Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La! (22 page)

“According to the plaque on the wall when we entered, Benjamin Franklin met King Louis XVI at this hotel to sign some sort of treaty.”

Raising my eyebrows to show I was impressed, I tried to lick the corner of my mouth where I’d missed a spot of the fabulous chocolate.

“Benjamin himself!” I said. The buzz I was getting off the candy was making me feel high enough to fly a kite and discover some untapped streak of electrical current. “These chocolates are really something. Are you sure you don’t want one?”

“Positive,” Amy said. “My stomach is a little upset. We really should have eaten some protein first.”

“Is it warm in here?” I asked.

“No, not really. Are you warm?”

I suddenly had to blink to focus my eyes on Amy.

“Are you okay?” Amy looked at me closely. She sniffed twice over the tray of goodies and then picked up the final bonbon.

“I knew you would change your mind,” I said. “They are really, really, really good.”

Amy took a tiny nip at the chocolate so that the marvelous inner goo oozed out. She took a kitten-sized taste with the tip of the tongue and looked at me with surprise.

“Ooh, Lisa, you should have gone easy on these.”

“Too late. Why?”

“I think they’re filled with liqueur.”

“Are you serious?”

“Didn’t they taste that way to you?”

“How would I know?” I didn’t feel so well. My stomach wasn’t used to receiving such extravagant deposits. “Can we pay for this and get some fresh air?”

“Sure.” Amy made a gracious motion for the uniformed server to come over to us. She asked for the check as I rummaged for some euros in my purse.

“Put your money away, Lisa. I’m paying for this one.”

“I can contribute,” I said. “How much is my half?”

“Let me put it this way. The bonbons alone have a street value of twenty-five euros.”

I knew that wasn’t good. My stomach wasn’t good either. “Amy, thank you,” I said, as she signed the Visa bill.

I stood and felt woozy. “Uh-oh.”

“You okay?” Amy asked.

“No.”

Picking up our pace past the Armani-suited men, I tightly pursed my lips together. My expression must have said it all because, just as we rounded the corner into the lobby by the plaque honoring Benjamin Franklin, Amy assessed the need.

“You’re going to lose it, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh,” was all I could manage. I was too busy measuring the distance to the front door while scouting out the lobby for possible planters to lean my head over.

Amy pulled off one of her shoes and thrust it over my
mouth and nose. If I hadn’t already needed to throw up, I would have then.

Blessedly, I’ve always been a quiet sick person and not like Amy with her “oohs” and “ohhs.” Also blessedly, like the best friend she always has been, Amy stepped in front of me and blocked my performance from the view of any sedate guests.

I urped as quietly as I could in her shoe. One urp was all it took.

“You okay?” Amy whispered.

I nodded, blinking in utter humiliation. I didn’t look back into the tea salon to see if my “moment” had caused a hiatus in the world peace negotiations. It seemed better to keep walking and never look back.

“The sign says the restroom is this way.” Amy led the way, limping only slightly in her stocking-covered foot.

I held her shoe under my arm the way some diplomats hold a folded copy of the
New York Times.

“Oh, Amy,” I said the moment we were behind the bathroom door. “I threw up in your shoe.”

“Yeah, I know. I was there, remember?”

“But how did you know that I was going to throw up?”

“The only other time I’d seen that look on your face was in fourth grade at the Thanksgiving pageant. Remember? Randall Finnley’s hat?”

I groaned and rinsed my mouth with water in the sink. Being reminded of the fourth-grade disaster made me feel
queasy all over again. Amy and I were part of the chorus group waiting backstage while the star students went onstage dressed as pilgrims and Native Americans. Next to the cardboard turkey they stiffly reenacted the friendly greetings exchanged at the first Thanksgiving. I had turned to Amy backstage a few moments before the performance began, and all I said to her was, “Uh-oh.”

Amy took one look at my pale face, grabbed Randall Finnley’s pilgrim hat, and held it up to my mouth at the crucial second. It wasn’t pretty, but at least it was brief.

