Paris, My Sweet (17 page)

If April is the cruelest month then T. S. Eliot wasn't acquainted with Paris in November. Beyond the bad dates, bogus work environment, and all my botched but earnest attempts at being a walking, talking Parisienne, by year's end I just wanted to curl up in an air-mail box and go home to New York.

By that point, I figured, it was where I belonged. I was still struggling with the language and couldn't crack the social protocol. I could never tell if I should remain on
vouvoyer
terms with people or if I had broken through to the friendlier
tutoyer
. I was confused by the air-kiss greeting: should I make accompanying kissing sounds or just bump cheekbones? And every time I met a local and we talked about getting together, nothing transpired. Everyone told me the French were hard to infiltrate. But it's different when people talk about it as a concept, and when you actually experience the chill of their sangfroid every day.

Everything in this foreign city had an extra layer of difficulty. No matter what the task at hand, it required exceptional flexibility and demanded infinite wells of patience. When I asked about the status of the Ogilvy business cards I had ordered months ago, for example, the office manager told me, “Next week.” For the eighth week in a row. My tree house's two-in-one oven-microwave started emitting a scary piercing sound that made use impossible and, instead of replacing it
tout
de
suite
, my jolly landlord told me to “have fun” with my first appliance purchase in France. Though a check I had deposited to my French bank account had cleared my U.S. account three weeks earlier, the money wasn't showing up and my bank rep wasn't responding to my email inquiries or phone messages, leaving me scrounging for lunch money and stewing in my juices. And I was feeling a little freaked out since my doctor had left a voice mail to go over some test results I'd had a couple weeks earlier. When I called back, however, she had left for a two-week vacation. While I was hoping the results were A-OK, my attention turned to Milo who had started crazily yanking out big tufts of fur from his haunches, requiring a whole new vocabulary for the vet that I didn't even want to know.

I suddenly understood what it was like to be handicapped, for I had become a mute. The simplest things rendered me a withering mess. I was clumsy and tongue-tied, intimidated and frustrated. Since I was alone so often (if you don't count Milo and his new bald patches), these dark thoughts and self-doubts just swirled around my head, leaving me with way too much time to dissect the crazy French and their crazy ways. Then I started wondering if it was just me. I started asking myself, “Am
I
crazy?!” and when I realized that I was talking to myself I thought, actually,
oui
, maybe I am! A crazy cat lady. My biggest fear, finally realized in the most spectacular city on earth.

It was all too much. I became so worn down and defeated by my ineptness that I started putting off every little action. The most mundane errand, like buying shampoo at the grocery store, was like a brainteaser, and I needed epic courage and concentration to call and make a dinner reservation. Everything required Herculean effort. As a result, I did nothing. There were bills to pay, appointments to schedule, and an avalanche of emails to catch up on. Then there was stuff like, you know, trying to figure out who to call at the Vélib' office to find out what the mysterious $57 charge on my credit card was all about. But I just couldn't be bothered. There was no time. It took too much energy. There were episodes of
Mad
Men
to be downloaded and Jean-Paul Hévin
mendiants
—little chocolate disks adorned with nuts and dried fruit—to be annihilated. I knew this self-defeating behavior was only hurting me, but after all those months struggling as an outsider and feeling branded as a foreigner, I was also tired of being a tough cookie. Thank goodness I finally had a few friends to lean on.

“So, it's going really well, huh?” I was talking to Jo about her blossoming romance, but it might as well have been Melissa since I'd had this same exact conversation with her just the day before. How was it that my two single girlfriends in Paris, my
only
girlfriends in Paris, had both recently started dating Frenchies? And both relationships, in true Gallic style, had quickly evolved into serious territory. There's no such thing as casual dating in France; you're either together or not. “You're really into him?” I asked with a smile that I hoped masked my anxiety.

As an Aussie, Jo relished the idea of scrambled eggs and strong coffee as much as I did, so we were also official brunch buddies. And lucky for us, Parisians were having a full-blown love affair with
le
brunch
. But while most cafés and bistros offered overpriced prix-fixe menus of
viennoiserie
,
tartines
, eggs, bacon, fruit salad, green salad, coffee, and juice, in portions that incited locals to show shocking and unusual displays of gluttony, Jo and I sought out more modest places where we could indulge in à la carte Anglo dishes. Granola paired with tart Greek yogurt and fluffy blueberry pancakes were recent triumphs. Today, we had discovered Eggs & Co., a two-story sliver of a restaurant with crooked floors and low ceilings in one of Saint-Germain's hidden alleys that was all eggs, all the time. Jo had ordered
une
cocotte
, a small dish of baked eggs, with ratatouille. I had scrambled eggs with smoked salmon coming my way. I didn't know why we called smoked salmon “lox” back in New York, what the difference was, or why I had never really eaten it before. But smoked salmon had become one of my favorite things in Paris.

“You know, it's going surprisingly well,” Jo said with a blush. “I mean, I just didn't see this coming. And it's so easy. This is the first guy I've dated here who I really feel like I can be myself around. And he's really into me!” Then she laughed, surprised by her own proclamation. Ever the modest one, she quickly added, “Well, you know what I mean—he
seems
like he's into me.”

“I'm sure he is! It certainly seems like he is. I mean, you guys spend so much time together. The chemistry's good, you have fun, you can communicate despite the language and cultural barriers…I mean, those are no small things!” Never the kind of girl to be jealous of my friends' relationships, I wanted Jo to understand that I was happy for her. In the past few weeks, I had already gone through the awkward and nervous early stages of a relationship with her: wondering if he'd call after they had met, debating the protocol of going Dutch in Paris, anticipating how the sex with a Frenchman would be. I was with her 100 percent. But I was also, maybe, overenthusing just a little bit to conceal my own vulnerability.

Oh hell, who was I kidding? I was secretly annoyed. Seriously! I had finally made a couple good girlfriends in Paris—cool, single girls—and they both had to go and meet men the very same week. Now they were both smitten, locked in time-consuming relationships. And while I did love eating eggs with Jo, I couldn't help lamenting the fact that, with her in a relationship, we would no longer be trolling bars for men together.

It was another reminder that I needed to land my own man. Even my promising American with a penchant for baking had flamed out after he got simultaneously too clingy and too ranty, going off about the evils of advertising even though he knew it was what I did for a living. It was more righteousness, and a few too many lectures, than I could stomach so I called it quits.

Because I was spending so much time alone, I got pretty good at solo activities. I passed entire weekends by myself, Vélib'ing to pâtisseries, strolling through the open-air markets, and taking early morning walks along the Seine, especially on Sundays when the main road was closed to cars. I also took a slew of cooking classes, learning to make sole meunière and Provençal sardines, lavender
crème brûlée
and plum clafoutis, celery root soup and vegetable napoleons. It was all lovely and delicious. But what I really needed now was a girls' night out.

“So, what are you doing later?” I asked after our plates had been cleared and her relationship dissected. “Do you want to go to Chez Jeanette for some drinks?” I was thinking the allure of this newly discovered hipster bar on the seedy rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis might tempt her.

“Ohhhh…” Jo squirmed a little. “Actually, I'm meeting Cedric's parents tonight. We're doing dinner.” As I plied her with questions about this important new phase—meeting mom and dad just weeks into the relationship,
sheesh!
—I was mentally rifling through my alternatives. Michael was traveling to some exotic Eastern European capital that was known to have hot chicks. Melissa was with her new beau. Again. And, though by now I had a couple other acquaintances, I just couldn't picture texting them for a Saturday girls' night out. So I masochistically started going through my New York Rolodex, imagining what all my friends would be doing at about eight o'clock on a Saturday night. AJ and Mitchell would be cozied up over a romantic dinner, planning the rest of their lives together. Jonathan would probably be chatting up some sexpot at a loud, thumping gay bar. And I bet Mary, Melanie, Krista, and Carrie were getting all dolled up, ready to take on New York's latest hot spot. Oh, how I suddenly wished it were September again, when I was back home. I had wasted so much time pining for Paris when I was in New York. I hadn't stopped to appreciate all the creature comforts and the camaraderie surrounding me—how natural and easy things were.

But that was then, this was now. Now I was in Paris. City of romance. City of my dreams. And suddenly, a city where I knew no singletons. I almost cajoled Jo into ditching the parents and having some fun
avec
moi
. But I knew that wasn't fair. She was in that lovely state of infatuation when everything was fresh and anything was possible. She deserved to bask in it.
Face
it, Aim,
I told myself,
it
looks
like
another
Saturday
night, just you and Milo
. Out loud, I tried to sound a little less pathetic and a lot more gracious.

“That's great, Jo. I'm so happy for you.”

When I first arrived in Paris, I was certain I was living some Cinderella story in which fairy godmothers materialized from bubbles to make my dreams come true. And with the highfalutin fashion, glamorous Champs-Élysées offices, and adorable tree house in the middle of the most delicious city in the world, why
wouldn't
I believe a little magic was at play? All that was missing was my tarte tatin prince!

After my initial giddiness when strolling through the Louis Vuitton flagship—pawing the silky gowns and spiky stilettos made me wonder why
I
was the lucky girl who got to live this dream—I was still asking questions as to just why I was there, but now instead of in a starry-eyed, I'm-the-luckiest-girl-in-the-world sort of way, it was a desperate, WTF sort of way. I thought things would get easier the longer I was in Paris. But they just kept getting harder. Not even after my parents' divorce or breaking up with Max had I felt so alone.