39

New York City was gigantic and noisy. Where was the fire? During a brief visit in June, every cliché that had ever been lodged against New York percolated inside me, and my acquired French radar went bananas. Staying at my sister’s apartment, I saw a commercial for Pizza Hut that advertised a meal offering “three whole pounds of food.” Three pounds of food?! And New York smelled fried where Paris smelled baked. It was a totality, an expression of many cities. Paris, on the other hand, was a village. So perhaps I’d become a village person.

My agent met me for breakfast. He’d drawn up a list of editors he thought might like my book. He’d begin sending the manuscript around the following week, if that was okay.

I asked, Had he seen that Pizza Hut commercial promising three whole pounds of food?

He said, Oh, so you’re Parisian now?

When we parted, I was extremely happy. That lasted three minutes, to the benches on the corner of Fifth Avenue and West Sixteenth Street. Then the idea of my book going around made my nervousness enlarge—not nervousness, but the fear I remembered, fear like lampreys in the blood.

If this book was rejected, could I wade into the next novel’s sea?

Anyway, those were my thoughts on the flight from New York City to San Francisco the following day, or those were the thoughts of several of the people who lived inside my head. The rest of us, who weren’t thinking about publishing, could not believe how absorbed we were by this episode of The Real Housewives of New York City, which in fact had a lot to commend it.

*   *   *

In San Francisco, Lucas the composer panicked because Air France had lost his boom. I won’t mention the cool-out music playing in the lobby of our hotel, or the potted boulders, or the scents spritzed into the air of the hotel’s public spaces to help us chill, because Lucas was grieved. Without a boom, how would he carry his microphone? Why couldn’t he make himself understood?

Ostensibly, Air France telephone support had no French-speaking representatives if you called them from within the United States.

We collected Vincent and went to the Mission District, where our hired crew worked out of a warehouse. Their production chiefs were Craig and Robin. That afternoon, Craig was showing Vincent how to use a new model of RED camera when Lucas showed up, having just woken from a nap.

“Be careful,” Lucas whispered to Vincent, pointing at the camera, “it’s a trap.”

Craig said to Vincent, “I’m sorry?”

Lucas snapped at him, “Be gentle with my friend.”

Vincent told Lucas to be quiet and apologized to Craig. “He means ‘nice,’ not gentle. Gentil in French is ‘nice,’ please excuse him, he is crazy from the plane.”

“I am not crazy,” Lucas said, sulking.

Craig squared up to Lucas. Lucas was about six inches taller.

“Lucas,” Craig said, “will you be gentle with me?”

Lucas said after a moment, “I will be gentle, comme un lapin.”

That evening, on Lucas’s behalf, I called Air France. They said they would need a day to look around Aéroport Charles de Gaulle for his boom, and they’d call us back.

*   *   *

In our interview, Francis Ford Coppola said he admired today’s youth culture in San Francisco—the dot-com kids, the laptop vagrants. So we found a coffee shop in the Mission District popular with bloggers, and asked the manager to provide us with a hipster we could shoot.

The girl he chose, a tattooed barista with a one-gear bicycle—“your typical pixie with a fixie,” Craig said—flipped out when she learned the name of our client. She couldn’t believe it—oh, she couldn’t breathe from excitement! “Look, look,” she said, showing Vincent how she’d emblazoned the Louis Vuitton logo on the stump of her tamper, to render it more luxurious.

Day two, Air France informed us they’d located Lucas’s boom, but now we needed to prove that Lucas was its owner. I said we possessed a luggage-claim ticket and a reference number—wasn’t that enough? This was not enough, they said, because they needed to open a dossier, which meant Lucas needed to fax copies of his boarding pass, claim ticket, and passport to the luggage-claims office at Charles de Gaulle.

Unfortunately, the woman said, she did not have the fax number at hand, so I’d need to call back the next day.

The next day, I got the number and faxed the documents. They called back to say that the fax had been received and we would be informed when Lucas’s dossier had been assembled, at which point they’d proceed returning the boom to Lucas’s possession, assuming it was his.

Lucas said he was about ready to renounce his French citizenship.

*   *   *

Day four, driving up to Coppola’s winery in Napa Valley: Craig the production boss driving, Lucas in shotgun, me and Vincent in the back. Vincent was frowning out the window, trying to nap, while I took notes as Craig and Lucas got to know each other.

Craig, pointing to cows in the distance: “These are?”

Lucas: “Les vaches.”

Craig: “Well, in English, we say ‘dogs.’”

Lucas: “Dogs?”

Craig: “Dogs make milk. Milk makes cheese.”

Lucas: “Fromage.”

Craig: “Fromage.”

Lucas: “The dogs, they are agile?”

Craig: “Small dogs, agile. Big dogs, no.”

