3
PARIS
The Rent-A-Wreck I picked up at LAX was in better shape than my Volvo. The horn worked, the turn signals operated automatically, and the radio got both AM and FM; I hit a blues station and sang along with Willie Dixon as I turned onto the Santa Monica Freeway. The magazine was putting me up at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, and I loved the cool, opulent privacy of my room. L.A., I thought, as I drove to meet the food editor for dinner, might not be so bad.
The feeling lasted until I arrived at Ma Maison and saw the Jaguars, Rolls-Royces, and Mercedeses parked in front. How could I possibly hand my Rent-A-Wreck to the valet? I couldn’t. I drove right past the restaurant and parked on the street. As I struggled to lock the door I was conscious that the damp night air was frizzing my hair. By the time I got to the restaurant I was excruciatingly aware that my dress was hemmed with Scotch tape and my shoes were in need of a shine.
But the restaurant’s covered patio with its AstroTurf and white lawn furniture restored my confidence; Ma Maison was oddly tacky. The big red and blue beach umbrellas with the word RICARD splashed across them were meant to be raffish, but they were slightly pathetic. When the restaurant’s owner looked me up and down in the appraising manner of aging Frenchmen who think women are good for only one thing, I straightened my back and stuck out my chin.
Patrick Terrail led me through the patio to the dim interior of the restaurant. He escorted me to a table, but it was so dark that all I could see was the outline of the food editor seated across from a massive man, a small mountain, planted at the far side. As we got closer I thought he looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t remember his name.
“Colman,” said Patrick in a sort of lewd Rod Stewart rasp, “your guest is here.” The food editor leapt from his seat and introduced me to the mountain: It was Orson Welles! The actor surveyed me with intelligent eyes that seemed trapped in the flesh of his face. I shook the great man’s hand, and then Colman and I followed Patrick out of the darkness to the twilight of the patio. Colman, I realized, reminded me of the natty young Welles of Citizen Kane, the ne’er-do-well who was thrown out of every elite American college. He held my chair as I sat down; a few hours earlier I would have found this hopelessly hokey.
We began with ’66 Krug and a pot of caviar.
“Triple-zero?” I asked.
“Of course,” he replied. “Let’s just eat it with spoons.”
The caviar was gray and glistened. When I put some on my tongue it was not salty, the way other caviar was, but seductively fruity with a taste that went on and on. I swallowed and the flavor resonated down my throat. Then I took a sip of champagne, and instead of washing the taste down it brought it back to life, sharper now and more intense. I closed my eyes.
I was somewhere else when a voice just above my head said, “Colman!” I jumped and opened my eyes. A man in a tall white toque was standing at the table. He had a round face and a snub nose he kept rubbing with his finger, like a little boy. “Colman,” he repeated in a thick Austrian accent, “shall I make a menu for you? I have a few dishes I would like you to try.”
So this is how real restaurant critics live, I thought. Movie stars. Caviar. Special menus.
“Shall we let Wolfgang impress us?” Colman asked, cocking his head to one side.
The chef turned and looked at me imploringly, as if my opinion were the only thing in the world that mattered. “I’ve been doing something with oysters that I think you will like,” he urged.
Unsure of what Colman wanted, ever so slightly I nodded my head.
“Good!” said the chef. “I go cook now.” As he walked away Colman said, “Wolfgang Puck is the most talented young chef in Los Angeles. I think he’s going to be important. I hope you like his food.”
There were baked oysters wrapped in lettuce, sprinkled with caviar and bathed in beurre blanc. There was terrine de foie gras with warm toast. The flavors danced and the soft substances slid down my throat. We drank Corton-Charlemagne and talked about New York and Paris and Rome. It all felt unreal, as if our dialogue had been lifted from one of those 1930s movies where mink coats go flying out of windows and there are only happy endings. He was Cary Grant. I was Katharine Hepburn.
