Heads Up for Harry by Hugh McCracken

Steve sauntered down the steps to the Parc du Vert Gallant and threw himself onto the third bench. As he sat back his hand dropped over the back and just hung there for a short time.
      "How about a banana?" he said. "I often have lunch here."
      His hand was closed as he brought it forward and pushed into his satchel. He winked and looked down. A canister of 35 mm film rested in the palm of the hand that had been behind the bench.
      "Stuck with gum under the seat."
      He spat his gum into his hand, rolled it into a ball and stuck that to a metal cigar tube from the satchel.
      "That goes back where the film came from."
      Our lunch eaten, we drifted along the bank towards the Trocadéro Steps at the Pont d'Iéna and sat in the sun watching youngsters playing on the wide concrete steps. We had been there for about ten minutes when a blond boy of about fourteen, I guessed, sauntered over and squatted in front of us.
      "Allo, Steve, ça va?"
      Steve shook the outstretched hand. "Assez bien, François, et toi?"
      The boy looked me up and down and Steve introduced us, first names only.
      "Nothing today," Steve said in French and François shrugged. He stripped down to a pair of very brief shorts and lay on his back on the concrete.
      Steve switched back to English. "This kid'll run errands for you. No questions asked. He runs a pack of street arabs. You deal with them through him. How's your French?"
      "Not bad. I can get by."
      François grinned. "Steve parle Français comme une vache espanol."
      He laughed and wriggled out of the way when Steve threw a handful of small stones at his bare chest.
      When François jumped to his feet and peeled off his shorts to reveal even skimpier bikini briefs I almost choked on my gum.
      "I thought those were his swim shorts."
      Steve laughed. "He does that for effect. To see how you react. You'd be surprised at how many squeals he gets out of some female tourists."
      "He's the same shade all over -- everyplace you can see, that is."
      Steve raised one eyebrow. "If you're interested you can examine what's left ... for a small fee. Touching's extra."
      I felt blood rushing to my face and Steve grinned.
      "You're blushing. You really are green, aren't you? A good job you didn't do that while François was here. He'd be sure he had a customer. And boy, can he be persistent."
      Confused, I didn't know which way to look or what to say. Steve didn't fit the picture I had of homosexuals. Not that I'd met any that I knew of but there had been plenty of jokes at school and university.
      "You can get that bloody stupid look off your face." Steve scowled. "I'm not that way. Not that it's any of your damned business."
      "Sorry, I didn't mean anything."
      "If you're going to get all stuffy about it I'll tell François to bugger off and you can find your own backup runners."
      "Look, I said I'm sorry. It was just such a surprise. He looks such a nice kid."
      "He is a nice kid."
      We sat watching the boys splashing in the Seine. Steve radiated hostility.
      Exactly what had I done that was so dreadful?
      "You must have led a bloody sheltered life." Steve said after a long silence. "If you're going to get mixed up in this racket you'd better get used to meeting pimps and whores."
      "But he's just a kid."
      Steve laughed and shook his head. "Christ. Middle class to the core, with blinkers on. Grow up and look round you. Here and at home. Not everybody has a nice home with parents. The latest war to end war left a lot of trash behind. François's part of the debris."
      "You mean he's an orphan?"
      "A bastard orphan with a bastard brother. He's a street arab. His mother was a whore who shacked up with one of the occupation army. When the liberation came François had a little brother and fond memories of a fat corporal with a limp who always had chocolate. The heroes of the liberation shaved his mother's head. She hanged herself."
      "How does he live?"
      "I told you. He steals, runs errands for the likes of us, sells his body to anyone who's interested."
      I looked at the boys playing on the steps through different eyes. I'd been here last year with the school group and had been annoyed, like the others, at being hustled away by the teachers after a very short stay. I remembered now the order to move on came after the French guide to our group had a brief, emphatic, hand waving talk with our teachers.
      "Are they all ...?"
      Steve laughed. "If you keep staring like that you'll soon find out which are. We'll be swamped in boys. No, you bloody simpleton, they're not all ... as you so delicately put it. And don't stare too hard at the tourists hanging round either. Some older pros make their pickups here too. They might try to rearrange your face if they thought you were trying to horn in."
      Don't think of a white elephant. Great advice. Where the hell can I look?
      François rejoined us, shaking himself like a wet spaniel. The conversation turned to generalities and I missed some to the rapid French. François had said Steve spoke French like a Spanish cow but he must have meant his accent and not his ability to understand and be understood.
      When Steve suggested it was time to move on, François scrambled into his clothes and walked with us.
      On our approach to the street a horde of small boys chasing each other jostled us before François snarled at them and they vanished.
      "How about a drink, Steve?" I said. "You too, François. My treat."
      The boy grinned. "In that case you'd better have this back," he said and held out my wallet.

Damn, Steve. Last year this had all been new, interesting, innocent. No! I had been innocent, ignorant rather. Yesterday Steve had peeled back a corner of the pretty picture to reveal festering corruption underneath. Now I don't know what to think. Is it all like this underneath? Everywhere? Do I really want to know?
Dammit, I can't see Paris the way I did before. Everything seems normal when looked at straight on, but out of the corner of my eye things shift, shapes change and in the darkness evil lurks.