2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie (42 page)

“I bags the bed by the window,” she says.

“That’s unfair – you’ll get all the fresh air.”

“Yes, but you’ll be closer to the bathroom.”

“You make that seem like an advantage.”

“It is if you’ve got a hangover.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence about tonight.”

“Okay, you take the bed by the window, then.” She sighs.

“No,” says I affably. “Go ahead. You generally get your way.”

So she dumps her case on the bed by the window and starts unpacking. She has no respect for people who don’t kick and punch and scream for what they want. I’m in no mood for kicking and punching and screaming. At least not yet.

She starts stripping. She’s planning on having a shower. Before me. But I beat her to it. Sylvana will now have to make her face up in a condensed, fogged-up mirror.

Fifteen minutes later (after a hot shower which dispenses the maximum amount of steam) I come back out swathed in a flimsy white towel – the largest in the bathroom. She ignores me completely. She undresses and walks into the bathroom seemingly indifferent as to who might see her voluptuous and perfectly naked curves, namely me, and after spending a whole hour inside she walks back out in her black silk lingerie like she’s actually planning on going to Club Zed tonight.

She sits down at the narrow dressing-table and begins applying foundation and eyeliner and mascara, indifferent to the fact that she’s blocking my view of the TV, as I lean back against my bedhead watching Clark Gable speak French with those odd mouth movements.

I’m in my power-pinstriped suit. I feel I can accomplish things in it. I’m relieved to see Sylvana getting into a downbeat brown suit and dark-green polo-neck sweater. At nine we are ready to embark into the still bright Paris evening.

A
t a quarter to ten I follow Sylvana through the awkward double doors of the Cafe de Flore. Inside is like a busy tea party. The place is glaring with bright yellow light. The atmosphere in this large, box-like, open room is noisy and bustling and intellectual, and I am immediately struck by the soft, bright-red banquettes on which Parisian life is happily chattering. These are fitted in between low wooden partitions on top of which lie salt cellars and baskets of hard-boiled eggs. The yellow-painted, aged walls are almost completely covered with huge old decaying mirrors.

Ornate chandeliers hang from the high, sculpted, dirt-yellow ceiling. In the left corner a wooden stairway curves its way round, upstairs, presumably to the restrooms.

The wooden rectangular tables are patronized by the trendy twenties and thirties. But there are the old regulars too, one tableful of whom is engulfed in a bellyful of conversation with a bow-tied waiter in black and white who has just rolled a pencil from his ear and taken a small notepad from the black pouch attached to his belt.

We are told to wait until a seat becomes available so we stay where we are just in front of the entrance. Recent arrivals are already forming a queue behind us.

“It’s nearly ten and they’re still not here.” I peer around the large room.

“Knowing him, they’re probably on a café crawl.”

Soon we are led to a small red banquette in the far right corner. I climb into the inside seat. Sylvana grumbles a little because she gets to face the wall, so I remind her of who snatched the bed by the window. She orders a ‘cafe espresso special Flore’ from the menu and just to be different I order tea.

And wait. From here there is a clear view of the door on which my eyes are fastened like bolts.

Our order arrives and we sip in silence.

Nothing happens. Everybody seems lost in conversation. Nobody is taking any notice of Sylvana or me, which makes a welcome change. Everybody is too beautiful in here. I watch one slender woman with large eyes animatedly engage her friend whose long arms are folded on the table and who keeps nodding in earnest. At another table sit a group of students in heated debate.

There’s a guy with black leather jacket, scruffy dark hair and a dark half-day stubble sitting reading a book. At the table next to him is another guy with long greasy hair but stunning Brad Pitt features, staring at length into the distance. Every so often he dips his head and scribbles something meaningful in a notebook.

“I’m a bit peckish,” Sylvana says.

“You should have thought of that on the plane. The two of them could walk in any minute.”

Sylvana: “You expected me to eat that chemically refined chicken and carrot paste, and those gherkin droppings? I don’t think so. What about an
omelette au crabe
?”

She’s reading her menu again.

“That’s a crab omelette.”

“I know that, Julie, but do you think it’s any good?”

“It’s one dish I wouldn’t touch with an oar.”

