Chapter Eleven #3
Before she could overthink it, she threw on jeans, a striped blouse, and her Adidas Sambas, smudged a bit of concealer under her eyes, and dabbed on a bit of red lipstick, then she headed out the door.
She kept her phone on in case Piper returned and wanted to know where she was, but she suspected that she’d be back before Piper knew she was gone.
It was better that way, because how could she explain the magnetic pull of a dive bar she hadn’t been to in twenty-seven years without telling her daughter how far she’d fallen from that former version of herself?
She was surprised to realize, as she walked, that her feet still knew the way, even all these years later.
She made her way down the rue de la Huchette, which had changed little in the intervening years, and her stomach growled as she passed a storefront offering crepes and another one offering melted raclette and fondue.
She would have one drink at The Red Telephone Box for old times’ sake, and then she’d stop at one of these places on the way back to the hotel for a quick, greasy lunch, just like she remembered from the days when she’d lived here.
She turned right on the rue du Petit-Pont, left on the rue Saint-Séverin, and right again on the rue Galande, expecting to see the bar looming in front of her.
But, to her surprise, in the spot where her bar—The Red Telephone Box—had once been, several anglophone flags flapped beneath a big sign that read LE MAISON GROG.
“Le Maison Grog?” she asked aloud as she stood frozen on the sidewalk.
It looked the same as the bar she remembered, but she knew she hadn’t gotten the name wrong.
She pulled out her phone and googled The Red Telephone Box bar, Paris, and she felt her hope plummet when the only thing that came up was a Google Review noting that the bar had been bought by new owners from Australia fifteen years ago—and that they’d renamed it.
She was indeed in the right place. But she’d missed her reunion with the past by a decade and a half.
She considered turning back to the hotel.
But she had walked all this way, and she suddenly had a nostalgic desire for a pastis—a popular aperitif she’d discovered when she’d lived in France so long ago.
She and Ellen had loved sitting on the terraces of cafés in the late afternoon, each of them slowly sipping an ice-cold pastis and believing that they looked very sophisticated and French while they watched the world go by. She hadn’t had one in years.
She crossed the street, went down two steps to the entrance, and entered the bar, which was nearly deserted.
From the sandwich board out front advertising a lunch special of fish and chips with a Foster’s, she had assumed the place would be buzzing, but there were only three other customers there: a middle-aged couple in the corner wearing clunky sneakers and matching fanny packs, and a man about her age, maybe a few years older, sitting at the bar with his back to her.
She almost turned around and left. Though the place still looked surprisingly like The Red Telephone Box on the inside, the vibe was completely different. Then again, she’d never been here in daylight hours, had she? And it was barely three in the afternoon.
She made her way to the bar and sat two stools down from the man, who was wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He nodded politely at her and then returned his attention to his beer as a bartender came over with a smile.
“G’day,” the bartender said in the most exaggerated Australian accent she’d ever heard. “Welcome to Le Maison Grog. What can I get you to drink?”
“You don’t have pastis, do you?”
“Sure we do,” the bartender said. “Ricard or Pernod?”
“Ricard sounds great,” she said. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” He gave her another smile and returned a moment later with a highball glass filled about an eighth of the way with translucent amber liquid, along with a small pitcher of cold water and a long spoon. “Need an ice cube, too?” he asked.
“No, thanks, this is perfect.” She could feel the gaze of the man just down the bar as she picked up the pitcher and slowly poured water into the glass, instantly turning the translucent liquid milky.
She filled the glass halfway, then put the pitcher back on the table and stirred the drink with the spoon.
Finally, she closed her eyes and took a small sip, the anise and licorice flavors zinging her taste buds and taking her back to that summer so long ago when her whole life lay ahead of her.
When she opened her eyes again, the man two seats away from her was still watching her.
She gave him a small smile, and his face lit up in return.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I don’t mean to stare. It’s just… what is that?” His accent was American, his voice deep and smooth. His eyes, she noticed without meaning to, were a beautiful shade of hazel that reminded her of warm honey.
“Well, this is basically my early twenties in a glass.”
He laughed. “A fountain of youth?”
“More like a portal to a time that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s pastis, which comes from the south of France. You mix it with water, and it turns into something completely different.”
