Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La! (13 page)

Strolling the length of the covered arcade of the Rue de Rivoli, Amy and I took our time, window shopping but not buying anything yet. It didn’t make sense to us to buy something that was down the way from our hotel and then carry it with us for the rest of the day.

Amy spotted a designer shop, and we took a detour down a side street that opened up into another wide boulevard lined with impressive, classy old buildings. We ended up passing the Ritz Hotel, and that’s when we knew we
were out of our element. The first shop we went into was a clothing store that carried a designer label I wasn’t familiar with. Amy took one quick look around, and we exited with a polite
“au revoir”
to the shop attendant who looked at us with disdain.

“This was not what I had in mind when I thought we could do some shopping,” Amy said once we were outside the exclusive shop. “Let’s find some stores where we can afford to buy something.”

We headed back the way we had entered the high-end area and came out at the Place de la Concorde. I pulled out the map to get our bearings. To our left was the main section of the Tuileries Gardens that we had viewed from our hotel window. That portion of the gardens covered well over a mile and seemed to roll itself out from the Louvre’s courtyard. A note on the map said that the far-reaching gardens were begun in the 1600s and showed meticulous attention to symmetry. It was the Central Park of Paris with rows of shady trees, gravel walkways, ponds for floating toy sailboats, open-air cafés, and elaborate fountains. The park came to an abrupt halt at a wide intersection where we now stood. In front of us zoomed a steady flow of traffic.

“Look.” Amy pointed to the front of a gated compound to our right. “It’s the American Embassy.”

“That’s always good to know,” I said with a nod to the two uniformed marines who stood at the entrance.

“Do you have any idea what that is?” Amy motioned to a pointed obelisk in the center of the traffic circle that punctuated the air like an exclamation mark. In front of it was a huge fountain with an imposing statue.

“I have no idea.” I looked around to get a point of reference from the landmarks and to make sure I was reading the map correctly. “If that’s the Fleur de Lis Hotel behind us, then this is the Place de la Concorde.”

“That’s the Fleur de Lis Hotel?” Amy spun around. “You’re kidding! Grandmere talked about that hotel. She went there one time when she was young. For tea. She said she wore gloves and had to sit up straight the whole time. We should go there, Lisa. For tea. Just like Grandmere did.”

“Sounds good to me. Do you still want to know about this seventy-two-foot obelisk here at the Place de la Concorde?”

“Sure.”

“The book says it’s a 2,300-year-old-relic and was a gift to Paris in the early 1800s from Egypt.” I read the final line from the guidebook. “ ‘A plaque in front of the obelisk marks the location where the guillotine was used during the French Revolution to remove over two thousand citizens from their heads.’ ”

Amy and I looked at each other with a matching expression of discomfort. Neither of us was prepared for this gruesome bit of French history. Especially when the
small detail of the loss of two thousand lives was delivered with a poor attempt at humor.

Amy looked at the book and finished the last paragraph for me. “ ‘Marie Antoinette was among the thousands who met with the guillotine’s blade on this square.’ ”

We looked at each other in solemn remembrance as the swirl of vehicles made their whiplash turns around the fountain and obelisk, heading for the bridge across the Seine.

“Do you know much about the French Revolution?” Amy asked.

“No. All I remember was that the peasants went crazy and stormed the Bastille prison to set the prisoners free.”

“I know that was the start,” Amy said. “But once the royalty had been removed from the throne, no one trusted anyone to make decisions and run the new republic. Grandmere used to say the birth of liberty in France was a bloody birth. Too many innocents were wrongly accused and beheaded along with the rebels.”

“So many lives lost.” I glanced at the tour book. A side note caught my eye. “Wow,” I said under my breath.

“What?”

“It says the bridge underpass where Princess Diana lost her life is three bridges downstream from here at Pont de l’Alma.”

“Wasn’t she coming from the Ritz Hotel that night? We just walked past that hotel.”

“I know.”

We stood together looking at the map in the tour book. All around us rushed the city’s noise. Diesel fumes floated our way from a large truck that aggressively took the turn. We were within walking distance of original art that had filled our imaginations yesterday with freedom and life. Yet at the same time we were within walking distance of where two princesses had died a hundred and fifty years apart from each other.

“This city,” Amy said in a low rumble. “It’s not what I expected.”

