Ninon and Me at the Grand Comptoir

by Katherine Watt

  Abbé Gedoyn could not take his eyes off of Ninon. “I’ll have whatever you are having.” he replied grasping for straws.

  “I am afraid I don’t drink alcohol.” replied Ninon. “Perhaps you would prefer a cognac?” She suggested, beckoning over her houseman.

  “Merci,” stammered the Abbe.

  Abbé Franguire, on the other hand, had been immediately smitten with Marguerite and was more composed about it. Putting his hand lightly on her elbow he cleverly steered her away from Ninon and Abbé Gedoyn to a separate corner of the room, leaving his awkward friend alone with the object of his immediate amour.

  The houseman came back bearing a crystal snifter on a silver tray. Abbåé snatched it and took a fortifying gulp. The vapors of the heady spirit filled his nostrils and made eyes water. He coughed and drained the glass. Ninon smiled and nodded to the houseman signaling him that it was ok to bring another.

  As the cognac took effect Gedoyn’s tongue loosened a bit and he became increasingly bold, trying to impress Ninon with how much he knew.

  “Yes, La Fontaine! Very famous!” he remarked. “His Fables are drole, but in truth, don’t you agree that they are just a retelling of Aesop?”

  “Well, Monsieur La Fontaine has been a regular at my Salon for many years.” replied Ninon. “He frequently shared his drafts with me, looking for feedback.”

  Oops.

  Example after example Gedoyn proved himself outwitted. Ninon was not only a great beauty but obviously very, very smart. Rather than be embarrassed and turned off by this, Gedoyn’s infatuation grew by the minute. When the time came that it was impossible for him to stay a moment longer without seriously overstaying his welcome, everyone else attending the afternoon’s salon had long gone, including his friend, Franguire, he was totally and forever être éperdument amoureux, head over heels in love.

  Gedoyn lived for the Wednesday Salons. He was loathe to miss a moment that was an opportunity to spend any possible second with Ninon. By the time the leaves had properly burst from their buds and the Square was green and filled with blossoms and children running and shouting and birds singing and dogs barking and horses clopping and fountains flowing, before the days got hot and the streets steamed with muck and horse leavings and air got more fetid, eventually unbearably so, our young Gedoyn was beseeching Ninon to become his lover.

  Gedoyn had just celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday, Ninon was half way through her seventy-eight year. She did not presently have a lover. She really didn’t want a lover. She was happy with her life, her friends, her books, her lovely home on rue des Tournelles. Sorry, cher Gedoyn, this was not going to happen.

  But as the seasons passed; Summer turns to Fall, and the days again becoming bitterly cold and the horses were sliding around the cobbles and the square was icy and empty and the fires were roaring at 28 rue des Tournelles, Gedoyn was still beseeching Ninon to become his lover. Finally she agreed. If he still was of a mind she would become Gedoyn’s lover on her eightieth birthday.

  On an unseasonably warm day in November in the year of 1700, Ninon made the 36 year old Abbé Gedoyn’s dreams come true.

  The birds were singing in the square.

  Popping the Five Star Bubble

  Evelyn asked for another Wednesday, post-tutoring drinks session at Le Bar at the Intercontinental. Part of me wants to put an end to this friendship, but part of me is intrigued and still wants to know what exactly it is that makes her tick. Along the way, she asked if I would mind inviting Judith, the woman we were also introduced to when we met each other, courtesy of mutual friends who were visiting Paris. I thought it odd because she didn’t seem to have a high regard for Judith when we met before. I didn’t click with her enough to follow up but I didn’t mind including Judith, even though it was my turn to pay and the martinis are thirty euro a pop.

  Somehow Wednesday turned into Friday. Renard is sick with a cold and in his own words, “When a man is sick the world must stop.” Maybe your world dear, not mine. The night before, in our before going to sleep texts he said “so much to say…. just I am sick, and when a man is sick, the world have to stop.” “Second…. Is a long story (kissy emoticon)” “And not for tonight…” (another kissy emoticon).

