Lunch in Paris (9 page)

A
S THE PLANE
took off I realized I was gripping the armrest, my knuckles white. It’s hard to say exactly what I was afraid of.

I am afraid that this is my last chance to make my life extraordinary.

I am afraid that I have strayed from my trail of breadcrumbs, that I will be lost.

Like a Spanish explorer with a map where the continents end and the oceans are marked with dragons and winged monsters, I
am afraid I will fall off the edge of the world.

I
ARRIVED IN
Paris at the beginning of April, just as the song instructs.

I tapped the code into the keypad outside, and the blue door made its characteristic click.
My door, my click.
My suitcases were wider than the spiral stairwell, but we managed to twist and turn them up to the second floor. Gwendal
had already made me a key, and when I opened the door, the apartment was spotless. There were roses on the table and yellow
index cards suspended from the ceiling with pieces of string. They fluttered like bright birds in the breeze from the hallway.
Each card described what we would do in a particular place, some of it innocent, much of it not. There was one above the stereo:
This is where we will dance.
One near the couch:
This is where you will distract me while I read.
One in the shower… There was one on the refrigerator, held up with a magnet like a Chinese take-out menu:
Amour, baisers, tendresse—livraison 24h/24—7j/7
. Love, kisses, and tenderness, delivered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
My refrigerator, my new life.

“Welcome home,
mon amour.
” For all my castles in the air, in this moment I felt like Gwendal had laid the world at my feet. My universe expanded and
contracted at the same time. He had built me a two-room Taj Mahal.

“I already put your name on the gas bill.”

How thoughtful.

“Trust me. In France, if you don’t have a gas bill, you don’t exist.”

W
HEN
G
WENDAL LEFT
for work on Monday, I was on my own. I lay in bed, looking at the ceiling and listening to the new weekday sounds. In the
courtyard, I heard a television, some high-pitched voices and familiar theme music. It took me a minute to place it—a rerun
of
Beverly Hills 90210
dubbed in French. For the first time in my life, I had nothing to do, nowhere to be. My only fixed appointment was every
Tuesday and Thursday, between eight a.m. and one p.m., at our local market.

Our nearest open-air market is at the intersection of a North African and Asian district on the boulevard de Belleville. It’s
one of the cheapest in Paris, and though it lacks the wicker basket charm of the boulevard Raspail or the rue Mouffetard,
the produce is fresh and the banter lively.

I got the impression that at ten a.m. I was already late. As I walked up the rue du Faubourg-du-Temple, it was clear that
the neighborhood had been up for hours. Delivery trucks blocked the cobblestone street, butchers in white coats chose whole
sides of beef suspended on hooks like enormous dangling earrings. An African woman with a baby tied to her back looked through
a bin of lacy underwear outside a shop. On the pavement, plastic tables and chairs were full of North African men drinking
coffee, smoking cigarettes, and watching the soccer highlights. Three
Chinese women with strollers gossiped outside an herb shop selling ginseng tea, birds’ nests of rice noodles, and pirated
DVDs. Every third store there was something called a
bazar,
where pastel laundry baskets, frying pans, and shiny new aluminum garbage cans were set up on the sidewalk. There was a line
outside the shop that sold African groceries: yams as big as footballs and tiny red chili peppers, still on the vine. I walked
up the block, an immigrant among immigrants. An immigrant with an American Express card, but even so.

When I reached the intersection, the boulevard de Belleville looked like a shantytown, with white canvas tarps and fruit crates
as far as the eye could see. The aisle between the stands was crowded, the vendors screaming for customers’ attention.

As I made my way down the street, a man shoved a strawberry in my path. “
Mademoiselle, goûte, goûte
” (taste, taste), he said, trying to catch my eye. This was not the French I learned in high school. It was loud and fast
and filled with the guttural click of Arabic. “
Ça va, princesse?
” He handed me a slice of melon, broke open a pod of sweet peas. I knew it was ridiculous, but after two years in England,
it felt so good to hear this caressing tone of voice, to smile and lower my eyes, even if the guy was just trying to sell
me a tomato.

