room bedroom.

Kevin pushed the TV away from the wall on its cart. When it got caught on the rug, Marty helped. It seemed as soon as he was there, Marty could almost lift the whole thing up by himself.

Marty watched as Kevin unplugged the big plug from the wall, then turned the TV set on.

“It not work without it,” Marty said, pointing at the plug.

“I know. I’m getting the charge out of the transformer. It will hold a charge to shock you. Zap!”

“Ahhhh,” Marty said. “Zap!”

Ten screws, Kevin had the back off the TV. It was full of dust, which he dumped onto the floor. Kevin peered into the banks of tubes and capacitors, Marty looked in over his shoulder.

“What all that?”

“These glass things are called tubes, they amplify a signal coming in from the antenna, and send it to this . . .” Kevin pointed at the back of the dark grey picture tube. “Then inside here is a little gun that zips back on forth on the back of this . . .” Kevin tapped the front of the TV. “That makes a picture out of tiny little dots.”

Marty, maybe not getting it all, still appeared very impressed.

“What I’m going to do is make sure none of these tubes are loose.” Kevin proceeded to pull a tube out of its socket. It was slim, glass, about the size of half a hot dog. There were little grey wafers inside, like floors of a building, and some wires up and down between them. Kevin inspected the bottom, six prongs and a notch, he lined the notch back up, fiddling around until it went back in.

“This one is good.”

“Ahhh, what that?”

Kevin followed where Marty was pointing. The fourth tube down in the row was burned black like it had been passed over a candle.

“That’s gotta be it, man.” Kevin reached and pulled it out. It fought with him, then . . . as he pulled it up toward him, there was a big glob of brown dust stuck to it.

“Yuck . . . uhhhhh,” they both said. And then, at the same moment, the realized it wasn’t dust at all clinging to the side of the tube.

Kevin looked at Marty, Marty looked back at Kevin.

“It’s a fucking mouse!” Kevin yelled.

Marty was laughing.

Stuck to the tube was a shriveled up, dried-out mummy of a mouse.

Kevin shook the tube, the mouse fell off onto the carpet. It seemed crunchy, light.

 “I don’t know, I’ll put it back in and see . . . but it could have been the mouse knocked it loose and got zapped.”

Marty had the mouse in his hand now, poking at it. “It luck, or no luck?” Then he put it in his pocket.

“I guess you think it’s luck, Marty.”

Marty shrugged. Kevin stuck the tube back into its socket. He had to jiggle it back and forth a little to work it in. Then Marty helped him get the back of the TV on, and Kevin handed him the screwdriver and Marty deftly put the screws back in.

“Okay . . .” Kevin plugged the set it with its weird plug.

Then turned the switch.

There was a crackling, a buzzing sound. Then the TV came on. The picture looked fine. And it didn’t smell as much like burning dirty diapers, either.

“Alll right! Slap me five, Marty.” Kevin held out his hand low, waiting for Marty to slap it. Marty just looked at it, smiling.

Then, Marty slapped him five.

As they were heading out through the front courtyard, Marty was spying into the black Mercedes.

“Ohhhhhhh,” Kevin joked. “Ne touché pas asshole’s car.” Kevin had told Marty all about M. Fart, the tortoise incident, and the man yelling at his mom . . .

“Kevin, the key inside.”

And Marty cracked the car door, and slipped behind the wheel.

A sudden, enormous rush of adrenaline surged through Kevin.

His feet were moving him toward the car, and there was a Kevin in the back of his mind saying “don’t do it, Kevin, no no no.” But all he had to see was Mouisser Du Fart bawling out his mom, and he was thinking about the shitty apartment and the Fart grandkids stoning the tortoise, and he was sitting next to Marty on the smooth leather. The car’s interior smelled like ammonia and cigars.

“Nice day for a drive, huh, Marty?”

Marty’s small hand pushed something one the dash. He let go, and the button that he pushed began to glow a dull yellow.

“Voila c’est ca!” he said, and . . . turned the key.

The Mercedes roared to life. It clattered like a truck. Kevin hit the electric window down on his side. What was next?

“We . . . we better turn it off, Marty.”

“You open gate, Kevin.”

“You’re crazy, man.”

Marty flashed his eyes at the gate, then at Kevin. Marty was great crazy.

Kevin was out of the car, running, and he opened the gate. He turned, the Mercedes was moving slowly toward him, Marty’s forehead and eyes barely making it above the wheel.

The car stopped hard, rocking back and forth.

Kevin hopped back in, closed the door smoothly and quietly.

“Aaaaaalonze I!” Kevin said.

And they were out on the street.

Marty crept them up to an arrêt/stop sign. He carefully looked both ways, and then moved the car slowly through the intersection. Then they cruised down the street, slowly, the engine gurgling away, to another stop sign. Kevin looked out and saw a woman with a bag of vegetables looking in at them. He waved. She shook her head and yelled something.

“This is great. This is great. This is great,” Kevin kept saying to himself. A car came up behind them. It began to honk. Marty rolled down his window, and waved them past.

A tiny Renault R5, a go-cart of a car, zoomed past.

Marty turned them around a corner. He seemed to be getting the brakes down with practice. And then, they passed a few Vietnamese guys standing on the corner by their mopeds.

Marty beeped the horn, waved, and kept on going by them.

One of the guys started yelling, and ran after the car.

Marty stepped on the gas just as a light was changing ahead of them, and flew through the intersection fast.

