Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La! (15 page)

“I think we better wait till morning to call,” Amy said. “It’s so late.”

“I wonder if he wants more details.” I slipped into the bathroom. “Because I don’t think there’s much else we could tell him. Hey, I’m going to take a shower to warm up, unless you want to take one first.”

“No, I’m too tired.”

By the time I emerged ready for bed, Amy already was asleep. She had the television news on low. I watched CNN for a while in the dim light, curious to see what was happening at home and in the rest of the world. It struck me that with only one station available, it could influence a viewer’s opinion of world events without the person even realizing it. At home we had several news channels to choose from, so we heard various angles on the same story. I felt far from home for the first time on our trip.

I didn’t miss home very much. I missed Joel but not too much. Mostly I felt privileged to be in Paris with Amy and even more privileged to experience this adventure with her in such comfort.

Wrapping the extra blanket from the closet around my shoulders, I pulled the corner chair up to the window. A wonder-world of glimmering lights filled my view. For a long time I hid behind the fold of the open drapes and watched Paris sleep.

In the solitude I thought about Gerard. I thought about my childhood. I thought about all the expectations placed on me in my early years and how diligently I had tried to follow the rules and stay off the punishment radar screen at my house. I thought about how old I was and how Amy seemed so much younger than me. She retained some sort of lovely strain of lightheartedness from our childhood while I … well, I mostly hid. Hiding felt familiar. It seemed the only way to keep from feeling overwhelmed.

Padding over to my bed, I burrowed under the covers and recalled the hitchhiking flute notes from the Metro. They played an evening serenade for me. Sleep came with a snuffer and put out all my flickering thoughts.

I woke to the sound of Amy dialing the phone.

“What time is it?” I mumbled.

“Eight o’clock, sleepyhead.”

“I hope you’re calling room service for a pot of coffee, Little Miss Merry Sunshine.”

“No, I’m calling the inspector.”

I rolled over in bed and tried to snatch another few moments of precious sleep while Amy engaged in a lengthy phone conversation accompanied by a lot of note taking on a piece of hotel stationery.

“You’re not going to believe this!” Amy exclaimed after she hung up.

“Are you going to call for coffee now?” I muttered.

“Lisa, forget the coffee. You and I are heroes!”

“Good.” I still hadn’t opened my eyes. “When the people of Paris decide to construct a statue to commemorate our ability to be duped by a local con artist, may I pretty please pose with a cup of coffee in my hand?”

“You didn’t even hear why we’re heroes!” Amy came over and bounced on the end of my bed. “Wake up! Look at me. They got the guy. The inspector caught the taxi driver. He said it was because of us!”

I forced myself up on my elbows and squinted at the beaming Amy Morning Glory. “Really?”

“Yes! How’s that for making our mark on this fine city?”

“We don’t have to identify the guy in a lineup or anything, do we?”

“No. The inspector was calling to say that as his way of personally thanking us, he would like to treat us to dinner tomorrow night at his brother’s restaurant.”

I looked at Amy skeptically. “Is that normal?”

“It’s a very French thing to do. I have the directions. Our reservations are for eight o’clock. So, let’s get going and see what we can see between now and eight o’clock tomorrow night.”

I flopped back in bed. “You call for the coffee, and I’ll lie here and decide what to wear to our award ceremony.”

“Come on.” Amy tugged at my blankets and shone her bright mood all over me. “The day awaits us! Let’s get out in it and find some breakfast. It will be something new, instead of the same old croissants and coffee.”

I failed to see how scrumptious flaky croissants and splendid French roast coffee with real cream had turned into “the same old” after only two mornings. But I knew better than to argue, so I tumbled out of bed in an effort to keep up with Amy-girl. She seemed determined to kick our sightseeing up a notch and demonstrate to me how to “shake what my mama gave me.” Shirleene would have been proud of her.

I, on the other hand, wanted to slip her a sleeping pill.

