Paris, My Sweet (14 page)

One day on my previous summer's Tour du Chocolat, as I was coasting along rue de l'Université, I had nearly flown over my Vélib's handlebars after slamming on the brakes. On this quiet stretch of the seventh arrondissement, a notoriously Anglophone area, I had been distracted—very distracted—by a double-decker table filled with magnificent cakes and tarts I saw in a small tea salon's window. An older gentleman must have witnessed my clumsy act of admiration from inside for, as I was pulling out my notebook to jot down the salon's name, straddling the heavy and awkward bicycle, he appeared from nowhere and gallantly handed me a business card:
Les Deux Abeilles
, The Two Bees. I thanked him before speeding off on my chocolaty way, vowing to return.

Two years later, I conjured the name of the tearoom. I dragged my ass back on a Vélib'. And I peddled across town, happy to see that Les Deux Abeilles was as sweet as my memory made it out to be. It had a fusty charm, with floral wallpaper and antique furniture, and vases of flowers and potted plants lent color and freshness. The two dining rooms were flooded with sunshine from an overhead skylight and French doors that opened onto the sidewalk. It felt as comfortable and safe as if Anne and Valeria Arella, the mother-daughter team who ran it, had invited me into their own country home. Just as decadent too. I immediately saw that, in addition to the display of tarts, crumbles, scones, and cakes in the window that had caused my near wipeout way back when, there was a whole other table laden with irresistible sweets.

I had finished my
omelette
nature
with its perfectly dressed greens and had been eyeing both tables, mulling over my choices throughout the entire lunch. “Would you mind explaining what the desserts are?” I asked the very pretty and polished Valeria. She wore white jeans, a camel-colored cashmere v-neck and her hair in an elegant ponytail, and I supposed it was only by running such a popular spot six days a week that she remained so thin.

“Bien sûr,” she responded. Despite the lunchtime bustle, she personally guided me to the front of the dining room, bringing me face to face with tens of thousands of calories.

“This is a pear-praline
clafoutis
,” she began, pointing to the pudding-like dessert that looked like a sweet, crustless quiche flipped on its top. “This is a peach tarte, and this is a plum tarte,” she continued identifying the desserts, one by one.

“Do you make them all here?” I asked.

“Yes, we are like acrobats in the kitchen, it's so small.
C'est pas confortable
,” Valeria shared with a shrug and small smile. She told me they had been making the same recipes since she and her mother, the “two bees,” opened the tearoom in 1985. Then she got back to the business at hand. “This here's our lemon meringue tarte, this is a chocolate fondant cake, this chocolate fondant has praline, and this one is chocolate brownie.” She then guided me over to the other table, where my greedy eyes grew even larger as she continued the parade of possibilities. Scones, tarte tatin, cheesecake, and, finally, she finished with what I had been yearning for: “And the crumble today is rhubarb-apple.” She turned to me. “I'll give you a minute to decide,” she smiled, walking off to the kitchen.

I lingered at the table, eyeing the golden brown topping of the crumble, clattering tea cups and intimate conversations dancing in the background. It was similar to Make My Cake's cobbler in that it was a giant dish of oozing fruit concealed by bits of topping—exactly what I had come for. Yet it was unmistakably French. While it was indeed messier than the
gâteaux
I had fallen for elsewhere around Paris, Les Deux Abeilles's crumble, presented in a round white porcelain dish, was still more refined. It looked thick and sweet and crunchy. I could practically taste the buttery bits and jammy fruit converging in a chaotic mix of flavors and textures in my mouth.

But now that pear-praline
clafoutis
was waving to me from across the room like a dense and eggy terrine from heaven. And the tall, airy wisps on the lemon meringue were tempting me, as well as the towering cheesecake, fluffier than the versions back home, with more finesse. Molten chocolate cake is never the wrong choice, I was rationalizing to myself, when Valeria returned. “
Alors
, what will it be?”

I gazed up at her comforting presence. “I'll take the crumble, please.”

After my laborious decision, I was relieved to discover I had been right to stick with my original intentions. Five minutes later, a generous slice of rhubarb-apple crumble arrived, warmed in the small kitchen and served with a side of fresh cream, whipped staunchly into a thick, puffy cloud. I sat for a minute, contemplating the crumble's imperfect bumps and dull brown color. The pale pink and sometimes green slices of rhubarb poked out of the sides and lumps of rogue topping decorated my plate. Where the crumble had baked against the dish, a sticky crust of caramelized fruit juice and sugar had formed. It looked like a tarte that had done a somersault in its pastry box and arrived bruised and battered. There was nothing perfect about it. Except its bright flavors. Except its comforting warmth. Except that it was exactly what I wanted and needed. I savored each juicy-crunchy bite. It was wonderful.

