Chapter 3
The man continued glowering, but his sister, looking paler than ever, smiled. “We’re fine. Thank you for your help.”
The rest of the meal crawled along. I brought out the (correct) courses, smiled so hard that tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and did everything I could to try to right this meal.
But it was already ruined, and the three of us were simply going through the motions miserably. My shame was almost overwhelming.
The woman seemed especially embarrassed, even though she had no reason to be. She picked at her food and seemed close to tears.
After a few minutes, her brother stopped glaring at the tablecloth and made an effort to lift her spirits. He spoke too low for me to hear, but he seemed to be making little jokes. It was enough to eventually coax a smile out of her.
The woman tried to pay at the end of the meal, but her brother and I both waved her card away. They were some of the final guests to leave, and when I finally made it to the staff room, the story had already spread.
“Margot, you did nothing wrong. I do worse every day, honestly,” Le?la said.
“It’s my fault; it’s entirely my fault,” Luc said, head in his hands.
I patted his shoulder. “It’s alright. Everyone makes mistakes.”
I certainly had.
“Here, they’re testing desserts in the kitchens, and I made sure to save some for you,” Yasmine said, pushing a plate of profiteroles at me.
I took a profiterole and squeezed it gently between my fingers until the outer shell gave a satisfying crackle. I tried to smile at Yasmine, but I knew she wasn’t fooled. When you’ve worked with someone practically every day for the past five years, it’s hard to hide your feelings.
“Don’t feel bad, Margot. That man was so rude to you, he deserved everything you said to him,” Colette said, elegantly stretching her legs. She’d trained for years as a ballerina, but a skiing accident had ended her career.
She wasn’t the type to stay down for long, though. She’d interviewed at Le Jules Verne while still on crutches and was now taking courses in costume design when not at work. She held out her empty wine glass to Paul.
“He was rude,” Paul agreed, “Although he had excellent taste in wine.” He poured the rest of a Loire Valley Cabernet Franc into Colette’s glass, stifling a yawn.
Paul and his wife had welcomed twins a few months ago, and I could tell from the dark circles under his eyes that the babies still weren’t sleeping through the night.
But Paul’s tiredness hadn’t affected his work in the slightest, and he was renowned as one of the best sommeliers in Paris.
He had Le Jules Verne’s thick wine menu practically memorized.
Yasmine bit into a profiterole, not smudging her lipstick one centimeter.
“Yours are better,” she said as she licked a fingertip. I smiled, knowing she was trying to lift my mood.
“I’m serious, Margot. The profiteroles you made for my birthday had a better flavor.”
“She’s right,” Luc agreed. “You could teach the pastry team a thing or two.”
Knowing they were complimenting me to try to bolster my self-esteem only made me feel worse. I gulped down my glass of wine and mindlessly chewed a profiterole (OK, maybe it was a little spongy). While my coworkers were still deep in conversation, I made my excuses and hurriedly put on my coat.
For one of the only times in my life, I couldn’t wait to leave work.
***
A waft of cool air greeted me as I stepped out at the base of the Eiffel Tower. I drank it in with long gulps. As I walked, I replayed the entire evening in my head, ruminating over how I could have handled the situation better.
Luc had dropped the ball, and the man had been rude, no doubt, but part of my job was dealing with rude diners.
I should have spoken up sooner, tried to get clarification on what exactly they could and couldn’t eat.
It had been a long day, and I’d been missing key information, but that was really no excuse.
I should have never lost my patience, never made even the vaguest suggestion that they should leave.
I trudged home miserably. The woman’s pale, unhappy face kept flickering through my mind. The key point of pride in my life was that I was an exceptional server, that diners I met had a better experience than they expected and left happier than planned. That hadn’t happened tonight.
With a sigh, I undid my chignon, letting my hair flutter in the breeze. I looked around, trying to take my mind off work. The tourist crowds had broken up, but there were still couples strolling together and parents pointing out the Eiffel Tower’s sparkling lights to their sleepy-eyed children.
My apartment was located in Paris’ 15th arrondissement, on the left bank of the Seine River and not far from Le Jules Verne.
I preferred to walk to and from work every day that I could, especially on an evening like tonight, when Paris’ sultry summer heat lost its edge and became soft and pleasant in the dark.
I crossed the river into the leafy, elegant 7th arrondissement, one of the poshest areas of the city. As I walked, I passed glowing street lamps and grand old buildings with wrought iron balconies and vines creeping up the stonework.
Paris, truthfully, is not always one of the best-smelling places in the world (its charms lie in other areas), but tonight the air was filled with the delicious scents of honeysuckle spilling out of neighborhood window boxes and the duck confit an elderly couple was sharing at the one of the restaurants still open at this hour.
That restaurant was all aglow, as though there was a spotlight focused directly on this tiny slice of the world. The man and woman were both white-haired and impeccably dressed, he in a dark suit, she in a cornflower blue dress with a silvery shawl draped over her shoulders.
She pulled the shawl off and folded it carefully as the man cut the duck, both of them concentrating on their tasks. The man raised his head as he passed her the larger piece, and a smile of pure contentment passed between them. It made something in my chest twist painfully.
I crossed the invisible line into my own 15th arrondissement and turned down a narrow, slightly shabby side street. On the corner was my building. Peering into the darkness, I saw a familiar figure sitting on the entrance steps.
My landlady, Madame Blanchet, sometimes suffered from insomnia and claimed night air was the only cure for it. In her arms was a thick blanket. I knew that Bijou, Madame Blanchet’s little white dog, would be snuggled inside, having no problems with sleeping himself.
“Bonsoir, Madame. Trouble sleeping again?”
“Hello, Margot. Yes, another night spent awake,” Madame Blanchet said, sounding not a bit bothered. “At least if someone decides to drop a bomb, I’ll see it falling and know my end has come.”
