Less believes he will head now from Berlin to Morocco, with a quick layover in Paris. He has no regrets. He has left nothing behind. The last sands through his hourglass will be Saharan.
But he does not head now to Morocco.
In Paris: a problem. It has been the struggle of a lifetime for Arthur Less to break the value added tax system. As an American citizen, he is due a refund of taxes paid on some purchases abroad, and in the shops, when they hand you the special envelope, the forms all filled out, it seems so simple: find the customs kiosk at the airport for a stamp, collect your refund. But Less knows the con. Closed customs offices, kiosks under repair, stubborn officers who insist he produce goods that were packed in his already-checked baggage; it is easier getting a visa to Myanmar. How many years ago was it when the information lady at Charles de Gaulle would not tell him where the detax office was? Or when he got the stamp but posted it in a deceptively labeled recycling bin? Time and again, he has been outwitted. But not this time. Less makes it his mission to get his damned tax back. Having splurged recklessly after his prize in Turin (a light-blue chambray shirt with a wide white horizontal stripe, like the bottom edge of a Polaroid), he gave himself an extra hour at the Milan airport, found the office, shirt in hand, only to have the officer sadly inform him he must wait until leaving the EU—which will take place when he concludes his layover in Paris and heads for the African continent. Less was undaunted. In Berlin, he tried the same tactic, with the same result (lady with red spiked hair, in mean Berlinese). Less remains undaunted. But at his layover in Paris he meets his match: a surprise German, with red spiked hair and hourglass spectacles, either the twin of the Berliner, or this is her weekend shift. “We do not accept Ireland,” she informs him in icy English. His VAT envelope, through some switcheroo, is from Ireland; the receipts, however, are from Italy. “It’s Italian!” he tells her as she shakes her head. “Italian! Italian!” He is right, but by raising his voice he has lost; he feels the old anxiety bubbling inside him. Surely she feels it. “You must now post it from Europe,” she says. He tries to calm himself and asks where the post office is in the airport. Her magnified eyes barely look up, no smile on her face as she says her delicious words: “There is no post office in the airport.”
Less staggers away from the kiosk, utterly defeated, and makes his way toward his gate in a numbing panic; how enviously he looks upon the smoking lounge denizens, laughing in their glass zoo. The injustice of it all weighs on him heavily. How awful for the string of inequities to be brought out in his mind, that useless rosary, so he can finger again those memories: the toy phone his sister received while he got nothing, the B in chemistry because his exam handwriting was poor, the idiot rich kid who got into Yale instead of him, the men who chose hustlers and fools over innocent Less, all the way up to his publisher’s polite refusal of his latest novel and his exclusion from any list of best writers under thirty, under forty, under fifty—they make no lists above that. The regret of Robert. The agony of Freddy. His brain sits before its cash register again, charging him for old shames as if he has not paid before. He tries but cannot let it go. It is not the money, he tells himself, but the principle. He has done everything right, and they have conned him once again. It is not the money. And then, after he passes Vuitton, Prada, and clothing brands based on various liquors and cigarettes, he admits it to himself at last: It is, indeed, the money. Of course it is the money. And his brain suddenly decides it is not ready, after all, for fifty. So when he arrives at the crowded gate, jittery, sweating, weary of life, he listens with one ear to the agent’s announcement: “Passengers to Marrakech, this flight is overbooked, and we are looking for volunteers to accept a flight late tonight, with a money voucher for…”
“I’m your man!”
Fate, that glockenspiel, will turn upon the hour. Not long ago Less was lost in an airport lounge, broke, robbed, defeated—and now here he is! Walking down the rue des Rosiers with a pocket full of cash! His luggage is stowed at the airport, and he has hours in the city at his own liberty. And he has already made a call to an old friend.
“Arthur! Young Arthur Less!”
On the phone: Alexander Leighton, of the Russian River School. A poet, a playwright, a scholar, and a gay black man who left the overt racism of America for the soigné racism of France. Less remembers Alex in his headstrong days, when he wore a luxuriant Afro and exclaimed his poetry at the dinner table; last time they met, Alex was bald as a malted milk ball.
“I heard you were traveling! You should have called me earlier.”
“Well, I’m not even supposed to be here,” Less explains, caught up in the delight of this birthday parole, knowing his words make little sense. He has emerged from the Métro somewhere near the Marais and cannot get his bearings. “I was teaching in Germany, and I was in Italy before that; I volunteered for a later flight.”
“What luck for me.”
“I was thinking maybe we could get a bite to eat, or a drink.”
“Has Carlos got hold of you?”
“Who? Carlos? What?” Apparently, he cannot get his bearings in this conversation either.
“Well, he will. He wanted to buy my old letters, notes, correspondence. I don’t know what he’s up to.”
“Carlos?”
“Mine are already sold to the Sorbonne. He’ll be coming for you.”
Less imagines his own “papers” at the Sorbonne: The Collected Letters of Arthur Less. It would draw the same crowd as “An Evening…”
Alexander is still talking: “…did tell me you’re going to India!”
Less is amazed how quickly intelligence moves around the world. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, it was his suggestion. Listen—”
“Happy birthday, by the way.”
“No, no, my birthday isn’t until—”
“Look, I’ve got to run, but I’m going to a dinner party tonight. It’s aristocrats; they love Americans, and they love artists, and they’d love for you to come. I’d love for you to come. Will you come?”
“Dinner party? I don’t know if I…” And here comes the kind of word problem Less has always failed at: If a minor novelist has a plane at midnight but wants to go to a dinner in Paris at eight…
“It’s bobo Paris—they love a little surprise. And we can chat about the wedding. Very pretty. And that little scandal!”