With the duck (“Just like Tour d’Argent”) we drank a ’75 Petit-Village (Colman had no use for old wine). And then we had a chunk of Roquefort and a wedge of Brie. As we ate the cheese, so ripe, so rich, Patrick passed the table and said, under his breath, “I smuggled it past customs in my underwear.” I believed him.
Colman didn’t like sweets, so I ate his dacquoise and then I ate mine. We had cognac. He smoked a cigar. Suddenly it was five hours later and the movie stars were all going home. By the time we were the only people in the restaurant, Patrick Terrail and Wolfgang Puck were sitting with us. We drank more cognac and talked about food. I felt beautiful and charming. I felt a million miles from Berkeley. Then Colman waved his hand and said, “Just put it on my account.” I had never known anyone with a house account in a fancy restaurant before.
Colman pulled out my chair, put his arm around me, and asked where my car was. “Perfect,” he said when I told him I had parked on the street, “we’ll just come back for your car in the morning.” He held the door for me.
“Yes,” I said, walking through. The valet opened the car door. I climbed in.
* * *
I woke up crying, stunned by my recklessness, wishing I could replay the night and give it a different ending. Overnight I had turned into some other person, become a stranger to myself. What had come over me? I was the least promiscuous person I knew. I had never even considered having an affair. In college my virginity had been a standing joke; guys whose names I did not know would sidle up and ask, “Still a virgin?” as if the very notion were ridiculous. Even now the number of men with whom I had slept would not fill the fingers of one hand.
I lay there, next to this man I barely knew, consumed with self-loathing. I berated myself for a while and then tried making it Doug’s fault: If he didn’t travel so much, none of this would have happened. That made me feel better, but not for long.
As daylight filtered into the room I weepily attempted to turn the situation into a soap opera. What would become of me when Doug discovered what I’d done? The two men dueled in the dusky room, leaping on chairs and making noble speeches, before the sheer ridiculousness of all that caught up with me. Doug would be hurt, but it would not be the end of the world, or even the end of the marriage. He knew that I loved him. Besides, it was not impossible that Doug was, at this very minute, in the arms of someone in Omaha. There was that female voice …
But I could not fool myself into believing that what Doug was up to had any bearing on why I had woken up in bed with a stranger. And that was what I had to figure out.
Colman was suave and handsome. He was wonderful company. But I had met other attractive men and never before been tempted to sleep with them. What was it that I found so irresistible about this man? I replayed the night in my head—the caviar, the oysters, the foie gras, the cigars. It had been like a wonderful dream, all my fantasies made real. Colman was like a character from some book I had read, like a man from another time, a bon vivant who had unabashedly devoted himself to food. He knew more about the subject than anyone I had ever met, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I had set out to invent the perfect man for this moment in my life, I could not possibly have done better.
Knowing this did not make me less fearful. I still wanted to get up, get dressed, and run home to the safety of Berkeley. But I resisted the impulse, and when Colman woke up, when he turned and said, “I know just where I’m going to take you for lunch,” I smiled and said, “Can’t wait.”
* * *
“Are you still in Los Angeles?” my mother asked every day. “This is a very long trip.”
“There are a lot of restaurants here,” I said. “Besides, Doug’s still in Omaha.”
“How old is that new food editor of yours?” she asked suspiciously.
“Old, Mom,” I said, stretching three years, “a lot older than me.” I was grateful that Doug’s radar was not as good as my mother’s. He called often, but each time it was only to say that he had to stay a little longer. The wind was with him, and in Omaha they really, really liked him.
* * *
Colman had his own table at every restaurant in Los Angeles, and there was nothing he did not know about food.
“You’ve never tasted real mozzarella made with buffalo milk?” he asked one afternoon, sweeping me out the door. “I know just where to go.” We drove to an industrial section of Santa Monica and went into a shabby-looking bar. “This is an Italian restaurant?” I asked, peering dubiously around a modest establishment.
“Wait,” he said. A trim, handsome man appeared and began dancing happily around us. “Oh, Colman,” he said in one of those absurdly romantic Italian accents, “you’ve come at the perfect moment. I have just returned from the airport. Look what I picked up!” He held out crumbling chunks of Parmesan cheese and glistening green bottles of olive oil.
“This is Piero Selvaggio,” said Colman. “He can’t get great Italian products here, so he’s been importing what he needs.”
“Wait until you taste these!” Piero exulted. “What a meal you will have!”
The two men huddled for a moment, deciding on a menu. Words like focaccia, Amarone, vero olio showered down on me and I snuggled into them in happy anticipation.
“Close your eyes,” said Colman. He held out a glass, and I took a sip. The wine was sweet and bitter at the same time, with an enormous flavor. It tasted like cherries and almonds mixed over a smoky fire. “Mmmm,” I said.
“Now taste this.” He put the softest little ball of sweet, buttery cheese in my mouth. I swallowed, and it was like sunshine and green fields.
Then Piero bustled up with six bottles of extra-virgin olive oil and good bread and demanded we taste them all, one by one, and decide which we liked best. One was green and spicy, another heavy and slightly sweet. The differences were astounding.
We had come for lunch; we stayed through dinner.
* * *
When I told my mother that I was planning a trip to France, she was immediately suspicious. “Is that food editor of yours going to be there?” she demanded.
“He has nothing to do with it,” I replied with as much dignity as I could muster. “He doesn’t even know I’m going.”
“But he will be there,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied in a very small voice. “He will.”
“PussyCat,” she said, “you’re asking for trouble.”
I certainly did not need her to tell me that. But ten minutes after Doug had called to say that his wind tent was progressing more slowly than he had anticipated and he would be in Omaha at least two more weeks, my friend Béatrice called from Paris. Her apartment in the Sixth Arrondissement was empty, and it was mine if I wanted it. I took this to be a sign from heaven. Within minutes I had found a student charter flight to London and invented an assignment.
* * *
I took the boat train from London to Paris, sitting up all night with the scruffy kids with knapsacks and high hopes. It all felt comfortingly familiar—the dim light, the furtive departure from Dover, the French douaniers at Calais stamping their feet in the early-morning cold. And then I was on a train speeding through the gray countryside and everyone around me was speaking French. For a moment I remembered the terrible homesickness I had felt in my first years at French boarding school, and a great wave of loneliness swept over me. What did I think I was doing? My mother’s voice was in my ear, suddenly very loud. “People don’t behave this way,” she said disapprovingly. Before I could stop her, she went on. “It will serve you right if that food editor won’t even see you. And then what will you do, Miss Smarty Pants, all by yourself in Paris?”
I didn’t have an answer. So I drew the shabby silver-wolf coat from Value Village around my shoulders and stared out the window, wishing I were in Berkeley, where it was sunny and I was not alone.
It was a cold, misty day, and as I stepped onto the platform at the Gare du Nord the train coughed up clouds of vapor, which enveloped me in a man-made fog. I looked up, and the black train hunched its back like a malevolent cat and hissed angrily at me. It was such an unfriendly sound that it suddenly hit me that I had only an address and Béatrice’s assurance that she had written a note to the concierge. A sudden vision materialized: the concierge, looking me up and down and dismissing me with a curt, “Je n’en sais rien. On ne m’avait rien dit. Au revoir, mademoiselle.” I looked down at my shoes and wished, once again, that I had thought to polish them.
The Métro was filled with people looking very purposeful, on their way to work. Watching them reading their papers and scurrying off to their jobs made me feel foreign, aimless, and alone; by the time I reached my stop I was so homesick I could barely drag myself from the train. I tried to shake myself out of the mood; I knew it was ridiculous. And then I climbed out into the air and started searching for the rue Auguste Comte, a bit startled by the elegance of the neighborhood.
Béatrice lived in a pale Beaux-Arts beauty of a building, with baroque curves and graceful wrought-iron balconies. I patted my hair, wishing it looked less like a rat’s nest, and bit my lips to give them color before pushing open the huge wooden door into the entryway.
