PARIS, WEDNESDAY, OCT. 19
It’s 5:30 in the afternoon when we were shopping in the Lower Marais Farmers’ Market, and through the day, M and I have been close, taking pictures and for long hours, 11:30 a.m. jusqu’a 3:30 p.m. we’re writing, eating French onion soup, two coffees for me, Coca Light, coffee for M, bread/butter and jam, mostly working by la fenetre: two tables, four chairs. I’m on a high; M too – “Pooch” and “Centipede” – very far along in the latter. Encounter with an American woman married to a Frenchman at Café Panis, near Shakespeare & Co. (it’s still there!) along the Seine, and further south, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, where M will buy her waterproof pens, Faber Castell, although before that she will pick up a red wool hat for 10 euros, ridges and daisy decoration, and gloves too, a little Eiffel Tower for our pal at the neighborhood gym, then on to tourist row, a crepe beurre et sucre.
Picture High: M at a payphone (a what?), red hat and brilliant blue phone receiver, then the aforementioned art supply store, and we are on our way home. Pleuvoir and froid; it has been cold throughout but now dark clouds, wet and cold, on M’s favorite little rue in the Latin Quarter when she was here more than forty years ago, Rue de la Huchette, now a cookie-cutter corridor of OPA! Greek dining, en route to the Marais Farmers’ Market (wait for it). Along the Seine, the rain is pelting when we stop in at Shakespeare & Co., more photos, this time a quintessential one of M reading “Quiet Nights in Clichy” by Henry Miller, under a book bunk is a vast collection of pennies to support starving artists. I’m turning pages of David Mitchell, Douglas Coupland and Patti Smith (less so); it’s after 5 p.m. now, bands of sun, wet splattered roads, cobblestones very Caillebotte and the next stop: The Market, with plans to buy food for dinner, our one romantic dinner at home in our cosy Marais garret apartment.
First we buy nine euros of vegetables, haricot, and fruit, then eggs and cheese from the Cheeseman, some bottles (rosé and rouge) from a wineseller and on to the chickenman, two leg/thighs; cuisse, they say, all heaped up in bags to take home, no more than a few blocks from here, but before we arrive, we stop at the supermarket, Monoprix by name, for sundries, a big bottle of Evian.
Finally, we’re at home: our work bags, numerous plastic ones, all arrayed before the gated door in the lobby of our building. Just before 6 p.m. and I realize that no matter where I look, I can’t find the key that will allow us to pass through these gates and on to our evening in our love nest. It's not in my pocket. Gone.
Near-freezing cold is falling as M sits like a bag woman on a wooden bench where long ago (only Saturday but) we had awaited Giovanni, our flat host, and now we have no cell, no key, no way to get into our flat to use the land line to call him to get a second key. (We had earlier in the week asked for a second one and had been declined, so think perhaps there isn’t one.) M and I gather up all the bags and food and other acquisitions, and, at M’s request, set her up in a corner location of Les Philosophes, our go-to café-restaurant, and off I go, running as fast as I can, retracing my steps with hopes of finding le petit clef, a single key with a black fob.
First stop, Monoprix. To the alienanted rebel of a cashier, pissed off at the well-to-do living around here, not just foreigners but French yuppies, too, and ask for the key and she just coincidentally (I think) flashes her keys as she does something with the register. Its fob is also black, a gusher of hope – only dashed. Then I’m racing out the door, daylight fading fast.
1) Cheeseman (he of the stale joke that it is the woman who plans and the man who pays.) Sorry, no.
2) Wineseller (English is good, but alas, he has the same message.)
3) Chickenman (Not there either.)
Running hard in rush-hour traffic. Along the Seine and near the Notre Dame de Paris across the bridge, a road over too far, at the hospital, where I should be committed, I’m thinking, close to tears now, the day destroyed, the trip . . . maybe I should just leave, three days early, go home to New York. Awful, awful, awful. Finally, I see the Café Panis and with the help of manager Benjamin (bleu cravat), pushing back the table and chairs of our place de fenetre, and I am doing the talking, can hardly believe it, Je suis desole, mais j’ai perdu mon clef de ma maison cette aujourd’hui. Pouvez-vous aider moi, s’il vous plait?
Benjamin and I check the washroom where I’d tossed a drained pen in the waste basket (it was still there) and he gives me une carte, with the name of the night manager, then on to the creperie, the Eastern European woman who had served us helps me; I look into that bathroom too, but no go; seek info on how best to get to Boulevard Saint Michel from a pedestrian, and try to go there but get mixed up, a maze of streets, then see Café Panis again, and the light is near-dead, along with my hopes of finding the key. The Cambodians at the chapeau, gants et Tour Eiffel toy magasin, the man is very kind, checking for the key in a stack of garments at the cash. Nope. Then to the bookstore. They too give me a card. Call later, they say.
Defeated now, as far as I can remember I’ve left no stone unturned. (It is M, not I, who paid at Gilbert + Joseph, the art supply store, so it is unlikely the key came out of ma poche; I'm sure it was lost when I pulled my wallet out to pay for something.) Thoroughly deflated, downcast, but before going back to find M, I stop at the market and visit my friends: Cheeseman, Wineseller and Chickenman, the latter of whom is especially alarmed when he learns that it's the only key to our house, and now he's down on the wet cobblestones, looking.
Then I recall it was I who paid for the vegetables. Only a few dollars, but I had to break a twenty. So I go to the woman who had waited on us and ask if she has seen my key and she immediately brightens and goes right to the spot where the plastic bags are kept and, there, hanging by its ring, is the key with the black fob.
I am elated as she gives it to me; a little prayer, looking skyward, a jump in the air: “Merci beaucoup! Merci beaucoup!” She, mildly startled by my gestures, then I'm on to the Cheeseman and Wineseller and the Chickenman, all of whom are thrilled for me. Grinning, at the remarkable turn of events.
I sprint to Les Philosophes, in and through the door, and see that M is exactly where I had last seen her, as I dangle the key over my head. Like Odysseus home to Penelope. Or, more to the point, judging from M’s less-than-enthusiastic stare, Homer home to Marge .¤.¤.
Next: Running for Your Life: Sleep Is Overrated
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