Kevin thought they were gong to run right into he back of a VW bug. He grabbed the dash tightly. They came within inches before they’d slowed enough that it moved away from them.

“Was that your brother?”

Marty nodded, grinning.

Kevin was laughing.

A little square police car passed them going the other way.

Marty looked over at Kevin.

Then, they were out into heavy traffic on Avenue du General de Gaulle. Kevin could tell Marty was suddenly having just a little bit of trouble with it.

And, it seemed, the feeling washed over them both at the same time.

“Let’s get out at the park. Just leave it, Marty.”

“Just leave, yeah.”

Horns were blaring at them. It wasn’t looking good. Marty started a turn off the Avenue de Gaulle toward the park, it was one way coming at him. He aborted the turn just in time.

Then, a bus pulled away from its stop and nearly sideswiped them. Marty yelled something in Vietnamese. Kevin could tell he was suddenly just a little bit . . . afraid.

Kevin pointed, Marty followed, and they were moving down a near empty street. It was a narrow, no-parking-during-the day rue. The trees of the Bois de Vincennes Park could be seen down the block.

Marty pulled the Mercedes over, now, finally, smiling wide, breathing again.

And they ditched the car there, parked, with the keys in it, and closed the doors quietly.

“That was the best! Kevin said.

It didn’t seem like anyone saw them get out. No one was around. Some guy was walking way up the street, going the other way. Kevin and Marty walked quickly, not looking back, putting some fast distance between them and the car until they were just kids walking along the sidewalk . . .

And then, alore, Lucien, the German spy in sweater and shorts came bounding out of his building . . . ugh, it would have to be the street with his building, Kevin thought. Lucien was looking in the direction of the Mercedes just like he saw them get out.

“Eeeeeeeh, Jaaaaack . . .”

“Eh Lucien. C’est Marty, ici.”

“Je sais. Mais pas Marty,” Lucien said, and nodded at him.

“It Marty,” Marty said.

And Lucien looked at Marty with a flash of disgust that really surprised Kevin.

“Anyway, Lucien . . . smell ya tomorrow,” Kevin said.

“Yeah, have nice day . . . azzhole,” Marty said.

Lucien just stood there, looking at the black Mercedes, and back at them, watching them walk away.

Kevin finally barked out a laugh. They were both really breathing again.

“He do smeel,” Marty said when they were almost at the park. “Like French kitchen.”

“A French kitchen is a bad place, man,” Kevin said. “A bad place.”

There was silence for a while, each in their own thoughts. Kevin was sooo glad they didn’t get caught. (Would they still? Who was up in the windows being peering busy bodies? What would Lucien do?) They walked into the Bois De Vincennes Park, green upon green, babies in strollers with good-looking moms or scary-looking grandmas pushing, kids playing foootball (soccer) on the fall day, and far off a ruined medieval stone castle loomed in a haze.

They started walking in the direction of the castle.

And finally, Marty said something Kevin would remember for the rest of his life.

“Europe bad karma,” Marty said, not smiling.

Kevin rolled that one over a bit, getting the gist of it. He sort of had a grasp on it, karma. Something his mom would say once in awhile. Tricky Dick Nixon’s bad karma. Carter’s good karma.

“Yeah, Marty. Plus, we drive a bad car ma.”

Marty looked at him. He mouthed the words. Twice. Then he got the lame pun. He punched Kevin in the arm.

“Ahh hah.” Marty said. “Funny man.”

“Me funny? Still got that mouse?”

Marty pulled it out of his pocket, held it up so it was looking at Kevin. One of its dried out eyes had fallen out.

“How ya doin’, mouse?” Kevin asked it.

Marty shook it and said in a little voice “I do well, I lucky mouse. I save you ass from police ay.”

“So . . . that’s that,” Jack Goode said, coming in the door of the flat soaking wet one March night after a last ditch effort to save his research. As it is en France, Jack Goode’s access was suddenly fini . . . there was some kind of flap, or flop, he said, about the quality of American scholarship from some bureaucratic higher-ups . . .which resulted in Kevin’s father meeting an heir of Bonaparte himself at a bar to try and talk him into putting in a good word about the American scholar to get access to something he just had access to.

“It didn’t go well?” Karen asked him. Kevin and his mom were playing gin rummy at the dining room living room bedroom table.

“No,” Jack said. “We’re done.”

“Uh . . . we’re . . . we’re going home?” Kevin asked him.

“Yep. I’m done here.”

Kevin was jumping up and down in his chair.

“You’re so happy!” his parents said.

“I’ll miss Marty, but I hate France.”

“So well we know,” Jack Goode said. “Guess you can start saying good-bye to Les Thugs at school, then, Kevin.”

“I suuuuure will . . .”

And so it was just before spring that Goodes found themselves at Orly Airport, getting back on a KLM 747. Kevin felt a tingle in his spine the minute the big wheels left the wet pavement.

He was free. He was leaving a terrible terrible place of bad food, bad T.V., bad skateboard (Kevin left the board with Marty, who said he was going to chuck it in the Seine River), nasty French kids, and bad karma all around.

Though the Metro was pretty cool.

And the buildings were wicked cool.

It was really hard getting back to the USA . . . Alore . . . the plane was hit by lightning over the Atlantic, something caught fire in the cockpit, and they had to make an emergency landing in the Azores Islands and get on a different plane.

Actually, Kevin was sure they all would have died if he wasn’t carrying in his Toughskins jeans pocket Marty’s lucky mummy mouse.

FIN.