I had long stopped being nonplussed by Madame Blanchet’s dark pronouncements.
Instead of trying to convince her that she need not spend her night as an air raid warden, I smiled and bent to scratch the bit of Bijou’s ear that stuck out of the blanket.
“Would it help if I made you a cup of tea, Madame?”
“And miss a night like this? No chérie, but it’s kind of you to offer. By the way, my sister has a new research assistant working for her. From Corsica.”
I bit my tongue, knowing where this was going.
Madame Blanchet nodded. “He’s quite smart, my sister said, and has a home overlooking the sea in Corsica.
She showed me a photo, and he’s not handsome, but you know how high the prices are for waterfront property these days.
Just turn the lights off when you’re with him and make sure you’re facing the sea.
” Madame Blanchet stifled a yawn behind an elegant hand.
“I’ll invite him over sometime so that you two can meet. ”
Ever since I’d moved into this apartment half a decade ago, Madame Blanchet had been setting me up on dates. They were always unequivocally disastrous.
There’d been one who’d shown up drunk, another who’d scooped out his crème br?lée with his hands and shoveled it into his mouth, one who’d asked for our server’s number while still on the date with me, one who’d stalked out of the restaurant when I’d admitted that I liked (actually loved) crappy fast food, and, most recently, a man who had behaved atrociously all during dinner, then announced he was heading to the airport to spend two weeks in Greece.
I’d ended up spending half a month watching his parakeet because I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t let the poor thing starve.
I’d gone into each date with high hopes but, eventually, even my hopelessly romantic self had to admit Madame Blanchet was the world’s worst matchmaker.
Since then, I’d made a solemn promise to myself that I’d do whatever it took—fake an illness, sign up for an intensive yoga retreat, make an international move—to avoid any future suitors she suggested. I was still finding parakeet feathers stuck in my clothes.
“I’m quite busy with work these days,” I said, tucking Bijou back into his blanket, “But thank you for thinking of me, Madame.”
I wished Madame Blanchard and Bijou a pleasant evening and was about to head inside when she called me back.
“I forgot to mention, chérie, but you have a new next-door neighbor. He finally got his things up from Provence. I’ll invite you all over for wine and brie so you can get acquainted.”
“Oh, don’t go to too much trouble for my sake,” I said, immediately deciding to decline until I could meet this new neighbor myself (in case this turned into another matchmaking scheme). “And try not to stay up too late, Madame.”
“Of course not, but if I get accosted, make sure they bury me in my yellow silk gown.” Madame Blanchet settled back against the steps.
The 15th arrondissement was one of the better addresses to have in Paris (and one of the best to have in the world, in my opinion). This remained true even though my building had seen better days, and perhaps better centuries.
The stairs squeaked atrociously as I went up them, but it was a comforting sound, the same way the dust-encrusted lamps and faded satin wallpaper lining the stairwell were comforting.
I flicked on the lights of my tiny, worn apartment.
In the yellow glow, I saw the landscape paintings I’d hung in brass frames, the row of herbs growing on the windowsill, my pale lavender couch, and the bouquet of dahlias I’d arranged in a glass vase that morning.
Pushed against the wall was my little dining table, one chair coated lightly with dust.
It was late, but I wasn’t tired. Going to the fridge, I pulled out the sheet pan on which I’d laid a neatly rolled-out rectangle of dough that morning and set it on the counter. Then I made myself a cup of tea and took it to the deep window seat.
From there, if I leaned in the right direction, I could just make out the Eiffel Tower. Most people wouldn’t like seeing their workplace from their home, but it always made me happy to see the Tower.
I sipped my tea, forehead pressed against the cool window glass, as I waited for the dough to lose its chill.
I baked something nearly every day, and this morning I’d woken up and known immediately that I wanted to make baguettes.
The stock I always kept in the freezer (for bread-related emergencies, of which there are many in France) was nearly depleted.
Once the dough was ready, I began the familiar pattern of shaping it into oblongs.
As I worked my way through the steps, memories of learning to bake with my mother, my grandmother, and—in a few sepia-tinted memories—my great-grandmother, flowed through my mind. They made my heart thump painfully.
It was late by the time I’d dimpled the top of the baguettes, and the city’s lights shone out against the night.
It was one of the rare moments Paris was very nearly silent.
The revelers had finally stumbled home, and the early risers—the bakers, the street sweepers, the shopkeepers—were still in their beds, savoring the final hours of sleep before they began a new day.
I loved being awake at these times; it made me feel as though I was the only one awake in the entire city, that Paris flaunted its charms solely for me at this hour.
But there was something…
Barely perceptible sounds emanated from the apartment adjoining mine: the clatter of pans being placed on the counter, the staccato sound of a knife pressing against a chopping board. I slid my baguettes into the oven, then sat at my table.
As I sipped my now tepid tea, a parade of scents permeated my apartment: onions, beef, rosemary.
My new neighbor must be making dinner, although it was a very late one. I wondered what had delayed his meal. Through the wall, I heard the muffled sound of female laughter.
Ah. Cooking for his partner. This was Paris, after all. If a person stayed up late, it generally wasn’t to work on their taxes. I pictured a generically attractive couple curled together on a couch as they waited for their meal to finish simmering.
I sighed heavily, sending little ripples racing across my tea.
When the timer went off, I pulled the baguettes out of the oven and smiled for a moment as I appraised their golden crusts. I set them on a cooling rack, where they’d remain until one became my breakfast tomorrow.
Tired now, I decided to run a bath. I poured in a generous amount of lavender bath salts then slipped into the scented water.
Leaning back, I again went through all the nice things that had happened today. Every time the image of the man and his sister wormed its way into my head, I flicked it away.
I soaked in the bath until the water grew cold.