Paris Is Always a Good Idea

by Jenn McKinlay

  I wondered if she was merely reacting to me because my clothes appeared distressed, as if they’d arrived in Paris under their own power, swimming down the Seine, perhaps. Despite my overnight airing out, both my pants and shirt felt as if they had a lot of miles on them. I did the sly stretch and sniff to see if my top was offensive. I didn’t smell anything, but that didn’t necessarily mean I was okay. I had once heard that people become immune to their own funk. Fabulous. I’d probably offended the entire restaurant.

  Mercifully, the café offered coffee to go, a fairly recent development in Paris, so I finished my pastry and espresso and ordered a steaming hot coffee in a paper cup for my journey. The sun was out, but the morning air was brisk. I burrowed into my wool coat as I walked away from the Golden Triangle, knowing that the prices of clothing in this district were going to be well out of my range. Instead, I kept my eye out for three things: an Internet café, a pharmacy, and a reasonably priced clothing store.

  The hustle and the bustle of the city soon had me moving faster than I was ready for, but that was all right. I loved walking along the Avenue George V. There was almost more eye candy than a person could take in. Men in suits, women in dresses, au pairs walking children to one of the city parks, tourists gawking at the tall cream-colored Lutetian-limestone Haussmann buildings that lined the streets in this part of Paris, and the endless boutiques, salons, antique stores, and restaurants that filled the bottom floors.

  I stepped around a row of scooters, which were parked in clusters up on the wide sidewalks, keeping them out of the road, and saw the green plus sign that indicated a pharmacie up ahead. Excellent. It looked like the hygiene was happening first. Thankfully, the woman in the white lab coat working at the front counter understood my pantomime of putting on deodorant. There wasn’t much to choose from, not like the wall of lip glosses, but that was fine. It was a step closer to being civilized.

  While the woman rang up my purchase, I asked if she knew where I could find an Internet café. The woman didn’t understand at first, but when I mimicked typing, she nodded. Instead of trying to explain, she wrote down the address on a slip of paper and handed it to me. I recognized it as a side street off the Rue de Rivoli. It was a bit of a walk, but that would give me a chance to shop for clothes, too.

  I headed back out into the bright day, stuffing the small paper bag into my large handbag. It was a small errand, but the feeling of accomplishment gave me a surge of optimism. Once I was able to send my family a message and buy a new outfit, I’d be ready to tackle seeing Jean Claude again. I hoped.

  I found two boutiques on my walk, where I managed to score some essentials—pants and shirts, nothing as comfy as my flannel cow pajamas, but I’d survive. Of course, I still wanted a dress to wear when I saw Jean Claude, but I’d worry about that later.

  Right now, I needed to touch base with my team. With any luck, when I returned to my small apartment, my suitcase and phone would have arrived, but in the meantime, I wanted to make sure I let everyone know I’d arrived in Paris safely but was missing my phone.

  Naturally, I got lost looking for the cybercafé. Shocker. I popped into a small bar that had a very “locals only” vibe. The only patrons were a cluster of old men sitting at a table in the back. I approached the counter and asked in my admittedly rusty French for help in finding the address the woman had given me at the pharmacie.

  The short, bald, pasty man on the other side of the bar looked me up and down with a disdainful curl of his lip and then very clearly said, “No.”

  I blinked. For real? He wasn’t even going to point me in the right direction? I opened my mouth to try again, but he walked away. I was dismissed.

  Rude! I turned to leave, passing a tall man with dark-brown skin and soft brown eyes, wearing a corduroy coat and a hand-knit beanie. He gave me a friendly smile and asked, “You are lost? May I help?”

  My shoulders dropped in relief. “Yes,” I said. I showed him the address, and he walked me outside and pointed in the direction I needed to go.

  “At the one, two red light, turn right,” he said. His accent was thick, but I knew what he meant.

  I put my hand on his arm and said, “Thank you. You’re very kind.”

  He smiled. “Enjoy your time in France.”

  “I will,” I said. I walked away, appreciating that it seemed important to him that I think of his country and its people fondly, unlike that other miserable little man.