“I know.” I didn’t tell Amy what I think she already knew. Paris was the city I loved to hate.

“This way.” Amy pointed toward the second part of the Tuileries that led to the Champs-Elysées. Along the path ahead of us a dozen varieties of flowering trees were in their final bloom, tossing the last of their pink and white confetti in the air. Spring had thrown her once-a-year party, and we were the latecomers. Our shoes were the bristles, our legs the broomsticks clearing away the evidence of a good time that was had by all.

A single red-tipped bird swooped in front of us on the wide path, twittering his apology for nearly bumping into us. The enamored fellow obviously had been one of the revelers at the spring party. That explained why he was still a little loopy.

Amy and I fell into step, subconsciously matching our
strides the same way we had when we were young and walked home from school every day to my house. I believe a calm contentment comes to a woman’s heart, even in the midst of newness, when she is accompanied by one sweet familiarity. Today that familiarity was the gait of my dearest friend.

We were still us.

It didn’t matter how old we were or what we weighed or what color our hair was at that moment. No one had to tell us how to fall in stride. We knew how to do that.

“Amy?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for bringing me to Paris with you.”

She smiled. “I was just going to thank you for coming with me.”

“This is really a dream for you—for us—isn’t it? I was trying to remember how old we were when you first gave me visions of sauntering through these gardens and down the Champs-Elysées like we were a couple of refined women of influence.”

Amy lifted her chin a little higher. “The way I see it, you and I have become so chic in our maturing years that we don’t need a fluffy poodle on the end of a pink leather leash to make our grand entrance promenading down the Champs-Elysées.”

“That’s a good thing since neither of us happened to bring a poodle.”

“We are a couple of classy women who are full of style just beggin’ to be shown off on this street of all streets.”

I laughed and added my well-wishes for our dream-come-true moment. “Well, in that case, ooh la la, baby. Champs-Elysées, look out! Here we come!”

The grand boulevard of Paris was alive with shoppers and visitors from all corners of the globe. As we waited at a traffic light with a throng of humanity in all shapes, sizes, and skin tones, I wondered if any of them had grown up with the same illusion as Amy. Did they imagine they had “arrived” as well?

When the light changed, we strode the wide width of the intersection and paraded down the tree-lined sidewalk with our heads twisting right and then left to take in everything.

“Ooh, Sephora!” Amy pointed to a perfume shop. “We have to go there.”

I blithely followed Amy into the huge cavern of a store. The palace of fragrance was decorated in granite and chrome. Guards dressed in all black and wearing communication wires in their ears stood at the entrance and throughout the store. The side walls were lined with glass cases, and inside the cases were hundreds of glass presentation pedestals, each holding an ornate bottle of perfume.

Heavy-handed techno music beat like jungle drums, driving us deeper into the fragrance jungle where instincts
took over, and we began sniffing at every sample bottle we saw on display.

“I don’t know about you,” Amy said, “but I’m not leaving here until I find some perfume to take home with me.”

Amy’s declaration infused our hunt for the perfect new fragrance with a frenzied vitality. We started to try on every perfume, the same way we had when we were thirteen and Amy’s neighbor Mrs. Roberts invited us to see her brand new Avon home-tester case. Poor Mrs. Roberts. Every one of her samples was thoroughly tested by Amy and me. I’m sure Mrs. Roberts hoped to acquire some of our hard-earned babysitting money. But in the end, we didn’t buy anything. Amy and I came home with four tiny lipstick samples that were an inch big and smelled like crayon wax. Amy’s mother decreed that our forearms smelled like a fruit ambrosia salad that needed to go back in the fridge.

“It’s so hard to decide.” Amy stood by a display of perfumes that all bore names in French. She sniffed one wrist and then the other.

I’d stopped using my available skin as the testing ground and had dabbed fragrances onto the small tester papers provided. I fanned out the dozen white strips in my hand. “Pick a perfume. Any perfume.”

“This one.” Amy randomly pulled one out of the middle.

I sprayed my wrist with that fragrance, sniffed it again, and sneezed.

A beautiful young saleswoman dressed in all black, with midnight black hair and ivory skin, stepped over with a shaker of coffee beans and a tissue. She handed me the tissue and then told us to breathe in the strong scent of the coffee beans to clear our sense of smell.

