French Fried (2 page)

Robert Levasseur drove
his sporty coupe up and down Charlemagne Cour, looking for a place to park and glancing anxiously at his watch. Why the devil had they chosen to stay in the Perrache area? The university had excellent hotels in which to house guests, places convenient to the chemistry department building. In order to carry out his mission, he had to arrive at the hotel before the visitors collapsed into their beds to sleep until the evening’s welcome dinner.

Adrien Guillot, senior professor and organizer of the Avignon meeting next week, had assigned Robert the task of taking Professor Blue and his wife to breakfast, but Guillot, in a hurry to escort his own wife to visit her mother in a Paris hospital, had failed to tell Robert when the plane was to land.
Ah! A parking place!
Robert pulled in, locked his car, and strode toward the hotel. Fortunately, Zoe, the adorable departmental secretary, whom Robert very much wished to invite to dinner, had had the name of the Americans’ hotel.

He entered and called to a sour-faced young woman sitting at a computer, pointedly ignoring him, “Mademoiselle, I am here to welcome Professor Jason Blue and his wife.”

“I’m busy,” she snarled.

“They’re Americans. Are they here?”

She looked up and squinted at him. “Americans? No, not yet.” A sly look came over her face. “But they are troublesome even before their arrival. Already a messenger has come by demanding to take champagne and hors d’oeuvres to their room. You could go up and wait for them there.”

“Surely that’s not encouraged. It
is
their room.”

“Champagne. Pâté de foie gras. Wasted on Americans if you ask me. But where are you from with your strange accent? Are you another American?”

“French Canadian.”
Pâté?
Robert’s mouth watered. Even the disappointment of having his excellent French pegged as American could not overcome the thought of pâté. “Well, perhaps I will, if that’s the way you handle things here.”

She rose from her desk to fetch the heavy key from under the glowing counter. “Cover the desk for me,” she called to an idle fellow behind the bar. The hotel had a Las Vegas ambiance to it. Lots of neon. Robert had been to a meeting in Las Vegas once and considered the place extremely tasteless.

He did like Jason Blue, whom he had met at an Ottawa conference. The poor man had had to leave suddenly because his wife had been lost on a cruise ship. Although the couple had grown children, Blue still seemed to be in love with her. Why else would he had left before the banquet, which Robert himself had planned and arranged to have flown in so that the conferees would have at least one wonderful meal in the French style?

Here in Lyon most of the couples in enduring marriages had already found lovers with whom they met several times a week—always discreetly, of course. He himself was involved in an affair with Madam Laurent, the chairman’s wife, and they were very, very discreet. In fact, the situation terrified him, but Victoire was an intimidating as well as a passionate woman. She wouldn’t mind if he managed to get a date with Zoe, which would serve as cover for their affair and irritate her husband, but she would mind if Robert ended his relationship with her before she grew tired of him.

Once in the Blues’ room, he sat down in a soft orange chair that was much too small for him and stared longingly at the split of champagne and the four slices of pâté with their mouth watering bits of black embedded—truffles, no doubt. He hoped that when the Blues arrived they would offer to share. Robert thought a really fine pâté de foie gras the finest dish in the world. He had once dreamed that at his death, the priest administering the last rites had offered him a wafer with a bit of pâté smeared on it to go with the communion wine. Dying with the taste of foie gras in one’s mouth would be the perfect appetizer to heaven, he had thought on awakening, not a dream that was likely to be fulfilled when his time came.

He turned the chair around and stared out the window at the green-leaved upper branches of the trees that lined Charlemagne Cour. With the drapes pulled partially back by Yvette, the hotel’s grumpy receptionist, he would hear the gentle rustling. Very nice. Perhaps the Blues had known what they were doing when they reserved a room here—well, except for the unpleasant Yvette. He had to assume that she was a Parisian. People in Lyon weren’t rude to guests.

But no thought could distract Robert from the pâté that rested so close. He sniffed the air, thinking he could detect its rich fragrance, then glanced over his shoulder and swallowed hard. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind if he took one slice. They were late arriving, and what a shame to let fine pâté dry out under its glass dome. What could one slice matter? He rose, carefully removed the dome, and with the small spreading knife, swiped pâté across a piece of toast. Ah, it was so good! One of the best he’d ever had. In Canada there was never pâté like this. Something must be wrong with the geese. In less than a minute he had devoured the rest of the slice before forcing himself to sit down again.

Now the plate looked wrong! Two slices in back, one in front, and that telltale space beside it. They, as Texans, might not even like pâté. Perhaps the wife was a native and, knowing no better, thought foie gras was nasty. Some Americans said that. If he ate the second slice, there would still be two left for Jason, should he want them. Obviously, it was the thing to do. The very thought of letting the pâté dry out made his lips and the inside of his mouth numb with dismay.

Robert rose, feeling a bit light-headed. He was salivating and even somewhat breathless as he made his way to the desk and prepared four more toasts, but with some difficulty because his hands began to feel prickly. Odd. And his feet, too. Silly little chair had cut off his circulation.

