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FOREIGNERS / Marcelle Martin THE DOOR OF the next hotel was open. A narrow carpet of light extended across the sidewalk, a sign Laurie took as a welcome. She said bonsoir and explained to the woman behind the desk that she wanted a single room. "How long do you plan to stay?" The woman spoke in precise, business-like French. Laurie wanted to hug her: at last she had found a hotel that wasn't full, at last she could sleep. "Just one night." "I'm sorry," the woman said. "Our rooms are full." "That's not true!" There was laughter from the lounge. Laurie noticed two men seated in armchairs. "Don't cry," one of them told her. "There are plenty of rooms for you in other hotels." She turned back to the clerk. "How many days must I stay in order to get a room?" "Je suis désolée." The woman pressed her lips together. She wasn't desolate at all. As Laurie walked out the door, the men made crude suggestions about how to find a room. Her cheeks burned, and she was conscious that her orange backpack marked her as a foreigner with no place to go. At the next corner, she sat down on the curb. The street was narrow and the buildings old, with shutters at every window. From the bank of the Seine, moving uphill block by block, she had been to every hotel in the Latin Quarter except the expensive ones with two or three stars on the metal plaques beside their doors. She slid the pack off her shoulders. Having been invited by the French government to live in France for a year, to work as an English assistant in a lycée, she had felt special when she arrived in Paris, privileged. Although she and Bill had had difficulties obtaining hotel rooms when they traveled in Europe two years ago during the height of the tourist season, she had thought it would be easy to find a room at the end of September. It had not occurred to her that on a Saturday night all the student foyers and inexpensive hotels would be full by nine o'clock. To ease the pain in her neck and shoulders, she rotated her head in a slow circle, her eyes closed. She imagined a bed, imagined herself between clean sheets, asleep. She wanted nothing more. "Qu'est qui ne va pas?" asked a voice with a heavy accent. She looked up and saw two African men, both wearing three-piece suits. The taller one repeated the question. She struggled to think again in French. "Nothing's wrong. Tm just tired." The Missouri Review · 233 "Can we help you?" "No," she said. "Thank you." "Why are you sitting here?" The taller man persisted. "We only want to help. Where do you come from?" "The United States." They did not understand. "America." "America! That's why you spoke to us. In your country you have Americans who are black like us." He spoke as though she had identified herself as a compatriot. "We're foreigners like you. We only want to help. What's wrong?" He seemed sincere, and that fact that he was not alone made her less suspicious of his motives. "I don't have a room to stay in," she admitted. "But there are so many hotels here." "They're all full." "Impossible. Come, we help you find a room." She hesitated, aching to turn her problem over to someone else. Apart from brief naps on the plane, she hadn't slept for a day and a half. It seemed as though it were the same day—a long day—on which she had woken up in Bill's bedroom in Washington. The same day on which she had kissed him goodbye in Union Station and taken a train to New York, kissed his hard mouth as though she might never have another chance. Even in the station he wouldn't promise to come over for Christmas, saying, "You never know what might happen." "I want a room just for myself." Laurie stood up beside the Africans. "You understand that, don't...

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