Plan C (37 page)

“You don’t bring a bottle of wine to a private dinner party,” says Kitty. “Not in France. It’s gauche.”

“Really? Since when?”

“You don’t know what the menu will be – red, white, what? Champagne is acceptable.”

“But you didn’t bring champagne.”

“I brought chocolates,” she says, lifting the bag. “Is that your dress for tonight?” She points to the dry-cleaning bag slung over my shoulder.

“Yeah, my good-luck dress.”

Kitty takes my arm, escorting me toward the bakery. When you’re single on New Years Eve there’s nothing like a Little Napoleon to cure your sweet tooth and broken heart. “I was thinking about the five things women need to know about a man…”

“Oh…” I say, always amazed at how her mind ticks.

“One, it’s important a man has a job,” says Kitty. “Two: that he can make you laugh.”

“So far so good.”

“Three. It’s important that a man doesn’t lie. Four, it’s important that he loves you and spoils you.”

“Yes, I know. And number five.,,:

“It’s important that these other four men don’t know about each other.”

“Very funny, but I thought you learned your lesson.”

“Yes, I did,” she says lowering her head, as though to suggest her shame. Actually that’s not why. She’s just staring at the pastries on the lower level of the glass case.

“Sooooo….” I say, hesitating. “Want to hear my big news?”

“You’re not pregnant?”

“No, silly. I sold four articles. Seems my blog is a hit, and I’ve been asked to do three more assignments.”

“That’s great!”

“I can’t believe I did it,” I say. “New year, new life…”

“And no Ben,” says Kitty, finishing my sentence.

“No Ben,” I pout.

“I know,” says Kitty, her eyes playing hockey between an éclair and a custard tarte.

“He’s the one thing that’s missing. We had hot kisses for years, you know? And usually kissing is the first thing to go in a relationship…” My tone drifts off, but Kitty’s eyes find mine. “Ben used to say kisses die off after the newness wears off. But, our newness lasted ten years. It still lasts. I mean, even when we were breaking up, just after my speech, he kissed me that day and I got shooting thrills that went from my tongue through my breasts straight down to…”

“That’s nice…”

“It was nice. Thank you,” I say.

“I get it now. I really do. I’m a changed woman,” says Kitty.

“Really?”

“Yes. Doing hard time will do that to you.”

“We were barely in jail for five hours.”

The woman behind the counter awaits our order. I raise my finger to tell her we need a few more moments to decide.

“Don’t you have hot kisses with Clive?”

“I don’t know. Yes. We did.” She sighs. She’d rather think about the raspberry, crème and chocolate tortes.

“I want to go back to Ben,” I announce. “Ben’s good for me. He really is. I was only seeing the bad in him which was his out-of-control twins, not how great he is. I
mean, Ben is the guy who buys me Mother’s Day gifts from my daughters because their own father never did.”

“That’s really sweet, Libby…”

“And he’s a composer which is basically the same as being a writer, like me. He’s so smart about writing in general, which is why I always let him edit my articles. There’s something about the way he grabs his sharpened pencil and starts making corrections on my hard copy. And then midway through, without saying a word to me about how bad my word choices are, I hear the grind of the pencil sharpener and I know there are more edits. He always hands back my pages with a big smile and the words ‘good job.’ And he kisses me on my forehead.”

“You know I think Ben’s a good guy.”

“And Clive’s a good guy, Kitty.” Suddenly I’m not interested in pastries. “Listen, I’ve made a decision. I’m flying back home tomorrow. It’s the first day of the year. I’m going back to Ben, assuming he’ll still have me. Won’t he still have me, Kitty? I mean it’s not like I cheated…”

Kitty lowers her head. “No, you didn’t.” Her tone suggesting that she did.

“I’m not judging you, but you know the whole Helmut thing was ridiculous. Let’s go home together. Both of us. Ben is the love of my life. He’s the man I can be completely honest with even if I robbed a bank.”

“Or a museum?”

Kitty orders the raspberry torte and I decide on the pear and chocolate tart. Taking them to go, we stroll to the apartment, but we can’t hold off that long. Kitty fingers reach into the bag. “Do you think it is better to love or to be loved?” she asks.

“I don’t know about better, but it’s certainly
easier
to be loved,” I say.

“You have to believe you deserve to be loved, right? Maybe I don’t believe that I deserve to be loved by Clive. Maybe I don’t think I deserve to be loved by any man, and that’s the real problem.”

“What about unconditional love?” I ask. “After my mom died, I completely lost that.”

