Paris in Love (41 page)

We wandered into a restaurant at Fontainebleau yesterday; with a wild glint in his eye, Luca ordered pigs’ feet with mustard sauce. Then a minute after his plate arrived, he snatched my wonderful lamb. So I cautiously ate the porky trotters, whose ankles must have been chubby indeed, given the fatty meat clinging to their tiny bones. Thank goodness for the excellent Bordeaux.

Fontainebleau has a carousel that matches its royal palace: a double-decker whose horses, tiger, and Cinderella carriages are decorated in ornate pastel arabesques. Carrie and I climbed into an egg frothing with rosy curlicues and went around and around, sedately rocking back and forth while the children threw themselves into a spinning egg. We leaned forward, watching Fontainebleau slide by as if we waved from a royal coach; the children’s screaming laughter came on the wind.

Chanel’s spring theme seems predicated, oddly enough, on barnyard references. The mannequins in Printemps’s windows are posed in front of hay bales, and I just walked by the Chanel store near the Madeleine to find mannequins in short skirts awkwardly clutching rakes. Could it be a response to the recession, a daring (if unconvincing) claim that the ultimate Luxury-Is-Us label is dressing down on the farm?

Strolling out of the ultraluxurious Hôtel de Crillon: a woman, at least sixty, wearing over-the-knee boots (Puss in Boots style, with the tops turned up), a flash of glossy thighs in pale stockings, and a severely seamed skirt. A silk scarf sporting bright orange polka dots floated back over her shoulder.

Today, Carrie, Charlotte, Anna, and I tumbled into Le Dôme, a café on rue de Rivoli, and were driven by loud music into the back room, which turned out to be fascinating: a louche setting of velvet couches and low tables with metal lanterns that sent out twinkling spills of light. One could just imagine that decayed glamour at night, when swivel-hipped young Frenchmen with earrings lounge on purple cushions.

Carrie and I left our children behind and went for a swishy lunch near place de la Madeleine, around the corner from Chanel and Hédiard. The people eating with us were as fascinating as our scallops: a newborn baby dressed in soft mint-colored linen; a lady sharing a meal with her husband (or lover?) while wearing a pleated silk skirt that fell to her knees, her sweater embroidered in the same pattern as her skirt.

Anna had a tummy ache in class and cuddled with the teacher for most of the hour. I was suspicious of that stomachache, insofar as Anna is positively Machiavellian at malingering. Domitilla apparently put her head down on her desk and wept loudly because Anna wasn’t sitting next to her. “She’s so dramatic,”
Anna complained, “and sometimes I still think about the way she slapped me, so I stayed with the teacher.”

Yesterday we flew to Florence for Easter with the family. I knew I wasn’t in Paris anymore when the entire dinner conversation revolved around food: salami from Sicily (is it better than that from Abruzzi?), the tomatoes bought from a special purveyor, the prosciutto made from “happy pigs” (i.e., free-range pigs, if such a thing is possible). “Any kind of prosciutto makes Milo happy,” Anna pointed out. There is no evidence that his current diet has reduced his waistline.

Florence’s store windows are full of Easter eggs—tiny ones wrapped in shiny gold foil, some as big as a small poodle, complete with pink bow. My favorites are speckled pigeon eggshells, carefully drilled and filled with molten chocolate. You crack the side with a spoon as if opening a soft-boiled egg, and voilà, chocolate delight.

To Marina’s great distress, when she called “Treat, treat!” (Milo’s favorite word) this morning, no Milo appeared. Convinced he was dead, she rushed around the apartment looking for him—only to discover him in the living room, stuck behind the couch like a cork in a bottle. Now the couch is pulled a good ten inches from the wall so that Milo’s stomach will not be impeded on its rush to the kitchen.