Chapter 30
My first mistake was oversleeping. I normally wake up at a reasonable hour without an alarm, but I must have underestimated how much the preparations for the gala had worn me out. Waking up late was annoying, but as long as I hurried, I’d still make it there with enough time to finish everything.
I looked at my phone. There were three missed calls and a flurry of texts from Yasmine.
WHAT’S YOUR PLAN??? was all the final one said.
I called her back, and she picked up on the first ring.
“I’m heading to the gala,” Yasmine said as soon as she picked up. “Have you left yet?”
“Not quite. But it’s only two Metro stops away and I don’t need to be there for an hour.”
“Margot, the Metro workers are on strike.”
I shot upright. “What? I hadn’t heard anything about it.”
“I know,” Yasmine said. “Apparently everyone thought the negotiations would work out, so there wasn’t much coverage about it, but talks fell through and they’re striking now. It’s all over the news.”
I groaned. I was a proud Frenchwoman through and through, and I fully supported workers’ rights, and unions, and the right to strike to improve working conditions. But why, why must they assert their rights on the day I really needed their services?
“How are you getting there?” I asked her.
“My mother and I are literally walking there.”
“Hello Margot!” Madame Saidi called cheerfully into the phone.
“It’s terrible,” Yasmine said. “You know how much I hate exercise.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Maybe I can take a taxi?”
“You and everyone else in Paris. None of the taxi companies I called were even answering their phones.”
A pit was growing in my stomach. It’d take me well over two hours to walk to the gala. Maybe I could run the whole way? But I knew that feat of athleticism was far beyond my abilities. Damn my preference for reading cookbooks over hitting the gym.
I didn’t know a single person in Paris who owned a car. Well, actually the guy who’d eaten crème br?lée with his hands on our first and only date three years ago had a car, but I couldn’t ask him for a ride, right?
Well, maybe…
I recalled the image of him plunging his bare hands into a ramekin full of custard and shuddered.
No. I had to think of something else. And quickly. If I didn’t get to the gala on time, half the desserts wouldn’t be ready when the event began. I couldn’t let Fatima and the others down like that.
“What am I going to do?” I whispered.
I’d been on the brink of a meltdown all month, and this was really looking like the thing that would push me over the edge. How ironic. It had taken me so long to build up the courage to bake for the gala, and when the day finally arrived, I’m thwarted by a strike.
“I can’t miss this,” I told Yasmine.
“You won’t,” she assured me. “We’ll figure something out. Umm, what if you try to flag down a random driver and ask them to take you to the gala? Maybe pack a knife in case they’re crazy?”
“Yasmine.”
“Well, what better option is there?”
I looked blindly around my apartment, as though the answer was written on the walls. “I’ll think of something. I’ll call you back when it’s figured out.”
I hung up the phone and dropped my head into my hands. Maybe I could go onto the street, and there’d be a taxi. It was a long shot, but I was due for a bit of luck.
I quickly showered, changed, and gathered everything I needed before stepping outside.
There was nothing, of course. My street was too residential to see many taxis at the best of times, and with the strike, I was sure they’d all be in the busiest parts of the city.
What was I going to do? I stood there, frozen with anxiety, trying to work out a solution. When a voice spoke beside me, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Margot?” Madame Blanchet was frowning at me. “Why are you crying, chérie?”
I wiped a hand across my face. “I need to get to the gala, and the métro workers are striking, and there are no taxis, and I don’t know how to get there, but I need to get there. Like, right now.” Saying my predicament out loud made the tears come even faster.
To my surprise, Madame Blanchet smiled. “I wondered why you hadn’t left yet. Come on, I’ll get you there.”
She started to move away, but I remained rooted to the spot. She must have misheard me. Or her age was finally catching up with her.
“Margot,” Madame Blanchet said, more firmly now. “Come along. It wouldn’t do for you to be late.”
She took my arm, and I allowed her to lead me toward the apartment building. Instead of going inside, she made a beeline for a storage closet.
My mind was spinning. “How am I getting to the gala?”
Madame Blanchet produced a set of keys. She selected a large brass one and fit it in the storage closet’s lock.
With a feat of strength I wouldn’t have thought her capable of, she wrenched open the door.
Inside were the normal repair tools and extra supplies one would expect.
But in the center of the closet, looking almost comically out of place, was a bright pink Vespa.