Lucas: “You fuck with me?”

Craig: “Actually, you want to say, ‘You fucking with me? You fucking with me?’”

Lucas: “Ah … ‘Craig, you fuck my wife? You fuck my wife?’”

Craig: “DeNiro.”

Lucas: “DeNiro. Craig, tell me, my English is not too ‘fade’ for you?”

Craig: “The fade is just right.”

Five minutes later

Lucas, pointing out the window at cows: “Dogs are gentle.”

Craig: “Not boy dogs. Bulls. Danger. Stay away.”

Lucas: “Ah … Danger. Not gentle.”

Craig: “Lady dogs, gentle.”

Lucas: “What is, ‘Stay away’?”

Craig: “It means, ‘Do not touch.’”

Lucas, screaming out the window: “Dogs, stay away!’”

Five minutes later

Lucas: “Craig, you tell me.”

Craig: “What should I tell you?”

Lucas: “About Robin. Robin is beautiful. Why you … stay away?”

Craig: “What did you say?”

Lucas: “Uh-oh! Danger?”

Craig: “You want to know why I stay away from Robin.”

Lucas: “Be gentle.”

Craig: “Well, I’m married.”

Lucas: “Yes. But you do not say Robin is beautiful?”

Craig: “Robin is beautiful.”

Lucas: “Robin … stay a lady.”

Craig: “Yes, Robin remains a lady.”

Lucas: “Craig, tell me, you fuck your wife?”

Craig: “This has gone far enough.”

Lucas: “Danger?”

Craig: “Les vaches manger les fromages.”

Lucas: “What? No, this is not making sense.”

*   *   *

Close to our final night in San Francisco, Craig’s friend Robb invited us over for dinner; he’d heard the French visitors were amusing. Robb made us pizzas by hand—with dough he’d prepared that evening; herbs he’d grown on his deck; sauce from tomatoes he’d plucked from his garden. There was his own beer to drink, home-brewed, and after that espresso, which Robb admitted was derived from coffee beans he’d roasted himself the previous weekend.

Vincent and Lucas were amazed.

That week, I’d spent a lot of time battling winds with a Lastolite EZ Balance Collapsible Light Balancing Disk, or squatting in a harness strapped to the outside of a camera truck, and I’d had some time to think. Basically, San Francisco was beginning to appeal to me. Back in New York, I’d always hated San Francisco. Most of the San Franciscans I knew were too contented, devoting their lives to their lifestyles; they all had terrific accessories and zero self-doubt. But from the truck, San Francisco seemed much more like Paris than New York did: neighborhoods crumbed over land. Rather than one big meal, a buffet.

In Paris, a great similitude prevailed—every roof a constant blue-gray—in the same way that unruliness governed New York City. I found myself wanting more time in San Francisco to figure out its organizing principle—was it bliss between quakes?

Though, to be honest, all I could think about was my novel sitting on five editors’ desks.

“This is how to live,” Vincent said after dinner, patting his gut. He was staring at some Victorian houses on a hill, at the fog combed over their foreheads. Vincent fumbled the door to the patio, lit a cigarette outside; then thunder boomed and he came scuttling back, just as the view became curtained with rain.

“In Paris,” Vincent said, pointing down at his cup, “no one has coffee like this. This is incredible. Hey, what is this grocery store we visited today?”

“Whole Foods,” Craig said.

“Unbelievable. So beautiful. We have nothing like Whole Foods.”

I said, “What about Monoprix?”

Vincent laughed. “Whole Foods, the fruit, comment tu dis, they are like jewels. Show me where in Paris food is sold like art.”

“Bon Marché? Mais non,” Lucas said, “trop bobo.”

“Yeah, trop bobo, trop luxe,” Vincent said. He told Craig that Bon Marché was a “luxury grocery store,” which made Lucas shout at Craig: “Guy, art is not a luxury—never!”

But what about Picard? I said. Vincent conceded the point. He explained to the group the idea of a store selling high-quality frozen food. “Conceptually, it’s strong. And in execution. I am surprised someone is not bringing Picard to the States.”

*   *   *

Air France called the next morning to say they’d finished assembling Lucas’s dossier and planned to put Lucas’s boom on the next plane to San Francisco.

Unfortunately, a week had gone by and this was on our last day in San Francisco, as we were leaving for the airport. I suggested to Air France that they should hold it, since Lucas would be able to pick up his boom in Paris the next morning.

Air France said that this would also be a satisfactory conclusion.

Back in Paris, after a twelve-hour flight, Vincent, Lucas, and I went through customs together. On the way to baggage claim, a gorgeous woman walked out in front of us, wearing a flimsy white dress and a visible black thong.

“See,” Vincent said, smiling, enlivened, “this is how in Paris we say, bienvenue.”