Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La! (10 page)

Even though I’d spoken my request slowly and assumed a large hotel like this would host English-speaking guests frequenty, the woman’s voice on the other end responded to me in French.

“I’m sorry, I …”

“Here.” Amy reached for the phone.
“Pardon?”
she said and then followed with several smooth sentences in which the only word I recognized was
croissants.

“Twenty-five minutes.” Amy handed the phone back to me. “I hope you don’t mind waiting that long.”

“If I feel faint, I’ll go drink your other contact.”

Amy squinted her eyes. “You’re just asking for it, Lisa-girl. I’ve never taken you out before, but I could do it right here, right now, if I had to.”

Not since junior high school had I seen Amy go through so many mood swings in such a short period of time. It was as if this were her first time away from home and away from anyone who expected her to act a certain way. She seemed to be spinning through all the options, trying to decide if she was going to be tough chick Amy-girl or Amelie, American princess abroad.

Secretly, I enjoyed watching her find herself out of her element. I suspected I was seeing the true Amy, in all her variations.

“I dare ya.” I challenged her to get out from under those puffy covers and prove to me she was brazen enough to start a catfight. It was a crazy way to begin our first day
in Paris, but somehow, after all we’d been through, it didn’t seem unreasonable.

“No,” she said with a pout. “I’m going back to sleep. Wake me when the food arrives.”

I was about to taunt her with some sort of sassy comeback when someone knocked on our door. Amy and I exchanged surprised glances. It was too soon for room service.

A knock sounded again. A male voice called out something in French. Amy’s eyes widened. She hopped out of bed and stood behind the closed door, peeking through the small viewing hole. “Oui?”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“The hotel manager. He says there’s an inspector in the lobby who wants to ask us some questions.”

The manager spoke again through the closed door. Amy turned to me. “He wants to know if we’re dressed and can go down to the lobby with him.”

Sadly, we already were dressed and had no other apparel options.

“Oui,” she answered the manager. In English she added, “We’ll be right down.” She repeated the phrase in French as I stepped into the bathroom and splashed some water on my face.

“I’m not going to put in my one contact,” Amy said. “So if we need to read any fine print or sign anything, you’ll have to do it for me.”

I didn’t explore the thought that my trying to read French fine print to her was not going to happen. Especially on an empty stomach. All I said was, “I hope this doesn’t take very long. I don’t want to miss breakfast when it shows up.”

The uniformed inspector was all business. He stood to the side of the front desk, his hands clasped behind his back. He was nothing like the traffic-directing policeman in my dream the night before. And, as an added reality check, not a single Monkee popped out from behind the counter or rode a tricycle through the lobby.

“Bon jour,” the inspector said without smiling.

“Bon jour,” Amy and I repeated in unison.

He motioned for us to be seated on the only sofa and chair situated in the small lobby area. We were barely settled in before he asked us a question. Amy took it from there. Every so often she turned to me and asked for verification. Did the driver have dark hair? How tall would we estimate he was? Any distinguishing marks?

“I thought we went over all this last night,” I said to Amy, while nodding politely to the inspector.

“No. The questions last night were about the taxi and where the driver picked us up.”

The inspector took notes on a small pad of paper with a Montblanc pen. I noticed his long fingers and trim nails. His watch was gold and shaped like a rectangle. It was too bad I hadn’t noticed as many details about our driver last night.

While Amy was nodding in response to one of the questions, I looked out the glass doors and noticed a taxi double-parked in front of the hotel. Two more taxis went around the idling car. I tried to imagine how many hundreds of taxis were driving around this huge city. Another taxi sped around the parked one, and I felt a new empathy for the police and their challenge of finding our contraband cab among perhaps thousands.

The automatic doors opened, and a dark-haired taxi driver entered pulling two wheeled suitcases behind him. He left a third suitcase outside on the curb. With my new powers of observation warming up, I noticed that he was wearing a gray sweater, but his head was down so I couldn’t see his face. And no passengers were exiting the taxi. The luggage was being delivered sans hotel guests. A dozen reasons could explain such a drop-off, but the instant I spotted Amy’s bright yellow luggage tags dangling from the otherwise nondescript black bags, I screamed.

Jumping to my feet, I charged toward the cabbie yelling, “Hey, you! What are you doing? Stop!”

He bolted, entered the taxi through the passenger side, and peeled out into the flow of traffic. An immediate chorus of honking from the other cars accompanied his getaway.

The inspector looked at me and then at Amy. She was rattling a string of words in French as I ran outside and grabbed what turned out to be my suitcase from the sidewalk where the cabbie had left it. I dashed back inside.
Amy was holding on to one of her luggage tags and nodding wildly.

With one swift motion, the inspector stormed the front desk, commandeered the telephone out of the hand of the dazed desk clerk, punched in some numbers, and barked orders. Three other hotel personnel appeared from a back room just as an older German-speaking couple exited the elevator. Everyone talked at once while the inspector shouted over the commotion.

Amy and I looked at each other open mouthed. A smile of uncontrollable exuberance lit up Amy’s face. We both laughed.

I didn’t want to be the doubting Thomas, but this was too bizarre. Too good to be true. I hurried to open my suitcase and immediately saw that all my neatly packed belongings had been rifled through.

“Amy, don’t get too excited yet.”

She sifted through her suitcase and pulled out a small slip of orange paper. “Hey, did you get one of these?”

Typed in English was a notice that U.S. Customs had searched her luggage as part of a routine security check. Spotting a matching orange card in my muddle of clothes, I withdrew my unbelief.

“Yes, my luggage was inspected, too.”

“See!” Amy still was giggling. “God sent the thief back here this morning with our luggage. Isn’t that a scream? Who says God doesn’t answer prayer?”