Randall Finnley appeared on stage thirty seconds later without his hat. His arms were crossed and he was wearing a puckered scowl. The audience waited for him to deliver his opening line of, “Welcome to the feast.” Instead of sticking with the script, Randall reported in his boisterous stage voice, “Lisa Kroeker just urped in my hat!”

I think that was the beginning of the Kroeker jokes with the double meanings.

“Amy, I’m sorry.” I wet a paper towel and dabbed the back of my neck.

“Don’t worry about it. I never liked these shoes very much.” She took off the other closed-heel clog and gleefully tossed it into the trashcan.

“Amy!”

“Go ahead. Toss the other shoe in there, too. We’ll have to go shopping now. Too bad, huh?”

“Shopping?”

“Yes, shopping. I need a new pair of shoes ASAP.”

I argued with Amy that we might be able to clean the defiled shoe.

“Lisa, are you kidding? I never could slip my foot into that shoe again. Go ahead, throw it away.”

I dropped Amy’s shoe into the trash receptacle. “Amy, I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t interceded at the right moment.”

“Oh, I have a pretty clear mental picture of what you would have done. Come on, let’s ask the concierge where a person in desperate need can buy a pair of shoes in Paris.”

A voice with a heavy French accent spoke to us in English from behind one of the closed stalls. “Michelle’s on Rue Denon in St. Severin. They have the best selection of shoes. But you will need to hurry. They close at five o’clock.”

Amy and I looked at each other with surprise and then in unison said, “Thank you!” We didn’t stick around to see who was making the helpful shoe recommendation since we only had half an hour to reach the shop before it closed. Apparently women around the world understand when it comes to shoes.

Trotting out of the world-class hotel in her stocking feet, Amy asked the bellman to hail us a taxi. She did this as naturally as if she were a frequent guest at this fine establishment and always went about the streets of Paris in her stocking feet.

A
my repeated the name
of the store and street to the taxi driver. I was glad for her keen memory because I already had forgotten what the mystery woman told us. It took ten minutes to travel across town in the afternoon traffic. Overpaying the driver because Amy didn’t want to wait around for change, we dashed into the boutique-style shop and eyed the displayed shoes.

I gazed the way a weary mom stares in her freezer and tries to decide if she’s going to thaw a pound of hamburger or a package of chicken wings for dinner. Amy gazed tenderly, like a proud auntie at the window of a hospital maternity ward, eager to figure out which one of the darlings is her new nephew and how soon can she get her hands on his chubby little cheeks.

“These are nice.” I picked up a basic brown loafer that
looked like the same style Amy had worn in high school. I always gravitated toward the classic look. That way I could be fairly certain I wasn’t going out of style before the clothing wore out.

“Boring. I like these better.” She held up a sassy pair of hot pink shoes with a glittery buckle.

I thought she was kidding and said, “And where, exactly, would you wear those?”

“Everywhere! They’re adorable. Jeanette would be so proud of me, if I bought these shoes. Or these.” She held up a bright yellow shoe with a black bow across the toes. I had to agree. The yellow shoes were darling.

With four potential shoe replacements in her hands, Amy turned to the saleswoman. “May I try these on in a size eight and a half or nine?”

“No,” the saleswoman said, glaring at Amy’s stocking feet. “We have only European sizes. We do not have eight and a half or nine.”

“Okay,” Amy said undaunted. She slipped into French and apparently asked the woman to measure her foot to determine her European size. The sales associate was much more agreeable and kept talking with Amy at a fast clip in French.

Task completed, the clerk went off to obtain the selected shoes. Amy looked at me and made a face. “Thirty-seven! How depressing to wear size thirty-seven shoes.”

