"Because they were made happy?"
"Agent Grillon was made so happy that ever since he has taken great exception to insults leveled at Euro Beasley. But Agent Sauterelle came out quite frightened. He was afraid to go back in. On the other hand Agent Papillon could not stop throwing up for three days."
"What did the poor man see?"
"He could not articulate it beyond the pageantry and bright lights of the Blot. He mentioned a particularly vivid green, as I recall."
Dominique Parillaud shot to her feet. "I hereby volunteer to penetrate the Blot."
The case officer raised his hand.
"No, I must insist. This is obviously a great mystery and must be dealt with." She straightened her spine, chin lifting in defiance. "I will go today. Immediately. I am not afraid. My fierce devotion to my country and my culture make me unafraid."
"You are going to America," insisted her case officer.
Whereupon Dominique Parillaud sank back into her chair and began weeping into a fresh linen handkerchief whose frilly edges were impregnated with cyanide in the event of her capture by hostile forces.
"Your mission will be to monitor all unusual events pertaining to the Sam Beasley Corporation," her case officer explained. "If you can gain employment with them, so much the better."
Dominique Parillaud threw her shoulders forward and plunged her face into the cupped handkerchief.
"You will report daily, and-"
With a cry of anger the case officer lunged across his desk. He threw himself across his best female agent, and the two ended up on the floor, rolling and clawing for possession of the cyanide-laced handkerchief that Dominique Parillaud was desperately holding on to with her strong, stubborn Gallic teeth.
WHEN THE AIR FRANCE flight landed at Furioso International Airport, Dominique Parillaud at first considered hiding in the lavatory and taking the same plane back.
But her duty to her country brought her out of the comfortable seat and out into the humid air of Florida.
It was awful from the first minute, from the very second she deplaned.
The air was hot and sticky. It clung to her perfectly milky skin, dampened her Parisian coiffure into a soggy mass like cornflakes and made her haute clothing chafe and itch like sackcloth.
The people were boorish, their accents rude and bewildering. They actually pronounced their terminal consonants. And as for their attire, the only word to describe their gaudy pret-a-porter rags was abominable.
At the grocery store there was no decent bread to be had. The cheeses were flavorless, and the wine would not pass for swill.
And the food. Lamentable in the extreme. They used no sauces except for sauce piquante, which they spelled sometimes catsup and sometimes ketchup. There was no delicacy in their cooking, no art in their dress. Everything was heavy and oafish, from the food to the men, which Dominique Parillaud also sampled out of sheer need to find some meager comfort in this hot, brutish land.
She found work in Sam Beasley World as an interpreter, but discovered nothing of importance. Except that they treated her-and all other employees-so horribly that she was forced to quit.
It was no better in Vanaheim, California, although the strength-sapping mugginess was replaced by a delicious dry heat that after two months seemed to exert a severely deleterious effect on her motivation, much as the Florida heat had sapped her strength.
At a good Vanaheim restaurant, where a valet parked her car for her, Dominique discovered an item on the menu called French fries. Her eyes lit up and she ordered them eagerly.
"What will you be having with it?" the waiter asked.
"Nothing. Just pile these French fries on a plate and give me your best house chardonnay."
When they came, Dominique saw these fries were neither French nor palatable. If anything, they were fit only for the bland British palate. She toyed with them idly as she consumed an entire bottle of barely passable chardonnay.
On another occasion she came upon French toast on a breakfast menu posted on a diner that she would ordinarily not otherwise enter, the smells coming from within it were so disagreeable.
But Dominique did enter, ordering two portions of French toast. "And your best breakfast Bordeaux," she added.
"No Bourdeaux, sorry."
"Very well. Beaujolais, then."
"We don't have an alcoholic-beverage license, ma'am," the waitress said.
That was another strange thing. It was impossible to obtain beer or wine in many restaurants. Even bad beer or wine, of which the oafs produced in abundance.
"Then give me a pot of coffee. Black."
When the French toast arrived, Dominique saw with brimming eyes and it was not in any respect French, although it vaguely resembled a species of toast.
She drank the entire pot of coffee, which tasted salty from the bitterness of her endless tears.
The cinemas were singularly insufferable. It was all junk, as were the television programs. The only bright spots came twice a year, during the Bastille Day Jerry Lewis movie marathon and again on the American Labor Day when Jerry conducted a telethon. When he sang "You'll Never Walk Alone," Dominique hastily taped it, and it became instantly and forever her favorite song.
She had never known that Jerry could sing.
By the time of the affair of Beasley U.S.A., Dominique Parillaud was a dispirited shell of her former self, who contemplated suicide with whatever was at hand. Her case officer had steadfastly refused to allow her any of the cyanide pills, hollow teeth or deathlaced handkerchiefs of her trade.
Thus she carried a tiny aerosol can of Black Flag bug killer. If need be she could swallow the nozzle and depress the trigger with the very strong and agile tongue whose talents had enabled her to climb the clerical ranks of the DSGE. Men appreciated her agile tongue. Or at least Frenchmen did. American men made disgusting comments about her ability to French-kiss, then would not-or could not-explain why such kissing was ascribed to the French above all others.
She had been in Virginia for three weeks, posing as a TV reporter for the European TV network, Europe 1, when the Second American Civil War unexpectedly broke out. Dominique's had been one of the first news trucks on the scene.
It was the perfect cover. Apparently all Americans were obliged to obey the many rules and laws of the land, but for some reason journalists were exempt. Even foreign ones.
Upon swooping down, Dominique discovered it was impossible to infiltrate the Petersburg National Battlefield, and had to content herself with eavesdropping on other news agencies, some of which had helicopters to spy on the battle below.
It was an astonishing sight. Their country seemed poised to rend itself apart, and instead of showing concern for their future, all that mattered to then was the all-important story.
Had they been French journalists covering a modern Reign of Terror, they would have been guillotined without benefit of trial, their treason was so great and so very apparent.
When the battle finally broke out, the Confederate pickets withdrew and the press surged in. At first Dominique thought they were going to take sides themselves. They did not. Instead, they sought out the roar of battle, and their bravery before the sharp whistling of the subsonic musket balls would have been admirable had it not been so obviously the product of an utterly congenital foolishness.
Nevertheless, Dominique picked her way through the park with its sticky pines and its idle Napoleon cannon and marveled when she came upon the battle how very much like uniforms of Napoleon III the soldiers' trappings were.
It confirmed to her that Americans gave the world nothing of high culture, but only took from it.
"I cannot tell one side from the other," she complained to an American journalist who was snapping pictures like a tourist at the Eiffel Tower. Wildly and without framing his shots.
"It's simple. The blue versus the gray."