On the next table were barrels of olives—wrinkled black, shiny green, and mauve—and small pickled lemons, bobbing to the surface
like rubber duckies. There was a patchwork of cardboard boxes filled with spices: paprika, cinnamon sticks, and something
called
graines de paradis—
seeds of paradise. They looked like caraway seeds, but when he held the metal scoop toward my nose I smelled a spicy hint
of pepper. I bought some, figuring no dish could be made worse by a pinch of paradise.

Behind the next stand was an older man, white bristles poking out of his beard, still bundled in a hat, scarf, and his winter
overcoat on this warm day. He was almost entirely hidden behind a wall of greenery, small bundles of fresh parsley, coriander,
and mint stacked in dense, neat rows like a garden hedge.

I passed piles of carrots with their bushy green leaves, radishes sold in bunches like roses. There was something near the
leeks that looked like a prop from Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, a knobbly root shaped like a brain, with dimpled ridges
and tiny coiled stems.
Céleri
. It looked like something you might dissect rather than eat. I bought one, just to have a look inside.

There was clearly an event up ahead. Shoppers were stacked three-deep under a blue-and-white-striped awning, pushing their
way toward the front. I had arrived at the fishmonger. As I approached, I took in the mildest whiff of the sea (a quality
fishmonger is never smelly). I nudged myself toward the corner of a large table packed with ice as water dripped on my shoe.
Behind the counter, there was a man with large red hands and close-cropped hair, his apron tied across one shoulder like a
toga. In a booming voice he abused the customers as he plunged his hands into a pile of sardines. I stared at the fish, and
for the most part, the fish stared back at me. There were mounds of mackerel and trout with glassy eyes and shiny skin. There
was an ugly one, fat and gray with a gaping red mouth that looked like it should have had teeth. There were piles of mussels,
whole octopuses, long strips of squid, as thick as foam-rubber insulation. Nothing was square or breaded or in a cardboard
box. I bet these shoppers had never seen a fish stick.

Clearly, I was too close to the table to be a mere spectator. The man with the big hands was getting impatient. A woman with
a shopping trolley rolled over my toe. I pointed to the mackerel, said, “
Deux, s’il vous plaît,
” and handed him a twenty-euro bill. He gave me a look that said: “If you were older and uglier, I’d be grumpy right now,”
and he deposited seventeen euros in
small coins into the palm of my hand. I took my blue plastic bag. “
Merci.
”

So there I was: an immigrant with an American Express card, seventeen euros in small change, a bouquet of radishes, Frankenstein’s
brain, and two mackerel.

W
HEN
I
GOT
home, I took the first mackerel out of the bag. His skin was slick and iridescent, with black spots that fanned out in a
pattern on either side.
This would make a nice handbag,
I thought, as I lost my grip and he fell into the sink.
Slippery little bugger.

I got hold of him again and put him on a plate. I knew there were things I had to do to him. Dirty, violent things. I’d seen
Gwendal gut a fish; I’d seen people skydive too, that didn’t mean I was ready to do it myself. I thought about all the things
I knew something about—eighteenth-century bookbinding, Victorian photography, Renaissance painting. Somehow I had missed this
particular skill on my carefully groomed résumé.

The little guy was still looking at me. It was a superior stare. I’m on to you, he said. You’re nothing but a New York princess.
You have no idea how to turn me into dinner. He was speaking French, so it was hard to tell, but I think his last words were
something like,
Pixie dust, my ass.

I took the knife and pressed its pointed tip into the belly of the fish. I hesitated, searching for something civilized to
think about during my upcoming act of brutality. Had Jane Austen ever gutted a fish?

The knife made a ripping sound, like an uncooperative zipper.

It is a truth universally acknowledged,…

I had hold of something now, soft and dense, like a clot of blood.

…
that a single man in possession of a good fortune,…

I pulled out the tiny heart and liver.

…
must be in want of a wife.

I yanked out the final membrane, guts dripping from my hands.

Tell Tinker Bell to put that in a pipe and smoke it.

After the initial carnage, the rest was easy: white wine, onions, and a sizzling hot frying pan. I felt like a lean and dangerous
individual, a creature of the wild. The fish tasted terrific, though I’ve no idea if it was the wine or the adrenaline.

“
Ça va?
” asked Gwendal, wrapping his arms around my waist while I rinsed the pot in the sink. He loves to catch me in the kitchen
when my hands are busy. “
Ça va,
” I said emphatically. A-okay. I squealed as he sank his teeth into my neck. “Good dinner.”