“Like magic.” The man smiled. “Alchemy, if you will.”
“Exactly. I haven’t actually had one in years. I lived here for a summer when I was twenty-two, and my friend and I used to think we were very fancy and grown-up when we drank them at outdoor cafés and flirted with French boys.”
The man laughed, a sound that rose from low in his throat and sent a strange little shiver down her spine. “Well, you still look very fancy and grown-up, for what it’s worth.”
“That’s what I was going for,” she said, and he laughed again.
“And what brings a fancy grown-up like you in to day-drink magical, transportive beverages in a bar like this?” the man asked.
“The same thing that made me order my first pastis in twenty-seven years, I guess. Nostalgia. I used to come here that summer I lived here, back when it was called—”
“The Red Telephone Box,” the man cut in, and her eyes widened.
“You remember it, too?”
“Yeah. I used to live a few blocks away, on the rue Xavier Privas. Summer of 1993.”
“I was here the summer of ’96.”
“Well, now I wish I’d come back. I could have been one of the boys you flirted with. Or would I have been disqualified for being American?”
“No,” she said, feeling uncharacteristically bold. “You would definitely not have been disqualified.” He stared at her for long enough that her heart began to thud. “I’m, uh, Julia,” she said, breaking eye contact and sticking out her hand.
He shook it and seemed to hesitate for a split second before saying, “Sam.”
“Sam. Nice to meet you. What brings you to Paris?”
He hesitated again. “Work. You?”
Now it was her turn to pause. It wasn’t as if she could tell him that she was here for one last hurrah before she kicked the bucket.
That would instantly kill the electricity she could feel sizzling between them, and she wanted to enjoy it for a few seconds more.
When was the last time a man had looked at her like she wasn’t invisible?
Like she had something to offer? She couldn’t remember.
“I’m on a trip with my twenty-three-year-old daughter.
She’s out wandering around a bit on her own. ”
“An adventurer, then,” he said with a smile. “So what does that pastis taste like, anyhow?”
“Like licorice, believe it or not.”
“Well, I like licorice.” He gestured for the bartender. “Hey, Russ, can I try a pastis, too?”
“Sure, mate, coming right up,” the bartender said and went to get a glass for Sam.
“You’re on a first-name basis with the bartender,” Julia noted, and Sam laughed.
“Only because I wandered in here yesterday when it was nearly as empty, and we struck up a conversation. Nice guy; he owns the place. He and his friend bought it from the owner of The Red Telephone Box fifteen years ago and they changed the name right away.”
“It was a pretty silly name.”
“That’s what I said!” Sam exclaimed as Russ delivered his pastis. “Could you show me what to do?” he asked her, contemplating the glass, the pitcher, and the spoon in front of him.
“Sure.”
“Mind if I scoot closer?” He gestured to the seat beside her.
“Please,” she said with a smile.
He pushed his pastis and the pitcher of water down the bar and then stood and crossed to resettle beside her. Up close, he smelled like a tantalizingly masculine combination of vetiver and cedar. “Okay,” he said. “Ready for my lesson.”
She showed him how to slowly drizzle the water in, and he stared in disbelief as the liquid turned instantly cloudy. She handed him the spoon, and after he’d stirred, they clinked glasses and looked each other in the eye. “To Paris,” she said.
“To meeting a beautiful girl in the old Red Telephone Box while discovering the strangest beverage I’ve ever seen,” he said with a laugh, and she could feel her cheeks heating up as they each took a sip of their drinks.
Just then, his cell phone, which was sitting on the bar between them, buzzed and lit up with an incoming call from someone named Cash.
Sam stared at it for a moment, and then, seeming to make a decision, he grabbed the phone and looked up at Julia.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to take this. Don’t leave, okay? ”
“Okay,” Julia agreed, and, looking relieved, Sam hopped off his barstool and headed outside to take the call. She stared after him as he walked away.
Surely this was too good to be true. Maybe he wouldn’t come back.
Maybe she’d be stuck with the bill for his pastis.
It would almost be a relief, because the alternative was that she had just met the perfect guy while she was in the process of dying, and that really wouldn’t be fair at all, would it?