Plan C (29 page)

The vendors along the Seine – les bouquinistes - hurriedly pull the metal green covers over souvenir stands full of Moulin Rouge posters and plastic Eiffel Towers. The firemen - the sapeurs-pompiers – busy themselves at their pier hauling in hoses. Then there’s the boat men of the Vedettes du Pont-Neuf - the tourist ferries - tossing plastic covers over the passengers’ seats, still hopeful the tours will run. For a moment, they stop to watch the crazy American woman dashing across the bridge in the rain. They wave, and I wave, and life is just grand.

Breathless I step into the doorway of a boulangerie with all types of Parisians. A small line has formed out front from under the awning. There are intellectuals who study books while waiting. There’s the classic bourgeois, and some Bohemians from a flea market, all with one thing in common, and it’s not the knotted cotton scarf around their neck. They’re here for their baguettes. But, I’m glad I wore a scarf, too.

The women work methodically from behind the counter - one running the register, another placing wrappings around each order. Smiling at the bored-looking patrons, I watch a few businessmen exit, some with big baguettes and some with small. Real men have small baguettes.

“Madame?” says the cashier to me impatiently.

“Je voudrais un baguette, s’il vous plait.” I would like a baguette, please.

She smirks, grabbing one from the mirror-lined shelf but not before furtively squeezing its crust as though secretly addicted. She calls out the price to the cashier. “Un euro!” She hands it to me as I move quickly to count my change - in euros no less. This leaves the other patrons frustrated that I’m holding up the line.

Five corners meet at Rue Saint-Andre des Arts and the world of cafes merge. For the French, coffee usually requires sitting in a café and drinking it slowly, soaking up the atmosphere, and analyzing the passer-bys…like this man only a few steps from me who sits glancing at his daily news as his son steals sugar cubes from his saucer. The boy licks an ice cream cone, which - since my arrival to Paris - I’ve observed is in close competition to replace cheese, the national snack.

“La Vie en Rose” can be heard coming out of the café. Nobody listens except me, the romantic tourist fool, which is exactly as the café owner intended to lure me in. I turn to the old lady with the thick fur coat and a silk scarf securely tied around her neck. She nibbles on a croissant. She doesn’t bother to glance up, instead focusing on her petite fingers picking at the crust. When I look again, it seems she’s admiring my smile. So I tilt my head sideways, closing my eyes to the tune of “La Vie en Rose” and then open them and speak to her. “No matter how often I hear it, it just melts me,” I say, but she only nods, since she doesn’t speak English.

For reasons I’d care to ignore, my mind moves to Ben, a million miles away from here. Suddenly, I feel very alone. For a split second, Paris feels like Venice, only without the gondolas.

This was our place. But then I’m quickly reminded of the reality of his life with the twins, and the image disappears like the spilled grape juice wiped from the floor with Murphy’s Oil Soap.

Suddenly an extended hand in my face, startles me. “Did you lose this?” says the man’s voice. I look up to see a gypsy holding a silver engagement ring. Panicked, I glance quickly to my finger. Relief. Mine is there, and I twirl it possessively. “No, thank
you, it’s not mine.” He pushes it in closer, insisting I take it, and thrusts his grimy hand under my chin for a reward. I put my hand up to signal “No, thank you” and decide to move to the inside tables of the café to order a Croque Monsieur.

I ask for water - “d’eau” - and the next thing I know, a carafe of mineral water, at seven euros a bottle is placed in front of me. The woman at the next table reads my frustration. She’s very haute couture looking, despite a simple wardrobe. Her hair is perfectly coiffed and she wears very little makeup. Clearly her flawless complexion has been raised in a country with the best skin care products in the world – Darphin, Clarins, Lancome. Undoubtedly she’s powdered and puffed herself for decades. Her expression softens and she smiles, as though to dispel my little burst of resentment.

“Salut,” she says, “Comment ca va?”

“Tres bien, merci, et vous?”

“Bien. Qu est ce qu it l ya?” What’s wrong?

I point to the pitcher, my mind processing French words in sudden slow motion. I can’t form a sentence, and I realize my jet lag has finally kicked in.

“C’est une carafe d’eau,” she says. “It’s a ‘pitcher of tap water’ if you want just plain water, she adds in English. It’s ‘une verre’ for a glass.”