I idly scan my own menu. On the front cover is printed ‘
Saint-Germain-des-Pres
’. Beneath this is printed ‘
rendez-vous au…Cafe de Flore
’, a quote attributed to J.P. Sartre from his
Les Chemins de la Liberte
. Beneath this is a heavy sketch in pencil of a coffee table on top of which lie a cafetiere, a cup and saucer and spoon, a newspaper, a letter, a packet of cigarettes and an ashtray.

I’m getting this tingling sensation in my gut. I desperately want a smoke so I light up. I start inhaling vigorously. I still don’t know what I’m going to say to them when they walk through the door. Perhaps I’ll just leave it to instinct.

“I think I’ll have the crab omelette,” Sylvana says. “I have yet to watch an egg crawl.”

The waiter comes over and she points to what she wants, then flips the page of the small booklet-menu and points at something else. And in an excruciatingly doggish French accent she says: “
Et: haricots verts frais en salade, s’il vous plait. Oh, et un Mere
-
un Tuborg s’il vous plait. Merci
.”

“
Oui madame
.”

“
Et pour moi, un café espresso double s’il vous plait
”

On impulse, I take out my phone and hold it for a second, and stare at it. I put it back down on the table. Frustrated, I grab the menu and start reading:
Croissant au beurre, brioche au beurre, pain aux raisins, pain au chocolat, Minis, tartines beurre…

Soon Sylvana’s
omelette au crabe
and her
haricots verts frais en salade
arrive, together with the glass of Tuborg beer and my
cafe espresso double
.

She starts delicately gobbling the pukish-looking stringy omelette mix. I pull back from the sea smell.

She’s munching away, now, into her dish, trying to guess the meaning of the various entries on the
Les Patisseries
page. She’s scoffing her crab omelette like a starved dog and simultaneously she is quoting disapprovingly from the dessert section, mock contempt etched on her brow: will she choose a
gateau au chocolat Macao
for her dessert? Or a
millefeuille
, whatever that is? Or a
tarte tatin (en saison)?
Or the
patisserie du jour?
Or the
cake frais?
None of these, of course, will do much for her figure.

I slam down my cup, twirl the mobile towards me and input Nicole’s number. It’s so noisy in here that when she answers all I hear from her is a squeak that vaguely reminds me of my name.

“Where the hell are you?” I shout.

Pause.

“How do you mean, Julianne?”

“How do I mean?”

When I repeat my highly complex five-word question she says she doesn’t really understand.

“You’re supposed to be in the Cafe de Flore. You’re late.”

“But we
are
in the Cafe de Flore.” She giggles, unsure.

I pause.

“What are you doing in the toilet?”

“What?”

“Have you finished in the toilet?”

“Julianne, we’re not in the toilet.”

“Are we talking about the same establishment? The big café on Boulevard St-Germain? With the red benches and the large mirrors?”

“Yes. We’re upstairs.”

“There’s seating upstairs? I thought there was just a loo?”

“There
is
, but there are tables also. It’s lovely here, Julianne. We’re having a really nice drink together. He’s having – would you believe it – a creme de menthe and I’m having a beer with creme de cassis. We’ve just eaten prawns and garlic sauce. They were great, though I’m glad Ronan didn’t tell me what they were until we’d finished. They have a funny name in French. I’ll read it out to you. Listen to this…”

I punch out and put my phone away.

“We’re going upstairs, Sylvana. Leave your revolting mobile egg where it is and follow me.”

Holding on to the curved wooden bannister rail we climb up the narrow squeaky wooden stairs past paintings of Paris hanging on the stairwell. We squeeze sideways to allow a waiter to pass, an empty tray at his side. We twist round and are now on the first floor. Straight ahead, to my surprise, is a long, narrow room full of people at tables: a banquet of liveliness.

At once I spy Nicole. She is seated on a curved banquette underneath the stained-glass window in the far right corner. She looks wonderful: soft, innocent, glowing, arms folded loosely. She’s almost in a kind of watery daydream. Obviously dotty with happiness. She’s wearing a loose shirt, the colour of pale-green grass, which accentuates her wonderful suntan. She’s in cream slacks. I can see her feet. Enclosing them are sandals with woven gold straps. I can even make out her light-purple toenail varnish.

