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weary to do any window shopping of my own, I zigzagged across the boulevard des Capucines and went down into the métro station.
    Home at last, thank the baby Jesus. The alert, generous-bosomed madame who seemed to rule at the hotel was having her afternoon tisane when I stopped at the desk for my key. I must have looked about as frazzled as I felt, because she offered me a cup.
    French businesswomen are about the least homey human beings imaginable. Anybody would be scared of them. I know I am. This one, however, told me she had noticed my saxophone, and wondered if I was in Paris to play an engagement somewhere. She had always admired le jazz , she said, and at the time of their wedding anniversary each year, she and her husband enjoyed making an evening of it at the music club just off St. Germain des Pre. You know—the one with the likeness of Satchmo in black plaster in the entryway.
    I told the madame, in as little detail as possible, about my search for Aunt Viv. She was sympathetic—genuinely so, I believed—and when she offered further assistance, I jumped on it.
    The madame’s husband relieved her at the desk while the two of us climbed into the taxi she had ordered. We were going to La Pitié Salpêtrière, a giant medical complex in the 13th arrondissement that also housed the city morgue. It made sense, didn’t it, to check there first? Oh yes, it was quite sensible, my companion agreed. After all, if, heaven forbid, Vivian was at La Pitié, then there was little point in canvassing the hospitals and the emergency rooms and hospices and so on—our search would be over.
    The office where we waited had a beautiful view of the Jardin des Plantes. As the lady from the administrative office led us along the corridors the worst kinds of morbid one-liners were running through my brain. I couldn’t help it. It was like whistling in the graveyard.
    Back in the fresh air, I went weak with relief, happy to know that Viv was not one of the bodies in those human filing cabinets. The madame and I rested for a few moments on a bench in the Jardin des Plantes and then caught another cab home.
    Back at the hotel we worked out a fair way of computing the phone charges I was racking up calling the appropriate municipal offices to determine if anyone fitting my aunt’s general description had been admitted to a Paris hospital. It seemed only right, I told her gratefully, that I also pay the week’s rent that my aunt had skipped on. That was most responsible of me, she said. Would I like to pay that now, or should she add that sum to my own bill at the end of my stay?
    None of the hospitals had any mysterious amnesiacs in residence who might be my poor aunt. So, as far as we knew, Aunt Vivian was still alive, somewhere out there. She had to be. If she was broke, how was she going to get out of Paris? I was going to have to bite the bullet and go to the embassy soon, it seemed.
    It was time for me to clear out of Madame’s way and let her get her dinner started. I thanked her for all her efforts—the tea and sympathy not the least of them—and went upstairs.
    About seven o’clock I put on a fresh shirt and jeans and left the hotel, with no particular destination.
    I wound up at one of the revival cinemas near the place everybody referred to as the Beat Hotel, a dump with character over on the rue Gît le Coeur, which I had checked out the previous day. Its reputation had been made by William Burroughs and his crowd in the fifties, and I guess its legend was still going strong. Not a single vacancy.
    The street was clogged with kids of all nations, hanging out, playing guitars, smoking reefer, dry humping in doorways, eating frites and souvlaki, and just glorying in being alive and young and stupid. A few paces away was perhaps the world’s narrowest, shortest street, which I had searched for years ago, on my first visit to the city, because its name was so intriguing: