by Ruth Reichl
“Welcome to France,” I muttered as I pressed the light for the landing. It sputtered reluctantly on, and I started the climb.
But once I had shut the door behind me, none of that mattered. It was a wonderful apartment, filled with light even on this gray day. I went to the window and looked out over the Luxembourg Gardens. And then I put my clothes into the beautiful eighteenth-century carved wooden armoire, climbed into the enormous sleigh bed covered with embroidered linen sheets, and fell fast asleep.
I woke up ravenous and went to explore the tiny Parisian kitchen. The refrigerator was a little box beneath a marble counter, but when I opened it I found bottled water, a few gnarled apples that looked like windfalls, a package of butter, a wedge of Chaource, and three bottles of Pouilly-Fumé. Two cracked blue bowls held brown eggs and walnuts, still in the shell. An ancient heel of bread sat on the counter, surrounded by bowls of spices, olive oil, vinegar, and a couple of bottles of vin ordinaire. This would certainly do.
I sliced the bread as thinly as I could and toasted it to make crackers. I put the cheese on a plate, surrounded it with sliced apples, and made myself an omelette. Then I poured myself a glass of wine and sat eating my good French omelette and my cheese and crackers, thinking that I was being a guest to myself and feeling very much like M. F. K. Fisher.
I piled the dishes into the sink and went to draw a bath in the enormous clawfoot tub. I found some crystals in a big glass, and when I sprinkled them into the water the tub began to fill with mounds of white bubbles. I poured myself another glass of wine and stepped into the bath. For a long time I lay there in the clean steam, feeling my body relax in the warmth. I would spend the afternoon at the Louvre.
Wrapped in towels, I wandered back into the bedroom and noticed the phone. It was an enameled white antique, perfect for calling your lover. I stared at it as I considered what to say to Colman. I lay back on the lacy sheets and downy pillows. Somewhere out in the Gardens someone was playing a flute, and I followed the thread of music. There was plenty of time; lulled by Mozart and the featherbed, I drifted off to sleep.
It was dark when I woke up, and I was momentarily disoriented. What time was it? Without stopping to consider what I was doing, I reached for the phone and called Colman’s hotel.
Waiting for the desk to connect me with his room, I panicked and hung up. My heart was thumping loudly in my chest. What if he was not alone? What if he wouldn’t see me? I felt vulnerable and foolish and frightened, and by the time I got the courage to call back my hands were shaking.
Then his deep voice was in my ear and it went through me like a shock. “Where are you?” he asked.
“In Paris,” I said.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. He sounded irritated.
“Visiting friends,” I answered.
“Is Doug with you?”
“No, I’m alone.”
“Well,” he said, considering, “we should get together sometime. But I was just on my way out to meet someone for dinner. Why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll call you in the next few days?”
I gave him my number, and he hung up. I wished I could snatch the call back. The days stretched out, empty, before me. Ten days was a long time. Why had I come? Maybe I could find an earlier plane home.
I burrowed into the pillows, ready to escape back into sleep. In the morning I would make a program, keep myself busy. I’d go to Beaubourg, spend a day at the Louvre, wander through the market on the rue du Cherche-Midi. If Colman called, I’d have lots to tell him . . .
But what if he called tomorrow? I had never had a fancy meal by myself. I wasn’t even hungry. But Colman would not waste his time in Paris making omelettes. What would he do? He would probably go to Taillevent or Tour d’Argent and eat a ten-course meal capped off with cognac and a fat cigar. Well, if he could do it, so could I; I was not going to tell him I had fasted on my first night in Paris.
Taillevent and Tour d’Argent were booked, but Guy Savoy was happy to provide a table for a single cover. How soon could I be there?
On the Métro I eavesdropped on my neighbors, trying to fix the sound of French in my ear. I did not want to seem like a tourist in the restaurant. When I arrived I said my name as carefully as possible, hoping that they would not know I was American. The maître d’hôtel seated me at a small table near the bar and asked if I would like an aperitif.
“Une coupe de champagne,” I heard myself saying, to my surprise. He went to get it, returning with a little dish of salted, buttered nuts, tiny puffs of warm cheese gougères, and the menu.
I asked for the wine list as well, and the captain looked pleased with me. He returned, and we gravely discussed the possibilities for the evening. It took us fifteen minutes to arrive at a decision, but when we were done he assured me that I would be very content with my meal.
Though uninvited, my mother appeared with the first course. “Is this how you will spend the next ten days?” she inquired. “Eating absurdly expensive food all by yourself? Trying to impress waiters? Where will the money come from?”
“Be quiet, please,” I said. “I’m busy. I want to remember every detail of this soup.” I described it for myself, the cream, the truffles, the faintly nutty flavor that could only be sherry.
“He won’t call anyway,” she said, meanly I thought. I ordered a half bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet to go with the terrine de poisson and tried to describe the captain’s demeanor as he served it. “When I came in,” I told my phantom mother, “he thought to himself, Oh, a woman, she’ll have the salad and some plain fish, and he was sorry he had taken the reservation. But I have turned out to be someone who likes to eat, and now he is a happy man.”
“You’re not going to order more wine, are you?” she asked with some alarm.
“Try me,” I said, ordering a half bottle of ’70 Palmer. Mom looked at the price and was scandalized, but the captain looked at me with serious interest and leaned in to ask how I liked it. I took one sip and thought how there is nothing, really nothing, like great wine. Mom just faded, like the Cheshire cat, as I began to describe the taste of the special lamb raised on the salt marshes of the Landes to myself. And to Colman. I was not lonely.
I had dacquoise for dessert, thinking of Los Angeles, and then, just because it seemed sporting, I ordered cognac with my coffee.
The room was practically empty now, but my captain urged me to have another glass of cognac as he set down the petits fours and macaroons and chocolates. I was sated and sleepy, however, and wanted nothing so much as to be in bed. “Our driver will take you home,” said the captain as I paid the (enormous) bill. I added another hundred francs to the tip; it was still cheaper than a taxi.
I barely remember walking up the stairs, and I don’t remember taking off my clothes or getting into bed. But when the phone’s irritating beeping began to sound, that is where I was. I groped for the receiver, knocking the phone off the stand as I did so.
“Bonjour!” said Colman’s voice in my ear. “Tu dormais?”
“Yes,” I said, “I was asleep.”
“Well, you’re wasting your time in Paris. Get up. Get out. Come meet me for coffee.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Time to get up,” he said. “It’s nine. Meet me in half an hour at the café at the foot of the boulevard Saint-Michel, just before the bridge. It’s called Le Départ. I’ll be there at nine-thirty.”
I thought you were busy.
I can’t possibly be there in half an hour.
You can’t just snap your fingers.
I contemplated saying all those things, but what I really said was “Okay.”
As soon as I hung up, I began to worry. Why had he called now? I knew that he was going to tell me that I should not have come, that he did not want to see me. It was like him to do it in person instead of on the phone. And to get it out of the way.
Well, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. I took my time, changed my clothes three
times, wanting to make him regret what he was about to lose. I put on my green velvet skirt and a purple silk blouse, and then I changed it for a pair of plain black pants and then went back to velvet. Was this best? I didn’t know, but now I was so late that I threw on the silver wolf and left.
* * *
Colman was sitting at a table by himself, tapping his paper irritably against the table. He stopped in mid-tap when he saw me and just looked up, without saying anything. I had planned to shake his hand, but instead I just sat down across from him and stared.
He looked wonderful in Paris. His hair was very black, and in his good clothes he looked like neither a Frenchman nor a tourist but some prosperous cosmopolitan who was at home in the world.