  Me: “Good story or bad story.” Careful girl, you’re getting a bit close to that self sabotage thing.

  “No no no... sorry but, not everything can be explain by sentence. Tonight for me is a (insert photo of foil pack of pills) “for my gorge.” What an ugly word for throat.

  This feels like really dangerous territory to me. My mind is racing through all the possible scenarios that “second” are going to be. He’s dumping me. He’s giving me bad news. Oh la la la la la la…

  I decide it’s better to deflect. “OK, you can tell me when you see me. I need to sleep now. Bonne nuit (kissing emoticon).

  “Bonne nuit aussi ma douce. (kissy emoticon)

  Well, he can’t be dumping me if he’s calling me his sweet.

  The next day he wasn’t feeling any better and was whining up a storm. I told him I was going out with friends. Get some sleep. I’ll text him when I get home but I hope he’s sleeping.

  Evelyn and I agree to meet at 5:15, an hour and a half before Judith will arrive. We can catch up. Google maps says it will take 18 minutes. I order my Uber at 4:45.

  The Uber takes an inordinately long time to arrive. I was about to give up on him and flag down a taxi when he arrived. For some crazy reason Uber drivers are locked into what their GPS tells them to do and sometimes GPS doesn’t seem to know what it’s talking about. We headed into the warren of what I call Amelie’s Paris, the little one way narrow cobbled streets of Montmartre. Up rue Lepic, turning on very narrow rue d’Orchampt which winds around to where we want to work our way down the hill to Blvd Clichy. Uber’s GPS really wants to avoid the main thoroughfare of Place de Clichy but more often that not, it would be the quickest route. Suddenly there was un bouchon, a bottleneck. Nobody is moving. I credit my driver in that he didn’t honk. Every Uber driver loves to honk. Eventually we backed our way through the little cobbled rues of Montmartre, a funny little parade of cars all going backwards. After about fifteen minutes of navigating the narrow passageways, we ended up out of the maze and onto Rue Blanche, at least in the right arrondissement, the ninth.

  I arrived at Le Bar a good twenty minutes late apologizing profusely. It’s no small coincidence on my part that it is my deceased father’s birthday. Just that day, my sisters and I were discussing the one main lesson Dad taught us. For me it was “Always leave in time to change a flat tire.” In truth I could not change a flat tire if my life depended on it, but I had developed a lifelong habit of always being early. Showing up late was indeed disconcerting.

  I found Evelyn in the crowded bar half way through her first martini and worrying about how we would find a table that would accommodate three. “Let’s just tell the server to watch for one and let us know.” I suggested. The server indeed accommodated us by moving two tables together and moving Evelyn’s martini and the little trio of snacks to another table. Problem solved.

  After what seemed like forever, I managed to get my martini we toasted to the holidays, to life in Paris, to our health. Evelyn asked me briefly how things were going with Renard.

  “Wonderful.” I said.

  “Have you seen him again?”

  “Oh yes. We are in that stage where you talk about everything for hours.”

  “I’ve never talked about everything for hours. I don’t like it when people ask me questions about my life. I don’t need to know about their childhood. And I certainly have no intention of telling them about mine.”

  I don’t know what to say. So I say nothing.

  “it’s really busy here on Fridays. I was here last Friday with a gentleman and it was equally busy.”

  OK, evidently she wants to tell me about that. I’ve le
arned not to probe with Evelyn. Let the story unfold on her timeline. But I need some help here. What gentleman? Did she meet him here in the bar?

  “No of course not. I met him through some business meetings I’ve attended here in Paris.” Evidently after retiring from her Marketing Director job in January, she has been consulting with some organizations in Paris. “Antoine” is a Parisian that she met in one of these organizations. He asked her for a drink and she suggested Le Bar. Since he had made what she considered a clever comeback to her remark in the meetings that hope is not a strategy, she decided he was worth a date.

  She described Antoine as pedantic, entitled and boring. Gentle probing, one has to be very careful with Evelyn or one would be perceived as pushy and nosy (both attributes which I freely acknowledge), revealed that Antoine is an “aristocrat”, a man of high breeding, divorced after 25 years of marriage to a beautiful woman. He lives in the sixteenth arrondissement and has multiple châteaux. But he was a bore, completely unable to carry on an interesting conversation.

  Now carrying on an interesting conversation with Evelyn is a bit of a challenge. It generally means getting her to talk about herself, without actually asking her any direct question which will render one borish and nosy. Don’t ask about her dead husband. Don’t ask about her kids. It is ok to ask after the health and happiness of her young grandson, but not about the discipline problems she alluded to last time we met. It’s ok to ask about her language tutoring, but not the status of Michael, the Financial consultant in New York who she plans to have dinner with in a couple weeks.

  As the martinis go down, a little more comes out about Antoine. “It’s funny,” she said, “he thought the date was a success and is looking forward to our next one.”

  I tilt my head and look quizzically, a trick I learned from an old colleague who always had me spilling my guts. Best not probe about these things.

  “Well of course I sent him an email, thanking him for the drinks.”

  One does not send a thank you email to someone one hopes never to see again.

  “He responded that he was hopeful but did not have a strategy.” I tilted my head to the other side. “I will probably go to dinner with him.”

  Give a handsome aristocrat with an apartment in the 16th and multiple chateaux in the country a second chance? Really? My how our standards are diminished….

  Finally Judith arrives, about forty five minutes late. She looks quite beautiful. She orders a martini “comme James Bond” she tells the server. He has no idea what she’s talking about. She points to Evelyn’s drink with olives (mine has a twist) and says “comme ca”.

  “So, how are you?” Evelyn asks. And Judith launches into a long story about the trials and tribulations of her new job. She is just ten days away from becoming a regular employee at an English language school. The ten days are crucial because once she passes that probationary period, she becomes, what is in France, impossible to fire. She tells us about how her French company has been acquired by a bigger US company. The acquiring CEO came to visit her location and she took the liberty of asking questions in a meeting that essentially embarrassed both her manager and her local CEO. She thought she was demonstrating how savvy she was and didn’t understand how dangerous her actions where in getting her over the ten day hurdle.

  “I’m working twelve hour days, doing my job and my assistant’s job. My boss seems invisible and clueless. The local CEO doesn’t care and replies to emails with ‘that’s a stupid question’. Nobody respects either of them. My assistant thinks she should have gotten this job and seems to be out to get me fired.”

  Evelyn is on fire. Business issues, particularly management issues fall right in her sweet spot. Evidently it’s ok for her to ask probing questions.

  “How old is your Manager? Tell me about her. What does she look like? How many kids does she have? How old are they? How tall is she?.....” Judith tries to answer but she can’t keep up with the questions.

  “How do you think you made your boss and your CEO feel when you asked their boss those questions?” An obvious question that I wasn’t going to ask because I’d rather just enjoy my martini.

  Two hours and more martinis passed with Evelyn grilling Judith about the actions she did and didn’t take; with her boss, with her bosses boss, with the big boss, and with the recalcitrant employee. This is what Evelyn does best. Try to fix things. When the focus turned to me; Madame HR, what would you do? I deflected. Honestly, what I picked up early in the conversation was that Judith wanted this job because it was a paycheck but truthfully, her heart isn’t in it at all, she doesn’t respect or like any of the players and frankly I would probably try to talk her into cutting her losses and finding another sort of job. But that isn’t where either Evelyn or Judith wanted the conversation to go.

  I finished my second martini and was looking for the waiter to order a third.

  Finally Evelyn decided it was time for her to go and Judith said she’d really like to go out for a cigarette and then come back and have another drink. I was rather eager to hear about the other aspects of her life so I ordered two more martinis and sat back enjoying the ornate room with it’s incredible chandeliers, it’s gargantuan mahogany doors and the soft background music of the gentleman playing the grand piano tucked into the back of the room.

  An Ending

  What happened to my great love for Philippe? One night with Renard and it has vanished. Here I sit at GCA on Wednesday night jazz night by myself. Somehow it feels important to do the normal things I do.

  Getting ready Renard was texting me, mushy romantic texts. Then suddenly about his plans to organize my kitchen.

  “Maybe I need to organize your kitchen in a different way… don’t be surprised. I am just crazy about food and the way of a kitchen supposed to be…”

  “This is going in the book.”

  “Good!” (smiley face emoticon and thumbs up)

  Monday, after a week with the horrible cold mon homme sauvage decided he was well enough to come to me.

  “I’ll cook for you.” I said. Damn, why did I say that?

  “I’ll bring wine,” he said.

  “It’s OK,” I assured him. “I have wine. You don’t need to bring anything this time. Just yourself.”

  Mondays are a difficult day for our dinners. Everything is closed except the boulangerie. Man cannot live on bread… and wine… alone. Of course the grocery store is open. That means really cooking something.

  I decided to keep it simple; gnocchi with a brown butter sauce and parmesan, a salad, some cheese and Magalie’s Christmas cookies and clementines for dessert. But a surprise to start, oysters. At the last minute I popped out and Thierry at Cépage prepared a platter of oysters on a bed of crushed ice with a lemon.

  Renard was delighted. I had a nice sauvignon in the fridge. He definitely approved, especially when I poured myself a glass of red and he realized I had gotten the white just for him and his oysters.

  It went downhill from there. Renard is a chef. Or rather he was a chef. So I’m going to say on his behalf that he just can’t help himself. I went into the kitchen to prepare the gnocchi. I had the directions for the brown butter sauce written out onto a small square of paper, on the fridge under the magnet he gave me the night we met.

  He popped up and followed me into the kitchen.

  “You, on the couch!”

  He went to stand on the other side of the kitchen island.

  “On the couch!” I repeated. He acquiesced.

  “You can help with the salad.” I conceded. I hadn’t really thought through the dressing anyway.

  “After the gnocchi.” he said. “Hot food and then cold.” How very French. My dinner was turning into a five course meal!

  I served the gnocchi which wasn’t beautiful and the store bought dumplings were a little dense. But he had seconds so it couldn’t have been too ba
d. I poured him a glass of red wine, the one he loved before. And a new glass because I know he likes a new glass when he changes wines.

  When it was his turn, he fairly sprang into action. I got the leavings of the oysters and headed out to the garbage. That’s when he took a good look at my fridge. I hadn’t planned on that scrutiny. Admittedly there were some things that had started to take on a life of their own. Thank goodness I had already dumped most of the Thanksgiving leftovers. And I snuck the rest of the meat stuffing the butcher had prepared for me, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was but I didn’t like it, into the oyster trash that I had taken out.

  We ate the salad. We nibbled the cheese. Renard ate two cookies. We opened another bottle of wine. And we talked. For hours. Then we went to bed.

  Without going all 50 Shades of Grey, it was a long night that seemed like a short night. In the morning I made coffee while he took a shower. Evidently I can make coffee well enough, even amid the mess of last night’s dinner. I haven’t quite figured out why leaving the night’s mess until tomorrow is ok. He snuck into the kitchen and took another look around.

  “I will come later this week to organize your fridge.”

  “Your fridge,” I said. “Going forward the kitchen is yours.”

  “Yes!” he responded, obviously beyond pleased.

  “But the bedroom is mine” I added with a small smile.

  He grinned. “Yes, the bedroom is yours. And now it’s important that I go to the marché, before it’s too late.”

  With a kiss he was out the door. A few minutes later a text: “I think the clock on your stove is wrong.”

  “You mean the clock on your stove. You forgot to change it after daylight savings time ended.”

  Wednesday night jazz night. I went alone and sat with my notebook, writing. I treated myself to a piece of tarte citron. Philippe came over to ask about my book. Is it almost done?