Paris Letters

by Janice MacLeod

  “Worse,” I replied. “Vegan.”

  “With the cheese they have around here?” She cut off a small triangle of creamy chèvre and popped it in her mouth. “That’s sacrilege.”

  I told my aunt and uncle about the butcher and how I felt like I was talking to him like a three-year-old, that speaking French was too hard, that he was too hard to get to know.

  “Act like a fool, sound terrible, and make laughable grammatical errors,” said my uncle. He was a primary school teacher in Toronto. He taught English to many immigrant children. “Act like a child.”

  So on the days that followed, I continued talking to my butcher friend, making grammatical errors and sounding foolish along the way. He replied in slow French, smiling and likely holding back laughter, but he was still a stranger, which made acting like a fool feel somewhat okay.

  One evening, I was heading to an English-speaking Meetup group for expats. There are hundreds of these specialized groups all over Paris. A friend once said, “If you’re an expat lesbian tightrope walker in Paris, there is a Meetup group for you.”

  Now I’m not one to go out on a limb and meet people. I’m introverted, and crowds exhaust me. But sometimes you have to be the grown-up of your life and tell your inner child, who is kicking and screaming, “Get your shoes on. This is not optional. We have a play date.”

  So that’s what I did. I put on my shoes and started walking up the street to the Meetup group. Insolent and begrudging.

  But who should be sitting in a bar up the street? Why, it was Christophe, wasn’t it? And didn’t he see me just as I was walking by? Why yes, he did. And didn’t he jump up from his bar stool and rush outside to ask me if I would be interested in having a drink? Why yes, he did.

  But he did it in very few words. He pointed at the bar and said, “Bière?” Lucky for him, I’m Canadian and know the French word for beer. And lucky for me, when I saddled up to the bar with Christophe, all the bartenders were Canadian and bilingual. Oh God in Heaven, thank you for this moment.

  Teaming up with the bartenders, we managed to piece together a Franglish conversation of sorts. They were determined to help their friend pick up this Canadian girl. And when no one was looking, I asked Christophe if I could take a photo of him and me. You know, the kind where you are cheek to cheek and one of you has your arms outstretched with the camera to get the photo. And that’s when he turned and kissed me!

  Cue sexy smooching scene. On film even!

  He immediately pulled back and apologized. “Désolé, désolé, désolé.” Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  I immediately leaned in and said, “Non désolé, non désolé, non désolé.” No sorry, no sorry, no sorry. It wasn’t my most elegant speech, but he understood.

  I never did make it to the Meetup group.

  Instead I walked around Paris with Christophe for half the night, with stops here and there for late-night coffees and smooches. The cafés were crowded. The streets pulsed with the heat of spring sunlight earlier that day. When he dropped me off at my building, I pointed up to show him the windows of the apartment where I was staying. He kissed me good-bye and said something to me in French. I’m not sure what it was, but I hoped it was something nice. It certainly seemed like something nice by the way he said it.

  The next day, I walked by the butcher shop, and he said something in French that I didn’t understand, but it had an inflection at the end of the sentence that led me to believe he asked me a question. Hoping he had just asked me out, I responded in French with my rehearsed, “My window tonight at 8:30?” He nodded. That night when I looked out my window at 8:30, he was standing there ready for our date. And he was standing there every night at 8:30 for the next two weeks, which were also what I thought would be the last two weeks of my time in the city.

  Cue sexy love affair in Paris.

  How long does one wait to have sex with a cute butcher in Paris? In my old life, I would have held out as per the rules in ladies magazines, and honestly, most of the men gave up right around the time I was buying undies for the big event. But the code of conduct is different for a traveler. Travelers live by this rule: collect as many experiences as you can without getting yourself killed or worse.