“Café?” he asked. I nodded. “Un crème,” he said to the waiter; his accent wasn’t bad, but it was clear he was not French. For the first time in my life I was glad my mother had sent me off to that French school. Just to show off, I said to the waiter, “Je voudrais aussi une tartine,” because the words are hard for an American to pronounce correctly.
“Why is everybody ordering bread and butter this morning?” the waiter wondered in French. “I haven’t sold a croissant.”
“Oh,” I replied, “it’s the weather. Some days are just bread-and-butter days.”
Colman seemed impressed by the exchange.
The coffee was just bitter enough. The bread, a skinny ficelle, crackled when I bit into the crust. The crumb was white and soft, and the butter was cold and sweet against it. “This is why I came,” I said to Colman, and for that moment I meant it. “It’s like having France in my mouth. If I stay away too long I forget the flavor.”
Colman leaned across the table and took both my hands in his. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. “How long are you staying?”
“Ten days,” I said.
“Well, we have to make them count.”
I had clearly said the right thing.
* * *
My Paris was uncomfortable pensions on the outskirts of town, cheap meals that started with watery soup and ended with watery flan. It was always being cold. It was hours peering through the gloom of the badly lighted Louvre.
Colman’s Paris was not mine.
He liked to start the day by strolling through the flower market and listening to the birds. Every morning he woke me with fresh flowers. Then he took me to Ladurée for coffee and croissants and we sat there, beneath the ancient paintings of nymphs and angels, bantering with the waitresses in their black dresses and white aprons. After three days we were regulars, and they didn’t even ask what we wanted, but simply put out the pots of coffee and hot milk, and the plates of croissants.
He showed me streets I had never seen before and small, out-of-the-way museums. He took me to the cemetery and we danced around Proust’s tomb, and afterward we went to Le Petit Zinc and ate platters of claires and spéciales washed down with a cold, crisp Sancerre. We walked along the Seine in the damp November air, and when my feet got cold he insisted on taking me to the nearest shop to buy me a pair of boots.
“But I’ve never spent two hundred dollars on a pair of boots,” I protested, looking at the soft maroon leather he’d picked out.
“And you aren’t now,” he said.
“It’s so extravagant,” I protested.
“But do you like them?” he wanted to know. And of course I did.
Colman never considered the price. Of anything. He bought first-class tickets for the Métro and front-row seats for the Opéra. At night, walking along Saint-Michel, we went in and out of jazz clubs and he introduced me to the joys of La Vieille Prune. I loved the way it tasted, like gentle cognac.
“That first day,” I said one night, after my third Prune, “you were going to tell me to go away. Weren’t you?”
Colman looked down at me. “Was I?” he asked. “I don’t remember.” It wasn’t like him to be clumsy, and I had a fleeting thought that there might have been another woman. If there was, I didn’t want to know about it. “Besides,” he said, catching himself, “that was a different time. It was before we had Paris.”
* * *
“You think these things happen,” I wrote one night in my journal as Colman lay in the other room, sleeping. He, no surprise, had not just a room but a suite. “And of course they do—sometimes—but never to you. Or you think that when they do you’ll be too dumb to recognize it. But there it is, it’s actually happening, and even I’m not so stupid that I don’t enjoy every second. Both of us keep pinching ourselves. Is this really taking place?”
I watched us as if we were strangers, kissing and laughing on the Métro, incapable of keeping our hands off each other. I envied us, even as I lived it. We were the people everyone smiles at. It wouldn’t last. This was the least sensible thing I had ever done in my life.
* * *
“Wear your best dress tonight,” said Colman.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
He took me the long way round, to get me lost, and then he made me close my eyes for the last few blocks. When I opened them we were standing in front of Tour d’Argent. “This is where we are dining.”
“My first three-star restaurant,” I said. And for a moment I thought what it would be like to go to a three-star restaurant with Doug. I was a restaurant critic, but I was still green enough that fancy places made me nervous. If I were with Doug we would both be embarrassed, and we’d get the worst table in the house and spend the whole night worrying about how much money we were spending.