  Instinctively, I reached into my handbag for my phone. I wanted to share this moment with someone. Annabelle, my dad, or maybe Jason, who would get a laugh when I told him France had its own people with the grumpy personality of Michelle Fernando. When my hand grasped nothing, I remembered why I was walking to an Internet café. Snap! With a sigh, I trudged on.

  Sure enough, I took the designated right, and the building loomed up ahead like a two-story monster with a trendy exterior and signs announcing that it offered use of the Internet, printing, and an e-sports arena that was open twenty-four hours per day. Good to know that if I got a wild hair to go on a Zelda quest at three o’clock in the morning, there was a place for me.

  I walked in, surprised to find virtually every computer in use. As I approached the service desk, I took in the bright interior. It was nice to find that the place did not look like some dark, smelly teenage hangout space, but rather it was slick and professional. I asked to use a computer to check and send email. The man, who appeared to be in his twenties and had a perpetual-student air about him, told me the rate was one euro per hour, and when I paid, I was assigned to a vacant computer with a large monitor over in the corner on the far side of the room.

  I settled in and opened my nonwork email. I quickly sent a message to my dad and sister, explaining that I’d lost my suitcase and that my phone was in it. I told them to call Café Zoe if they needed me and that Zoe would get the messages to me. I wasn’t a big user of social media, so I didn’t bother going to those pages.

  Lastly, I opened my work email. This was a bad idea. Despite having set it to a “temporarily out of office” auto reply option, the emails had clearly kept coming in like a tsunami of neediness. I scrolled through, glancing at the volume of new messages, which made my rage for order itch like a bad rash. I knew if I opened one, I was done for, and this was not how I wanted to spend my hour. Instead, I sent my colleague Julia a message, asking her to tell everyone the same thing I’d told my family—basically, I’d be in touch. I hoped this would put everyone’s mind at ease.

  Once that was accomplished, I hunkered down to do an Internet deep dive on Jean Claude Bisset. As Jason had suggested, I wanted to find out if he was married, engaged, or other. I was not going to get caught flat footed again. While I had done some research on him before I left the States, there simply hadn’t been time to follow all the references for Jean Claude. Where Colin had been nonexistent, Jean Claude was everywhere. Frankly, it intimidated the heck out of me. This time when I met up with an ex, I wanted to know as much as I could about him before I showed up on his doorstep, potentially making an idiot of myself.

  My initial search didn’t offer much more information than I’d gotten before, which was pages and pages of his image with all the movers and shakers of the fashion industry. Jean Claude did not have a clothing line of his own, as had been his dream, and he was now listed as a designer at Absalon instead of the House of Beauchamp, where I’d met him. I’d heard of the designer Absalon Brodeur, known just as Absalon to the world at large. He was a hot ticket in the fashion scene, judging by the buzz that was generated after his show, where Anna Wintour had been seated front and center.

  As I scrolled through the most recent Absalon shows, I saw several pictures that included the designers currently in-house. I scanned the faces, looking for him, and just like that, my breath caught. There he was, looking out at the camera as if he knew all the secrets of the person taking the picture. I felt a thri
ll ripple from my head to my feet. That! That was the sizzle and zip I was looking for, and he—Jean Claude—was right here in Paris 8.

  I checked the date of the picture just to confirm. The calendar had flipped from March to April since I’d left the States, and this picture was from Paris Fashion Week six months ago. He was here. My heart started to beat triple time in my chest, but I couldn’t tell if it was excitement or panic. Could I do this? Could I track down this gorgeous man whom I hadn’t seen in seven years on the off chance that he remembered me?

  I studied the picture. The truth was Jean Claude was so far out of my league, surrounded by models and aristocrats, billionaires and artists, that it was laughable that I’d even attempt to contact him. Still, there was no mention of a wife or girlfriend. Could I just walk away and not see him again? No.