I went back to the office on Monday, embracing my imperfect job, my imperfect situation, and my own imperfections. All those months, I had been idealizing all the perfect little cakes, just as I had been Paris, as a city and as my new home. And I saw that nobody was expecting me to be perfect—except me. So I couldn't wow my colleagues with French fluency. So maybe I wasn't going to kick ass on everything the Louis Vuitton team asked me to do. And so what if my weekend's dessert discovery looked more like a third grader's bake sale contribution than the picture-perfect cakes in the windows of Hugo et Victor? Really,
so
what?
It was time to be more open: to the unexpected, the unfamiliar, and, especially, the imperfect.

I may have been embracing my imperfections, but the Parisian men weren't. I mean, forget Robert Doisneau café cuddles, moonlight strolls along the Seine, and dancers twirling beneath streetlamps glowing rose. My dating life so far exhibited none of the romantic trappings that the black-and-white posters on my college dorm walls had promised me sixteen years ago. The sad fact was, it reminded me more of my college boyfriend's dorm room poster of Larry, Moe, and Curly: funny, ridiculous, and in a set of three.

My first date came about, unsurprisingly, after a night out with Michael. As my quintessential bachelor friend, we had an implicit agreement to be each other's wingmen when we met for happy hours and nightcaps.

“Sooo? Did you get his number?” he trilled toward the end of a night at Experimental, one of the city's chicest—nay, one of the city's
only
—cocktail bars, which had been started a year and a half earlier by three natty friends. It was more East Village speakeasy than common
comptoir
or ubiquitous café, giving a mostly international crowd a sophisticated place to drink and dance. Not even two blocks away from my tree house, I was lucky to claim this little taste of home as “my” neighborhood bar.

“
Oui
,
oui
, and I gave him mine,” I yawned, always staying out later than I should with Michael. Even though I wasn't particularly charmed by the tall, skinny, Swedish trust fund baby I had chatted with for forty minutes, I was determined to live by my new Paris motto:
Be
open
.
Say
yes
. So I agreed to meet the beanpole for a drink the following week. Michael and I high-fived.

The night hardly started auspiciously. Alec, the Swedish beanpole, suggested we meet outside a pub on rue Saint-Denis. Now, unless you're walking around with a penis, rue Saint-Denis is not the most desirable place—an infamous stretch of dingy sex shops, seedy massage parlors, and fifty-year-old hookers with vinyl boots and basketball-sized implants loitering in doorways. I tried to keep my chin up after fifteen minutes of waiting for Alec, lecherous men muttering and blowing kisses in my face the whole time. It was one of the few times I was relieved, not amiss, that I couldn't understand what was being said to me. I was about to text and cancel when the beanpole jogged up, shoulder-length brown hair flapping in the wind.
What
was
I
thinking, agreeing to this?
But as suddenly as the thought entered my mind, I squashed it, trying to embrace the night with my new optimism. (Be open! Say yes!)

Once we were settled inside a nearby bar with gin and tonics—his eighth by the smell of it—Alec rapidly progressed from small talking to flirting to seducing. Within minutes, he leaned over and just started making out with me. No attempt at warming things up. No soft “
hello, you
” kiss. Just a full on make-out attack. And he wasn't a good kisser. That said, I must admit I was a little flattered. This kid was probably twelve years younger than me, and I hadn't even been sure if our drink, when arranged the week before, was intended to be platonic or romantic. After my months of lonely moments, I was finally on a date. So I went with it, still being open! Saying yes!

“So,” he sat back, all smug and smiley, his concave brown chest peeking out from the crisp shirt that was unbuttoned one more button than it should have been. “Should we go home now or meet my friends at a club?”

It had been a long time since someone rendered me speechless, and I laughed in his face. “Um, right,” I said, wiping my lips dry. “Why don't we join your friends.”

My bullshit sensor on high alert, we left to ostensibly go to this club, but along the way, he dragged us into a brightly lit, sadly empty bar with thumping music. It was then I realized how horrendous French music is. Sure, they had Serge in the sixties, Air in the nineties, and add me to the list of Phoenix fans. But otherwise, the outdated house music and cheesy crooners that permeate are embarrassingly unhip.

Alec marched up to the bartender like he owned the joint and ordered himself,
only
himself, a drink, and though he was generous enough to let me take sips of his vodka and mint liquor, I declined after the first sip, having gagged at what tasted like tainted mouthwash. I found myself in that mute role again, not so much because I couldn't understand the language—I just didn't get this guy's behavior. I was simultaneously fascinated and horrified as he kept leaning over and mauling me. What can I say? It was one of those things where I was so aware of the absurdity of the situation, but I didn't care. (Be open! Say yes!)

But then things just started getting dumb. “Don't you want to go home with an arrogant bastard?” he asked, grinding against the bar and flipping his hair behind his ear. “Don't you want to be able to tell your friends you slept with a hot Parisian?” Incapable of a kind or clever response, I just smiled and shook my head. He switched tactics. “Okay, time for a shot!”

“Yeah, that's not going to happen, Alec.” Finally, my senses were coming back to me. The comedy routine had gone on long enough. “It's time for me to call it a night.”