Her long, goldeny hair is back off her shoulders, exposing her long, dangly Rue de Rivoli earrings.

I advance. Now I can see Ronan’s profile. He’s reading his paper. Wouldn’t you know it:
Le Figaro
. The paper for the intellectual. The paper for Ronan, the pseudo-intellectual bull-shitter.

Sylvana: “This should be fun.”

Nicole says something to him and laughs. He smiles, takes a sip of his green drink and returns to his paper. Nicole hasn’t seen us yet, though she’s facing this way, still daydreaming.

I advance slowly.

She looks around.

Then looks up.

She sees me. Her eyes are very large and her mouth is slightly open, teetering on the brink of hesitation. She looks like she’s about to break out into a great big smile but she doesn’t quite manage it. She glances at Ronan doubtfully, as if requiring reassurance. Who can blame her for her amazement? We’ve just beamed in here like two apparitions from
Star Trek
without the fancy gear.

She touches him lightly on the arm. But he’s stuck deep in his paper. She should realize by now that she is located way below the
Figaro
in his order of priorities. She nudges him harder. He raises his creme de menthe and takes a sip and, as he lowers his drink, he glances in our direction. When he sees me his glass halts in mid-air.

I think he goes white, though I’m prepared to concede it’s a pale shade of grey. As we approach, the vibe is so thick you could cut it with a baguette.

Nicole snaps out of her daze. She jumps to her feet and throws her arms around me shrieking, “You had me fooled right up to the very last minute! What are you
doing
here? How come you never said? I had no idea.”

I respond to her hug like a stiff, rolled-up carpet, although to my credit I do say hello. Disengaging myself from her arms, I stand back to let her hug Sylvana if she wants to and I just glare at Ronan.

They disentangle themselves and Nicole squeals at Ronan how
amazing
this is and in high frequency she demands to know what brings us here at no notice.

I don’t respond and neither does Ronan: he is in puzzled concentration. This is how he looks when he’s been taken for a ride and isn’t quite sure who has ridden him, or hasn’t yet worked out how best to ride back. As he attempts to get a hold on the situation his eyes flicker around the three of us like a lizard’s.

“Oh my God! I can’t believe you’re here,” chants Nicole, staring happily at me the whole time, head tilted, figertips touching the side of her face.

She starts jabbering now, a useful release of tension for all. “Ronan do you remember I told you about Julianne and Imelda? They’re my two new, very good friends. Julianne’s the one that brought me to the hospital – you know – after that thing? Come on, Ronan, of
course
you remember. I told you about her. She’s the one who’s really into
Feng Shui
. Remember? No, he doesn’t remember – he’s not into
Feng Shui
.”

He opens a pack of Gitanes.

“Ronan.” She nudges his shoulder. “Julianne is the one who moved into a new apartment with her husband Helmut recently; that’s the place where I started repainting
Chi
yesterday morning on the balcony. And this is Imelda, her friend. I met her at the zoo yesterday.”

She would have to put it like that.

“Ronan, is something the matter, love?”

Love
.

Nicole is frowning down at him. “Ronan!”

But he has turned away.

He is withdrawing into himself, considering the equation, measuring the vibes, preparing the perfect word. And he will not be lost for the perfect word.

“He’s not listening.”

Nicole is all sighs.

Me: “He’s not a great listener.”

“Anyway, this is Ronan, folks.”

What an embarrassment. She stands there, her hand opened out towards her lover like he’s the next guest on a chat show, grinning away like she’s just escaped some institution.

An appropriate response from Ronan is still not forthcoming. All he can do is smoke, very calmly, exhaling to the side. Nicole’s orgy of joy is becoming progressively more forced. The smile is fast draining from her cheeks. She frowns, eyeing each of us in turn.

“Talk about an anticlimax,” remarks Sylvana.

“Hello there, Ronan,” says I suavely. “I must say, Cannes is a lovely city. A little cool, though, for July.”

Only his eyes move. Slowly across. They burn into me like two hard, deep, smoking gun barrels. Sylvana is glaring at him. Hatefully. Loyally.

Ronan consults Nicole: “You have no idea who this is, do you?”

Nicole’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
Sure
she knows who this is, the poor thing craves to say: these are her new friends Julianne and Imelda.