  Decision made. I noted the address of the Absalon design house on the Avenue Montaigne and closed the browser windows. Newly resolved, I pushed back from the computer, grabbed my shopping bags, and hurried to the door. If I was going to do this, I was bringing my A game. Calling “Merci” to the man at the counter, I dashed from the Internet café.

  * * *

  • • • •

  BACK AT CAFÉ Zoe, I was disappointed to find that my suitcase had not magically appeared. There were no messages from my family or work, so I assumed my emails had arrived and all was well or they had yet to read my emails—it was still morning in Boston, after all, so they might catch up to me later.

  I dropped my loot in my apartment and went back downstairs to strategize while fortifying with a good lunch. I was a planner. I needed bullet points, a spreadsheet, or at the very least a mission statement so that I could keep my nerves from taking over and sending me into a spiral of self-doubt. At the moment, I was 100 percent flying by the seat of my pants. This was not my comfort zone.

  I sat by the window, brooding over my latte. Zoe appeared at my table with the salmon toast I’d ordered. It looked amazing. A thick slab of bread with slices of avocado and thinly shaved salmon, topped with greens and a soft boiled egg, which was split open, with the runny yolk glazing the food beneath.

  “Merci,” I said. “This looks amazing.”

  “Are you well, Chelsea?” Zoe squinted at me with concern. “You look . . . concerned.”

  I glanced up at the pretty Frenchwoman. She had such a peaceful way about her; maybe she could give me some ideas on how to handle this situation.

  “Do you really want to hear my tale of woe?” I asked.

  Zoe nodded and pulled out the chair on the other side of the table. It was then that I noticed she had a latte in hand and had been planning to join me all along. That made me smile.

  I took a bite of my salmon toast, enjoying my food for a moment before delving into my story. I explained about my father’s wedding, my sister calling me out, which Zoe kindly protested, forcing me to admit that, no, it was actually true. Then I told her about my year abroad and the recent awkward reunion in Ireland.

  I was swabbing the last of the egg yolk with my bread when Annalisse came with two fresh coffees. We thanked her, and she took away my empty plate.

  “You are here, then, to see a man?” Zoe asked.

  “That’d be the short version, yes,” I said. “But I’m nervous. What if he doesn’t remember me? What if he’s married or horrified that someone from his past has shown up out of nowhere?”

  Zoe tapped her chin with her index finger, then she snapped her fingers and pointed at me. “You should follow him in disguise. Dress as a server, and then you can watch him and see if he is worth another chance.”

  “Wouldn’t he notice a woman dressed as a server following him around the city?” I asked.

  “Non, that is why it is perfect,” Zoe said. “No one ever notices servers. In France, we keep our distance and try not to be noticed. We are like background scenery that delivers food.”

  Her French accent made the crazy idea seem so reasonable. I found myself actually considering it until I remembered. “I don’t have any clothes.”

  “I have clothes for you,” she said. She studied my figure with a critical eye. “Yes, we can do this.”

  * * *

  • • • •

  THIS WAS HOW I found myself outside the Absalon design house, wearing black pants and a white shirt and one of Zoe’s burgundy aprons tied about my waist. I felt like a fraud, an imposter, and a little bit of a stalker. Mercifully, Zoe was with me, wearing the same, as we posed as two restaurant workers taking a break at the bistro across the street.

  We were sitting in the corner of the patio, behind a bunch of scrupulously groomed topiary trees beneath a heater. We could just see past the thick foliage to the front door of Absalon. I sipped my wine, wondering how long we could realistically stake the place out. Zoe seemed very French about it all, as if it was perfectly normal to drink wine at midday while waiting for a glimpse of a man.

  “You’re good at this,” I said.

  “Love makes us do crazy things.” She shrugged.

  “Does that mean you’ve done this before?”

  A slow smile lit her face. “Perhaps.”

  I suspected that was all I was going to get out of my new friend.

  “Oh boy,” I said. “Just promise me there isn’t a warrant for your arrest in Paris or elsewhere.”

  Zoe laughed, tipping her head back, causing her braids to swing. “Non non. But I have gotten a proposal or two.”

