City of Romance.

Jamie Bennet woke, stretched lazily and blinked as the train slipped
effortlessly into the gaping cavern of the Gare du Nord. It had seemed
almost too easy, this first trip under the Channel: even the drab
station approach with its incomprehensible graffiti might well have
been Waterloo or Victoria, had it not been for the sleek, smart clutch
of TGVs standing smugly in the adjacent platforms. Nodding to his
companion, he stood and reached for his hand luggage.

Here at last.. after all Jamie had heard about Paris from his
affectionate but slightly suffocating parents over the years. The city
had been something of an obsession with them, along with all things
Gallic. The food, cinema, lifestyle; they'd been passionate enthusiasts
for as long as Jamie could recall. Especially the films, which had been
so popular among the arty set their own far-off student days.

Jamie had sneakily taped a few of Channel Four's early-morning
offerings to see what all the fuss was about, an? he'd seldom been
disappointed. Virtually all the "plots" had revolved around some
blazing, erotically-charged affair between a slim, olive-skinned young
beauty and a saggy-bellied, balding middle-aged lecher with a face like
a depressed bloodhound.

It hadn't seemed fair, somehow, though he could certainly understand
why his father was so interested. Surely, he'd told himself, there must
be scope here for a young chap who was more than willing to learn?
Someone with a bit of staying power, all his own hair and the correct
hormones in abundance? It was worth a go, and his chum Bernie had
needed little persuading to join him on this romantic odyssey.

They'd booked themselves a package holiday in a small suburban hotel,
and were fully prepared for a week of sightseeing and erotic adventure.
Cases in hand, the pair shuffled down the interminable platform,
looking out for the Metro signs.

After booking into their hotel in faltering franglais, Jamie and Bernie
strode out to ride the famous Metro again. Carte Orange tickets tucked
safely away, they squeezed into the first train to simply ride and
breathe in the unique atmosphere. Everything was new, fascinating and
different, but many of their preconceptions were entirely
accurate.

The trains did, in fact, run every few minutes, they were considerably
cleaner than their notorious Underground equivalents, the whole system
worked properly. To a long-suffering Londoner, this apparently
effortless efficiency seemed little short of astonishing. And, to cap
it all, their tickets had been ridiculously cheap.

And yes, there they were.. the girls. Dark-eyed, oval faced girls with
delicate hands and flowing black hair; reading exotic paperbacks,
clutching bags from fashionable stores, studiously ignoring the pale
English interlopers' hopeful attempts to make eye contact.

It mattered not: this was Jamie and Bernie's first day, and they'd soon
get the hang of it. Soon enough, the lads assumed, they'd be swept off
to sip the black coffee that smelled (and probably tasted) like
creosote in some cramped pavement cafe. After a furious bout of
intellectual argument, they'd totter up to some romantic, shabby garret
to view the magnificent skyline between lengthy bouts of ever more
inventive lovemaking. That was surely what Paris was all about?

In Jamie's overactive imagination, his (numerous) partners would be
petite, dark and sophisticated. They'd also spend ages teaching him
techniques that he'd never even dreamed about. As always, however,
things didn't quite work out as expected.

By their third day, the pair were feeling the need to soak up some of
the city's magnificent treasury of culture. To this end, they purchased
museum passes and embarked upon a hectic day of getting their money's
worth. As a grand finale, the pair dragged themselves to the top of the
Arc de Triomphe to find themselves confronted by a seething mass of
American tourists. They were young, brightly-dressed and loud, but
neither Jamie nor Bernie allowed themselves to be put off. They were
foreigners, after all, and therefore vaguely exotic.

"Hey, for Chrissake!"

Jamie flinched visibly as the aggressive bellow smacked into his
eardrum.

"You blind or what?" Only then did Jamie realise that he'd accidentally
kicked a rucksack over.

"Sorry," he mumbled, bending to right it.

"You speak English?" the large blonde girl yelled.

"I am English," Jamie countered.

"Oh," the girl said, frowning. "So you speak English, right?" To her,
English was simply the language Americans spoke, the one everyone
should speak if they had enough Goddamn sense. The word didn't actually
apply to anything else.

"Yes." Sensing, correctly, that his friend had been cornered, Bernie
deftly slipped his watch from his wrist and walked over to ask a less
ferocious-looking girl the time.

"Hey, what do you make of this Goddamn hole? I'm Judy, by the
way."

"Jamie." He offered his hand politely, and had it unceremoniously
crushed.

"Jeez, can you believe there's no lift up here?" Judy began her litany
of complaints again, correctly assuming that she now had a captive
audience. She was a hefty, fresh-faced girl, not unattractive, but
Jamie couldn't summon up any interest. Not at that decibel level, he
couldn't. "What a country, huh? And that Loov place, the queues! We
stood all day waiting to see that dumb statue with no arms. What a
disappointment, right? We got a copy at home in the shopping mall, only
it's better.."

"Better?" Jamie interrupted bravely.

"Sure, it's bigger!"

"Of course," Jamie nodded. Bigger, so it was better. How stupid of him
not to have realised that.

"And the food! Ugh.. we got these stoopid litle rolls for breakfast,
right, and this French guy opposite, he goes right ahead and dips it in
his coffee! Weird or what?"

"It's what they do.."

"I mean, you gotta find a McDonalds', right? Get some proper American
food and what do they call it? Om-burg-air! Say it right and they
pretend not to understand! Why can't they say hamburger the proper way?
In English?"

