Standing Room Only

by Heidi Mastrogiovanni

  In Search of Lost Boulevard Périphérique

  Someone in the car behind Lala was honking at her in an unpredictable rhythm of long and short blasts that made Lala think he might be trying to communicate via Morse code. She lowered the driver’s side window and leaned out with her head turned over her shoulder.

  “Listen, buddy, at this point I don’t know if you’re pissed at me or if you’re flirting with me, but in case you hadn’t noticed, NONE of the cars are moving!”

  Damn, Lala thought. He probably doesn’t understand me. How do you say all that in French?

  Lala put Kenny’s car into park and leaned her head back on the headrest. She closed her eyes and remembered how enthusiastic she had been feeling on the evening before that fourteenth of July.

  The plan had been for Clive and Lala to drive to Gérard’s family estate for the celebration of Bastille Day and to spend the night there.

  “In separate bedrooms,” Lala had declared, over and over and over again, during the coordinating of details. “Do not get any ideas, pal.”

  “No ideas gotten,” Clive had assured her, over and over and over again.

  They had planned to leave early so they could have the option of stopping anywhere along the way if an especially charming location appeared. But when Lala’s phone rang and woke her up an hour before the time she had set on the alarm, she jolted awake with the immediate and very unpleasant feeling that something must be wrong.

  “WHAT?” she bleated at her phone.

  “I’m so sorry. The good news is, your virtue will be especially safe. The bad news is, I can’t go to the party. We have to reshoot all the scenes at the farm. You know, the ones we did on the day the goat molested you.”

  “I remember, Clive,” Lala growled. “I remember the goat, and I can hear you trying to suppress a long series of giggles. Why do they have to reshoot? Did you see the dailies? Did Clément suck? Oh, god, I forced him on the production to serve my own selfish, albeit very caring and humane, needs, and he sucked? I knew I shouldn’t have imposed an amateur on the film. I get so tunnel vision with animals, and now I’ve put the entire—”

  “Lala, take a breath. Yes, I saw the dailies. Clément was amazing. I mean, he was brilliant. It’s me. I sucked beyond belief. I think Matthew wanted to fire me on the spot. I’ve got to redeem myself pronto or else I am fucked.”

  “Oh. Okay,” Lala said.

  “Listen, since I can’t drive you, I think you should take the train.”

  “Why?” Lala huffed. “I’m perfectly capable of driving myself.”

  “You’re a terrible driver.”

  “What makes you think I’m a terrible driver?” Lala demanded.

  “You told me. Those were your exact words.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, I was kidding.”

  As she remembered her conversation with Clive, Lala opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling of the car.

  I wasn’t kidding, she thought. Driving myself today has already earned a top spot on my long list of dumbest ideas I’ve ever had, and I’m not even half of the way to my destination.

  After she hung up with Clive, Lala was feeling defiant and irritated and like she had something to prove to patronizing men everywhere, so before she got the car from Kenny and headed out, she deliberately programmed the GPS on her phone to give her directions in French.

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Kenny had asked when she told him about her bold and confident decision. “It’s just an added layer of difficulty that maybe you don’t need when you’re—”

  “Kenny,” Lala said through tight lips, “I know you mean well, but the patriarchy is really busting my ass this morning, so I’m in no mood.”

  Lala shut her eyes again. Just as she did, the driver behind her leaned on his horn with a steady pressure. She thrust her head up and looked in the rearview mirror. The man was standing up as much as he could in a car and appeared to be pressing the full weight of his body on the center of the steering wheel. Lala leaned back out the window.

  “Are you KIDDING? Aucune voiture n’avance, you big jerk! So why don’t you just calm the fu . . . Oh . . .”

  Something had caught Lala’s attention out of the corner of her right eye and had taken her focus away from the car behind her. That something was a boulevard newly devoid of the traffic jam that she had assumed would be her destiny, if not until the end of time, then certainly for at least the next hour.

