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Carpe Diem
by Grove Koger Karen and Jane had done the planning, and then Karen had made the actual reservations. That meant that Margie didn’t have to do much more than pay some bills online with a credit card and show up at the airport at the right time with a passport and a week’s worth of clothes. Which was why, when she started back to the hotel that afternoon, she didn’t know the name of it, much less which street it was on. Karen had turned on the television as soon as they had gotten to their suite and squealed with delight to find a channel in English, which was so wrong. Because now that Margie was really here, really in Paris, she wanted to do something Parisian, try out her French. She’d go for a walk, maybe have a coffee, un café. As soon as Jane had finished sorting through the complimentary toiletries on the counter, Margie brushed her teeth and fluffed her curls and told the others she’d be back in an hour. Took the tiny elevator down to the first floor—no, make that the ground floor, the first floor was one up—and stepped out into the street. La rue. Well, here she was! An American in Paris! And at just that moment a passing car honked—at her? —and immediately she heard the bouncy sequence of car horns from that Gershwin piece. Yes! Oui! She wandered a bit, humming to herself, gazing in store windows. Here were bakeries with displays of plump brown loaves and pale lean baguettes, there an agence immobilière (what on earth could that be?), a chocolaterie (mouth-wateringly obvious, that one), a narrow little shop selling gleaming plumbing fixtures, and café after café bustling with a kind of insouciant casualness. Should she? Of course. She chose a spot out of the sun and after a few moments a young man, a boy really, sporting a day’s growth of beard and a kind of abbreviated white apron, strolled over to her table. “Mademoiselle?” “Un …” She hesitated, changed her mind. “Un vin.” “Blanc? Rouge?” “Blanc.” Of course. She saw herself sitting at this charming little café in Paris drinking a glass of white wine, un something de vin blanc. She knew how she would describe it when she got home: “There are these charming little sidewalk cafés, you know, simple but so chic. You can while away the afternoon drinking wine and …” She remembered the feel of the little tube between her fingers even before the word came to her: “smoking.” Of course! It had been ages, but … She glanced around. Could you smoke here? Yes, it seemed so, judging by her neighbors. Just then the boy appeared with her tumbler of wine and she raised her finger before he could slip away. “Mademoiselle?” “Cigarettes?” “Oui, mademoiselle, cigarettes. Filtre?” “Oui.” “Quatre euros. Four euros.” She realized that he must be getting them from a machine and reached into her purse. How clever they had been to change some bills at the airport! After a few more moments he brought her an ashtray and a blue pack with an odd kind of winged helmet on the front and a book of matches that he fished out of the pocket of his apron. Somehow the wine had disappeared by then and she ordered another. She drank more slowly now, savoring the moment. Carpe diem, someone was always saying back in college. Seize the day. She would try to work that phrase into conversation when she got home. She watched the passing crowd, lit another cigarette, and was wondering whether she should buy a beret, when she realized that the shadows had grown quite a bit longer. It took some time to get the pretty boy’s attention and then pay, but by the time she got that little chore taken care of she had to face up to what she already knew. She had no idea where she was. OK, where she was specifically. Paris, yes, but several, too many, streets radiated from the cafe where she had been sitting so blissfully, and none looked particularly familiar. Well, actually, they all looked familiar. She started down one, and here, yes, there was a bakery, but the loaves weren’t arranged in the right way, not at all. She turned back, tried another street. Here was a display of faucets and spigots and God-knows-what, but coppery, not pewtery the way she remembered. She turned back, tried another. Here was another agence immobilière, but the photos of—villas, OK, she got it, it was a real estate agency, and a pretty upscale one at that—the photos didn’t look like anything she’d seen recently. She-- She stopped, took that deep breath they’re always talking about--they!—and a man in a crisp uniform took a few steps toward her and asked, in a reassuringly kind voice, “Mademoiselle?” She explained, in slow English, what had happened, tried not to sound frantic, and he seemed to understand perfectly. “Have you your passeport?” Margie reached for the holder she had worn around her neck, but it was back at the Whatever-Its-Name-Is Hotel, and the passport itself, of course, was at the front desk where she had been required to leave it. Damn! “Papiers? Réservations?” She opened her purse, started rummaging through the tissues and mints and such. Had she brought any of the printouts with her? “Mademoiselle?” He reached gently into her purse and pulled out a book of matches, turned it over in his fingers, raised his eyebrows, and smiled. “S'il vous plait, you will come with me.” There was something seriously nagging at the back of Margie’s mind, but the man—he was surely a gendarme—seemed so confident that she gladly fell into step beside him. Gladly. They passed a bakery that did look vaguely familiar, a bookstore that didn’t, and more cafés. The traffic had gotten busier and the sidewalks more crowded. They came to a corner, trotted across the street as the gendarme held up his hand to the oncoming cars, turned again. She was wondering whether she really could have wandered this way, and knowing the answer perfectly well, when-- “Marguerite! Marguerite!” The gendarme came to a halt and she nearly ran into him. He turned, handed the matchbook back to her, smiled again, and bowed ever so slightly. Margie opened her mouth but the man had already disappeared into the crowd. Stunned, she looked around. She was standing in front of an unremarkable pale stone building that looked neither new nor old. Tables and chairs were clustered beside a doorway leading into a small foyer, and above the door a marquee bore the legend “Hôtel Avenue Colette” in pale blue letters. The matchbook, which she now looked at for the first time, carried the same legend. The matchbook that, in her mind’s eye, she saw the waiter-- She gasped as someone pulled her into a chair. A babble of voices assaulted her, and half a dozen women leaned forward to stare eagerly at her. “Marguerite! Mon ami! Où avez-vous été? Nous avions peur que vous ayez été perdu!” “Marguerite, your sweater! Très chic!” “Vos chaussures!” The women went on and on and one leaned forward to rest a hand on her knee, but she couldn’t follow any of the words. “Marguerite!” She realized that she held a glass of something in her hand, something pale and bubbly, and she drank it. “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. I’m not—” “Oh non, Marguerite! Nous avions convenu de trois heures, oui?” The woman looked at her watch, a tiny gold thing that must have been terribly expensive. “Yes, trois heures, it is now …” Her head swirled and she took another drink. By now Karen and Jane must be wondering where she was, would surely start looking. “You see, I can’t find my hotel!” At that one of the women leaped up to point at a window over their heads and said, “Ah, il y a une chambre prête pour vous!” The window was open, and she could see a filmy curtain billowing invitingly in the late afternoon breeze. The sky was turning pale. A waitress appeared with another bottle, popped the cork, filled their glasses, replaced the empty bottle in the bucket. They all took a sip. The bubbly was really quite good, and, well, “Marguerite” was such an attractive name, wasn’t it? Evocative … Then she realized that one of the women, a blonde her age wearing a black beret, had been staring even more intently than the rest. She stared back boldly for a moment, at which the blonde pulled off the beret, leaned across the table, and snugged it down on her brown curls. The blonde sat back to consider the effect, smiled at last, and they all laughed and raised their glasses.“À Marguerite!” |
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