Paris in Love (53 page)

I have developed a fail-safe way to cook fish with skin: you first cut a crisscross pattern in the skin. Then you rub the flesh with a seasoning mixture containing at least a hint of curry (Galeries Lafayette has a freshly ground mixture labeled “couscous”). Heat some olive oil over a high flame and sauté the fish skin side down (if it’s a whole fish, turn it once). When it’s browned, pour lemon juice over it and pop it in the oven for five minutes if it’s not already white and flaky. This will give you a crisp, crackling skin and a faintly exotic flavor that even children will enjoy.

I’m sitting at my desk, just before seven in the morning. The sky outside my study window is a kind of pearl blue, so pale that it looks like the shadow of blue, or the memory of blue. Swallows are swooping over the rooftops across from me, flashing black across the sky and disappearing again.

I am having a new experience with the book I’m writing, a Regency version of
Beauty and the Beast
. Ordinarily I slave over my characters’ lines, endlessly rewriting them. But this book is different. It’s as if I were describing a movie happening right before me, which makes me feel oddly delirious.

Months in Paris have done nothing for my appalling French. This Sunday in church I was singing along merrily, half-thinking about the words. So nice, I thought, here we are singing that Jesus freed the fish:
“nous libérant du péché.”
 … No, no, that
can’t be right. Maybe it’s a union song and Jesus freed the fishermen. Alessandro informs me that Seigneur Jésus freed us from sin. Sins, not sardines.

Florent and Pauline have finally broached the subject of romance with each other. Alas, when he laid his heart at her feet, she replied that she wasn’t ready for a long-term commitment. He replied that she was like a lemon tart that he could see in a window but couldn’t eat. He won my heart with that metaphor—though Alessandro pointed out (again) that if Florent were Italian, he would be in the patisserie and picking up the tart already.

It’s getting warmer in France, and Parisian women have broken out their shorts. They go to work in the morning wearing tight knee-length shorts, often cuffed (and sometimes even in denim). These are combined with dignified jackets and high, high heels. The result is—rather to my surprise—stylish rather than skanky.

I have finished my version of
Beauty and the Beast
! To celebrate, we went out to our local Thai restaurant and discussed titles. Because my hero was inspired by the television program
House M.D.
, the kids are championing “The Cranky Cripple and the Bodacious Bride,” but my editor tossed that for
When Beauty Tamed the Beast
. I like it, though I’m secretly afraid that my hero remains untamed as ever.

I was sitting at a café when an adorable two-year-old toddled past, wearing black tights, a black-and-white checked dress, and a black sweater. And a black barrette. No wonder Parisians are effortlessly sophisticated—they learn the virtues of a little black dress when we’re all still wearing Disney T-shirts emblazoned with pink rhinestones and sunglasses to match.

I always jog down rue La Fayette, so that I can stop in front of Graziella, a minuscule store with two or three garments at most in its window. Everything they design and sell is striking, with flair and drama. The pieces, especially a coat with a flared collar and fabulous buttons, bring to mind an old Katharine Hepburn movie.

We are sending Luca and Anna to Italian tennis camp. Luca will follow that up with two more weeks of French tennis camp. He’s furious about our social planning. Given his druthers, he would sleep all day and be on Facebook (or worse) all night. But we retain sovereignty, for a little while longer.

M
y mother often said that her life ambitions were to marry a poet and become a ballet dancer. I have to suppose it was thwarted ambition that led to my sister and me being given dancing lessons. I have one memory, mercifully dim, of performing in a school play. I was an autumn leaf, prancing across the elementary school cafeteria with brown crinkly paper bobbing at my waist. I felt lumpish and decidedly unleaflike, and I was dismally aware that a gift for dancing hadn’t emerged in my gene pool.