  “Okay, okay,” she muttered. “I’m shifting into drive, Monsieur. My mistake. Sheesh.”

  Lala hit the gas pedal and pulled over to the first free space at the curb that she saw. She turned the car off and covered her face with her hands. She shook her head and sighed.

  We will be doing this, Lala told herself. We will take a deep breath and we will not be bested by le Boulevard Périphérique. We are strong. We are invincible. We are woman. We have no idea why we are using the royal “we” in our internal pep talk.

  Kenny had changed tactics that morning when he felt the vibrating wrath of Lala’s irritation, and had decided to be overly encouraging because it might save him from any additional glaring. He had explained to Lala that she would be heading out of Paris toward the countryside via le Périph’, the multiple-lane road that circled the historic center of Paris and loosely defined its classic borders.

  “It’s just like a freeway in Los Angeles,” Kenny assured her. “It’ll take you right to the A-4 and you’ll be in Reims in no time. Piece of cake. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m not taking the highway to get to Reims,” Lala had explained.

  “What are you talking about?” Kenny had asked, with an expression that immediately telegraphed grave concern for Lala’s grasp on sanity.

  “I’m programming my GPS to avoid highways. It’s what I do in LA I take side streets. I don’t like Southern California freeways. I don’t like any freeways. I swear, I have no idea what the difference is between a freeway and a highway. In either case and in any event, I’m taking the scenic route to Reims.”

  “Well, then you’ll get there on Tuesday. Late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Of the week after next.”

  “Very funny,” Lala had sneered.

  “I’m not trying to be funny,” Kenny had said.

  “Oh, this cannot possibly be the right address . . .”

  Lala had passed many charming locales on her way to Gérard’s grandmother’s home. She had only had time to give each of them the briefest of longing glances as she motored through them at the quickest speeds that French travel regulations would allow.

  Once Lala had finally driven outside Paris, guided by a new and stuffy British voice speaking clipped English on her GPS, it had become agonizingly clear that she would not be getting to Reims quickly on the country roads. As loping minute after minute after minute passed, she drove onward, silently debating different courses of action and unable to decide on any of them.

  Turn around and call it a day and get hammered at the restaurant with Kenny and his grandfather and Atticus? Search for the nearest train station on the GPS, park the car there, and hope that a train to Reims is leaving sometime today? Park the car and speed-walk, because at least then I’ll be getting some exercise and I probably might even get there more quickly than at this rate on these gorgeous cobblestone streets and all these winding paths through these impossibly adorable villages?

  And now she was driving up what looked like either an endless, diminutive public road or an endless, huge private driveway. Majestic trees bordered the car on both sides and bent toward each other to create a canopy for Lala to drive beneath as she talked to herself and fretted.

  “I think I distinctly remember that Gérard described his grandmother’s place of residence as a house and not a freakin’ château . . . I really don’t think I packed anything fancy enough for this flippin’ castle
. . .”

  Lala turned into the circular path in front of the immense wooden double door at the center of the structure’s endless facade. The doors flew open and Marie-Laure came running out. She smiled and waved and rushed over to open the driver’s side door.

  “There you are! Vite, vite!”

  Marie-Laure took Lala by the elbow and helped her out of the car. She kissed Lala on both cheeks and then opened the back door to grab Lala’s weekend bag.

  “I had no idea the house is this big,” Lala said. “Is this a fancy party? I don’t think I have anything fancy enough for a house like this.”

  “Ma chère, it’s a picnic! Do not worry, you will look perfect! Now, you’ve got half an hour to rest in your room before the festivities start, so let’s get you upstairs.”

  Marie-Laure escorted Lala inside. The entry hall had soaring ceilings and ended, after what Lala estimated was probably the full length of a football field, in a wide staircase.

