“She’s a taxi girl/All she wants to do is grab a cab.”
I reached across the pillow in the dark, knocking my brand new ultra-cool phone to the floor of the hotel room.
“She’s a taxi girl/Flag ’em down fast and jump in the back.”
“Hello,” I whispered under the pillow, expecting that Penelope had forgotten what time it was in Paris. On the other side of the room there was some restless movement.
“Mademoiselle, it’s Bertrand the doorman.”
“Uh-huh,” I answered curtly.
“You have a visitor who asked me to call you on this number.”
“Who is it?”
“He doesn’t give a name,” Bertrand paused, sounding sheepish. “Just to say it’s a joke.”
I smiled to myself. “Big guy, really big, looks like he could play Magwitch in Great Expectations?”
“Oui, il est très grand….” Bertrand replied, sounding nervous.
“Please tell him I’ll be right down.”
I left a note on the bathroom mirror, grabbed a banana from the fruit basket, and eased into the hotel hallway. What would Blag be doing at my hotel at four thirty in the morning?
“Hey Mac,” he grunted when I spotted him pacing in the street beside his cab. I shrugged and waved at Bertrand, who retreated to the safety of the lobby. I gave Blag an awkward but sincere hug. Have you ever tried to hug a truck or a small office building? Blag was built like a low-lying mountain range, with a shaved head and a permanent five o’clock shadow to go with his gruff demeanour and intense gaze. I’ve seen people cross the street to avoid passing him on the sidewalk, and not just because he’s a one-man crowd. What they don’t know, and what took me a while to discover, is that underneath is one of the best people you’ll ever meet. I would have been in a world of trouble — I mean more trouble — if Blag hadn’t had my back during last summer’s adventures. Oh, by the way, in French a blague is a joke, so you can understand the doorman’s confusion.
“Blag, it’s good to see you, but it would’ve been just as good if we’d waited until at least sunup.”
“We have work to do,” he said tersely, walking purposefully to the cab, “partner.” He shot me as much of a smile as I would ever get from him, which wasn’t much. I figured that part two of my rally training was about to begin.
“It’s a lot easier getting around the city at this time of day,” he said, handing me a grease-stained map of Paris and a few squares of paper with handwriting on them. “Okay, nana, you’re the navigator, start navigating.” He hit the sound system and an angry, siren-like guitar filled the car. As the thunderous drums kicked in, Blag began pounding the steering wheel and nodding in time to the music. A row of Viking action figures bounced on the dash along with the bass drum.
“What’s the first clue say?” he shouted over the music as he tore away from the curb into the mercifully empty street. I shrank in my seat and held up the first piece of paper in the pile. It was written in an elegant, if spidery, hand. Blag read my mind.
“Yeah, Tawdry made up the clues. I couldn’t think of any.”
“Oh, cool,” I said, “how is she? You guys looked great at the wedding, sorry you couldn’t make it to the party.”
“Yeah, well, I can only handle so much of the Daroo crew. And that carnival crap they play, ugh.” Blag banged the dash in time to something called “Death Hurts.” “Not like Malade, this is music.”
I chose not to mention my dad’s part in the music-making at the party. I flattened out the map on my lap as we sailed down Faubourg St. Honoré and read the first clue.
Like a belt it holds us in/This is where your day begins.
Blag chuckled as I stared at the map and thought out loud.
“A belt. A belt has notches and ... it goes through loops. Maybe it’s an overpass.… No ... they don’t have those in Paris, do they?”
“Death hurts/It’s a drag …”
Blag’s singing wasn’t helping.
“But happiness/Makes me gag …”
I looked up as we approached rue Royale and caught a glimpse of the Madeleine church. What would Madeleine do in her little tower in Montmartre, from where she managed the world of Paris taxis with her giant map of the city? I closed my eyes, and there it was! The road that surrounded the city ... like a belt!
“It’s the périphérique, Blag!”
“Nice work, short stuff, so how do we get there?”
Good question. “Okay, so let’s stay on Saint-Honoré, right past the Palais Royale and head across the Pont Neuf.”
“Sure, if it wasn’t one-way the other way.” Blag glanced over at me, grinning, and ran a yellow light.
I had to choose. “Rue de Rivoli,” I suggested uncertainly.
“One way. Wrong way,” he shouted as “Death Hurts” crescendoed.
“Okay, okay.” I tried to keep my cool, already feeling over my head in my new role. “Then let’s turn here up to Berger, past the Centre Pompidou, up to Francs Bourgeois, right on Turenne, left on St. Antoine, and around the Bastille.”
“You got it, nav.” Blag accelerated, thrusting me back into my seat, grateful for the empty pre-dawn streets.
I peered at the map but couldn’t read it in the dim light, then I remembered that my new phone could be a flashlight. “Okay, I’ve got it,” I shouted excitedly. “Stay on St. Antoine and circle Nation and take Cours de Vincennes all the way to the périphérique at Porte de Vincennes.” This was one of the gates to the city that separated Paris from the suburbs on the other side of the périphérique. Relief was short-lived as Blag careened past a terrified vendor opening his newsstand, toward our first destination.