  So how long does a traveler wait? Evidently not long. This was new for me. I used to watch Sex and the City and wonder if every girl was getting it on all time, because I wasn’t and neither were my friends. We weren’t nuns, for heaven’s sake, but we weren’t so…slutty either. And most of us were mystified by the amount of sex Carrie and her gaggle of girlfriends had with the boys of New York. But with Christophe, I must admit I deliberately didn’t wait, simply because I was running out of time. Would it end in heartbreak? Likely. Would I look back on it fondly? Definitely.

  All the aches and pains in my calloused heart had been replaced by soft touches and smooches here and there. And there. And a few nights after our first date in the bar, he reached a part of me inside that had been silent too long. In ecstasy, she screamed out for more.

  12

  Mona Lisa Smile

  I spent my final weeks in Paris with Christophe. Before I came strolling down the rue, he had booked a vacation to Poland. I learned that my French butcher boyfriend wasn’t French at all. He was from a small city in Poland. He called the airline and his brother a few days before his flight and said he wouldn’t be going. He had to see about a girl.

  The lease on my dank flat was up, and I moved into a hotel for the final three days. Christophe moved in with me, and we spent most of our time honeymooning in our robes, interrupted by occasional walks along the Seine and meals at bistros. Because we couldn’t speak the same language, we walked in silence much of the time. In the silence, holding hands or with his strong arm around my shoulder, we became part of the city, feeling it in the moment: watching boats slowly coast beneath the bridges, standing beneath trees that were now raining down blossoms in the breeze, sitting at cafés and watching the world stroll by.

  Who was this guy? What was his story? I didn’t know and didn’t have the language skills to find out. I had to rely on other clues to discover more about Christophe. He was always on time, he always opened the door for me, and he was tender, strong, and considerate. He showered me with kisses and hugs, and he constantly asked if I needed anything. I could usually only respond with simple Oui or Non, which seemed to be enough for him. We had our own versions of charades and Pictionary to communicate. We’d point and nod. Sublanguages ruled.

  Turns out guys love when chicks don’t talk their ears off. Had I played the W.A.I.T. game (Why Am I Talking) like this back in Los Angeles, would I have found love? My friend Áine always finds love in foreign lands. There seems to be an energy shift that opens her up to love. Was it just because she couldn’t speak the language as well as a native speaker who could rattle on? Was this what was happening to me?

  Christophe and I lived in the present, which is the only tense in French I could muddle through with a modicum of success. As we walked, I would look for scenes to photograph. He would look at me. During this time, I felt freer than ever before. Without the ability to tell him my backstory, I was just Janice In Paris. No one else. I was not a tired corporate drone. I was not a direct marketing professional. I was not the story of who I was the year before, secretly plotting my escape from corporate life. As for his backstory, as I ran my fingers up and down his chest and legs, I felt a scar here and there. I’d ask him what it was. “Accident,” he’d reply. “Fall. Bad.” I would nod, knowing all I needed to know for now.

  I couldn’t project any pressure onto him about the future, not only because I didn’t have the language skills to hint, but also because we both knew the score. I was traveling through town. For all I knew, he could have been like the many men in France who are very happy to accommodate women who are, for the first time, discovering the traveler’s code of conduct. A drink here, help with a map in broken Engli
sh, a grateful woman who loves the sound of an accent. After one or two hot, unforgettable nights, she can skip off into the sunset, back to her regularly scheduled life, and stalk him on Facebook with her reliable speedy Internet service back home.

  In the mornings, I would plan the itinerary, pulling out my maps and notes. I would point. I’ve got to see this and that and this and that. Busy, busy, busy, always running. Christophe would nod at my plan. “You want?” he would say. I would nod. “Maybe one.” And then I’d pick a place on my list and we’d go. Before Christophe came along, I was a workaholic tourist. Fast. Go. Get there. See it all. Take loads of photos just in case. Go, go, go. But Christophe, he had more of a saunter. And with him always holding my hand and never letting go, I could either drag him along or let him set the pace. There were times when I had been fighting my way through a pack of tourists at Notre Dame and I forgot to look at the cathedral altogether, but with him setting the pace, I could see layers of the city I missed before when I was running to catch the green lights. I thought I knew Paris fairly well by now, but with Christophe leading the way, I was led to small interesting pockets. I soon realized that Paris isn’t just a big city; it’s a series of small communities as well.

