Plan C (31 page)

And then I sneeze.

“Gesundheit,” says Helmut who’s arrived next to me and Kitty. She’s staring fixedly at Helmut and I can’t take it anymore – she’s getting a little too “Fatal Attraction.” Next thing I know somebody will be boiling a bunny! Doesn’t she know that the person who cares more in a relationship has less power? She’s given Helmut all the power. And he’s just not worth it. Whereas Clive - gosh, Clive is worth any risk. But would Clive even take her back? It might be her biggest gamble on earth, but Clive is definitely the Bellagio.

And then it occurs to me, the one way to get through to my Kitty Kat is her Blackberry. She never ignores her Blackberry, but unfortunately I didn’t bring my cell phone. “Mommy’s in Paris,” remember?

But then there’s that guy from earlier – with the wrinkled cashmere jacket and broccoli fetish. I reach out to him as he passes, that I need to borrow his cell. He obliges, handing me his phone and I thumb in her number. The text reads, “We need to talk NOW! xo Libby.” I hit the send button, hand the phone back to the guy, and shoo him away.

I walk back to Kitty’s side just as her phone beeps – but for once, she ignores it! “Kitty, your phone…” I say, but she continues to ignore it and worse than that, now she’s
ignoring me! Her eyes melt into Helmut’s who makes his way to her face with his lips. “Don’t give me that look,” I hear him whisper to Kitty. “You know I have to withhold the cock from you every now and then.”

Who’s he kidding? Like any man in the entire universe would ever
say
that to a woman. And certainly not a man who was all
about
his cock! I can see through him as if he were holding a microscope at my kitchen drain. And what I’m seeing is pure impotence.

Kitty’s lips are under his nose. “Fine. I can wait,” she murmurs. “But how many women have you slept with in your lifetime?”

Helmut inhales and glances up to the ceiling. “One hundred and fifty three and a half.”

“A half…” I say.

“You fucked a midget?” says Kitty.

“Yes, but she was all woman,” he says.

“Well, it doesn’t’ matter,” says Kitty giggling, “because I intend to pour all my passion into your art. We’ll keep it strictly business.”

“That’s right. My art is everything. But you aren’t
just
my gallerist,” says Helmut kissing her forehead, “you are my muse, my inspiration. You make my love for art larger than life.”

They can sense me staring at them. My stomach churns. I think I’m going to vomit. “I’m gonna call it a night,” I mumble, turning to go.

“Auf wiedersehn,” says Kitty.

But as I go, I run smack dab into a tall, dark and handsome man who’s wearing a black Italian silk shirt which exudes a hint of Davidoff cologne. How do I know this? Because my nose is buried in his chest. He steps back to admire me and extends a hand. “Enchanté. Etienne Langlois.”

Honoré de Balzac once said, “The bar of a café is the parliament of the people.” Well, if that’s the case then why is this place so empty? From where I’m sitting, in this striped banquette at Café Laurent, it’s deader than Pere Lachaise. The drizzly view outside the window isn’t much better - pitch dark and dreary. The days are getting shorter as they inch their way toward Christmas. Even “La Vie En Rose” is beginning to sound like the same “Auld Lang Syne.”

And when your daily baguette has lost its thrill, what’s left? I thought Paris would inspire me to write more, but my creativity has been completely shattered. I have nothing to show from days on end at my keyboard except a few crumbs. My internet was down until this morning when I anxiously hit the send/receive button and saw my inbox filling with emails. Emails from an editor who owes Simone a favor, offering me a food writing assignment; emails from everybody back in the states; emails from everybody except Ben.

American assignments seem miles away - probably because they are, and probably because my customarily article-inspired mind has been overwhelmed by the
disturbances coming from the apartment building across the street. Every morning, when I toss open the sash on my fourteen-foot windows, I’m greeted by construction men sand-blasting floors in the next building. As I sip my coffee and head for my keyboard, the construction guys up the air pressure on the conveyor-belt, sending giant farts exploding through the neighborhood. So much for the music of pedestrians’ heels click-clacking up the street, or the echoes of their morning “Bonjours!” Even the clanking of dishes being stacked by Jacques’s busboy in the restaurant below has been subjugated.

