The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City (26 page)

STORAGE:
Pâté will keep for three days, well wrapped, in the refrigerator. It can also be frozen for up to one month.

OF COURSE!

Finding anything in Paris can be a challenge, from the right printer cartridge (which is no longer being made, even though you just bought the printer two weeks ago) to a bath mat that doesn’t set you back eighty-five euros. Everyone in Paris has pretty much figured it out: we all save ourselves a lot of trouble, and Métro tickets, and head straight to the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville, le BHV, the sprawling
grand magasin
that spreads its bulk over one enormous city block of the Marais.

You don’t shop there because you’re going to save any money—in fact, you’re going to do just the opposite—but
because you know that within one massive block-long building, you’ll find whatever it is you’re looking for. In America, I used to spend whatever time it took in pursuit of a bargain. But in Paris, bargains don’t exist, so no one even bothers.

I am certain the BHV has scouts who look far and wide, combing the world, in search of the least-helpful people they can find. Then they bring them back to Paris and set them loose on the sales floor. But the surly salespeople aren’t nearly as infuriating as the shoppers. If you think the
bousculeurs
on the streets are bad, they surely get their training wandering around the aisles of the BHV before the city of Paris releases them onto the streets. It’s so bad in there the store had to erect prison-like steel reinforcements at the base of each escalator to prevent people from cutting you off as you try to hop on the next escalator going down or up.

My mode of action when I’m ready to enter the BHV is to go on the offensive immediately. Which is pretty easy, since the second I take my initial deep breath and reach for the door handle, I can see everyone inside redirecting themselves toward me and the door I’m going to open, expecting me to move out of their way once I do. Except by now, I’m onto them and let go of the door at the last possible moment, quickly cutting away to another door, watching them panic and scurry around once their plans are thwarted.

Whatever cunning means I use to get inside, I enter with the assumption that no matter what it is I’m looking for, the BHV will have absolutely everything—except that one specific thing that I came to get.

Like the shoelace I broke and had to find a replacement for, one that was 110 cm long. There I stood in the shoe-accessories department in the basement, facing an entire wall devoted entirely to shoelaces. Really! You’ve never seen that many shoelaces in your life, and it’s a sight to behold—leather or lanyard, woven or waxed, cotton or poly, round or flat, string or cloth; in white, brown, black, beige, tan, red, white, green, purple, and blue. Not only do they have every color and style, they have every size that exists, from 60 cm to 120 cm and everything in between, all carefully lined up on hooks pegged to the wall. Scanning the racks, I see 60 cm
and 65 cm … and 70 cm … and 80 cm … yes, and 90 cm … and 100 cm … and 120 cm … all the way up to 150 cm. They have them all.

Except one.

Of course!

If every salesperson isn’t busy avoiding customers or texting friends about what time he or she got home that morning, you might possibly be able to find someone to take an interest in you. And if you’re really lucky, that person might even want to help you find what you’re looking for.

“
Exeusez-moi, monsieur, avez-vous des lacets de 110 centimeters, s’ilvous plaît?”
I inquire, optimistically.

“Oui, monsieur. Au 5ème étage,”
the salesclerk assures me.

Scratching my head at the logic, I ask why one pair of shoelaces would be up on the fifth floor when every other conceivable size and type and shape in the known universe is on the wall in front of us.

“It’s because the hiking shoes are on the fifth floor.”

Of course!
How stupid of me! Even though my laces are for regular shoes, not hiking shoes, I find myself nodding in agreement. I can’t explain it, but the logic around here is starting to make sense.

“Mais oui, monsieur”!
he says, hoping he’s done with me as he fumbles in his pocket for a cigarette and sidles toward the exit.

I used to fall for the oldest trick in the book they use in French department stores, which is sending someone to another floor for whatever they’re looking for when it’s actually just one aisle over. Now I’ve wised up: I don’t budge unless I’m absolutely sure the item I want isn’t just around the corner, where it often is.

The problem with the BHV is that you
have
to go there if you live in Paris. You have no other choice. Well, there is another choice. You can spend days and days searching through every obscure alley and passage to find that special shop that sells only laces for shoes with four eyelets, or the vacuum cleaner bag shop on the fringes of the faraway seventeenth arrondissement for those very special bags that only a French vacuum cleaner takes. But unless you have a couple of weeks to spare to search far and wide, you just suck it up and head toward the behemoth on the rue de Rivoli.

During the winter, if I have to go to the BHV, I wear as little as possible. It’s worth freezing my backside off on the way over because I know that moments after I step inside, I’ll soon be withering from the stifling heat and the lack of any sort of ventilation whatsoever. I’ve made the mistake of going in there bundled up against the cold outside—after a few minutes, I’m ready to keel over from heatstroke, and find myself staggering toward the nearest emergency exit in a sweaty stupor.

Come summertime, no matter how well prepared you are, whether dressed in wispy linen or a skimpy tank top, if you make it to the second floor without needing to call SOS Médecins, you’re a hardier soul than I. They should just replace the bulbs with tanning lamps and Parisians could visit two of their most cherished institutions at the same time.