  “That Boulevard Périphérique thing?” Lala said as she peered at the portraits and tapestries that covered the walls. “Le Périph’? I got on and off that damn thing about a thousand times before I finally was headed in the right direction. I am serious, give me that swirling overpass on the 405 South just past the Getty Center, or that section downtown where you’re going from the 110 to the 10 and you have to get across five lanes of traffic from left to right in like two minutes? I mean, I’ve only ever done it as a passenger, but I would cheerfully do it as a driver any day of the week, including rush hour heading home on a Friday, rather than get anywhere near that damn périphérique again. I assume there’s champagne in my room?”

  “Bien sur,” Marie-Laure said.

  “Then I’ll be downstairs again in twenty-nine minutes, and I will be in fine fettle.”

  Lala’s guest room for the holiday was considerably larger than the first apartment she had in New York City when she moved there after college. And it was rather a bit more opulent, given that her fifth-floor walk-up with a bathtub in the kitchen wasn’t quite up to the standards of an Architectural Digest spread.

  A bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket next to her bed. Lala popped it open and poured a full glass.

  Lala lay down on the lush canopy bed for just a moment and woke up forty-five minutes later when Marie-Laure knocked on her door. The first thing she noticed when she opened her eyes was that she hadn’t had any of the champagne before she fell asleep.

  “Are you ready, chère Lala?”

  Lala grabbed the glass and chugged the contents.

  “I’ll be down in five minutes, Marie-Laure! I fell asleep! That drive must have been way more stressful than I realized.”

  Lala put on her sundress. It was a lovely soft cotton in light blue and it had a wide belt in the same fabric. She had specifically bought it for the Bastille Day celebration at a cozy boutique near her apartment that was owned by a friend of Kenny’s. Kenny had dragged her there under protest.

  “I hate shopping! I look stupid in just about every outfit I ever try on! I have no visual taste and I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m not going to the party! I don’t want to go shopping!”

  Once in the dressing room, having been given a selection of items by Kenny’s very warm and welcoming friend Simone, protest turned to praise as soon as Lala tried on the first dress.

  “Omigod! This dress makes me look like I have a waist! I can’t wait to show it off at the party!”

  Lala walked down the staircase with the bottle of champagne in one hand and her glass in the other. She was barefoot and had gotten a manicure and pedicure the day before, because Marie-Laure told her there would be lots of “adventures without shoes and much bathing” that weekend.

  Lala didn’t normally get pedicures because it was hard for her to sit still that long and because she didn’t much like her toes. A friend in college had seen her toes for the first time a year or two after they met and was shocked and worried.

  “Were you in some kind of horrible farm accident?” the friend had asked.

  “I . . . No, I didn’t grow up on a farm. I haven’t spent much time on a . . . Why do you ask?”

  “Why didn’t you warn me that you have these strange little hobbit toes?”

  Lala’s friend had then taken to referring to any sandals that Lala wore as her “so-called open-toed shoes” and had ostentatiously made air quotation marks as she said that, and had cackled at her cleverness every time as though it were the first time she had ever come up with that memorable quip.

  Lala had lost touch with her friend after they graduated. A bit by design. And had been a bit self-conscious about her toes ever since.

  The second glass of champagne she was drinking as she walked through the doors that led to the endless lawn and gardens behind the house, and the image of herself in her new dress that she had enjoyed in the mirror before she left her room, had helped to put that thought about her feet on the back burner of a stove in a different time zone.

  That and the fact that Gérard leapt up from the vast picnic blanket he was sitting on with a group of people to greet Lala with a radiant smile.

  Oh, merde, Lala thought. How do you still make my heart race? And why do you look so much like my Terrence? That is just the weirdest thing on record.

  “Lala! Come meet our friends!”

  Lala did her best to focus on all the names she was hearing for the first time. It was a little hit-or-miss throughout the day and the evening, both of which involved lots of delicious food and more champagne than Lala thought she had ever seen in one place at one time, including at her wedding to Terrence.

