Without Reservations (4 page)

But what the heck, I thought, heading for the hotel and my first look at the room where I would spend at least the next month. I was excited, but also a little nervous about seeing it. Although I knew
many travelers think of a hotel as “just a place to sleep,” it was important to me to feel at home in this room.

A young chambermaid proceeded me up the winding staircase, stopping in the middle of it. Pulling out a key, she opened a door I hadn’t noticed, one situated between the reception area and the second floor. It was the door to my room. I stepped inside. What I saw disappointed me.

After passing through a narrow entry hall, I entered a long narrow room. It seemed to tilt to one side, the side occupied by a huge, dark armoire. At the far end of the room was the bed; or, to be precise, two twin beds that had been pushed together. In the middle of the room was a round table covered with a fresh linen cloth and flanked by two straight-backed chairs; it served as both desk and dining space. Opposite the bed, near the small entry hall, was a slightly worn loveseat, its wine-velvet arms and back rising and falling in classic Art Deco fashion. All in all, it was not what I had hoped for.

But the room had two big, beautiful French windows that opened out over a small green courtyard. There was one in the large, well-appointed bathroom too, situated in such a way that it could be left open without any lack of privacy. Brushing my teeth in the morning while looking out over the courtyard became one of my real pleasures.

Still, at first glance, I couldn’t imagine living in this room for several weeks. Later, when the room became home to me—when I had learned to appreciate how comfortable the bed was and how elegant the linens that covered it, how spotlessly clean the room was kept and how well it actually functioned—I realized that first impressions about hotel rooms are like first loves: neither is based on the concept of how, over time, one can come to appreciate the pleasures of durability over infatuation.

At a little before five in the afternoon I left the hotel and headed for the Café de Flore. It was early, but I was quite hungry and, in fact, almost ready to retire. The Flore, which was only a short distance from my hotel, was a great place to sit and take in Paris while eating the perfect omelette.

It was a mild evening, so I chose a seat on the terrace and ordered wine. This was the best time to come to the Flore, I thought, looking around. Lunchtime here always seemed hectic, a time when people came to see and be seen, to make deals and use their cellular phones. Late afternoon at the Flore, on the other hand, had a relaxed ambience; people laughed a lot and gossiped and seemed not to be in a hurry to go somewhere else.

It was a lesson I hoped to learn in the months ahead: how to stop rushing from place to place, always looking ahead to the next thing while the moment in front of me slipped away unnoticed.

I knew it once, of course—the feeling of connection that comes from seizing the actual world. When I was a child, very little that happened in the real world escaped my attention. Not the brightly colored ice in small paper boats we bought at Mr. Dawson’s snowball stand; or the orange-and-white pattern that formed a map of Africa on my cat’s back; or the way Mother sat at her dressing table, powdering her beautiful face to a pale ivory color. It used to surprise me, the intensity with which I still remembered these distant memories. But when I entered my fifties—the Age of Enlightenment, as I came to call it—I understood their enduring clarity. By then I’d knocked around enough to know that, in the end, what adds up to a life is nothing more than the accumulation of small daily moments.

A waiter appeared with my omelette and salad.
“Bon appétit,”
he said, placing my meal on the small round table. He reminded me of someone. Belmondo? No. Louis Jourdan? No. I studied his face, a very Gallic one; a little gaunt but handsome in a bony way. It crossed my mind to flirt with him. This was Paris, after all, where women of a certain age were thought quite desirable. But before I could act on my thoughts, the waiter moved to the next table.

After polishing off the salad, omelette, and a bowl of vanilla ice cream, I ordered a
café noir.
Then I settled into one of the great pleasures of café-sitting: surveying the scene. At the next table, a young, shy-looking couple spoke softly in Japanese, trying not to call attention to themselves. Across the way, a darkly handsome man dressed in black sat sketching in a large notebook.

Outside on the terrace, catching the last bit of sun, were the deeply tanned Italians: beautiful women wearing gold jewelry, and sculpted, model-perfect men in Armani suits. And then, of course, there were the Americans—either overdressed or underdressed but always friendly—and the French, who ruled the Flore, rightfully so, and were elegant no matter their attire.

I sat sipping my second
café
, imagining the time when Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir practically lived at the Flore: writing, eating, and even seeing people by appointment there. It was not difficult to imagine. I could imagine doing it myself. Of course, at that moment, I could see myself doing just about anything, including ringing up friends to set up appointments:
“Bonjour, mon ami, it’s Alice. Look, I’ll be at the Flore most of the afternoon and I’ve decided to have some friends over. Why don’t you come by sometime after one? Dress casual. See you then.
”

At about eight I noticed a subtle change in the light. As the sun moved lower in the western skies, it washed the ancient Paris buildings with pale-pink patterns. The faces of those gathered at the Flore were tinted rosy by the softening light; everyone looked
years younger. By now my eyes were growing heavy from jet lag. It was bedtime for me.