Just then the inspector darted past us and ran out to the squad car that had pulled up in front of the hotel. The chase was on.

“Ooh! Don’t you just want to go follow them?” Amy asked.

“Ah, no.” I zipped up my suitcase.

“Come on, Lisa! Where’s your sense of adventure?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at Amy. “You know, as tempting as it sounds to go running around more unfamiliar streets in Paris in pursuit of a deranged taxi driver who demonstrated a strange sense of propriety in returning our belongings, I think I’d rather go upstairs and see if our breakfast has been delivered. Then I’d prefer to take a long hot shower and change clothes. To be honest.”

“Well, I do always want you to be honest,” Amy said, still smiling.

We rolled our luggage into the elevator, and Amy said, “Can you believe this? We asked God to bring our luggage to us, and He did.”

Something inside me felt compelled to launch into a clarification of how prayer works. It seemed important to point out that God doesn’t have to do what we ask, just because we cry out to Him whenever we have a problem. Things don’t always go the way we think they should. This time it just happened to turn out favorably for us.

Then I realized I didn’t have to explain God to Amy. Why was I trying to protect His reputation? All Amy
wanted was to be delighted with what He had done.

She stood in the elevator beside me, lifting up her chin all the way and with a wide smile whispering, “Thank You, Papa! You are incredible! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!”

I nodded my agreement with Amy in much the same way I’d passively acknowledged her prayer on the street corner last night. She was the one having all the fun and all the joy, celebrating the three little lost sheep that had come back to us.

But then, she was the one who took the first step of faith and asked. I had written off the luggage as lost for good.

A
n hour later,
after we each took a fabulous shower with a fragrant bar of hotel soap, and fluffy buttery croissants were resting merrily in our bellies, Amy gleefully wiggled into her skinny jeans. “They fit! I can zip them up easily. Look!”

“Voilá!” I said, sharing her moment of success. I poured myself another cup of coffee from a simple thermos coffeepot that was oh so elegantly French with its trim style.

“Travel agrees with me,” Amy said in a brazen tone.

I laughed so hard I had to wipe the tears from my eyes. My friend had come a long way in twelve hours. Fresh starts like the one we were experiencing are so sweet after a disastrous first run. I had great hope that we were in for a much smoother ride from here on out.

“Would you mind if I unpacked everything before we
go exploring?” Amy asked. “I need to hang up a few things; hopefully the wrinkles will fall out.”

“Fine with me. We have the rest of the day, the rest of the week to see everything we want. Take your time.”

Settling on the edge of my bed, I watched Amy unpack. First one full suitcase, then the other. It was like watching a magic show; I kept waiting to see what she would pull out next.

“Do you have any white rabbits in there?”

“Any what?” She pulled out a long scarf, oblivious to how much she was mimicking an illusionist.

“I just can’t believe how much you fit into those two suitcases.”

I had hung up my four articles of interchangeable clothing in our narrow closet and had used two hangers. Amy used the other ten hotel hangers and then pulled out a dozen of her own metal ones. The next outfit she hung up was really something: a rich golden-colored sleeveless dress. It had a sash around the waist and a full skirt. The top was accented with shimmering brocade and came with a short jacket trimmed in the same extravagant material.

“Wow! Where did you get that? I’ve never seen that outfit.”

“Grandmere made it when I was in college. I’ve never worn it.”

“Amy, it’s gorgeous.” I stood up to examine the details.

“I know. And it fits me now. It was too small in college,
but I never told Grandmere after she sent it to me. Even when I couldn’t wear it for the past twenty years, I just couldn’t get rid of it.”

“Hold it up. Oh, Amy, the color is beautiful with your hair and skin.”

“I know it was crazy to pack this, but I thought I might wear it if we went out to some fancy place for dinner.”

“Definitely.” I glanced at my one wrinkle-free knee-length travel skirt and tried to think of what I’d wear if we actually did end up going somewhere nice enough for Amy to don her designer outfit.

“It’s really beautiful,” I said, focusing on Amy and not on my limited options. “And it’s timeless, you know? It’s the kind of outfit Grace Kelly could have worn in the fifties, yet it’s still in style today.”

Amy smiled. “Grandmere would have loved you even more for saying that.”

Finishing the task of unpacking her excessive wardrobe, Amy reached for a final nibble of her neglected croissant and declared that she was ready to take on the day. We exited the hotel with a minimalist plan. We vaguely knew we wanted to start with the Musée d’Orsay, an art museum near our hotel. The Louvre seemed too daunting for our first day, and being less than eager to take another taxi or figure out the Metro system, we opted for a place close enough to walk.

As we stepped from under the protective and lengthy
portico arcade of the Rue de Rivoli and paused to cross the road, a zesty breeze caught up with us. We marched across a wide bridge marked “Pont Royal” and stopped halfway, buttoning up against the breeze.

“Let me take your picture.” I motioned for Amy to stand by the railing. As I stepped back, Amy stretched out both arms as if wildly embracing the fresh air of Paris like a long-lost relative.

When I joined her by the side of the bridge, we paused to look down on the Seine River. The slow canal wound its way around the neck of medieval Paris like a green ruffled boa. The ancient face of this city was certainly age-creviced beyond anything a vat of wrinkle cream could do for her. But she was regal and proud and greeted us with her shoulders back and her chin forward.

We crossed the bridge and stood in line for tickets to the Musée d’Orsay, which was located in the huge transformed central train station. I skimmed the tour book, trying to remember why Amy wanted to come here first. The book said the Orsay museum was proud host to art from the 1800s, which meant it was rich in examples of impressionism. This was the place to experience the best of the works of artists such as Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Manet, and, of course, Monet.