A trip to the BHV is always a test of not just my stamina, but the limits of my French vocabulary as well. If you want to see my favorite part of the BHV, you might be surprised to learn that it is not the well-stocked kitchenware department (where I once gave a cooking demo with cookie samples during the Saturday crush, and which ranks right up there with touching squid as one of the most terrifying experiences of my life). Instead, head straight down to the basement, where the hardware is. A mad jumble of hammers, windows, door jams, wine-making equipment, screws, power tools, lightbulbs, doorbells, heaters, insulating tape, locks, safes, flashlights, Beware of Dog (
Chien Méchant!
) signs, and lawn mowers.

It’s not enough to prepare myself physically by dressing appropriately to go to the BHV; I need to prepare myself psychologically, too. It’s barely controlled pandemonium. A friend went with her husband, who loved hardware stores and insisted on checking out the hardware department. As the president of a major American financial institution, he’d weathered some pretty stressful situations. Yet after three minutes in the madness, he had to find somewhere to sit and decompress: the floor of the New York Stock Exchange is simply no match for the basement at BHV.

Adding to the confusion for me is my lack of vocabulary for all the hardware. Anyone know what you call a “kickplate” in French? An
assiette à coup?
If I tell them I’m looking to “kick a plate,” that’s one time they’d be
within their rights to send me upstairs to another department: housewares. What’s window insulation tape called? I wasn’t sure either, so I asked for
“Le chose comme le scotch à l’emballé les fenêtres pour l’hiver”
otherwise known to me as “the stuff like masking tape for wrapping the windows for the winter.” Or maybe they were wondering why I was asking for “the stuff like Scotch whisky to coat my windows for winter.”

After a few years I got a bit tired of tripping over the loopy-length shoelaces that I settled for and I headed back to the BHV thinking that by now, they’d have the correct size. I pulled open the glass door, barging into Parisians as if they weren’t even there. I’ve stopped apologizing when I run into people now and haven’t had any repercussions. (Why should I? After all, who do they think I learned it from?) I headed for the grand staircase leading downstairs, peeling off articles of clothing as I started to feel the perspiration welling up on the surface of my skin. My fingers were poised on my cell phone, set to speed-dial SOS Médecins, as I strode past the smelly Chanel counter and the fancy eyewear boutique, dodging oncoming Parisians with the finesse of an Olympic slalom champ.

(Except a thought just occurs to me—I’m beginning to understand the relationship between
les bousculeurs
and those fancy eyeglass shops that are running rampant across the city. Parisians must have terrible eyesight from sitting in dark doctor’s offices. They’re not really rude at all—maybe they just can’t see where they’re going.)

As I sprinted toward the basement that day, I wondered if I might need glasses as well, because everything had changed. The place was clean and bright, and the sense of complete chaos was almost gone. There was actually some sense of organization. And on the wall—no, wait—over there. Could that really be a map of the aisles?

Breathing heavily from the excitement (or was it the oppressive heat?), I wandered around, amazed at the startling transformation. All the chainsaws
and tree trimmers, so popular with city-dwelling Parisians, were lined up neatly against the wall. There were two fully stocked aisles of
joints d’isolation
(when you live in a drafty rooftop apartment, you learn the correct word for “insulating tape” pretty quickly). And I counted six shelves that held nothing but bells, from ones you’d hang around a cow’s neck to the kind the town crier might ring to summon a town meeting. And to top it off, they were all on sale! A five-inch brass bell that I could use to call the gang to dinner was a mere €185, which I could now get for 20 percent off. I think I need to change my tune about there being no bargains in Paris.

Optimistically, I rounded the corner to the
cordonnerie:
the shoe repair department, which had been completely redone, too. I raced past the cobblers, tapping soles onto shoes with great concentration. There were dozens and dozens of insoles hanging from the wall, including those that promised to be
capteurs d’odeurs.
A good portion of display space was given over to all the various types of shoehorns
(chausse-pieds
), another obscure bit of vocabulary I learned during an earlier experience involving nylon hosiery and unintentional nudism.

But there still weren’t any 110-centimeter shoelaces to be found. Because I didn’t want my visit to be a total loss, I decided once and for all to find out the French name for kickplates for doors. It was driving me a little crazy and was something my French friends couldn’t figure out when I asked them, even though I accompanied it with a demonstration on my door at home. But then again, it is pretty perplexing to be invited over to someone’s apartment and to watch them repeatedly kick the bottom of their front door.

Next time my handyman comes, I’m going to ask him how to say it. He likes to come by my apartment, since it always means a scoop of homemade ice cream, a wedge of cake from a recipe I’m testing, or a handful of cookies in a little bag to take for his lunch break. Although lately, I’ve begun to suspect him of sabotaging my pipes, since a few days after he comes, another one suspiciously springs a leak, prompting yet
another visit.

I’m not really worried about what he’ll think of me, since we’re on
pretty good terms. And I don’t mean hardware terms. After I find out that particular one, I’m going to forget about learning the rest of them for a while. I’ve got more important things to find around here—like shoelaces.

SOCCA
CHICKPEA CREPES
MAKES 3 LARGE CREPES, ABOUT 6 APPETIZER-SIZED SERVINGS