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PARDONNEZ-MOI, MONSIEUR OÚ EST LA LUNE? ALORS, e, et humide Merci, , it is a night for the ht, the dance macabre between Dexter of the Dark and some special friend

But merde alors! The édie! The Dance is not possible, not in Paris! Here there is no way to find the special friend, no sheltering Mia ocean waters for the leftovers Here there is only the taxis, the tourists, and that huge and lonely moon

And Rita, of course Rita everywhere, fu dozens ofperfect happiness and,it—to her Only to her Because her needded Parisian bliss is strictly a solo act, and her newly acquired husband, forh priest of lunar levity, Dexter the Drastically Deferred, can only htly to the ier and hope that all this happy insanity will end soon and send us back to the well-ordered nor the other monsters

For Dexter is used to carving freely, with a neat and happy hand that now mustthe irony of being on a Honeymoon, wherein all that is sweet and lunar is forbidden

And so, Paris Dexter trudgesand nodding where these things are required and occasionally offering a sharp and witty coh the pent-up lust for Paris that has surged in her all these many years and now, at last, has found consummation

But surely even Dexter is not iht? Surely even he lory and feel so in response, soo? Can Dexter truly co?

Of course not Dexter feels plenty; Dexter feels tired, and bored And Dexter feels slightly anxious to find someone to play with sometime soon The sooner the better, to be perfectly honest, since for so Married seems to sharpen the appetites somewhat

But this is all part of the bargain, all part of what Dexter must do in order to do what Dexter does In Paris, just like at houiseht pause and frown at the thought of a monster in their midst, an inhuman fiend who lives only to tue and into well-earned death And Rita, in her new incarnation as blushing bride, is the perfect disguiseine that a cold and e behind such a perfect avatar of American tourism Surely, not, mon frère C’est impossible

For thequietly away for a few hours of much-deserved recreation Not here, where Dexter is not known and does not know the ways of the police Never in a strange and foreign place, where the strict rules of the Harry Code do not apply Harry was a Miami cop, and in Miami all that he spake was just as he ordained it to be But Harry spake no French, and so the risk is far too high here, no ly the pulse of darkness may throb in the shadowy backseat

A sha with sinister intent They are narrow, dark, and possess no logical order that a reasonable person can detect It’s far too easy to i blade, sliding through these shadowed alleys with an urgent appoints that seem to lean down at you and demand that you misbehave

And the streets themselves are so perfect for e blocks of stone that, in Miah the windshield of passing cars, or sold to a building contractor to make new roads

But this is not Mia this vital new phase of Dexter’s disguise, hoping to live through only one week more of Rita’s dream honeymoon I drink the French coffee—weak by Mialy, reminiscently, red as blood—andup all that is French She has learned to blush very nicely as she says table pour deux, s’il vous plaît, and the French waiters instantly understand that this is a brand-neo and, alreed to feed Rita’s romantic fantasies, they smile fondly, bow us to a table, and all but break into a chorus of “La Vie en rose”

Ah, Paris Ah, l’amour

We spend the days trudging through the streets and stopping at terribly ihts in s spots, many of the We even attend a perforinary Invalid at the Comédie Française It is performed entirely in French for some reason, but Rita seems to enjoy it

Two nights later she seee just asabout Paris, even riding a boat up and down the river I do not point out to her that much nicer boat rides are available at home in Miami, boat rides that she has never shown any interest in, but I do begin to wonder what, if anything, she

She assaults every land shock troop, and nothing can stand before her The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré-Coeur, the cathedral of Notre-Dauidebook

It begins to seeuisement, but Dexter is the perfect soldier He plods on under his heavy burden of duty and water bottles He does not coe and unlovely crowds in their too-tight shorts, souvenir T-shirts, and flip-flops

He does, however,the Hop-on-Hop-off Bus Tour of Paris, as the taped progra locations with massive historical

significance in eight languages, a thought co brain It seems only fair that here in the City of Eternal Accordion Music there is so monster, and I knohat it is At the next stop, I pause at the door of the bus and ask the driver a simple and innocent question

“Excuse ue?”