God, Jamie thought as the tirade turned to the vexed question of
washrooms (lack of}, how long can she keep this up non-stop? What
orifice does she breathe through? Maybe she does, it looks big
enough..

"I tell you, Johnnie, I can't wait to get back to Toledo, Ohio. We got
everything they got here, only better."

"So why did you come?" Jamie interrupted firmly. Judy stood silent for
a moment, racking her brains. The blissful respite couldn't last.

"To see something different. Me and Buck's getting hitched next year,
and I wanted to see the world before I settle down. You gotta, right?
Only Buck wouldn't come because of some Goddamn college football match.
You play football?" Jamie nodded. "Say, you'd like Buck. He don't put
up with no nonsense. Maybe it's a good thing he ain't here."

As the light faded, the traffic glittered along the Champs-Elysee and
washed noisily around the etoile below. Jamie grinned amiably and
heartily wished that he was somewhere else - even Toledo Bloody Ohio as
long as its most garrulous resident was still over here haranguing any
poor mug who'd listen.

Bernie had struck luckier, and was making no attempt to rescue his
cornered companion. Only later, back in the hotel, did Jamie unwind
sufficiently over a huge glass of cheap wine to laugh about the
incident.

The following day, after listening with great amusement to a group of
bewildered English tourists arguing in a cafe about what the French for
"serviette" might be, then haranguing the unfortunate waiter in
ever-louder English, the pair ventured out to see the city from a boat.
They'd only just slipped their moorings whan a familiar voice boomed
out.

"Hi! Johnnie!"

"No, it's not real. Tell me it's not real," Jamie groaned as the hand
descended onto his shoulder with unexpected force. Maybe he could leap
back to the shore? Maybe not, but he could swim.. death by drowning
might be preferable to death by droning?

"Oh, hello, Judy.. what a coincidence."

"Yeah, ain't it? Jeez, don't this water stink? That place over there,
that's Notre Dame, right?"

"I think it's the National Assembly."

"No, I can see those funny carving things," Judy corrected him. "You
know, they come to life in the movie? Yeah, that's the place all right.
Say, you been on the subway? I thought every damn station was called
'Sortie', can you believe it?" Jamie could, very easily, but he wisely
bit his tongue.

After the Voyage from Hell, Jamie managed to extricate himself from
Judy's unwelcome clutches and flee shamelessly back to the anonymous
safety of his hotel. Bernie, of course, reckoned that Jamie had been
well in there, and he should have persevered. Buck would never have
known, would he?

Jamie was, initially, distinctly unamused by this suggestion: copious
quantities of red wine, however, eventually restored his sense of
humour. And, while Jamie thoroughly enjoyed the remainder of his
holiday in Paris, he spent an inordinate amount of time listening out
for both braying English and strident transatlantic voices.

He arrived back at the Gare du Nord exhausted. True, he'd not managed
to get himself seduced in a garret or arranged to float across the
Montmartre skyline under a cluster of red balloons, but maybe those had
always been over-optimistic goals. And, he'd be back.. he was sure of
it.

Safely ensconced in his Eurostar seat, he thought of Judy and chuckled:
she'd marry her dozy quarterback Buck and develop into a loud,
heavy-hipped matron, shovelling Maxi Best of McCrappy meals into
wailing offspring and teaching them to distrust anything outside of
Toledo, Ohio. Because she knew, that's why. She'd been there and
suffered.

As Jamie yawned noisily, a pair of girls appeared at the end of the
packed carriage: checking the seat numbers carefully, they worked their
way methodically down towards the two empty seats opposite Jamie and
Bernie

"Please, please.." Jamie whispered, as his comrade murmured his
agreement. The girls were slim, dark, pretty.. they tallied precisely
with Jamie's vision of typical young Frenchwomen. The the lads'
delight, the couple flopped gratefully into the vacant seats
opposite.

"Bonjour," Jamie ventured hopefully.

"Bonjour." The girl fixed him with a diffident yet enchanting smile
before turning to whisper - quite audibly - into her friend's ear: "I'd
hoped we were through with all that."

"You're.. you're American?" Jamie gasped, breaking into a broad
grin.

"Sure! I thought you guys were French! Say, don't get me wrong.. we had
a great time in Paris. But, It'll be such a relief to speak English
again."

"We're your men," Bernie asserted to general laughter.

Hey, you live in London?" To Jamie's amazement, the tone was soft; even
shy. In an instant, all his recently-acquired preconceptions about loud
Americans had been neatly shattered.

"We do. Just spent a week in Paris, but we've both got a couple of
spare months before going up to university. So, if you girls need a
couple of expert guides.."

"What do you think?" The girls looked at each other, giggled and
laughed. "Yeah, we're up for that!"

"Excellent."

"We'll be staying for two weeks. I'm Kathy, by the way."

The introductions complete, Jamie hauled a jumbo plastic bottle of
cheap red from his luggage and passed it round. Almost imperceptibly,
the train had begun to slip away from the platform. Jamie paused,
looked out at the distant silhouette of the Sacre-Coeur for the final
time, and whispered: "I'll be back.."

"You're lost in thought!" Kathy laughed.

"Mm. Hey, where are you two from?" Jamie asked nervously.

"Boston, Mass. That's Massachusetts. You look surprised!"

"Oh, no," Jamie lied glibly. "I just thought you might be from..
somewhere else, that's all. It doesn't matter."

"As long as it's not Toledo, Ohio," Bernie hissed before smothering his
laughter.

"Never mind him," Jamie said airily. "Now, what was it you wanted to
see in London?"