I unfolded the next clue.
See if you can find the star/The river means you’ve gone too far.
I didn’t know where Johnny Depp’s apartment was. “The star.” Was there a telescope in Paris? I wondered.
Blag couldn’t resist. “How’s your French, kid?”
“Why?” I asked, “Oh, wait, star is l’étoile in French.” I practically bounced in my seat. L’étoile is the name the locals give the Place Charles de Gaulle that circles the Arc de Triomphe. The streets radiate in all directions, making it look like a star from above. “Let’s take the périphérique, now that we’re here, all the way to avenue Victor Hugo, and then straight to L’étoile!” I celebrated by picking up one of Blag’s Vikings and making it do a little dance on the dashboard.
“I’m Eric the Red and I’m going to L’étoile,” I chirped happily, until Blag grabbed it and placed it, gently for him, back in its spot in an arrangement of brawny guys in capes and helmets.
“That’s Leif Eriksson, Eric the Red’s father. Don’t you know anything important? What’s next?”
Guess I was put in my place. I’d have to work on my barbarian studies. I read clue number three.
The little sparrow and Chopin/Know this is the place to land.
“Isn’t there a bird sanctuary near the city?”
“Not sure sparrows need protection, kiddo,” said Blag. “What do birds do?”
“Fly? Nest? Poop? Sing? Sing, that’s it! My dad told me all about the little sparrow, Edith Piaf. And Chopin, it must be a musical reference, right? Like the opéra, or cité de la musique.”
Blag chuckled and turned up Malade. “Listen to this. Real music. Check this tune out, ‘Obliterate Me,’ it’s their big ballad.”
The speakers shook and I was having a hard time thinking.
“The Olympia Theatre. She made a record there. Did Chopin play there?”
Blag ignored me and headed into the sparse traffic at L’étoile. “Place to land”? The airport? Or the air salon, as Rudee called it.
“Hard to fly when you’re dead,” said Blag, “and there wasn’t a lot of commercial flying going on when Chopin was rocking the Nocturnes.”
I knew he was trying to help me, but I wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm.
I looked at the map and noticed the big green patches, thinking that’s where I would land if I were a bird. “Wait, the cemetery. That’s land. Where is Chopin buried?”
“Père Lachaise,” said Blag, catching my eye.
Père Lachaise was a vast cemetery that held the remains of some of the most celebrated artists, philosophers, and leaders in French history. “That has to be it. Edith Piaf is there. My dad said they leave flowers on the little sparrow’s grave every day.”
“Well, well, most of you Yankees figure the whole joint is dedicated to Jim Morrison of The Doors. Impressive. Okay, show me the way, kid.”
The map was looking like spaghetti to me with the tangle of streets between L’étoile and the cemetery making my head spin. It didn’t help that Blag treated driving a cab like a game of bumper cars. Oh wait — I scratched at the map. That was spaghetti. Nice.
“Okay, Blag, let’s take Friedland to Haussmann then right at Place St. Augustine, around the Madeleine, past the Opéra. I can’t read the street names, they’ve got sauce on them.”
“No problem. Then what?”
“Then 4 septembre to Réaumur. What happened on September the fourth? Did Napoleon get his buttons polished?”
“Close. Nappy three got his butt handed to him by the Prussians so the third French Republic began. It was a big deal at the time, but, hey, let’s just get to Père Lachaise, alright? Hint — stay on the boulevards, the small streets just mean that breakfast will come that much later.”
“Right. Then rue du Temple, around République, and straight to Père Lachaise. We don’t have to actually go in the graveyard, do we?”
“What? Of course we do. I’ll take a picture on your fancy new phone of you on Jim Morrison’s grave.” Seeing my horrified expression, he added, “Kidding! Why don’t you get busy with number four.”
“Okay, it says Where the wheels come to rest/and the bean juice is the best.
“Bean juice? That sounds gross. Wait. Ohhhh, bean juice — coffee,” I said triumphantly. “I know where that is. The wheels are on taxis, right?”
“You got it, Cal gal. I think Tawdry took pity on us and made the last one the easiest.”
We pulled up to the locked gate at Père Lachaise. The sun was just starting to come up and it cast long shadows in the ancient graveyard. I shuddered and Blag laughed.
“It’s actually a pretty awesome place.” He could see that I wasn’t convinced. “You know, if you like ghosts, zombies, the undead, that sort of thing.”
I directed Blag up Menilmontant to Belleville to Villette and into Montmartre at the top of the hill. Blag’s cab seemed to be on autopilot as he pulled up in front of CAFTA, one of the few places open at this hour.
I would find out later just how much Blag was not telling me about the rally, but what good would it have done to know in advance about terror on the country roads in the south of France? Of course, I also found out later that Blag had never actually driven in the taxi rally, or navigated for that matter, another small detail that he conveniently neglected to mention. Something to do with the fact that no one would get in a car with him. My stomach was just starting to settle after this morning’s ride.
“Alright, nav, let’s eat.”