  “Pierre? Is it Pierre? Am I remembering that correctly?” she said to the debonair older man who had joined her on the terrace to open a new bottle. She had discovered when they were standing next to each other in line at one of the many buffet tables that they were both vegetarians, and she had grabbed every opportunity since then to flirt with him.

  “It is Pierre,” the gentleman said, smiling. “I like the way you pop. Did Gérard tell you that all of this is from his family’s vineyard?

  “Get outta town!” Lala said. “That is wicked cool! Oh, and just to confirm, that’s an American idiom. I don’t literally want you to leave Reims.”

  Lala had, early on, given up the idea of trying to speak French to anyone at the party because they all spoke English so perfectly and because she didn’t want to hurt their ears.

  “Pierre,” Lala continued. She filled their glasses and winked at him. “Apropos idioms, I heard the most adorable French one recently. The grumpy fruit vendor near my apartment said it to me the other day, and I don’t think she meant it as a compliment. It seems that I parle français comme une vache espagnole!”

  Lala saw Pierre recoil and just as quickly try to hide that he was doing that.

  “Aren’t you gallant!” she said. “And is that an adorable way of describing not speaking French well, or what! Like a Spanish cow! Which I’ve never heard speak French, but I can’t imagine it sounds very good! I should, in my own defense, point out that it’s my accent, as you just noticed and don’t pretend you didn’t, you sweet man, that causes the problems. My syntax and vocabulary and grammar are, I think, quite pas mal, if I do say so myself. Oh, look, they’re choosing teams for pétanque!”

  Though Lala’s physical skills were almost exclusively to be found at the gym or on a hike, she had heard about this popular French version of bocce before, and on that Bastille Day she ended up being quite good at it on her maiden foray into the sport. Possibly, as she theorized somewhat stridently, because the champagne was loosening her pitching arm.

  She sent her steel ball rolling toward the small wooden ball that the players were trying to get their aim closest to. Lala’s ball landed, rolled, and came to rest just a few centimeters from the goal. Lala pumped her fist in the air and turned to one of
her teammates.

  “Oui! The bubbly is kickin’ in, mes amis! Pas mal for a beginner, huh, Clothilde? Did I get that right? It is Clothilde, isn’t it? We are winning this thing, huh!”

  Gérard was on the losing team and was very noble in defeat when Lala ran up to him waving her steel ball in his face at the end of the match.

  “Nous avons gagné, SUCKA!”

  “Toutes mes felicitations, chère Lala,” he said.

  “And we’re having your family’s champagne? What? You weren’t perfect enough already?”

  Oh, jeez, Lala thought. Way to act like you’re still in love with him. Change the subject. STAT.

  “You know, something just occurred to me, Gérard, and I’m feeling very ungracious that I haven’t asked about this before now. Where’s your grand-mère?

  “She’ll be here a bit later. She’s at a demonstration in town. Her women’s political group organized a protest against the mayor. He called a female reporter a little tart, loosely translated. That didn’t sit well with my grandmother. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll issue a public apology. My grandmother doesn’t give up easily.”

  “She sounds great! I can’t wait to meet her!”

  Lala paused and smiled at Gérard and suspected that she looked like a crazy person. Like a crazy person in love. That was something she had done more than once when she worked with Gérard in New York and had a painfully overwhelming crush on him. Something she had done more than once a day. Often repeatedly in one hour. Before she knew that Gérard had a gorgeous girlfriend named Marie-Laure.

  Lala could only keep smiling and bobbing her head at Gérard while she searched for an exit line. At last, one popped into her mind.

  It’s not melodic, but it’ll have to do, she thought.

  “Okey doke. See ya around!”

  Just before the fireworks in town were to begin, the buffet tables were once again loaded with an infinite spread of savory and sweet treats. The champagne bottles, Lala suspected, were spontaneously regenerating themselves in a legendary wonder of nature that had no actual basis in scientific fact.