Paris, My Sweet (15 page)

Meanwhile, after a lifetime of wondering who “the one” would be, AJ finally knew. My best friend was getting married.

“Hi, Aim. Call me when you can,” her voice mail said. “I want to tell you something.” It was a short and simple message, but I knew. I could hear the restrained giddiness in her voice. Since meeting Mitchell the previous month, I knew he was different from the other New York clowns. I called her immediately.

“So, tell me,” I baited. “What's up?” I felt compelled to let her know that I knew exactly what she was about to share. She started giggling the way she did when we lip-synced Duran Duran's “Wild Boys” back in 1984. Oh my, she had it bad. “You're engaged, aren't you?”

“Yessss!” she melted into the phone. For the next ten minutes, she recounted every detail of her night in the Meatpacking District, which started with Mitchell buying her a new dress at Diane von Furstenburg, then proceeded to a lovely dinner at Bagatelle, a moonlight walk on the High Line, bended knee proposal, a suite at the new Standard Hotel, champagne…

I stared out my window, looking across the zinc rooftops to Sacré-Coeur, glowing big and white up on Montmartre. I felt strangely detached. Mostly it was because I was hearing AJ's happiness through a crummy little BlackBerry, in a rented apartment, in the middle of a foreign city.
How
did
I
wind
up
here?
AJ and I had been attached at the hip for twenty-five years. And now for one of the biggest milestones in life, she was back home, and I was thirty-six hundred miles away from the excitement.

But it was also something else. As happy as I was for her, her engagement made my single status more conspicuous. It hadn't been that long since I arrived in Paris, all starry-eyed and buoyed by the confidence of being “a catch.” Colleagues and acquaintances had told me being a foreigner was an asset in Paris. That my accent was “cute” and my expat status “exotic.” But after months of hearing this and nothing but two dubious dates to back it up, I was beginning to wonder: was I going to strike out in the world's most lover-ly city? I wouldn't have admitted it to just anyone, but I had secretly dreamed of meeting a cute pastry chef and eating tarte tatin for the rest of my life. But the closest I was getting to romance was an old amputee in a wheelchair telling me I had
jolies
jambes
. I may have pretty legs, but they weren't getting me anywhere. Out of the five of us best friends from high school, I was the last one standing—the only unattached one.

Getting engaged hadn't exactly been at the top of my to-do list. Ever since graduating from college, I had let my career dictate my path in life. With a New York agent and budding editorial career, the prospect of a fat book advance had prompted me to leave San Francisco—and Max—for Manhattan at the prime marrying age of twenty-nine. And now my advertising career had brought me to Paris at an age where the news programs and my outspoken aunts were telling me I'd better heed my biological clock, or else. Certainly, I had thought about love and marriage and babies over the years. It's just that how to get a byline in
Elle
magazine had always been a bigger deal than how to get a guy.

So a year ago, my single status wouldn't have bothered me one bit. It had become central to my identity and was normally such a source of pride. I protected my independence, enjoyed my freedom, and had done enough dating over the years that I didn't feel like a hopeless leper.

But something was triggered by AJ's engagement. She had been my steady companion through two and a half decades, across country borders, and despite our respective relationships. Now, she was going to be committing to someone else. I felt more alone than ever.

“Uh, hel-lo? Being single in Paris is like having a social disease,” Michael explained, dumbfounded he had to point out this very evident truth. “I mean, if you're not in a relationship, you might as well be dead.” He paused, watching a guy in a manual wheelchair maneuver the crosswalk outside the window of Gaya Rive Gauche, Pierre Gagnaire's pricey seafood restaurant. “Or a paraplegic.”

We were indulging in one of our regular lunch splurges, and I was whining, as I had been with increasing frequency, about my lack of dating opportunities. At least the restaurant was proving to be a winner, even if I wasn't. While perusing the menu, we indulged in crusty bread, served with both butter and olive oil—it's a rarity to get one or the other, much less both in Paris. We were also enjoying a beautiful
amuse-bouche
of octopus salad, which we speared with toothpicks, and a carafe of chilled Valflaunès Blanc. And the subsequent courses, right down to the chocolate praline cake served with rhubarb compote and salted caramel ice cream, were
fantastique
. But still, it had nothing on our previous lunch at Le Grand Vefour.

The history of Le Grand Vefour, tucked inside the gardens of the Palais-Royal in the first arrondissement, goes back to King Louis XV's reign. It's legendary. Napoleon wooed Josephine there. Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, and Colette all dined there. It has three Michelin stars and a masterpiece of an eighteenth-century interior, complete with lush red velvet banquets, gilt trim, painted frescoes, crisp white linens, and silver vases skyrocketing with fresh flowers. It's an unforgettable experience before you even sit down to eat. But eat you do.

Michael and I had one o'clock reservations, and I ducked out of work inconspicuously enough. When I arrived at the restaurant, I joined my hungry friend at our table that afforded us a prime view of all the dining room's spectacles: the elaborate decanting of fine French wines, the delivery of the painstakingly constructed plates, and the meticulous choreography of the wait staff. There was a team of at least eight waiters, ranging in age from eighteen to eighty, each of whom clearly had his role (yes,
his
; there are only male waiters at Le Grand Vefour, and you can tell they're all proud to have worked there all their lives). More than once, one of the older gentlemen, in his dapper black suit, would catch me lustfully eyeing someone else's dessert and he'd joke, “Not yet,” making me laugh.

We went for the three-course,
125 menu—obviously a splurge, and yet I barely batted an eye, seduced as I was by the restaurant's opulent setting. But the prix-fixe menu was also quite a value, considering it was really four courses once you factored in the biggest, most ridiculously decadent cheese course that came with it…or six courses, when you counted the two
amuses-bouches
that began the meal…or eight courses with the two side dishes served alongside our entrées…or
fourteen
courses with the dishes of complimentary
gelées
, caramels, chocolates, lemon cakes, and
petits fours
that came
in
addition
to
our dessert course. The meal was absolute madness. Absolute decadence. Absolute bliss. Each time someone from the cast of waiters approached our table to deliver a new plate, pour more wine, or just smile at us and make us feel like royalty—I wanted to give them another
10 in sheer gratitude. It was one of the richest dining experiences of my life.

Three and a half hours later, I was stuffed on French food and walking on air, though admittedly feeling a tinge of guilt for having been gone so long. As I approached the office, one of my colleagues who was on a smoke break looked at me knowingly. “Was it a good
baisenville
?” she asked. A
baisenville
, she had taught me only the week before, is slang for a “fuck in town.” In other words, she had noticed how long I had been gone and naturally assumed I was enjoying some afternoon delight with my imaginary French lover. The way I had been struggling with cultural norms lately, it seemed like a midday romp would have been more acceptable than spending over three hours at lunch. So I did my best impersonation of a fabulous French woman, gave her a conspiratorial smile, and didn't say a word as I slipped back into the office.