  A few months before, just after I bought my plane ticket to Paris, I fantasized about speaking French and buying a baguette on the walk home. I dreamed of sitting in cafés like they do in postcards. Now here I was, doing all this hand-in-hand with the lovely Christophe. I could hardly believe what was happening to me.

  On a cold, gray day in April, we opted to visit the Louvre. I had been there three weeks prior to see the pièce de résistance, the Mona Lisa, and quite honestly, I didn’t get what all the fuss was about. On my first viewing of the world’s most recognized painting, I was slightly disappointed. It was smaller than I imagined, a mere 30 x 21 inches. It was dark and drab and not nearly as jaw-dropping as many of the other masterpieces surrounding it. I needed another look, and Christophe was game. Immediately after buying our tickets from a vending machine beneath I. M. Pei’s pyramid, I grabbed his hand and tried to fight the crowds who were also heading toward the painting that made Dan Brown famous. He kept pulling me back to look at the art en route. I started feeling panicked that I would run out of museum-going mojo by the time we arrived at the painting, but he had no such thoughts. He wanted to stroll and pause, stroll and pause. I breathed deep and checked in with myself before addressing his snail’s pace.

  She’s not going anywhere.

  Mr. Miyagi, in his infinite wisdom, was right once again. Mona Lisa wasn’t leaving the building. She wasn’t touring the earth. She was staying put. I could take my time. And when I took a deep breath, stopped trying to drag Christophe through the crowd, I understood what made this museum special. I saw the sculptures, pillaged by centuries of kings, exquisite paintings traded and bought, stolen and found from around the world, and I saw the intricate décor along the grand walls of the palace itself. A fine place for royalty and emperors to call home. The art before arriving at the Mona Lisa was quite lovely. Who knew? I didn’t even see it the first time.

  Before long, I was back at the Mona Lisa for another look at her enigmatic smile. I had done some research and knew that the way she was painted became the standard for how portraits would be painted and photos (once photography was invented) would be taken henceforth. Before the Mona Lisa, paintings were full-length profiles looking in the distance with the background being as clear as the foreground. She had a three-quarter-length pose, looked directly at the painter, and is in front of a background that faded in the distance. She also had no outlines around her eyes and mouth, which made her even more realistic.

  Oh, how far we’ve come. Now we can re-create the same look with a photo app on our phones!

  With Christophe at my side, we stood before the lovely Lisa del Giocondo to see what all the fuss was about. I stared and stared. What was it with this lady? I kept looking at this mysterious smile. I kept forgetting that this was a painting. The lines blended so well that I couldn’t see paint strokes, which was a new technique at the time. What was she trying to convey? What was he, Leonardo da Vinci, trying to convey. She. He. She. He.

  Then it hit me.

  This smile is the smile of someone who was treated well by others…but more importantly, by herself. She was pleased with her life and it showed, or glowed, to be more precise. She radiated serenity. The same glow I’ve seen on old ladies watching over grandchildren in the park. The glow of yogis after a meditation. The glow I’ve seen on myself in the mirror the mornings after nights with Christophe.

  I could have been projecting all this onto the lovely lady who sat composed in her kind silence in front of me. The first time I saw her, I didn’t see any of this. I saw the crowds gathered that I had to fight through as if I were in a car on the freeway back in Los Angeles. Fighting traffic on-road and off. But now that I had experienced more than a week of vacation, a juicy love affair, and eaten the most luscious food of my life, I was developing my own Mona Lisa smile.

  And da Vinci saw this and painted it! Amazing.

  I nodded to Christophe. He nodded back and pointed at the Egyptian collection on the map. I nodded, and we sauntered slowly toward the mummies. Later at the gift shop, I bought a print of my new friend Mona and tucked her in my journal like some people tuck cards of saints or gurus in their wallets. A reminder to aim for that feeling on my journey.