No. She couldn’t be serious. I glanced at Madame Blanchet. She most definitely was serious.
“Madame, I don’t know how to drive that.”
“Of course not,” she said kindly. “I’m going to drive it. There’s plenty of room for two.”
I looked again at the Vespa. I’d never seen a model like it on the streets; it had to be decades old. There was rust encroaching across the pink paint, and the basket hung sadly on one hinge.
“Madame, I don’t think this is safe. It’s difficult enough to drive in Paris, even when you’re not driving a, a…” A neon pink death trap, I wanted to say, but I refrained.
“Margot Delcour.” Margot Blanchet removed her glasses. Her gaze became even more piercing. She folded her arms. My tiny landlady, who spent her time crocheting baby blankets and singing arias to her dog, was suddenly terrifying.
“I have watched you bake astonishing things for nearly six years. Astonishing things that you have done nothing better with than give away to people, like myself, who don’t appreciate half the time and skill you put into them.
This day is your chance to prove yourself. I’m not going to let you be late.”
I swallowed hard. “You know how to drive it?”
Madame Blanchet smiled, and the imperious spell she’d cast broke. “But of course I do. I learned when I was twenty, and I don’t remember it being hard at all.”
Please have driven since you were twenty, I prayed to the traffic gods. Madame Blanchet jammed a helmet over her head and passed another to me. Meekly, I put it on.
I scrambled on behind her, trying to hide that I was shaking. After all this was over, I was going to take a vacation. No working, no baking.
Madame Blanchet turned on the engine. The Vespa made a horrific coughing noise and emitted a billow of smoke.
And absolutely no motorized vehicles.
“We’re off!” Madame Blanchet declared.
She promptly reversed into the wall.
“Ah, I always forget that,” she muttered.
“You forget if you’re going forward or backward?” I asked, my voice unnaturally high. I don’t think she heard me over the noise of the engine. It was louder than a truck.
“Hold tight,” Madame Blanchet said. As if I needed reminding.
We sputtered onto the street, nearly tipping over.
“Don’t worry. It’ll steady once we’re going fast,” Madame Blanchet shouted. A whimper escaped me.
We wove along the streets, Madame Blanchet seemingly trying to remember how to drive in a straight line.
“Awful giant cars,” she grumbled, nearly clipping an SUV. I couldn’t decide which was worse, opening my eyes or keeping them shut. I settled for staring into my lap, muttering positive affirmations as though they were protection spells.
“I welcome new experiences. I am open to adventure. I have released my fear and can enjoy this moment,” I whispered frantically, breaking off to cough as another cloud of Vespa smoke engulfed me.
It took Madame Blanchet several intersections to remember how the Vespa’s turn signals worked. Until she got it, she settled for shouting to the world at large which direction she was turning.
By the time we reached the busier roads, she seemed to have gotten the hang of the Vespa. With her increased confidence came road rage. I was shocked at the words coming out of my demure landlady’s mouth.
“Learn the rules of the road!” she shouted at a man she decided had passed too close in front of us. “And your girlfriend is too pretty for you, you ugly bastard!”
“We didn’t free this country from the Nazis so you could drive like a filthy connard! Casse-toi, espèce d’abruti!” she shouted at another while flipping him off, her scarf flapping in the breeze.
I did not know it was possible to be so terrified of impending death while simultaneously wishing the world would swallow me whole.
At one point, the engine made a sad sort of clanking sound and just died, right on the road. Swearing, Madame Blanchet managed to pull over while she tried to figure out what the problem was.
“J'en ai ras de cul,” she said, kicking the Vespa with her heel-clad foot. “We have places to go.” She kicked it a few more times, and just as I was about to say I didn’t think that was an approved Vespa repair tactic, the engine roared back to life.
“Exactly. And there’s more where that came from if you act up again. Putain de bordel,” Madame Blanchet said, kicking the bike a final time.
By this point, I was beyond the power of speech.
But we made it to the gala as Madame Blanchet promised, on time and in one piece. I’d kept my legs so locked during the ride that I nearly fell over when I got off.
Once I was confidently on terra firma, I thanked Madame Blanchet profusely, assured her I wouldn’t need a ride back (I’d crawl across Paris if I had to), and went inside. The Vespa ride hadn’t done a thing to calm my nerves, and I was keyed up as I opened the doors.