As I strolled back to the hotel, I stopped to watch a young couple near the tiny, romantic place Furstemberg. From a radio they’d set on the ground, the voice of Frank Sinatra rose like smoke, filling the air with words about a small hotel and the longing of lovers to be there together. I watched as they began to dance slowly to the music, arms wrapped around each other. The square was deserted except for the young dancers beneath the fragrant paulownia trees. Of course, even had the square been bursting with tourists, the dancers would not have noticed; they existed only for one another.

I knew that feeling. As I stood in the shadows, it all came back: the feel of Dick Reavey’s arms around me at the high school prom, swaying to the last slow dance of the night, the swish of my silk dress, the sharp edge of his white collar against my face. Swaying back and forth to the music, our cheeks touching, inhaling the scent of his aftershave, nothing else existed. Time stopped, and we hung there, dancing, not looking back, not looking forward. After the music ended, we’d walk off the dance floor hand in hand, dazed with longing. Some part of me still felt I would never feel that alive again.

Does anyone ever forget such moments? I wondered, watching the two dancers in the place Furstemberg. What if more of life could be like that? Like the last slow dance, where, to echo T. S. Eliot, a lifetime burns in every moment.

By 8:30 I was back at the hotel. The bed had been turned down and there were fresh flowers in the room, a bouquet sent by a friend living
in Paris. The food had revived me, so I decided to try one of Françoise’s miracle beauty products. But which one? The mask, I thought, the one that Françoise promised would “tighten the skin and circulate the blood.”

With the bathroom window open, I stood in front of the mirror and spread the green cream on my face. I watched as the mask stiffened and small fissures appeared on the surface. For some reason, I thought of my thrifty Scottish grandmother. How she would have laughed at the idea of spending money on cosmetics! Her own beauty habits consisted of going into the garden early in the morning to splash her face with drops of dew.

“Aye, it’s nature’s own free moisturizer,” she would tell me on those Saturday-morning forays into the garden. If I closed my eyes now, I could still see it: a stocky, plain-looking woman in her sixties and a curious, plain-looking child of eight, both dressed in bathrobes and slippers, kneeling in the misty light of dawn and with cupped hands splashing dewdrops onto their faces. Afterward, I would fall back into the warmth of my bed, to doze and dream of the scones I smelled baking in the kitchen.

So strong was the image of that woman and child—one dead now for over thirty years, the other grown—that when I peeled off the stiff green mask, I half expected to see my grandmother’s face emerge.

Perhaps tonight I will dream of my grandmother, dream we are back in that garden, together again, I thought, climbing into bed.

But I didn’t. Instead I fell into a deep sleep. When I awakened the next morning, the Paris sun had entered my room, falling in slanted golden rays across the floor. I walked to the window and inhaled the golden air. The breeze carried with it the sound of children’s voices from a nearby playground; happy, laughing voices
that called to one another in high, excited shrieks of irrepressible energy. The language of pleasure, I thought, is the same everywhere.

The sounds floated into my room, swirling around the dark armoire and the red velvet loveseat before drifting out the window into the skies of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. As I listened to the high, childish voices, I imagined them moving like laughing birds along the narrow street outside; I imagined them turning right at the rue de Beaune, a tiny street that ended at the Seine; I imagined them landing on the water, wings tucked back, playfully joining the river’s glorious rush through all of Paris, sending small cries of contagious joy throughout the city.

A gentle tapping on the door reminded me I had left a request for breakfast in my room.
“Bonjour, madame,”
said a cheerful young woman carrying a large tray with white china plates and silver pots. She placed it on the table, just between the two open windows. “
Bon
appétit.
”

I sat down and studied the tray’s contents. Carefully laid out on a white linen cloth were fresh orange juice, croissants and brioche, strawberry jam, cheese, and a tall silver pot of coffee, accompanied by a smaller server filled with hot milk. I thought of my usual breakfast at home—coffee and a slice of whole-wheat toast dabbed with peanut butter, served from the top of my television set. Usually I ate this repast while making phone calls and watching Katie Couric on the
Today
show. In my former life, the one that existed until yesterday, it was my habit always to do at least two things at once; three, if possible.

But there would be no hurried phone calls or Katie Couric-watching this morning. Leisurely, I draped the linen napkin on my lap and took a sip of orange juice. Into my large china coffee cup I
poured a combination of the strong black coffee and hot milk. I added two small cubes of brown sugar from the sugar bowl and stirred the mixture with a small silver spoon.

This is heaven, I thought, sipping the coffee.

I picked up a croissant, broke it open, and covered it in a painterly way with strokes of red jam. Then, just before taking the first bite, I raised the croissant and, in a celebratory mood, issued a toast to myself:
Welcome to Paris, madame S. And
bon appétit!