I tried hanging out in the laundromat - a place where I can separate my towels from my delicates, and my bad ideas from my good ones - but a pair of lovers has chosen my folding-bench to lip-lock the afternoon away, and that’s not a spectacle I’m in any mood to watch.

Of course there’s always the Seine. But today a chill wind is whipping off its blackened wave caps. The river bank is where I used to fantasize about romance, but now I just scurry past, hiking my collar up to warm my neck and chest. Standing under the Invalides Bridge this morning, thinking darkly about how my pathetic supply of euros has been translating to even-more-pathetic dollars, I heard the traffic overhead and wondered what would happen if I threw myself in the river. The way my luck has been running, it wouldn’t be the potential love of my life who would jump in and save me. It would be the homeless man, whom I’d just passed as he was setting up his cardboard shack. Swimming to shore would constitute his first bath in months. Maybe he’d have to practice his rusty CPR on my mouth, his whiskey-laden breath jolting me horribly back to life.

Despite this being the city of lights I feel as though every bulb has burned dim. So maybe an assignment is coming in from Simone’s friend. If I don’t get about five more, really soon, I’ll be setting up my box shack right next to his!

We spend our entire lives wondering where we belong, and somehow I don’t feel like I belong here. Or anywhere. Or so my ATM receipt is telling me.

But do I belong with Ben? Is all the other stuff - the baggage he comes with - really important? Truth is, unlike that bum on the cardboard bed, I’ve been well-fed and well-cared for, I’ve had heat to keep me warm and a roof over my head. I remember what Grandma Vi defined as her idea of perfect happiness. All it took was an electric clothes drier, a color television set, and fresh mint leaves from the Armenian produce store to put in her iced tea. For her, Plan A would have been plan enough.

The longest relationship we have in life is with ourselves. I guess I could learn to be alone, right? But I’m not. I have company. The gypsy boy is back, seemingly from out of nowhere, tapping me on the shoulder and presenting a silver ring in the palm of his hand. My heart lights up as I examine it closer. It
is
my ring! I grab it from his sweating palm, not even thinking to reprimand him, and slip it over my left ring finger’s dampened knuckle until it’s snugly back where it belongs. I clasp my hand to my chest and then extend it before me, turning my hand left and right as the diamond catches the lights from the street lamp. Reaching into my purse, I hand the gypsy twenty euros, but he bolts from my side and disappears before inquiring if I want any change.

*

I slump into the banquette. I can’t believe I fell for that Etienne. And his infamous line: “Here is ze slipper. And not one, but two balls.” Well, it would be a good story to tell all my girlfriends over a bottle of wine… “And there I was, standing in front of his statue-of-David physique, my mouth agape, fighting the temptation to look down at his giant, um, knob…”

Amazing how fast the booze wears off when you’re put in an odd situation. Amazing how fast I was capable of bolting out the door and down the hallway to the elevator. The hallway that never seemed to end. It hadn’t been a walk of shame, it had been a walk of shock. I don’t recall whether I glanced back over my shoulder to see if Etienne was watching. Luckily - and let’s face it, this never happens - the elevator dinged almost immediately when I hit the button.

The doors slid shut. Exhale. Safety. Exhale. Going down. Okay. At least I’d left before anything really happened. Tiny clock hand hitting lobby. Ding. Lobby entrance. Ding. I hadn’t even looked down at his…Ding. Light bulb. Ding dong. The shoes!

I was barefoot. How could I leave without the shoes? Panic set in faster than my mind could process what I knew would have to happen next. They were Kitty’s expensive shoes, and Kitty would kill me if I didn’t return them. I had to go back.

With my wits a bit more about me than just five minutes ago, I held my head high and entered the elevator with a woman who was too busy staring at my feet to say “good evening.” I hit the button to Etienne’s floor. Silence riding up. When the doors opened I
proceeded to the right, strutting down the hall. Would I knock gently or ring his buzzer? Would he show up at the door naked, or would he now be wearing his robe?

Neither one, as it turned out. Because there he was - Etienne in the tanned flesh – standing completely naked in the hallway, Kitty’s shoes dangling from his left hand.

He smiled slyly at me and said, “I knew ze Princess would return.”

“For the shoes,” I said, snatching them out of his hand.

And I turned around and was gone.