“Much better,” I said. “Thanks.”

She asked if we needed any direction.

“This may be a silly question, but do you carry Chanel perfumes?” Amy asked.

“Of course. Thees way, s’il vous plaît.”

We followed, and Amy picked up one of the sample bottles. She closed her eyes and gave a tiny spritz of the familiar fragrance. Then, as if remembering a pleasant dream, she said, “My grandmere just walked into the room. This is what she wore for years. I have to buy some. Is this your smallest bottle?”

“Oui.”

“Excuse me.” A woman with a British accent smiled at the assistant. “Would you please direct me to some fragrances that have light floral tones but don’t include jasmine as one of the ingredients?”

“Certainly. Thees way.”

“Do you mind if we tag along?” I asked, about to sneeze again. “It sounds like you and I are looking for the same sort of perfume.”

The woman gave us a broad smile and nod, as we fell in line like Sneezy, Sleepy, and Happy behind our very own
Snow White. We were off to mine the gems of this fragrance cavern.

“By chance did either of you go to the perfume workshop offered by the Bon Voyage Tour Company?” Happy asked us.

“No,” I said.

“I had the pleasure two days ago. That’s how I knew what to ask for. The workshop is three hours; you have to reserve ahead of time. You smell samples and learn how perfume is made. It was very interesting. Fairly expensive, but I’m glad I went.”

Our Snow White apparently wasn’t about to be outdone by a workshop offered by one of the local perfumeries. She gathered us close at one of the impeccable displays and with her lovely French accent described how a single perfume “note” could be comprised of a combination of five hundred ingredients. She explained the way the “top notes” dance off the skin almost immediately.

“Think of zee middle notes as the heart of the fragrance that sets zee tone. Zee base notes give depth and last for days and sometimes for years.”

Amy and I shared a nod of agreement. Those few liquid granules of Amy’s grandmere’s fragrance still lingered and reminded us both of her.

“It’s like buying a bottle of memories,” Amy murmured.

After more direction on warm tones, cool tones, floral
tones, and earth tones, Happy made her selection and left us to go to the cash register.

Amy and I lingered as Snow White lowered her chin and took us into her confidence. “Fragrance presents a person to zee world. When Marie Antoinette came through zee streets of Paris, it is said zee people knew it was she by zee scent coming from her carriage. Napoleon carried a flask of cologne always in his boot. His scent was of lemon, rosemary, and rich sandalwood.”

Mesmerized by her passion for fragrance, Amy and I willingly reached for bottles of perfume that we knew had to come home with us. I bought the smallest bottle and knew at the price I was paying I would use it sparingly. Amy went a little crazy and bought three bottles. One was for her mom. Our lovely Snow White included extra free samples of perfume and lotion in our elegant shopping bags and waved to us as we left.

Spectacularly fragrant and culturally enriched, Amy and I sashayed our way down the Champs-Elysées with smiles on our contented faces. We held the handles of our shopping bags as daintily as if we were holding pink leashes to prancing poodles.

Ooh la la! We were classy, sassy, and just looking for chocolate.

“What do you think, Lisa? Should we stop at a café and watch the world go by?”

A twinge of past Parisian memories clenched my stomach
and raced up to my throat, choking the goldenness of our chic moment.

“How about that café?” Amy asked. “Why don’t we go there?”

“No!” I squawked. “Not that one.”

Amy stopped to study my expression.

“We need to go to the Ladurée,” I said, in a moment of quick thinking. “Did I tell you about Ladurée? It’s a Victorian teahouse just down the way. Very pink and fun. You’ll love it.”

“Okay. Do you remember where it is?”

“No, not exactly.”

Amy pulled out the map, found Ladurée with ease, and led the way with a cloud of sweet, complex fragrance still following her. I was the cloud. A very wisteria-and-lavender sort of cloud.

We entered Ladurée and were led upstairs to the grand salon and into a room that was about as pink as I had remembered it to be. Seating ourselves on a pink-tufted bench seat by the window, we were only inches away from the guests at the adjoining table. I’d forgotten how dining space was different in European restaurants. At first Amy kept glancing over at the expressive man next to us talking in low tones to the woman across the small table from him. I wondered if Amy would be too uncomfortable with this setup, especially since she could more than likely understand everything they were saying.