Dillard Mibble Goes To France

By BIll NesSmith

Though Dillard refers to himself as Man of Mystery, Man of the World, those who know him would more likely call him Mr. Oblivious. Actually, his wife employs the phrase “inferior yet lovable life form.” Traveling with this loving yet frighteningly perceptive wife, Dillard literally stumbles into a dangerous web of industrial espionage. Of course he is oblivious to this danger and he worries instead about other things.
He worries about how to deal with the French people he meets. For example, he bravely resists--well, his resistance is an off and on thing--but he mostly resists the temptations of his hostess, she of the well-filled blouse and smoldering eyes. This resistance takes up much of his time but he also must warily track the movements of the ten-year old boy that he suspects is a collector of body parts.
He struggles to avoid various elements of the animal kingdom the French consider food, including slithering eels, winking octopi, the proffered Orange Vegetative Matter, and the bothersome, over-sized duck breast that he finally, triumphantly hurls onto a golf course.
Even the waters of France present Dillard with challenges. He topples into the Mediterranean Sea and a French river, thrashes about in a French marsh, and is discovered by an excessively polite, small-headed teenager while performing a late-night shimmy in the wrong French pool.
All the while Dillard unknowingly carries a few pieces of plastic that attract the nefarious attentions of bumbling but dangerous characters. Such are the trials of the ingenuous American traveling in this foreign land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BIll NesSmith
• Release date: Apr 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991381500

BIll NesSmith

Many major writing awards, such as the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, The New York Times Top 100 Obscure Writers, American Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Literature, Grand Master Award for the Amazing Writers of America, the Ersatz Medal, and the Prune Award have eluded the grasp of the author.Mr. NesSmith spends the bulk of his leisure time fantasizing that Dillard Mibble will be made into a Major Motion Picture. The rest of his time he spends checking to see if anyone other than blood relatives has downloaded his book and written a charitable review.The author resides with his lovely wife in Florida.

Book preview

Dillard Mibble

Goes To France

A comedy—with suspense

By

Bill NesSmith

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Bill NesSmith

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Table of Contents

Preface

Un

Deux

Trois

Quatre

Cinque

Six

Sept

Huit

Neuf

Dix

Onze

Douze

Treize

Quatorze

Quinze

Seize

Dix-sept

Dix-huit

End Note

PREFACE

This story takes place along the route my wife and I followed during one of our trips to France. The settings are accurately described to the best of my recollections. The people in the story are entirely fictional.

The reader is invited to write the author with comments at [e-mail].

Un

It was the lady's smooth, creamy sort of neck—a neck that spoke of French soap, possibly powder, and surely perfume. That's where the troubles began for Dillard Mibble.

If only this lady had not stood so close to him, and if only the small, frail man with a puny potbelly had not also been among the small crowd of pedestrians waiting with Dillard to cross a busy street in Orleans. Well, then Dillard's French vacation would not have become an adventure.

But as it happened, this lady and this other man were among the pedestrians standing with Dillard. The lady would soon become part of his large archive of memorable women and the man would figure prominently in Dillard's near future.

The man's name was Etienne Legrand. He wore a garish, yellow shirt. If Dillard had not been so interested in the lady's neck he might have noticed that Legrand's left hand, holding two candy bars, had reached to confirm that his right hand still clutched a small package. Dillard had no way of knowing that the package contained four computer flash drives for which certain parties would be willing to pay a fortune because the small devices held data which could transform the airline industry of Europe, indeed the world. Monsieur Legrand was on his way to Paris, a few miles north of this street corner, to exchange the innocent-looking, plain brown package for a million euros. It was his ticket to a new life.

At this moment, of course, Dillard Mibble knew none of this about Monsieur Legrand. At this moment Dillard Mibble's attention was focused entirely on the lady who just moments before had strolled up to the curb and positioned herself within touching distance of him. She had stood there radiating allure—French allure, Dillard had noted. He had sensed immediately that she was French because of the exotic vibrations she seemed to emit, something he had never felt from an American woman, not even his wife, Macy. Dillard certainly did not consider himself a quivery sort of man, but at that moment he had felt weak in all his limbs.