“I think love can be unconditional like with our mothers. But it’s relationships that are conditional. They have boundaries….’”

We pass a flower stand. “Hey, let me grab our hosts some flowers, too,” I say, reaching for a bouquet of chrysanthemums.

Kitty pulls my arm back. “Are you crazy? Chrysanthemums signify death in France.”

“Then they’re perfect.” I go into a French accent, “I feel like
dying.
We feel like
dying
. Our love lives are dead, remember?”

“How about a butternut squash,” says Kitty, grabbing one from the bin at the vegetable stand next door.

“Unlike America we won’t be finding any rock hard peaches this time of year,” I say.

“When they say seasonal they mean seasonal.”

“Okay, you know what? For tonight, I’m going to bake a pumpkin pie. Something old fashioned…And American.”

“You’re a good baker, but it takes balls to bake a pie for a famous French chef.”

My eyes can’t seem to disengage from the vegetable bins. “The thing I’m going to miss most about Paris…”

“This farmer’s market,” says Kitty, squeezing my hand. “I know. Roaming through the stalls, sniffing the stinky cheeses, examining the firmness of an orange…”

“The little dog who roams around everyday looking for handouts over near the fish market where today’s catch was just thrown onto ice slabs,” I say. Upon seeing me, a cute fisherman ignites a big electric smile. “And the smile of the fisherman putting it there.” I wink back.

“I love that there’s no such thing as fat-free in France yet everybody is skinny,” says Kitty. “Whole milk, pure sugar, no artificial sweeteners…”

“And real butter,” I say. “Forget margarine.”

“And…”

*

…Frogs legs. At the New Year’s Eve dinner at the home of the great chef, Jacques Gagne, I quickly learn that frog legs don’t actually taste like chicken, so I move them around on the plate to give the illusion of being eaten. And besides, I’m already full of olives, caviar, foie gras and champagne.

The gleaming silverware and the roaring fireplace represent holiday perfection. The only thing missing is a lover. The only thing missing is Ben.

But we have our lovely hosts. Mrs. Gagne sits at the head of the table across from Jacques Gagne at the opposite end of the table. To Jacques’s left, and posed on the
Oriental carpet is Jacques’s beloved dog, General Paton, looking like he’s stepped off the pages of
Town & Country
Magazine with his velvet-red ribbon collar. To my right are two empty seats, and to Kitty’s left are two empty seats. One was to be for Bebe and one for Tamara, but our many attempts to reach them have failed. We can only assume they’ve missed their flight and are sitting in a hot tub in Gstaad celebrating on their own.

There’s a board of cheese to my right, a board of cheese to my left, and well, let’s just say the cheese doesn’t stand alone. Our hostess must be sleeping with the guy who runs the local fromagerie. Cheese is everywhere on the table – Cantal, Gouda, Brie. All begging me to take a nibble. Kitty gives me a look that says, “Do not touch the cheese until
after
the meal,” even though a small piece of Chevre is crying out “Eat me! Eat me, now!”

Our silverware gently clanks and we hear an arising ruckus from outside the dining room window. The screams grow to concert level, and soon the scream of police cars joins them – the klaxons in France sounding like a flock of honking ducks. Mrs. Gagne dabs her lips with her napkin and rises. “Pardon,” she says.

I follow. Kitty right behind me.

The three of us look down at crowds of women huddled together, shrieking, their knees bent as though their legs might give way. They yank at their hair, the look on their faces hungry and desperate. Now there’s a limo slowing down, a door opening, and cameras clicking wildly. Policemen’s arms hold back the tidal wave of females as a figure jumps from the car. Hands thrust forward vying for autographs. “For godsake, you’d think Johnny Depp had just arrived,” I say.

“It’s only young people celebrating New Year’s Eve,” says Mrs. Gagne. “Seem to be excited about somebody’s entrance.”

“Probably Americans,” says Jacques, still seated.

But something strange is going on down there. For one thing, the limo is a real rent-a-wreck – a late-90s model with one door badly repainted and a giant gouge in the other, dented fenders, a smashed headlight. And the man who has jumped out, the one everyone’s mobbing, didn’t come from the back seat. He’s the driver.

“Daddy!” screams Kitty. Sure enough, it’s Screamin J Pepper, who is making his way through the crowd to open the passenger door for his companion.

“Timing is everything!” says Jacques, tossing his napkin. “My soufflé!”

Mrs. Gagne moves to the entry, but the new arrivals have already made their way up the staircase.