“What?” He was incredulous. And I was incredulous that he was incredulous. “C'mon. Let's do a shot. What do you want? Whiskey? Tequila?”

“No, seriously, I'm going to go now.”

“No, wait. Just walk me to this club where my friends are,” he said, apparently no longer interested in who I was but only in what I could do for him. He was furiously texting on his mobile. “They'll charge me if I'm alone, but not if you're with me. So come with me, it's really close, and
then
you can go home.”

It was 1:15 on a Wednesday night. I had to meet Josephine for my French lesson at 8:30 the following morning. I was done. “Hmm, that's tempting. But still, I'm going home.” I was making my way to the door, over his protestations. “Thanks, um, for an, um…see ya!” Having reached the door, I bolted midsentence and started running through the cobblestoned streets without so much as a glance over my shoulder. When I was safely back in my tree house, I noticed my phone ringing. Alec wanted to come over. In disbelief—at his audacity and because I couldn't figure out how to turn my phone off (French wasn't my only challenge; I was an iPhone girl back in New York, and I couldn't quite figure out the BlackBerry the Paris office gave me)—I hung up without any pretenses of
politesse
, dislodged the phone's battery, and crawled into bed.

The next morning, I had
twelve
missed calls. And when I hopped off my Vélib' outside Ladurée, ready for my French lesson, the phone rang again. It was the Swedish beanpole, oblivious, still wanting to know if he should come over.

My first date in Paris: strike one.

About a month later, I connected with a Frenchman—a
sane
Frenchman. I went to a Pretenders concert, giddy about seeing one of my favorite all-time bands in my favorite all-time city. I had been to two great shows since arriving in Paris, both at incredibly intimate venues that would have sold out in, well, a New York minute, back home. My music karma was good, and I had big expectations for the night. It was an unusually steamy night, and beads of sweat were already tickling my back before I entered Élysée Montmartre, a two-hundred-year-old music venue that had hosted everyone from David Bowie to Robbie Williams. The French are infamous for not investing in air-conditioning—but I thought a major music venue where twelve hundred people cram into one room might be different. It wasn't; it was going to be a hot night. Weaving through the crowd, I found an open pocket and noticed a very cute guy in a simple white button-down, perfectly worn Levi's, and closely cropped salt-and-pepperish hair nearby. He was also alone.

More and more people started filing in around us, the air getting stickier with every one of them. I was as acutely aware that I was standing next to a single, attractive guy as I was that my naturally curly hair was undoubtedly getting bigger and frizzier by the minute. Chrissie Hynde and the rest of the band had taken the stage, starting with “Break Up the Concrete.” I needed to seize the opportunity before I had an afro.

Striking up conversation with strangers has never been my forte. In New York, AJ was always there to loosen things up and give me a jolt of confidence, telling me how funny I was or that I was having a good hair night. She encouraged me to make eye contact, not put pressure on myself, and to just enjoy meeting people, with no expectation for the outcome. So I kept thinking:
What
would
AJ
do?
As I was channeling my best friend in New York, Chrissie was snarling on stage: “Il fait chaud! Merde!” I cracked up with the rest of the roaring crowd at her ability to say it was bloody hot in there like a badass Frenchie. Then I made my move.

“Elle est la mieux,” I shouted to Salt-and-Pepper, letting him know I thought she was the coolest chick going.

“Oui, oui,” he smiled back at me. Okay, so maybe he had been looking at me out of the corner of his eye, too. “Oui…”

“As-tu déjà vu?” My French was laughable, but I wasn't backing down now that I had successfully made contact.

“Oui, trois fois,” he smiled at me again. What a great smile. “Toi?” We exchanged adoration for our mutual idol the rest of the show, in between jumping around to “Message of Love” and singing “Brass in Pocket” at the top of our lungs. As we were getting herded out of the sweaty venue ninety minutes later, he asked me if I wanted to get a drink. I did. So we did!

We climbed the hill to rue des Abbesses, a street in Montmartre jammed with classic cafés—the kind Robert Doisneau would have photographed—my stomach aflutter for the first time since coming to Paris. We sat down and the hours ticked by as we talked about music, traveling, France, and politics. While he did most of the talking, I was still proud I was keeping up and following, oh, about 40 percent of what he was saying. Although, toward the end, he did get very French on me—talking superfast with
beaucoup
gesticulations to emphasize his points. That's when I began to check out, again faced with the reality that French people really like to hear themselves pontificate. After shutting down the café, we exchanged numbers—and names, which we hadn't until that point. Frank. What a nice name. What a nice night.

The following evening, when I hadn't heard from him, I told myself I could text him.
Pourquoi
pas?
AJ would. But things had started on a French foot. It seemed too ugly-American to do that. So I waited. For nothing, as it turned out. Josephine was certain the reason I hadn't heard from him was because he was married. She pointed out that he lived in
les
banlieues
and had a daughter and had probably just come in for the night to see the concert. So confident was my plump, schoolmarmish tutor whose every word of French I clung to that a week later, I had to concede. Strike two.