  There was a sexy twinkle in her eye, and I wasn’t sure I should trust her judgment. I had a feeling Zoe would encourage all sorts of shenanigans, especially of the romantic kind.

  “Oh là là, is that him?” Zoe asked. She sat up straight and pointed across the street.

  I whipped my head in the direction of Absalon. My heart stopped. It just stopped in my chest, as if I’d taken a punch to the sternum, then it started up with a hard thump while the blood drained from my face. It was him!

  Jean Claude was just as beautiful as I remembered, with the same unruly dark hair, chiseled features, and lithe build. His clothes, slacks and a dress shirt, fit him to perfection, naturally. He walked with the same restless energy he’d had when I’d known him. I’d always tried to slow him down, ease his journey, and it took everything I had not to run to him and grab his hand in mine and distract him from his course, just like I used to do with hugs and kisses.

  “Il est magnifique.” Zoe sighed.

  I nodded, and Zoe hopped up from her seat. “We must follow him.”

  Having already paid our bill, we headed toward the door.

  “Um . . . small problem,” I said. I was watching him out of the corner of my eye as Zoe led the way through the tables. “He’s walking this way. He’s coming here!”

  We looked at each other, frozen into immobility, as Jean Claude crossed the street, heading right for us.

  “Back, go back!” cried Zoe.

  We rushed to our seats, almost spilling what remained of our wine as we knocked the table in our hurry.

  I sat with my back to the patio, not wanting him to see me. “Act casual,” I hissed at Zoe, who nodded.

  She relaxed in her chair, the very picture of nonchalance. She lifted her glass and took a sip, but her eyes widened, gradually, as if she were watching a slow-moving collision. I desperately wanted to turn and see what was happening, but I didn’t want to give myself away. Not yet.

  Zoe lowered her glass and mouthed some words, but I’d never been good at lipreading. I had no idea what she was saying. Was she speaking French? I started to turn around, but Zoe grabbed my hand and shook her head. Did that mean—oh no, was he right behind me? I widened my eyes at her and pointed right behind me. She nodded, and I broke into a light sweat.

  Jean Claude was here, mere inches away! I had to pee. No, I didn’t. It was nerves. I jogged my knee up and down. Zoe star
ed at me hard. I stopped. I reached for my wine. A drink would calm me down. I lifted the glass and took a sip just as I heard his voice.

  It was the same deep, sweet tone I remembered, and it felt like getting dipped in warm caramel. With a sigh, I leaned back in my chair to hear more. I could catch only every other word. It sounded like he was ordering a glass of wine. I wondered if he was alone. I glanced at Zoe, who was leaning forward, as she, too, was trying to hear what he had to say over the street noise of cars passing and the conversation of the other diners. We exchanged a frustrated look. I leaned back farther, tipping onto the back legs of my chair ever so slightly.

  Jean Claude’s voice sounded agitated, and I looked at Zoe in concern. She shrugged and then pantomimed holding a phone to her ear, which explained why I heard only him. His tone became frustrated, and I glanced at Zoe, who was frowning in concentration. What was he saying? I was certain I would understand Jean Claude if I could just get a little closer. I tipped my chair back just a teeny bit more.

  Of course that’s when disaster struck. I overshot, the legs of my chair gave out, and I tipped over! I flailed, trying to save myself, sending my wine raining down on all of us. Zoe leaped out of her seat to grab me, but she was too late. I went over backward, falling onto the cement with a thud.

  Lying on the ground, feeling dazed and winded, I glanced up at the shocked expression of Jean Claude.

  “Mon Dieu!” he cried.

  He was staring down at me as if I were deranged. Hard to argue the point at the moment. Wine dripped off his hair, and there were spots on his shirtfront. This was so not how I’d pictured seeing him again. I wondered if I could just roll over onto my belly and slink out of the bistro without anyone noticing. Highly unlikely.

  “Chelsea!” cried Zoe.

  She raced around the table to help me up at the same time that Jean Claude reached for me. At the mention of my name, he froze. He frowned at me with his hands outstretched, and I panicked. He could not recognize me now. I would die, just die!