He had been afraid of this when his wife first suggested a trip to France. He had held a vague notion that French women were especially sensual and mysterious, maybe even a little dangerous. And now he stood quivering on what seemed like an incredibly picturesque French street, very close to a powerfully attractive, authentically French woman.

His romantic notions about French women might explain why, despite the fact that he had been married to Macy for twenty-something years—twenty-three, he thought—he had allowed himself a closer examination of this enchantress standing so tantalizingly close to him.

His downcast eyes had slid along the pavement to fasten first on her feet, delightfully encased in—what else? —stiletto high heels. There was no turning back now, he knew, not with stiletto heels. His eyes had swung inexorably upward, along slender ankles, then to shapely, naked legs. Reminding himself to take a breath, his examination had continued upward, and he had noted the smooth curves filling her simple blue dress. Being something of a man of the world he knew that beneath that simple dress would be found authentic French lingerie, all lace and frills, black no doubt, all harboring, supporting and presenting authentic French womanly flesh. These thoughts quickly proved too much for Dillard so his examination had quickly moved upward to note that her hair was silky and hung perfectly around her neck—a smooth, creamy sort of neck.

Now, while he was leaning slightly forward with his nose leading the way, sniffing for the perfume he knew must be emanating from this tantalizing neck, its owner turned and caught him. And that's when he made his big mistake: His eyes flickered up to meet hers, possibly to make absolutely certain that she was not actually some vaguely remembered high school friend visiting France. Such a coincidence was not impossible, after all.

But, no, this was no one he knew, though at that moment he believed he would never forget her face.

Apparently, when one meets the eyes of a Frenchwoman on a sidewalk she assumes that you have entered into some kind of commitment. That's how this woman saw it. Or at least that's how Dillard saw her seeing it.

In any case, she gave him a meaningful look.

She tilted her head and smiled, and then looked at the quivering American tourist in a way that demanded that he pay attention to her in a more forthright way, as opposed to the sneaking examination she had just interrupted. It wasn't exactly a sexual thing; it's just that she seemed to insist that he acknowledge her feminine appeal. She was probably around his age but she obviously took care with her appearance and she wanted him to do his manly duty and appreciate her.

Apparently that's how they do things in France but Dillard was just not accustomed to being confronted in such a provocative way by an attractive woman he had never met, even one that he had met. Nice looking women had always caused Dillard's brains to slide down into his socks. His jaw hung open, slack and useless, presenting an image not unlike the photograph on his driver's license.

There he stood, an American near (if not exactly in) Paris, transfixed by the eyes of a stranger, a femme fatale. He tore his eyes from hers and looked around for escape from this dangerous situation. He was, after all, supposed to be fetching his car with which to pick up his wife while she finished shopping a scant block away. In fact he held two bags full of his wife's purchases. The stream of traffic in the noisy street before him separated him from the safety of his rental car, which he searched out now with the yearning of a child looking in a crowd for his mother. There it sat in the second row of the lot, cozy and secure, a very friendly little sedan.

Nervously and yes, recklessly, Dillard shot another glance at the temptress who immediately swiveled her head, locked eyes with him again, and smiled at him in a significant way.

Here I am, he thought, standing next to an attractive woman. A stranger. French. Smiling at me. In a significant way.

Dillard's reaction to this situation was mixed. His first impulse was a warm smile, which would be any man's natural reaction to such a response from an attractive woman, foreign or not. This impulse, however, was overtaken by a panic that twisted his emerging smile into a ghastly grin.

He felt like an idiot, but he must have looked like an endearing kind of idiot, because the woman's smile seemed to grow in warmth. Even worse, he watched in horror as her lower facial muscles began ominous preparations for what threatened to result in . . . speech. And it would be French speech, no doubt, sensuous French speech, which might very well be the end of him.

This threat pushed Dillard finally to act. He somehow managed to break his eyes away from this woman, firmly resolved to make his escape despite the steady stream of traffic before him. He took a long step into the first of the four lanes that stood between him and the safety of his car.

