The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [68]
“Isn’t there any other sort of passport you can give until Washington issues me a new one?” I pleaded. “Please, I’ll be much more careful next time, I promise.”
“I have already stated the official position.”
“But can’t you at least give me something to prove who I am? I mean I don’t even have a driving license or anything like that.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About six months.”
“You’ll have your carte d’identité, then.”
“Oh hell, I never got around to getting it.”
“Yes. Well I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about that” he said, dismissing me.
Rather surprisingly it was Bradley Slater who jumped in. “This is outrageous!” he shouted. “I never heard of such a thing. You can’t let Sally Jay wander around without any means of identification.” And he banged his fist on the desk to show he knew how to do those things. “She demands another passport immediately. You can’t stop her. It’s her right as an American citizen.”
I could see by his triumphant smile that old Pince-Nez had us there too. “An American passport is a privilege, not a ‘right’,” he said. “The sooner you people learn that, the better. It may be,” he continued, in a frenzy of satisfaction that was at last beginning to crack through his officialdom, “it may be, let us hope, that Washington has at last ceased its weary tolerance of these Left Bank irresponsibles who are forever losing their passports, their money and their minds, and is growing understandably chary of reissuing new ones again for use as shopping lists and toilet paper. Good day. Miss Bowen, will you please attend to this young lady? Meanwhile I advise you to leave no stone unturned to recover that passport.”
I went to Miss Bowen and stated the facts as gently as I knew how, and as I turned around to leave I looked at those patient huddlers on the benches who had hardly moved, and a horrible irony hit me: they wanted so badly to get into the States; I wanted so badly to stay out.
I sat down that afternoon and thought very, very hard. Then I rang up Larry.
“Larry, listen, I’ve lost my passport.”
“Who is this?”
French phone or not that was a blow. “Sally Jay. Sally Jay Gorce in case there are two.”
“Well, hello. Hello darling.…”
“What’ll I do?”
“Better look for it. How did it happen, anyway?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know. I’ve been over it and over it and I figure it must have been sometime Opening Night with the Contessa and her zoo. I mean that was the last time I saw it— you know, when I smashed my mirror at the queer joint.”
“Shouldn’t have done that, Gorce. Seven years bad luck.”
“That’s not so funny. There’s a jerk at the Embassy who thinks I’ve sold it. Do you think it could possibly have been stolen? The trouble is there are too many suspects. I can’t go around accusing everyone.”
“How do you mean too many?”
“Well, it might have been that Lesbian, for instance. My God, she was dying to get to the States, she even told me so herself. Or Crazy Eyes. I haven’t seen him or his sister around lately, so that looks pretty suspicious—though he’d have had to have done it by osmosis, because I didn’t go near him that night—at least I don’t think I did. Or take Boofie—he’s the type who goes in for what’s laughingly known as living by his wits, and he’s always in trouble with the authorities, or at least he was in Italy anyway. Or those dreadful brats, or the King of Lithuania, or whoever the hell he was, or even the Contessa for all I know. She hates my guts. And then there’s a wild possibility it could just be the French painter I went over to see the next afternoon, though I’m dead sure I didn’t take that particular handbag. In fact everyone but you.”
“Why not me? I’m a little hurt not to be in such distinguished company.”
“Well, you were the one who found it and gave it back to me.”
“By God, so I did.”
“What I wanted to ask you was—oh Lord, this is going to be embarrassing—what I wanted to ask you is that although I remember up to the Rotonde and the champagne distinctly that evening, it begins to cloud over a bit after that. I mean where else