Lunch in Paris (17 page)

After one particularly bleak morning of visits, Paul went back to the flat to take a nap and my mother and I walked over to
the bric-a-brac shops on the rue Oberkampf. We looked at an art deco vanity with a pond-sized circular mirror, and a set of
ceramic pantry jars lined up in descending-size order like Russian dolls:
farine, sucre, café, thé, sel, poivre
. They were so much more civilized than the plastic wonton soup container I’d used to store my sugar in New York.

We both saw it at the same time, as we turned into our street. There was a cardboard panel in the window, nothing official:
à vendre
and a phone number. An apartment. For sale. On our very own street. I wouldn’t have to change my dry cleaner, my
boulangerie,
my fruit man, my pizzeria. I felt my salivary glands go into overdrive. I leaned forward like a jungle cat ready to pounce.

And then I saw him, out of the corner of my eye. A man across the street, twenty yards up, cell phone cocked, also staring
up at the window.

I’ve looked for an apartment in New York, so I know what it is to act fast—to shove your rival to the pavement and offer up
cash, drugs, duck à l’orange, and your firstborn child all for a studio on East 62nd Street.

Although I stopped dating before whole relationships were conducted by text message, I can be a dial demon when I need to
be. The phone rang.
Oui, allo.
I looked at the guy up the street. He put his phone back in his pocket and walked on. No doubt he was going to do something
foolish, like
call back later,
by which time if there was anything up there worth having, it would be mine.

The phone was answered by Natacha. Yes, she was in the apartment. Sure, we could come right up. We climbed one flight, noting
the paint flaking in the hallway and the smell of fried fish
hanging in the air. Natacha met us at the door in tight black pants and stilettos utterly unsuited to climbing the spiral
staircases of Paris. Her hair was streaked blond like a lion’s mane, escaping in wisps from behind her huge sunglasses.

The entry was dark. “Welcome, we just finished the renovations,” she said, flipping on the lights. This was already a good
sign. Apartments in Paris are sold by the square meter, and whether the thing has recently been burned out in a fire or has
brand-new granite countertops makes very little difference in the price.

There was a small bar that separated us from the empty kitchen. I leaned on it with my elbow and my shirt stuck to the wood.
The varnish wasn’t even dry. There was no refrigerator, no oven, no stove. I long ago stopped looking for the washing machine.
In Paris, most apartments, even rentals, come with no appliances. These are bought and lugged around (and I thought my books
were a pain to move) or given as unsexy but very practical wedding gifts. Beyond the bar was the living room: shiny hardwood
floors and a cast-iron fireplace that resembled a taller, flatter version of a potbellied stove. Above it was a tiny marble
mantel, dusky pink veined with gray. The room was flooded with the early afternoon light. It was everything I imagined a Parisian
apartment to be: intimate and a little bit eccentric around the edges. Natacha pointed toward the bedroom door. A real door,
with a handle and everything. I peeked in. It was small but gleaming white, with a recess just begging for bookshelves. And
what was that over in the corner? Wonder of wonders, a
dressing
—that’s French for “hot diggety dog, a closet!”

There were also, my mother noted with emphasis, radiators.

I dialed Gwendal and told him to extend his lunch hour and come right over. Fifteen minutes later we were down to business.
The apartment was at the tippy-top end of our price range. Was there anything, I said, mentally placing my dog-eared copy
of
Paradise Lost
on the soon-to-be-built bookshelves, that she could do?

“
Bien,
” said Natacha, seeing in our eyes an early finish to her day’s work and a long vodka tonic. “I can knock the price down ten
thousand euros if you can pay ten percent in cash.” I looked at my mother; she had on her “I found a Prada gown at Marshalls”
face. Gwendal looked panic-stricken. I gave him my best “stick with me, kid” smile.

“Take the sign out of the window,” I said. “Sold.”

We arranged for the signing, which is split into two parts—the
promesse de vente
(sealing the offer) and three months later the
signature
(exchanging the title). Suspecting that Natacha worked for a muscled and mustached man named Boris, we negotiated to deliver
the cash in two parts.

Gwendal was in shock. Had we really just made the decision to be homeowners in less time than it takes to finish a beer? My
mother and Paul were over at the bar, scribbling numbers on the back of an envelope.

Gwendal was about to be introduced to a unique and quite possibly earth-shattering new theory: Bard Economics.

Bard Economics has two central principles:

Money in my family has always been a fairly abstract concept. Usually, this kind of abstraction applies only to very wealthy
people, like the saying “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” That wasn’t precisely our case. More like, “Why ask, we
can’t afford it anyway.” My auntie Lynn calls my mother “the richest poor person I ever met.”

Paul, an accountant by training, still insists my mother must have done it with mirrors, multiplying the zeros at the end
of our
bank account like the fun house at the end of Orson Welles’s
Lady of Shanghai
. My mother spent her career at the New York City Board of Education, first as a special education teacher, then as an administrator.
How did she send a kid to college (home equity loan), the opera (she took lunch to work), and summer camp (she sold her first
engagement ring—it wasn’t the cut she wanted anyway), all while maintaining a home and a fabulous collection of vintage handbags.

Growing up, I never had my own money. When I worked during the summer the money went into “the kitty,” and when I wanted to
go to the movies with my friends or buy a new CD, I just took it out again. I guess I never did anything unreasonable, because
we somehow never got to the bottom of the kitty. I have a very distinct memory of the first time I used an ATM in high school.
It fit in very well with my airy-fairy understanding of finance. Money may not grow on trees, but it
does
come out of brick walls.

Gwendal couldn’t quite fathom all this. Debt, it turns out, is not universal. As hard as this is for Americans to believe,
most of the world does not live life off of borrowed money. Most French people do not possess a credit card as we know it.
Nicole and Yanig didn’t buy their first home until Gwendal was eighteen. I know that being a psychoanalyst conjures visions
of a comfortable Manhattan apartment with lots of potted plants, but there is no such thing as a $300-per-hour shrink in France.
Yanig was away on the boat for weeks, and there were many times when things came up short at the end of the month. Gwendal
took money out of the bank the same way he added pasta to boiling water, one small handful at a time.

There’s a Billy Wilder movie from the 1960s called
One, Two, Three
. James Cagney plays the regional manager of Coca-Cola in postwar Berlin. His mission is to bring America’s greatest
beverage behind the Iron Curtain. One day, the boss’s daughter arrives from Atlanta, falls for a Communist, and gets pregnant
in the bargain. James Cagney has twenty-four hours to get them married and to transform the new son-in-law into a respectable
capitalist. As they’re driving to the airport to meet Big Daddy, Cagney adds up the tab for his protégé—new suit, aristocratic
title, fancy car.

“Total: Ten thousand two hundred and fifty-five dollars.”

“You mean, I have been a capitalist for three hours and already I owe ten thousand dollars?”

“That’s what makes our system work. Everybody owes everybody.”

All this to say that my future husband had never seen anyone take fifteen thousand euros out of a cash machine.

M
Y PARENTS CAUGHT
their plane to New York the morning we signed the
promesse de vente
. We had carefully hidden the cash all week in Gwendal’s two-volume copy of
Maus
. I didn’t quite know what to do with the envelope on the way over. Just putting it in my purse seemed like an invitation
for trouble, so I stuffed it into my bra. Seven thousand euros looks like less money than it is. One cup size at best.

My Jewish mother said Hail Marys all the way to the airport. They wouldn’t know until they landed in New York that “Boris”
was in fact a balding middle-aged Frenchman from the staid 16th arrondissement. He had polished loafers, a respectable linen
blazer, and, of all things, an American wife. I bet the
dressing
was her idea.