I
can describe our day of sightseeing
with one word. Exasperating.

We ate a leisurely breakfast at a café three doors down from our hotel. The rain from the night before continued to keep the streets slick, and as a result, we witnessed a fender bender out the window. It seemed like a good day for the Louvre. And a good day for umbrellas, which we purchased from a sidewalk vendor for five euros each. Mine broke within two blocks on our way to the Louvre when a sharp wind popped it inside out. As the wind rose, the April shower turned fierce.

Huddling under Amy’s umbrella, we tromped through puddles and arrived at the Louvre’s entrance only to find it closed. Who closes a major museum on a Tuesday?

Chilled on the outside and slightly steamed on the
inside, we slipped into a taxi and asked to go to Montmartre. The quaint restaurants and sidewalk artists painting portraits sounded so appealing when Jill had told us about this district outside the city.

Again, we weren’t thinking. Or reading our travel guides. As the driver took us through the mangle of traffic, we only managed to inch our way through the main intersections. We should have taken the Metro.

“This is ridiculous.” I watched the meter click as we sat still. “Amy, would you mind trying this another day? It’s cold, and we’re not going to want to linger at the outdoor artists’ stands. They might not even be painting today because of the weather.”

“You’re right.” She asked the driver to turn around the first chance he got and take us to Hotel Isabella.

That minor accomplishment took forty-five minutes. I don’t want to talk about how much the cab cost us.

It was almost two in the afternoon when we unlocked the door to our room. We both immediately noted that our room hadn’t yet received maid service.

“I can’t believe this day!” Amy dropped her wet umbrella in the corner and marched over to the phone to request the room be cleaned.

All I wanted to do was soak in a hot bath to remove the chill. Instead, I changed into my warmest sweater and a dry pair of pants. Amy changed as well and told me we needed to leave when the maid came in to clean up.

“The room isn’t that bad,” I said. “We can tidy it up. Just ask for some dry towels, and we’ll be fine.”

Amy shook her head. “I made too much of a fuss when I called down to the desk. Come on, I’ll treat you to a chocolate drink at Angelina’s.”

I would have argued, but my defenses were down. Angelina’s was close. The walkway was covered. There didn’t seem much to complain about.

We sat at a small table for two next to the wall and tried to medicate our tourist ills with all the goodies that had charmed us the sunny afternoon we had spent there with Jill. Today, nothing cheered us up.

“Have you noticed how crazy everything has been on this trip?” Amy asked.

Feeling sassy I said, “Well, yeah. I’ve been here, too, you know.”

“Drink some more chocolate,” Amy said. “You’re not sweetened up enough yet. All I was trying to say was that everything we’ve experienced is either over-the-moon spectacular or jump-off-a-cliff horrible.”

“I know.” I used my two thin straws to stir what remained of the chocolate. “That’s Paris for you. I tried to warn you.”

Amy scowled at me. “It’ll get better.”

We sloshed our way back to our room and spent the remainder of the stormy afternoon taking turns soaking in the bathtub. A tiny corner of my psyche said this was my
fault. I knew it was ridiculous to blame myself, but that’s what I did whenever frustration set in. After all, I was the one who had wanted to give Amy a sleeping pill to slow her down. I had made that silent wish, and this is what happened.

Amy turned on the television and watched
Back to the Future
in French. I slept through most of it and was thankful for a day to let my wits catch up with my body.

“Feeling better?” Amy asked, when I woke up after dark. She was curled up on the chair by the window with the tour book in her lap.

“Much better.” I stretched and said nodding at the book, “I wondered why none of the tour books suggests planning a day in the schedule to adjust.”

“Do you mean going ‘back to the future’ and adjusting the flux capacitor in one’s time-space continuum?”

“What are you talking about?”

Amy laughed. “Too much TV. Hey, what do you think of taking a bus tour?”

“Tomorrow?”

