Bill:  Wantcha t'pack for three days.  

Deb:  Cool.  What for?

Bill:  Paris.

I literally felt my face hit the floor.

Deb:  Paris?!  What the hell for?

Bill:  Business trip.

Deb:  Three days?  Hardly worth bothering.

Bill:  Oh, it'll be worth it.  Thought all women wanted t'visit old Paree.

Deb:  Hell no!  Full of Frogs!  And I'm not 'all women'!

Bill:  I think I figured that out.  Tell ya what...you tag along and be good
an' we'll stop in Miami on the way back...

Miami!  Bully...the red shirt, the tight black pants...the beard!

Bill:  Scratch that shit, we'll hit Jamaica.  I know what you're thinkin'...
you get torqued up enough without that.

I was hoping he'd forgotten his fool idea to drag me off to France when
he appeared with a familiar looking document in his hand.  I could feel my
brain going to 'ignore' mode.

Bill:  Got a passport.

I thought he was asking me if I had one.

Deb:  Mine's expired, Bill.  Can't go.  Bummer.

What a wonderful feeling.  It was impossible.  Was I the only woman in
the entire world trying to weasel her way out of a trip to the City of
Romance with the man she loved?  Probably.  Did I give a good goddamn?  No
way in hell.  What good was a trip to the known center of the romantic
universe with a man who, by his own admission, was about as romantic as a
sea cucumber?  With an attitude.

Bill:  Pay attention, punk.  Said I got a passport for ya.

Damn.

Bill flipped me the blue folder.  I noticed that the embossing on the cover 
was perfect, a wonderful enclosure for the phony documents contained within.
I opened the little booklet...there was my face.  In fact, it was the very
face that had accompanied me to Mexico under the guise of Jade Riordan all
those months ago.  But now I was identified as...

Deb:  Annie Warbucks!  What the hell is this?  What's yours say?

I dug in his pocket, snatched the well worn folder I found there and
opened it up.  This particular travel document had been issued to a Dad E.
Warbucks.

Deb:  You are a sick man.

Bill:  And you love me.

I knew he was expecting a smartass remark if not an outright denial, but
I didn't have one for him.  Finally he leaned into me.  His voice was low.

Bill:  Don't look at me that way.

Deb:  Can't help it.  Sorry.  

Bill:  Punk.

I poked him in the belly.

Deb:  Guess I need to go to WalMart for that high-fashion vacation wardrobe.
Think I could get some money, there, Daddy Warbucks?

Bill:  You can kiss my ass and bark at the moon.  Whadda ya think?

He was already fishing for his wallet as he spoke, and he stuffed two
or three hundred dollars worth of bills down the front of my blouse.

Deb:  Thank you, Bill.  You know...you complete me.

Bill:  Get the hell outa here!

I scrambled out, laughing...keeping strictly to myself the thought that I
hadn't been joking completely.

We flew to Paris on the Concorde.  It wasn't that Bill had any great love
of spending three times as much as he needed to on a flight, but more that
he had to get to Paris and kick some ass in a limited amount of time, and
that was a wastin'.  We passed through French Customs with a small ripple.
The Agent wasn't as ignorant as he looked.

Agent:  Dad E. Warbucks, eh, monsieur?

Bill:  My dad had a sick sense of humor.

Agent:  And this would be Annie...your daughter?

The only thing between me and complete collapse was Bill's hand...clamped
on the back of my neck underneath my...um...red...curls.  I managed a nod
to the Agent and turned to Bill.

Deb:  I'll be okay, Daddy.  Hey, can I have a raise on my allowance?

Bill:  You can have a raise on your ass...

The agent eyed Bill sardonically, then turned to me, stamping my passport.

Agent:  Enjoy your stay in France, mademoiselle...and remember that your...
uh, Daddy...is only looking out for you.

Deb:  Oh, yes...I don't imagine I'll have a chance to forget...thank you.
C'mon, Daddy...let's go shopping...

I grabbed Bill's big hand and dragged him away from the Agent, toward a
taxi stand.  I was giggling, and though he was trying to maintain a pissed
off expression, he was having a hard time.

Bill's idea of a hotel was a horrible rat trap on the Left Bank.  There was
a concierge at the door who seemed to know Bill.  In any event, he called
him 'Guillaume' and mentioned his most recent stay, which sounded to have
been no less than a month or so before.

Deb:  Guillaume, eh?

Bill:  Shut the goddamn hell up.

He had taken up both my duffle and his own seabag, leaving me to carry my
purse.  I had probably overpacked, I could tell by the look on his face.

Deb:  Call ya Gilly?

Bill:  Kick your ass?

Our room was on the fourth or fifth floor, whichever the hell way they
numbered it.  By the time we got there he looked about ready to chuck my
dufflebag through the window, but every time I offered to be responsible for
it myself, he warned me off.

Bill:  Next time I tell ya to pack for three days, I mean three days normal,
not three days for the fucking arctic and three days at the equator...

Deb:  I always try to grab something in case it's warm and something in case
it's cold and...

Bill: You pack your damn jeans and some underwear and if you need a goddamn
jacket, you buy it.  Understand?

Deb:  Okay...Gilly.

It was an hour or so before I could sit comfortably.

Bill stuffed money of some kind into my purse and shoved his wallet into his
back pocket...before stepping back into his jeans.

Deb:  What's this for?

Bill:  Keep ya busy...go sightseein', go shoppin', stay outa my way.

I sat up in bed, shoved my hair back out of my face.

Deb:  I was in your way just now?

He leaned into me, stapled me to the headboard with a look.