*

I rearrange my dignity in the banquet as though the people at the next table can read the escapades inside my mind. But I know they can’t, so I turn my thoughts to what really matters. Ben. How many times had I snuggled up to Ben’s bicep right in this very spot. If he were just here to have a conversation with, I’d so love to listen to him speak - so rich with information, so challenging, so complex, and so entertaining. Ben is like a big book worth buying the entire coffee table for.

Thinking of him makes me long to fall in love with him all over again but I can’t allow it. Granted I can’t be screwing around with every Tom, Dick and Prince Etienne either, but I have to remember Ben might never be. Fiddling with the coaster in front of me, the white one with a blue etching of a man’s profile, I’m startled when a real man slides into my booth. It’s him - the man on the coaster - the café manager.

“Madame Libby! Bonjour!” he says, looking around to see if Ben might be in the vicinity.

“Oh, bonjour!” I say. “Je suis seule.” I am alone.

“Oh, so
sad
,” he says, in his French hairball accent. He rises up, grabs a bottle of white wine from the bar, and pours me a glass. He places it in front of me and I’m about to say “I don’t drink in the daytime” but why the hell not? Maybe Kitty was right. Picking up the goblet I raise the goblet to him, and he smiles and heads over to the center of the room, where a band is setting up for this evening’s performance.

My mind instantly digs back to one of those silly little things Ben taught me. “With white, you never hold the goblet, because your body heat will warm its contents. You grasp the stem. Like so.” Somehow when he said that over a candle-lit dinner and I was a wee bit drunk it always sounded so much more intelligent. He knew he had my attention, and he’d continue on with his wine lesson. He would lift the buttery liquid to the candle’s flame, our gazes and glasses would meet over the flicker, and then he’d say very smoothly, “Now with cognac….” and he’d make me giggle… “You cradle the glass like this.” I’d watch him swirling the glass in the crook of his hand, all the while staring longingly at me, his eyes slipping to my breast with a stare that was both naughty and desirous. Once I heard him whisper, “la belle poitrine” – French for beautiful bosom.

The band has finished setting up and they decide to practice a song, motioning to me to see if it’s okay, since I’m the only one in the café. “D’accord!” I say, with a warm smile, and the piano player begins. But seconds later I recognize the notes. It’s “Unconditional Love” – a song Ben wrote especially for me. Oh God, I think to myself, scanning the table for silverware. But there isn’t any. Too bad. I really need to stick a fork in my neck to end this misery.

A cell phone rings, and I realize it’s mine. Okay, I lied. Remember when I promised that I’d left that outgoing message that said, “Call back later, Mommy’s in Paris?” Well, I did, but that was on my
American
phone. This is my French cell phone – the one I’m renting, “in case of emergency.” Its outgoing message is some computer-generated monstrosity. The Caller ID tells me that it’s Ben. But, I don’t answer it. I can’t. Not because I don’t
want
to but because I honestly don’t know
how
to. There’s a manual back at my apartment. In French.

Just as well, I say, slipping the phone back into my purse. Better to play “hard to get,” even though some part of me is itching to tell Ben how I met Rosemary’s first ex, Jean-Francois, at a trendy French party. But as it rings and rings, the screen lit from within my purse, I feel farther away from America than ever.

Finally it stops. Then a second later it rings again. As I attempt to silence it, I hit a button and I hear somebody saying “Hello?”

“Hello?” I say, bringing the phone to my ear.

“Are you sipping coffee?” says Bebe.

“Bebe? Oh, my Bebe!” I say, putting a finger in my other ear so I can hear her voice over the rehearsing band. “Bebe, it’s so good to hear your voice. I miss you!”

“I miss you, too, but if you’re sipping coffee, put the cup down right now. I don’t want you to spray it across the room or stain whatever pretty dress you’re wearing.”

“Its down” I say, staring guiltily at my empty wine glass.

“Okay,” Bebe exhales deeply. “I’m coming to see you. In Paris! I’m bringing Tamara. And most importantly, I’ve dumped Bernie.”

“Oh, there is a God!”

“Oh Libby, you’re funny. You’re sounding like Kitty.”

“Well that’s not good.”

“No, it’s all good. I thought about what you said. Life is short. Time to take risks. And you want to know the truth?”

“I thought so until recently,” I say.

I can hear her smiling through the phone. “I don’t know a lot of things, but I know I don’t want Bernie in my life. I don’t want any man in my life right now.”