“No, now. A company down the road from here offers night tours on a double-decker bus. What do you think?”

“Is it still raining?”

“Nope. Skies are clear. Stars are coming out.”

“Well, in that case, we better go join them.” As a night person, I was ready to get up and go. Amy-girl hadn’t napped. She wouldn’t know what hit her.

I bundled up, expecting to be chilled again, but the night was calm and mild. The vicious rain clouds had drifted off to pester some other city. As we left the room, Amy stuffed a box of unopened chocolate into her shoulder bag. It was our only purchase of the day from a candy store next to Angelina’s.

“Expecting to do a little snacking on the tour?” I asked.

“No, these are for the boys.”

I didn’t know why she would take the candy she had purchased for her husband and son. “For Mark and Davy?”

“No, the boys at the police station. I wanted to give them a thank-you gift.”

I sent her a motherly look over the top of my glasses. “Are you still looking for a ride on the back of a Vespa?”

“No,” Amy said coyly. “Of course not. I’m being polite. I am French, you know. This is what we do.”

I nodded and took note of an important fact: Amy was wearing her skinny jeans.

“Why don’t we go to the police station first?” I suggested, guessing that Amy wasn’t as interested in a bus tour as she had pretended to be.

“Okay.”

We retraced our steps from our first night in Paris and found the enchanting tucked-away square as inviting as it had been on our first view of it. In unison we said, “We should go to that café.”

Laughing at our spontaneous harmony of thought, we
linked arms, and Amy said, “After the police station.”

I added, “Instead of the bus tour.”

“Thanks for not pointing out the obvious,” Amy said.

“Obvious what?”

“The obvious fact that in forty-five years my priorities haven’t changed much. Boys and food always seem to make their way to the top of the list.”

I laughed some more and couldn’t stop smiling when we entered the police station. As soon as the young officers on night duty saw Amy and me, they snapped to attention and began talking to Amy with more animation than we had seen on our previous visit. Obviously the news of Amy’s and my elevation to French heroine status had spread to the station.

She presented them with the box of chocolates, and they expressed their unworthiness with a charm that even I, the skeptic, found irresistible. Coming around to our side of the counter, the boys thanked us both with airy kisses on each cheekbone. The slender one smelled like cigarettes.

“Old enough to be their mother,” I muttered to Amy with my teeth fixed in a smile.

She ignored me and gave the boys a gracious dip of her chin. With what I assumed to be words of farewell, Amy waved, and we turned to go.

The taller one stopped us. He made an appeal to Amy, looking at her with puppy dog eyes. She gleamed. I
scowled. Then I pulled out my camera. I knew what was coming.

Two minutes later, I stood on the curb outside the police station, watching Amy ride off on the back of the officer’s Vespa.

Her exuberant “Wheeee!” echoed down the narrow street, and I grinned at my lighthearted friend.

As they bumped over the cobblestones on their way to the café, I murmured, “Oh, Amy-girl, you are definitely shakin’ what yo’ mama gave you!”

I caught it all, up close, in the viewfinder of my camera. Even the fluttering scarf around her neck looked like it was having a grand time. But because I’m her best friend, I didn’t press the button that would freeze-frame the view of her jolly backside for all posterity.

I wanted Amy to remember this moment the way she saw herself and not from a truth-telling photo that would shatter her fairy tale. Putting down the camera, I turned and smiled at the other officer, who was watching from the doorway with a bonbon plumping out the side of his amused cheek.

The sputtering Vespa returned sans Amelie Jeanette, and I was invited to hop on for my free ride to dinner. I put my feet on the side pegs and rested my hands on the driver’s shoulders. He spoke to me, and I said, “Oui,” even though I had no idea what he said. I presumed he was asking if I was ready.

With a lurch, we took off, bumping over the cobblestones. I clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t bite my tongue. He turned the corner onto a paved road and picked up speed. I realized this wasn’t the way we had walked to the station.