Thirty-seven turned out to be Amy’s new best number, as she tried on what seemed like thirty-seven pairs of shoes in her new size thirty-seven. I watched each pair go on and off her feet. I particularly liked the pair of hot pink shoes with black patent leather straps. Extracting them from Amy’s reject pile, I nonchalantly slipped one of them on my feet. The ridiculously delectable shoes slid on with Cinderella-fit perfection and made me smile.

“Are they yummy?” Amy asked.

“Amazingly yummy. They’re so comfortable.”

“And I can see they make you happy. That’s Jeanette’s criteria, you know. She doesn’t buy anything with her own money unless it passes the yummy-happy test. It has to be yummy, and it has to make her happy.”

“What about being affordable?” I looked at the price tag and tried to calculate the amount from euros into dollars. If I did the math correctly, the shoes were a steal. “Amy, did I figure out this price correctly?”

Amy checked it and came up with the same price I was calculating. We looked at each other with enthusiasm for our retail experience of the day.

The salesclerk stepped away and returned with a purse that matched my pink shoes.

“That is so stinkin’ cute I can hardly stand it!” Amy squealed. “Look how perfectly it matches your pink top.”

“I know! This is the cutest purse in the world, isn’t it?” I held the perfect-sized pink purse up to my side, as if I
were modeling it. The neatly tied black bow looked so snappy. I walked over to the full-length mirror and posed this way and that. I loved it. It was yummy. And best of all, I could afford it. Oh, yeah, this purse was coming home with me.

“Lisa, if you don’t buy that purse, I’m going to throw up in your shoulder bag so that you
have
to buy a new purse.”

We both burst into laughter, and the salesclerk, who obviously understood English, gave us a peculiar look.

“She threw up in my shoes.” Amy turned to the clerk and wiggled her toes. “That’s why I came in here in stocking feet.” She then repeated her line in French.

The clerk gave Amy and me the kind of look Gerard used to give me. Yes, we were crazy. Americans in Paris. What could we say? After trying to fit in and do everything right, clearly some of our lifetime quirks were ours alone to laugh about.

“You can keep your hands off my shoulder bag,” I told Amy. “I’m going to buy the purse.”

“And the shoes?” Amy asked.

“But of course,” I said, trying to imitate a French accent. I didn’t impress Amy, and I definitely didn’t impress the salesclerk. “They have to come home together so they can keep each other company.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Amy said.

I took myself for a happy little walk around the store while Amy tried on more shoes.

“I have to concentrate on these two pairs of shoes and see which ones pass the yummy-happy test.” Amy sounded as if she were a rocket scientist conducting an important experiment.

“You could buy both of them,” I suggested. “Do they come with matching purses?”

Our saleswoman already had gone to the window to pull out the purse that went with the yellow shoes. She seemed less concerned about our keeping her in the store past closing time since we were making purchases and not just trying on thirty-seven pairs of shoes.

“I think the red ones are my favorite.” Amy looked at the dazzling red low-heeled honey of a shoe on her right foot and the classy yellow and black high heel on her left. “But the yellow and black ones make my feet look smaller.”

“Are they both yummy?” I asked. “Do the yellow ones make you happy?”

“No. They pinch my toes a little. But the red ones don’t.”

“There’s your answer.”

“Jeanette will be proud of us both.” Amy slipped on both red shoes and walked around. She stopped in front of the mirror and grinned. Clicking her heels together she said, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

“Do you have a matching ‘Dorothy’ purse?” I asked the salesclerk.

Amy spoke up and explained my question. The salesclerk brought two purses for our inspection, but neither of them truly matched the shoes. Amy didn’t mind. She said the shoes were a world of cuteness all to themselves.

“You know, I did have a bit of an emotional connection going with the black ones.”

“I missed the trial run on the black ones,” I said. “Let’s see them.”

Simple, stunning, classy, the black shoes had my vote in an instant. “And just consider all the purse options.”

The salesclerk willingly gathered nine purses, and then she stood next to me while we watched Amy give us a fashion show. A black leather purse with a fabulous handle won our vote.