But Colman had no shame. He gave his name at the front and the owner rushed up to shake his hand and lead us to a table by the window. “My nephew told me to take very good care of you,” he said as he pulled out the chair. “Is that chef he has at Ma Maison really as good as he says?”
Colman nodded. “Better,” he said.
“Well,” said Monsieur Terrail, “we’ll have to see if we can’t impress you even more than he does.” He opened a bottle of Krug ’66 and poured us each a glass. Then he disappeared. Colman raised his glass and suddenly I saw, through the bubbles, Notre Dame flooded with silvery light just across the Seine.
Dinner was a dance. Colman and Monsieur Terrail were moving in perfect time to the music, and I floated along between them as they dipped and swayed. What would we drink with the foie gras frais? Colman thought perhaps a Meursault, an older one. Ah yes, Monsieur Terrail was in perfect agreement; it was a fine thing, he thought, to have such a sympathetic guest. The wine would be very nice, did he not agree, with the brouillade aux truffes?
The foie gras was molten velvet in my mouth, and when I took a sip of wine the flavor became even more intense, richer and rounder than it already was. Colman looked at me, and I felt the thrill all the way down to my fingertips. I understood, for the first time ever, why those turn-of-the-century restaurants had private rooms with velvet couches. I would have liked a couch.
The scrambled eggs with truffles were even better than the foie gras. Minutes earlier I would not have thought it possible. Each forkful was like biting off a piece of the sun. It was like musk and light, all at once, and suddenly I burst out, “This is what I always imagined sex would taste like.”
Colman put back his head and roared. “Being with you,” he said, “is just like being by myself. Only better.” And he picked up my hand, across the table, and kissed it.
Monsieur Terrail was back now, lighting a candle. He crooned a little as he decanted the wine, and I knew it must be very, very good.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Oh,” said Colman. “A Petit-Village from my birth year.” He looked a bit smug and said, “You know, ’45 was a very good year.”
“And ’48?” I asked.
“Not as good,” he said. And then, quickly, “But a very good year for women.”
I thought, briefly, of what the world was like when the wine was put into the bottle. Paris was being liberated; there was dancing in t
he streets. I imagined I could taste all that. Afterward there was sorbet and framboises Chantilly and an ancient cognac. “This is probably costing more than I make in a year,” I said to Colman.
“Probably,” he said. “You know, I was thinking that tomorrow we could take the train to Boyer for lunch. It’s only got two stars, but it will probably get its third this year. I want you to taste la fameuse truffe en croûte.”
We were very drunk walking back to his hotel, and I put my head on his chest as we walked, listening to his deep, wonderful voice resonating through his coat. I wanted the night to never end.
We did go to Boyer the next day, where we drank antique Roederer champagne from 1911. “I hope I’m this vibrant when I’m sixty-seven,” said Colman. There was a kind of magic to champagne that old, a wine bottled before automobiles or airplanes or either of the major wars. A wine bottled before women had the vote. Watching the liquid come sparkling into my glass, I thought of all the years it had been waiting in that dark bottle, what a different world it was emerging into. I was drinking history; I liked the taste.
The whole truffle was incredible too; it looked like a lump of coal wrapped up in pastry. The crust was flaky, but once I got through I hit the truffle, which tasted the way a forest smells in autumn when the leaves are turning colors and someone, far off, is burning them.
Colman watched as I ate; I could feel my cheeks get flushed. “I always thought truffles were overrated,” I said. “I had no idea. Thank you.”
He took my hand, caressed it. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I have another surprise.” There was an odd look on his face, dreamy and wistful. “I am going to introduce you to someone very special.”
I couldn’t imagine who it might be.
* * *
A marcassin, the hide of a young wild boar, was stretched across the door of the restaurant we were approaching. “You don’t see that much anymore,” said Colman. “But this is an old-fashioned bistro, the real thing.”