Still the prickliness didn’t prevent him from enjoying each of the four treats as he popped them in his mouth and sighed with delight. The pâté was so rich and creamy, so flavorful. And the toast crunched delightfully between his teeth as the foie gras melted onto his tongue, laving his taste buds with its matchless flavor. His eyes were already on the last two slices. If he ate those, too, would the absent Americans know the difference? But wait. Who had sent the mini-feast? He leaned forward to read the card on the champagne split and almost fell over. Now his legs were numb and rubbery. “From the Department of Chemistry,” he read aloud through tingling lips. If he ate the pâté, the Blues might thank the chairman for the champagne and be asked how they had liked the pâté. They’d say, “What pâté?” and his secret pilfering would be—

To catch his balance, he dropped his hand onto the desk with a thud that rattled the tray and its contents, and his wrist gave way like foam so that he found himself propped up on his elbow and wobbling legs. Must sit down. No, lie down. He could straighten out the bedspread as soon as he felt better. Scrape the remains of pâté he’d eaten from the plate. He managed to fall on the bed.
Wipe off the knife
, he thought fuzzily. At least lying down he felt better. A few minutes of rest and he’d . . . close his eyes for a time.

The numbness was spreading in his extremities, and his stomach hurt. Robert felt a distant panic set in. Had he had a stroke? Was paralysis overcoming him? He was too young to . . . How he wished someone would come. Anyone. Even the horrid Yvette. Or the Blues. They’d see he was in trouble and call for help. So what if they noticed the missing pâté?

He had fallen on his side and found his breathing becoming shallow. He needed to stand. To take a deep breath.
Stand up
, he told himself, but when he tried, he ended up on his stomach across the two beds.

Someone. Please come. Help me
, the voice in his head called silently. He could no longer speak. His lungs cried for air, and he . . . If only help would come.

But by the time someone entered the room, Robert Levasseur, still marginally conscious, could make no sound but a faint cough, a slight wheeze of failing muscles.

Jet-lagged and apprehensive,
I stood at the far end of the elevated Perrache Station, high above the district where our hotel was located—in theory. Goodness knows what I’d do if I couldn’t find it. “Go down to street level and straight up Charlemagne Cour,” my husband had said. “The hotel can’t be more than a block or two. Hotel Charlemagne.” Then, having already stowed his suitcase in a locker, Jason had hustled off to catch another train, which would take him to the university.

I still had my suitcase. No matter how much trouble trundling it to the hotel might prove to be, I refused to enter a strange hotel in a strange city without any luggage. I made that point to Jason, who replied, “Why not? You don’t have to have your nightgown to fall asleep.”

I sighed and headed for the curved marble stairs that would take me down to street level. At least the street had tall, leafy trees on both sides, even if the buildings looked somewhat shabby from where I stood. Surely marble was unusual in an el station that had very hard-used wooden floors where we got off and seedy-looking shops selling newspapers, unappealing souvenirs, and hot dogs—hardly the fare to be expected in a city reputed to be the cuisine capital of France. Maybe the hot dogs were actually sausages. Lyon was famous for those.
I don’t even like sausages
, I thought grimly, as I bumped my wheeled suitcase down the first marble step and followed after.

Bump. Step. Bump, bump, bump. Whoops. The weight of my suitcase pulled it down several steps and almost took me with it. I managed to catch my balance and my bag on the fourth step but had to stop, hand pressed against my pounding chest. I felt like sitting down right there to indulge in a bout of exhausted tears, but a man stopped beside me, lectured me sternly in French, slammed down the handle of my wheeled bag, and carried it away.

“Here, you! Give that back! Help! He’s stealing my suitcase!” I chased him down the curved stair to the next level while people from a newly arrived train galloped down around me, paying my predicament no mind. How very French of them! When I caught him, the thief was standing in front of heavily scuffed, red-brown doors, pushing a button.

As they opened, he said, “Elevator,” and shoved my bag inside. As if I was going to get on an elevator with a strange French luggage snatcher. Evidently that wasn’t his plan, for he nodded to me and stalked away. I had no idea what button to select, and before I could decide, a woman pushing a stroller crowded in and sent the elevator down to a floor that didn’t look promising. She and her wailing child exited, and I stayed on. When the doors whipped open again, I yanked my suitcase out hastily, lest it be carried off by the impatient elevator, onto which an impatient Frenchman had directed me.

After looking confusedly in all directions, I spotted a door with a light above it, so I headed across the grungy, white-tiled floor and stepped out into—what was it? A smelly tunnel with cars, vans, streetcars, and buses whipping by. I must have gone down a floor too far, but I could see daylight toward my right, and there was a walkway, so I took it.

Alas, the walkway ended when I emerged, and I was confronted with a maze of crisscrossing tracks and roadways. Beyond that an even larger street, lined on one side by grimy, industrial buildings, disappeared to my left. That couldn’t be Charlemagne Cour. To my right what I took to be the end of the station jutted out, and the leafy-tree street led away from the entrance. Charlemagne Cour. But how was I to get to the street when everywhere I looked vehicles were cutting me off? Gritting my teeth, I stayed as close to the curving wall as I could. When I heard a motor hurtling toward me, I stopped and closed my eyes. A lot of honking went on, no doubt at me, before I arrived, trembling, at the front, or back, of the station.