“D’accord!” Okay! I say, and soon we unleash big Peace Treaty grins.

“Vous avez le temps de prendre un café?” Do you have time for a coffee? She pats the seat next to her.

“Oui,” I say, sliding my cup over to her table. “Um, je ne comprends um - un peu de Francais.” I can only understand a little French. I smile, sheepishly.

“I know,” she says, taking me in from head to toe as though I reminded her of herself perhaps twenty years ago. “You see the world through rose-colored glasses, n’est-ce pa?”

Great. As though she weren’t perfect enough, now she’s fluently bilingual.

“Rose-colored glasses?” I say. “I see the world more through bifocals these days,” I laugh. “I’m joking. I don’t wear bifocals, but give it time.” I pick up her spoon to stir my coffee studying the whirling crème as it dissolves into the steam. My sleepy eye lids seem to sink with it.

“Men troubles, non?” she asks.

“Men troubles. Oui.”

“Married then?” she says, her eyes darting to my finger in search of a wedding band.

“No, engaged, but I think I just broke it off,” I say, removing my ring to the table.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Me, too.”

“I’ve been married before,” she says, “I tend to collapse my former husbands into one by saying ‘married before.’”

I laugh. “So there were more than one?”

“One too many,” she says tossing her head back and running a hand under her chin and into her hair. In the language of annoying men, one doesn’t have to be fluent to get it.

“I’m sitting here thinking of the ones who got away.” I say. “Did you have one of those?”

“Oh, tres - many that got away. And you?”

“Three possible should-have-been’s. And one soulmate. Very intense romances that had a short fuse but were all-consuming at the time.”

“Then you made the right choice. A Parisian café is far more desirable and much safer.”

“Life is too short for regrets,” I say, thinking of Simone’s words.

A woman arrives, and sits next to her. They kiss, but not a peck, more a romantic and passionate kiss as if between man and woman, their mouths devouring each other for about twenty seconds. Long enough to give me the real story. It’s very clear my new friend has switched teams. She smiles sheepishly and says, “Ever since I saw “
Vicky Cristina Barcelona…”

“Together…” says the other woman, squeezing her hand.

“Scarlett and Penelope Cruz make anything seem right,” I say, and they chuckle, rubbing the backsides of each other’s hands, and then gazing deeply into each other’s eyes.

But my glance lands on the finger where my engagement ring once was. Then to the table top, but it’s gone. Panic overtakes me. Grasping the table’s edge I look left and right and then dip under the white linen cloth to glance down at the sticky marble floor, my eyes darting over the filthy grout, but it’s nowhere to be seen. And then I realize the gypsy somehow got me. Got me good.

“How many of these damn parties do we have to go to?” I ask.

“I agree,” says Kitty. “We come to Paris to get away from New Yorkers, and suddenly it seems all of New York’s art world has come to Paris.” We mount the steps of a grand apartment building that occupies an entire block just around the corner from the George V. I’m right behind Kitty’s ass which is moving rather slowly despite her very fitted, velvet Armani pants.

“Why do they have so many stairs to climb in Paris?” I ask.

They don’t believe in elevators,” says Kitty. “Actually its because the buildings are old.”

“It’s bad enough French women don’t get fat. They have to have tight asses, too?”

Kitty is now six steps away from the entrance at the top of the landing. “Oh, I can’t wait to see him,” says Kitty. “This show means everything to me.”

“Helmut will be
huge!”
I say imitating her.

“And he’ll be my rebound to get over my ex.”

“What ex?” I ask. “Clive is still your husband.”

“Oh, details, details.”

“Did anyone ever tell you you’re like some twisted Peggy Guggenheim?”

“Peggy Guggenheim was already twisted.”

Kitty stops on the last step. “Don’t you feel it? The heat? Helmut and I are insatiable!”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Helmut teases me,” says Kitty, flipping me off. “He’s always withholding from me. It’s about the longing and then the not having. He’s got me completely confused. Does he want me, doesn’t he want me? I can’t tell. But I know it makes me want to fuck him more! Not make love. But
fuck
him!” She says this a little too loudly as some guy, albeit still sober, squeezes by.

“And fuck ‘em, you should!” he says, practically spilling his
five
olive martini in Kitty’s face.

“Wait! I know you,” says Kitty. “You’re that big divorce attorney. That’s why you can afford all those olives.”