Just as he took his second step, a car swerved from the second lane into the first and blared its horn. The car's brakes began screeching and its tires squealed as it slid toward the lanky American tourist poised two steps from the curb.

Dillard spun and adroitly leapt back onto the curb. He overshot his objective, however, and his momentum carried him into the small crowd he had so recently abandoned. The blue dress flashed before him and he dodged to his left. This maneuver brought him into full frontal contact with none other than Etienne Legrand, the small man in the loud yellow shirt.

The taller American man's shoulder rammed into the forehead of the shorter French man. Both men fell against a cushion of their fellow pedestrians, and then toppled to the sidewalk, Mr. Mibble on top of Monsieur Legrand. The man on the bottom had grasped the other's shirt and torn the pocket. Monsieur Legrand's glasses lay askew across his forehead. Both men lay dazed for a few moments, though the little Frenchman's altered state of consciousness lasted a bit longer.

Mibble rolled off Legrand and waited for the little man's eyes to stop fluttering. Some of the spectators bent to inquire about the well-being of the two fallen men. Others gathered the men's scattered bags and packages.

Sorry, buddy, he said, then remember he was in a French-speaking country.

He searched his French vocabulary, which sadly required the merest moment, and came up with only one phrase, but which seemed to be one of those all-purpose phrases. He pronounced it a little self-consciously, his first attempt at French outside his own house.

Bon jour, he said to Legrand.

The little man was not quite ready to respond.

Four hands helped Dillard to his feet, and he knew that two of them belonged to the woman whose allure had sent him scurrying into the street. He knew, because her touch again produced quivers in his limbs.

As she moved her face close to his, he noted with great interest that her eyes were an especially intriguing shade of gray. Her expression however, had changed from inviting smile to scowl.

Good day to YOU, Monsieur, she said in accented English, and with some heat.

When it comes to reading people, Dillard Mibble does not rank among the top five billion persons on the planet. In this instance, however, even he detected a definite change in his immediate social environment. Even he sensed that his actions and choice of words had not endeared him to the femme fatale, or to the rest of the crowd. And for once he was right.

Someone shoved his shopping bags roughly into his hand, and someone else turned him to again face the street. These actions were decidedly lacking in sympathy, and Dillard felt new motivation to cross the street, which was for the moment clear in all four lanes.

He ran across the road, and then risked a look back. He encountered no hostile glares from the French pedestrians, but only because they were too busy ministering to Monsieur Legrand, who was still lying down, stirring but dazed.

Dillard hurried to his red Renault, tossed his wife's purchases into the back, and immediately got the car rolling through the parking lot. When he paused at the entrance to the road, he saw that someone had helped the small, shaken man to his feet.

Feelings of regret about the collision assailed him, and Dillard waved an apology to the little man, hoping the gesture translated well into French.

Meanwhile, Monsieur Legrand seemed to regain his mental faculties, and began patting his pockets and talking excitedly. People in the crowd began looking on the sidewalk among everyone's feet, obviously searching for something. Legrand paused in his search and watched Dillard's car as it turned down a narrow side street.

That side street was where Macy had been shopping. Dillard drove slowly, looking for her while he tried to forget all about the femme fatale and the mild-looking little Frenchman in the yellow shirt.

His eyes were immediately drawn to a pair of beautiful women sauntering along the sidewalk. Their backsides swayed and swiveled together in graceful rhythm. One of these nymphs was long and svelte; the other was shorter and curvy, delightfully curvy. They passed before a café where an elegant redhead in green sat reading a magazine. The next table held a gorgeous brunette whose short skirt rose high along her thighs.

There may have been even more beautiful women at that café but Dillard did not continue his survey because his car had wandered into the path of a pedestrian—yes, a striking female pedestrian, this one dressed in a clingy red dress. Dillard noted the lady's monumental bosom even as he stomped on the brake pedal and brought the car screeching to a halt. The woman may have cast an angry look toward Dillard but he was not concentrating on her face. As she strode to the sidewalk he cast his appreciative eye on her perfectly rounded, delightfully rolling hips.