“Sorry we’re late,” says Screamin’ J Pepper. We were at Nicholas and Carla’s. Once he gets talking about the unions…” Screamin’ J moves his hand to mimick the open and close of a blabbing mouth.

We do the round of greetings and our eyes fall upon Screamin’ J Pepper’s date, a gorgeous woman of a certain age, dripping in pedigree and pearls. Her blonde hair is swept up in a flawless chignon. “Hope you don’t mind I brought Janey,” he says.

“Oh, Princess Windisch-Baden,” says Mrs. Gagne. “So honored you could join us. Please…” Mrs. Gagne extends her hand to direct the two newcomers to the dinner table and then Jacques places a ceramic pot of coq au vin in the center. It joins the tray of grilled sea bass with white butter sauce and chervil that Jacques previously placed on a trivet there. I know. I’m keeping notes for my French food blog.

We return to our seatings, Janey sitting next to me in what would have been Bebe’s chair. I look across at Kitty and raise a glass to Screamin’ J without saying a word. He knows that I’m thinking how grateful I am that he bailed us out of the Barbizon jail. He raises his goblet in return and I tip my head and flash a sentimental grin, but my mind is someplace else. It must be said that if somebody asked who would play the role of Screamin’ J Pepper in the movie version of my life, it would have to be, hands down, that ageing rock star Bill Nighey, in the movie “
Love Actually
.”

My thoughts drift back to our Barbizon escapade, so frightening at the time, and now so in retrospect, so silly and absurd. And speaking of absurd, Kitty seems to have launched into one of her insanely hard-to-follow stories. And poor Screamin’ J is actually trying to follow it….

“…So as I was saying,” says Kitty, “this friend of mine, she was engaged to a guy in wheelchair. He was a refugee from Albania. They crossed the Mexican desert…”

“In the wheelchair?” asks Screamin’ J Pepper.

“Okay, maybe he wasn’t in a wheelchair,” says Kitty, and we all break into laughter. “Forget the wheelchair. I’m on my fourth bottle of wine. Anyway, he cut his foot on coral…”

“In the desert?” says Jacques. “Coral in a desert?”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t coral, but anyway, it’s a long story but she got pregnant,” says Kitty.

“By the guy in the wheelchair?” asks Screamin’ J Pepper.

“No, forget the wheelchair. Just think of the sex,” says Kitty. “The point is she realized he was a virgin. The guy didn’t know the difference between her clitoris and a light bulb!”

“He clearly wasn’t a Frenchman,” says Jacques.

Everyone laughs.

“Then one day I’m visiting them,” says Kitty. “And I walk in the guest bedroom looking for something and there’s the guy in the wheelchair
banging
the cleaning lady!”

“Maybe he thought she was the light switch,” I say.

“He must have been a Brit,” says Jacques.

“How did you know that?” asks Kitty.

“The French may be arrogant in bed, but we love sex and we understand it. The British are….bent,” says Jacques calmly sipping his wine.

We all laugh but Kitty isn’t hearing it.

“Clive isn’t like that,” she says. And I’m proud of her for defending him.

“What do you mean, ‘Clive isn’t like that,” says Jacques “Sure he is. Throw him on a train going through a blizzard in Siberia, and I’ll bet Clive would sleep with the young man in the next bunk.” More laughter as Jacques refills all our wine glasses.

I rise from my chair and grab a few empty dishes. “May I help clear the table?” I ask.

“No,” says Mrs. Gagne. “I have kitchen help from the restaurant downstairs. You sit. Relax. You Americans are always so rushed.”

“Even Louis XVI ate a relaxing meal before being guillotined,” say Jacques.

“That’s insane,” I say.

“Insane but true,” says Jacques. “Aperitifs, soups, fowl, roasts, cheeses, compotes, the best Champagne, a fine Bourdeaux…”

“The works,” says Screamin’ J Pepper.

“Even topped it off with a cappuccino,” says Princess Janey.

I excuse myself again for the powder room, persistent to drop off a few dirty plates along the way. I swing through the louver door and see my pumpkin pie sitting on the counter. I pop it in Jacques’s oven knowing it’s best served warm with the cool fresh crème whipped earlier. Sliding it on the metal rungs, I close the oven door and can’t figure out the French words on the dial, so I take my chances. I turn the knob to the left and then glance up at the clock. My heart stops: 11:15 p.m. in Paris. Exactly forty-five minutes until the stroke of twelve. Forty-five minutes until there’s nobody to kiss after screaming out “Happy New Year!”