Les flics

Last night I had a run-in with the French police.

You'd think it would've been scary but it was actually the most hilarious thing that's happened to me in a long time.

Another assistant, Lily, and I had gone to Fort de France to meet up with some acquaintances at a bar. Which already wasn't the smartest decision on my part, because I had work at nine this morning and ended up nearly oversleeping. But that's another story. For the purposes of this one, I should say that Fort de France is at least a half-hour drive from where we live, so we don't go all that often and don't know the area very well.

We left the bar just after midnight. The streets of Fort de France were quiet. In the car, as we made our way towards the autoroute, we began flipping through the radio channels to try to find something good to listen to. Which can be quite a task in Martinique -- the stations are all either the news, talk shows, or random reggae or techno. Finally we came to a station that was playing Whitney Houston.

"Oh, my God, this is such a good song!" Lily exclaimed, turning the volume to level 20.

Lily turned down an abandoned street, and all of a sudden, there were flashing blue lights in our face and French men in police uniforms running towards our car. It was a one-way street, and we were going in the mauvais sens, the wrong way. Merde.

"Can't you turn down the music?" one of the cops asked. First Lily tried, and then I tried, to make the radio stop. I turned the dial to the left, and the music got quieter. Then, as I continued turning, I watched (and listened) in horror as the volume climbed to level 24. Panicked, I turned the dial to the right, to the same effect. Then I tried pushing button after button, but it was useless; Whitney was still going strong.

As I was doing this, Lily was trying to explain to the cops that we were sorry, we live in Trinité and aren't familiar with Fort de France, we were just trying to find the autoroute and we didn't mean to disobey the sacred traffic laws of Martinique/endanger all the invisible cars that were sharing the one-way street with us at 12:15 on this lovely Wednesday night. Or something to that effect.

By this point, Whitney is seriously belting. "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!" It really, really couldn't have been any louder.

Lily tried to apologize for the music, but now, the French policeman, understanding that we were foreign, told us with a half-smile, "C'est pas grave."

I was already struggling to hold back laughter.

In desperation, Lily pulled the radio out of its socket, and finally it was quiet.

One of the French police then started giving Lily directions to the autoroute. He pointed out where to go and where to turn. Finally we said goodbye and Lily reversed to get off the one-way street.

"Thank God I don't speak much French," Lily said as we were driving away. "Otherwise they totally would've slapped me with a ticket."

As we turned onto the next street, we passed an ATM and Lily decided to try to stop and get money. Except the police car was still right behind us.

We pulled over and the police pulled up next to us, rolled down the window and started talking again. There were four of them in the car -- a full house. Didn't they have anything better to do on a Wednesday?

"Alors, c'est la radio? Ou c'était un CD?" one of them asked. They still couldn't get over, I guess, our cacophonous tribute to our countrywoman, Whitney -- towards whom now, miles and miles away from America, I feel a certain kinship.

Lily told them it was the radio.

Then they asked us where we were from, and Lily told them America. She explained that we were language assistants -- you know, the whole spiel. Non-French people aren't as common as you'd think here, so we end up having to explain this to people a lot, that no, we're not on vacation but that we have actual, legit, twelve-hour-a-week jobs here.

"Et votre amie, elle ne parle pas du tout français?" another of the cops asked. At this point, I realized I hadn't said a word during this whole ordeal. It had been Lily in the driver's seat doing all the talking.

"Si, je parle français," I managed to get out.

After we'd said goodbye for the second time, they drove in front of us. They turned on their blue flashing lights and as we began to drive after them we realized they were pointing us in the direction of the autoroute.

Once we were safely back on the road to Trinité, we exploded into laughter and pretty much didn't stop until we'd reached my driveway.

"Sometimes it pays to be a cute foreign girl," Lily said. "It can take you far."

Yes, indeed. Amen to that.