He nudged his car into motion again while his appreciative eye was minding the lady's hips. That was unfortunate because he did not notice that his car was headed toward a collision with another pedestrian. This pedestrian was still another woman, another attractive one. In fact, as he would realize momentarily, he had married this attractive woman a couple of decades ago.

Macy stopped in her tracks and cocked her head, waiting with perhaps unwarranted confidence that her husband in a sufficiently timely manner would rip his gaze from the bobbling, bounteous pedestrian. Would this distracted driver run down his wife while gawking at another woman?

Dillard might claim that he was simply making certain that the lady in red had gained the safety of the sidewalk. It was his great fortune—and his wife's—that the lady reached the sidewalk soon enough for Dillard to turn his attention back to his driving in time to once again bring his car to an extremely abrupt halt.

For a dangerous moment his appreciative eye began to admire this lovely pedestrian in comfortable slacks and sensible blouse. During that moment the identity of this female became apparent. His appreciative eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. It took him another moment to rearrange his features into a welcoming smile, though the smile wilted when he began to read her posture and face.

Her arms were crossed and her shoulders stiff. Her head was tilted, her lips pursed into a smirk that carried accusatory overtones. Her brows arched so much her forehead wrinkled. Her eyes were showing a greater than normal amount of white as her gaze drilled a question into him, a question which he read as, What HAVE you been doing?

He swallowed and recovered his welcoming smile. Oh, there you are, dear. I was looking for you.

Macy let his lame comments float awkwardly in the French air for a moment. She sighed, relaxed her posture and her facial muscles. With a slight shake of her head she smiled and entered the car.

Well, she began. I'm glad you found me in the crowd. There are so many people on this street, especially women for some reason.

You're telling me, he said quickly, too quickly. I mean, yes, there are a lot of people out and about. And you're right, quite a few seem to be of the female persuasion.

Very attractive women, too, she observed.

How does a husband respond to that?

Oh, I don't know, he said in what he hoped was a comfortable, innocent tone. Maybe some of them. Maybe.

Macy had played with him enough. After all, she figured, he was only looking at—okay, ogling—some women who were undeniably attractive. She decided to put a damper on her annoyance. She patted his knee and Dillard relaxed, once again grateful for his wife's magnanimity.

Then she noticed his scuffed pants and torn shirt. She studied his face searching for information.

Dilly, what HAVE you been doing?

He felt a stab of anxiety. Had she decided after all to make an issue of his gawking as he had driven through this Valley Of The Dolls? Perhaps worse, had his romantic encounter with the woman in the blue dress left some telling mark in his expression? Did his eyes retain some special glow? Was he visibly oozing a heightened masculinity or exuding raging pheromones?

You look like you've been rolling around on the sidewalk, she said. Her hands smoothed his hair as he read the road signs for the next intersection.

What happened? she asked. Were you mugged?

I fell, he replied.

Oh, she noted, as if he had explained everything.

Actually, he would have preferred that she express some wonderment at how such an athletic guy could somehow fall during a simple walk back to the car, but she just shook her head a little, smiled, and buckled her seatbelt.

Meanwhile, Monsieur Legrand was not smiling. Instead, he was gasping for breath after his sprint to the corner of the side street where the American had turned his car. Legrand rested with his hands on his knees and watched a woman enter the American's red car. Then the American signaled to turn onto the main highway heading west.

Legrand stood at the corner, his puny chest heaving and his fists clenching and unclenching around the candy bars that someone in the crowd had retrieved for him. His other package, the most important he had ever possessed, was gone, and the American surely had it. It had been either a deliberate theft or an innocent mistake during the confusion following the collision.

He drooped his head and ran his hand through his gray, thinning hair. He uttered a few comments impugning the intelligence of Americans, then turned and walked as quickly as he could toward his own car.

Legrand startled Aline when he jerked open the car door. She was so startled she actually tore her eyes from the paperback she was reading. Her bleary eyes took a moment to focus on him as he threw himself into the driver's seat, tossed her the candy, and fumbled with the ignition key.

He noticed that she grabbed the candy without a word of thanks and buried her face again in the book. All she ever seemed to think about was reading and food.

As he drove off he reflected how different she had seemed when he had first spotted her back in Toulouse.

It seemed like long ago that she had entered the subway car during his ordinary afternoon commute. Her frizzy red hair had bounced exuberantly as she jostled thought the car's doors with the other commuters. She seemed to stand out like a flower sprouting from a crack in an expanse of dreary pavement.

He had studied her from the corner of his eye. She was not pretty, not particularly young—probably in her early thirties he figured. Still, from that very first observation she had held for him an odd attraction. Her face was long but the skin was smooth. The thick glasses gave her an intellectual look. Her figure was knobby and bony, but she defiantly had worn a short, shiny skirt and a skimpy, clingy shirt. From her red mop to her funky clothes and down to her psychedelic shoes, she had shown clearly that she was unconcerned about convention, about the world's ideas of beauty and fashion. She had seemed unburdened by the worries that left everyone else in the car comparatively gray and slouched. She was the odd bird who had reached an accommodation with who she was and what she would never be. She was comfortable with herself and would deal with the world on her own terms.

Legrand had been fascinated at that first sighting, but of course had said nothing to her. He never spoke to strangers. He was not the sort of person anyone noticed, and certainly not the sort that any woman would want looking at her. As a matter of course, he avoided a direct look at her, but then it had occurred to him that his life course had recently changed. Only five days earlier he had entered into the daring agreement with the stranger named Nicholas, and so he permitted himself a satisfying internal monologue.

If only she knew what I'm up to, he had thought. If only she knew that she was sharing a subway car with a man affecting world affairs, a man of secret importance.

He had smiled to himself, a James Bond-ish kind of smile. Then his smile had fallen from his face when he looked up and saw that she stood before him, her paperback book still tucked under her arm, for the moment ignored. She had studied his eyes with frank interest.

You smile like a high-stakes gambler, she said, extending her hand. My name is Aline. What is yours? Her French was from Provence, with a hint of Marseilles. He found it exotic and sophisticated.

He allowed her to establish a conversation. Resolved to remain detached, he only nodded at her comments. She talked in a steady stream, leaping from an inconsequential topic to one that revealed a glimpse into her inner life, then back to something frivolous. She had soon mesmerized him with her cascade of easy conversation.

She skillfully prodded and encouraged him so that within a few minutes of their meeting he began telling her about himself. Once he began he stumbled over his own torrent of words, desperate to tell his story as if this were his first and last opportunity to establish a record of his inner existence. He willingly answered all her questions, eagerly revealing the person who had for so long suffocated beneath a defensive reticence.

He rode with her past his stop, carried off by her unrelenting conversation and startling admiration of him. He followed her to her shabby, cluttered flat. Over the next few hours he traded his life story for Aline's.

That first night, in a gesture of bravura and with a hint of an involvement in a broader scale of espionage he told her of his agreement with Nicholas to steal the data. They both knew by then that they would share the money and everything else in their lives.

That had been two weeks ago. Now Aline sat in the passenger seat, unwrapping the first of the candy bars. Her long, bony legs were doubled underneath her mini skirt. She devoured the candy and the paperback simultaneously.

When she wasn't talking or eating she was reading. And when she was reading she got hungry. He watched as she took another bite from the candy bar.

How can she eat so continuously and remain so . . . so angular, he wondered. She could certainly do with some curves.

The sight of her miniskirt sliding up her thigh as she shifted her weight failed to elicit the kind of excitement it had when they first met. He noticed a piece of blue fuzz caught in her permanently tangled red hair and resisted the urge to pluck it. He sighed and turned his eyes back to the road, which was now pelted with the first drops of an imminent shower.

Hungry? she asked him without looking up from her reading. The first candy bar was gone.

He glanced out the window to his left, silently asking the rainy countryside why he should be hungry after having