  When we had seen enough, we sauntered back to the hotel to make soup and love. “You want?” he said and eyed the bed. I want. And we made love very slowly. As he held me, he told me that with everyone he was closed but with me he was open.

  Well, that was something. Without my ability to tell the stories of my past, I felt more closed than ever. But maybe that was a good thing. Maybe we weren’t our stories. Those could be events, memories, and lessons, but not necessarily definitions of self.

  We stayed up most of my last three nights in Paris. Talking slowly, kissing slowly, touching, and caressing. There was nowhere else to be, nothing more to do, no more tourist attractions to add to my list. There was no list. There was no email to check, no one that required anything from me other than a Mona Lisa smile. Up until that point, those were the sexiest nights of my life.

  On our final day, we boarded the train that would take me to the airport and away from my French-speaking Polish lover. At the airport, as we waited for my check-in line to open, he fetched coffees while I stood with the luggage. In the two minutes alone, I cried and couldn’t quite compose myself by the time he returned. Would I ever come back? I had told him I had a return ticket from Paris to Canada for a few months later and I would call. He smiled, wiped my tears away, and said he would call every day. I pushed the torrent down. Wait until the plane. The hotel. Just wait. He said he loved me. I said I loved him. Whether or not it was true wasn’t important. What was important was that we knew how to say it in French and English. During the two weeks together, we filled a lot of space with je t’aimes, and I wondered in the silence of my own mind whether it was true or not. But for now, for these two weeks, I could say it and let it be the intense love affair that it was.

  As we stood near the security line, he asked me to promise him something. I had no idea what he had asked. “Oui, je promise, je promise, je promise.” Then I paused and asked him what I was promising. We laughed, both of us knowing that time and plane tickets can void any promises to ride off into the sunset together.

  It was time. He kissed and hugged me in a way that made me forget the concepts of time, space, and circumstance. In his arms, I was in an eternal space where I craved to be forever. A man’s love. I got it. I really got it. For two weeks, I really got what I hadn’t been getting until this beautiful creature showed me. He never, ever kept me guessing. He never, ever kept me waiting. He always showed up.

  He kissed me on the forehead and said, “Go.” I nodded, turned, and slowly walk
ed toward the security line, knowing he was watching me. I turned even though they all say you shouldn’t. I was right. He was standing there looking at me with the same curious glance he’d had all those mornings when I sat at the café and he stood at the butcher shop. I blew him a kiss. He smiled, caught it with his hand, and held it to his heart. I walked through Security and looked for signs to my gate.

  In my old life, I would have spent a week sniffling on the couch over my lost love. But in my traveler’s life, I had to compartmentalize feelings. When I was on the move, there was little room for emotional breakdowns. There were too many signs to read, too many physical needs to meet—finding shelter, food, hotels, and gates. So with the exception of that two-minute burst of tears before getting on the plane, I was calm and cool. Once seated, I waited for whatever I had choked down to come up.

  But nothing came. Instead, as the plane took off, I looked through the window at the fields below and thought back to my time with Christophe—his hands, his lips, his eyes. I caught my reflection in the glass and saw that I was smiling. I recognized the look.

  13

  Declare Nothing but Your Genius

  The Customs line at the airport in Edinburgh read, “Nothing to declare.”

  I was so very happy to be in a Customs line with an English-speaking Customs agent that when he asked me if I had anything to declare, I wanted to sing out a quote from Oscar Wilde, “I have nothing to declare but my genius.” But I didn’t. You don’t joke with the Customs guy, for fear of saying something irreversible. (I have always felt mildly guilty at Customs. I have to keep telling myself that I did nothing wrong. I was innocent. I didn’t even buy Duty Free). The Customs agent looked at my passport. “MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod.” Has every man in the world watched The Highlander? Is there some kind of specialized training for men? Because every man I met along the way referred to me as “MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod.”