“Guilty as charged,” he says, raising his glass.

“Give me your card,” says Kitty, extending her hand.

“Kitty, you don’t need a divorce lawyer,” I say. “You’re staying married.”

“Yes, married, “says Kitty, “To the Brit. From the land of once-powerful now defunct
, tea-
drinkers!”

The lawyer reaches into his jacket pocket and hands her a card. No reason to miss out on a potential client. He smiles and moves on.

“Maybe Helmut’s withholding because he can’t get it up,” I say.

“Puh-leez!”

“Well?”

“There’s something more to life...”

“Then carbs and a hard cock?”

Kitty shoos me away as we step into the party. The room is filled front to back with beautiful people who look like they’ve stepped off the pages of French
Vogue
, probably because they have. Now I’m completely out of place. Scanning the room the guest list includes a few Barclays’ bankers, a film producer or two, a fashion photographer, the once editor of French
Vogue
- Joan Juliet Buck, the head of some major modeling agency, a few art dealers, a baron and his baroness, a recently pardoned fugitive financier from Palm Beach who swindled his clients out of millions, and the former German swimming champion.

Despite the fact that Kitty fits right in with these people - on the outside - with her Badgley Mischka, hunter green, silk jacket, I can’t help but think that on the inside Kitty’s behavior is completely inappropriate. Kitty spent so much time in life lying to herself, that now lying to Clive comes easy.

Kitty glides through the room air kissing everybody she passes - all of them lighting up with the sincerity of a Saint on Sunday. It’s kind of an oxymoron to be air-kissing all sincere-like, while I feel like a complete fraud. I’m nothing but an accomplice to her cheating; standing here in my cheap ½ price dress from last season’s clearance rack.

Oh well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, I figure. I am in Paris after all. So I make my way to Kitty. She’s just reached for a champagne glass off of a waiter’s silver platter, and now stands one hand on her hip, the other raising the crystal flute to her mouth. She takes an anxious sip, her eyes darting about, debating who her next victim might be.

I grab a wine goblet off the table. Kitty steps back and gives me the once over. Clearly whatever label I’m wearing passes her inspection. “You look nice,” says Kitty.

“Yeah, whatever,” I say. “Don’t you go trying to suck up to me now... I just hope you’re using protection. Did an article on STDs. Guess who has the highest rate of pregnancies and diseases after teens?”

“Who?”

“Women over forty. Why? Because they were married, now they’re not, and suddenly think they can go out there and have the same unprotected sex they had with their husbands.”

“Oh for godsake,” says Kitty. “I have a seven percent chance of getting pregnant at my age. And besides, Helmut has his wife, Brigeeta, so he’s not sexually active with any woman other than me.”

“What? Back up…Helmut’s married to someone named Brigeeta? Who the hell is…”

“It’s one of those European marriages.” She bats her hand in front of her face as though dismissing the obvious. “They live separate lives.”

“They do?”

“Yes, but Brigeeta comes to all of Helmut’s shows. She’s very attractive. Check her out for yourself. She just walked in the door.”

My eyes move to the door as my jaw drops in amazement, not so much because Brigeeta is a head-turner, but because Kitty could be so, well, European about such matters. And then there’s Brigeeta. She’s six foot tall. And she looks like Cher, only younger. But wait. Cher looks like Cher, only younger. I watch Brigeeta give a weak
wave to Kitty before moving to a circle of friends on the other side of the room. I’m completely at a loss for words when Kitty grabs my arm.

“Oh my god, it’s him,” says Kitty.

“Who now?”

“Christian Louboutin. In the flesh.” In walks the king of the red-soled shoes she’s always talking about, though he looks like the guy from next door in a rumpled polo shirt, wrinkled khakis and deck shoes. He’s more like the nice guy you might borrow a cup of sugar from and decide to invite over for coffee and a chocolate cupcake. He seems as out of place here as I do, though everybody flocks to this balding man with salt-and-pepper beard. He’s got twinkling eyes and a friendly smile which now makes him seem like the kind of neighbor you’d ask to stay on the couch and watch old Meg Ryan reruns over a bowl of popcorn.

“Can we ask him if it’s Loo-Boo-tin or Loh-Boo-tan?” I say.

“No, we can’t ask him that,” she snaps.