Bill:  Girl?

Deb:  I'm sure I can keep busy.

Bill:  Oh, I'm sure you can.  Just keep your ass outa trouble.

Bill crashed out of the room, leaving me in tired confusion.  I decided
that, since I had no desire to sightsee, I would go back to sleep.

Hah!

All I knew was that I spent three hours cowering in the wide bed, with my
face buried in a pillow that smelled of Bill when there was no earthly
reason why it should, and the phone screamed off the wall.  I rose, I took
a message, I lay down.  I rose, I took a message, I lay down.  I jumped up
howling, bawled into the handset, tore the room apart and dressed.  I was
in search of the answer to the current burning question of my existence -
namely how did the entire French underworld know of Bill's arrival after a
scant four hours?

I went in search of the concierge, Maurice Chevalier's bastard son.

Deb:  Who are these people?!

Concierge:  Quelles personnes?

Deb:  'Scuse me?

Concierge:  Vous etes excuses.

Deb:  Okay, wiseguy, I know you speak English.

Concierge:  Comment le dites-vous...only when I feel like it.

Deb:  Thank you.  Now...who are all these clowns?

I pushed the list across the counter into the little hidey-hole he
inhabited.  The closet stunk fiercely of Gauloises and something else I
preferred not to think about, and I remembered how delicately my high school
French teacher had tackled the subject.  They don't think it's necessary
to bathe as often as Americans do.  Period.  I remembered also thinking that
their national hygeine or lack thereof was their business.  I still held
that belief...but it was a little harder to remember it when faced with the
reality.  The concierge seemed completely unaffected by my expression.  He
took the sheets of paper and studied them carefully.

Concierge:  You might call them...associes dans le crime.

The crime part I got.  Oh, great.

Deb:  Say what?

Concierge:  Partners in crime, mademoiselle.

Deb:  Figured as much.  So...it's true he uses this place as the Strannix
Annex when he's here?

Concierge:  Certainement!

Deb:  And if I left...how would I get back?

Concierge:  Get a taxi and tell the driver...Le Palais.

Deb:  This is a palace?

Concierge:  Figure of speech.

Deb:  Right.  Okay...if the Godfather shows up, tell 'im I went out.

That was a real smooth move.  It was something like two in the afternoon,
when most things shut down for the lunch break.  The only things that looked
to be truly open were restaurants and I had no appetite.  I had just
climbed out of a taxi and escaped with my life.  I didn't want to push my
luck and eat.  So I sat down on a parkbench someplace and just watched the
world go by.  I could see the spire of the Eiffel Tower in the near distance
and even the dedicated Francophobe in me had to admit that that was a pretty
cool thing to be able to look at whenever I felt like it.

Next I found my way to the Seine.  There were a gazillion bridges over the
river, houseboats tied up to the banks - some with neatly tended gardens,
for God's sake - tourist boats full of dorky Americans with cameras plying
the channel.  I looked down at one of the boats going by...and saw Bill near
the gunwales with a really disreputable looking sort.  I reached into my
purse, found a pezgun - and whose was that? - and whaled it down at him.  It
was heavy enough to fly, so there must have been some pez in it.  It bounced 
off the rail by his hand and caromed off into the water.

Deb:  Not bad!  

It is pretty bad when a person needs to cheer her own marksmanship.
Bill startled comically, looked up to see who was bombarding him...and I
went barrelling off to find a taxi.  Good Lord!

Concierge:  And how did you find Paris?

Deb:  More like how did I find Bill?  Shit!  

Concierge:  Gillaume?  You found him?

Deb:  He's gonna kill me.  He was down on one of those tubs in the river 
with some guy that made him look small.  Big old Arab-lookin' dude.  I
chucked a pezgun at him and he looked like he was coming over the side.  I
don't think I was supposed to see him with that guy.

Concierge:  You know you were not, mademoiselle.  So you ran?

Deb:  Like hell.

Concierge:  I will stop him as he comes in...we will share a bottle of wine
before he goes to bed.

The Concierge winked broadly at me.  Bill would be walleyed before he hit
the stairs.

I'd made an uneasy trip to a bookstore not far away from The Palace.  The
Bastard Maurice reminded me that the Left Bank was a traditional, cheap 
haven or foreign college students, so there were bound to be English 
language books in the shops.  I would just have to go make the clerks dig 
them up.  So I did the intimidation thing and managed to dig up copies of 
Jane Eyre,something by Kinky Friedman of Kinky Friedman and the Texas 
Jewboys and the Communist Manifesto.  I stole back to the hotel and up to 
our room, wondering when he would show up and what kind of shape he would 
be in.  Bastard Maurice might not need to do much.

I fell asleep over Karl Marx' stimulating political theories and didn't
regain consciousness until the morning.  I had a heavy arm across my waist
and a kind of low rumbling in my ears.  I tossed Karl off my face and
raised my head to try and pinpoint the source of the heavy machinery.

Deb:  I'll be damned!

Bill was snoring.  The entire French Foreign Legion could have stormed
The Palace, assuming they could have routed Bastard Maurice, and Bill 
would never have known.  His breath hung in a toxic, alcoholic cloud over 
our heads and sitting up into the center of it caused me to become 
lightheaded. I had never seen him so wrecked.  What in the name of 
God had he been ingesting...I wanted to get some of it.

As I was pondering the advantages of destroying Bill at will...a brown eye
opened.  It focused, found me, speared me.  When I noticed that the dead
were walking again...I knew I was in dutch, Bastard Maurice or not.

TO BE CONTINUED...

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