“Vous désirez?” the concierge inquired. Her voice was like ice. She was exactly what I had expected: a small, officious woman with short, sensible black hair and shapeless, colorless clothes. My French deserted me completely, and I stammered in English, “I am the friend of Béatrice du Croix. I will be staying in her apartment?”
She fumbled for her glasses and peered at me. “Je ne parle pas anglais,” she said shortly, and turned to go.
“Je m’excuse,” I said quickly, a flood of French coming to my rescue. “Le voyage était si fatigant. Je suis l’amie de Béatrice du Croix. Nous nous connaissions à l’école. Elle m’avait gracieusement offert son appartement.”
“Elle parle!” said the concierge sarcastically. She did not encourage me to continue.
“On ne vous a rien dit sur moi?” I continued, a bit desperately. Already I saw myself on the street.
“Oui, mademoiselle,” she finally conceded. She went to a desk, pulled out a large iron key, and handed it to me. She sniffed. “Troisième étage. Vous avez deux semaines. Au revoir.” And she shut the door, leaving me in the blackness of the hall.
“Welcome to France,” I muttered as I pressed the light for the landing. It sputtered reluctantly on, and I started the climb.
But once I had shut the door behind me, none of that mattered. It was a wonderful apartment, filled with light even on this gray day. I went to the window and looked out over the Luxembourg Gardens. And then I put my clothes into the beautiful eighteenth-century carved wooden armoire, climbed into the enormous sleigh bed covered with embroidered linen sheets, and fell fast asleep.
I woke up ravenous and went to explore the tiny Parisian kitchen. The refrigerator was a little box beneath a marble counter, but when I opened it I found bottled water, a few gnarled apples that looked like windfalls, a package of butter, a wedge of Chaource, and three bottles of Pouilly-Fumé. Two cracked blue bowls held brown eggs and walnuts, still in the shell. An ancient heel of bread sat on the counter, surrounded by bowls of spices, olive oil, vinegar, and a couple of bottles of vin ordinaire. This would certainly do.
I sliced the bread as thinly as I could and toasted it to make crackers. I put the cheese on a plate, surrounded it with sliced apples, and made myself an omelette. Then I poured myself a glass of wine and sat eating my good French omelette and my cheese and crackers, thinking that I was being a guest to myself and feeling very much like M. F. K. Fisher.
I piled the dishes into the sink and went to draw a bath in the enormous clawfoot tub. I found some crystals in a big glass, and when I sprinkled them into the water the tub began to fill with mounds of white bubbles. I poured myself another glass of wine and stepped into the bath. For a long time I lay there in the clean steam, feeling my body relax in the warmth. I would spend the afternoon at the Louvre.
Wrapped in towels, I wandered back into the bedroom and noticed the phone. It was an enameled white antique, perfect for calling your lover. I stared at it as I considered what to say to Colman. I lay back on the lacy sheets and downy pillows. Somewhere out in the Gardens someone was playing a flute, and I followed the thread of music. There was plenty of time; lulled by Mozart and the featherbed, I drifted off to sleep.
It was dark when I woke up, and I was momentarily disoriented. What time was it? Without stopping to consider what I was doing, I reached for the phone and called Colman’s hotel.
Waiting for the desk to connect me with his room, I panicked and hung up. My heart was thumping loudly in my chest. What if he was not alone? What if he wouldn’t see me? I felt vulnerable and foolish and frightened, and by the time I got the courage to call back my hands were shaking.
Then his deep voice was in my ear and it went through me like a shock. “Where are you?” he asked.
“In Paris,” I said.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. He sounded irritated.
“Visiting friends,” I answered.
“Is Doug with you?”
“No, I’m alone.”
“Well,” he said, considering, “we should get together sometime. But I was just on my way out to meet someone for dinner. Why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll call you in the next few days?”
I gave him my number, and he hung up. I wished I could snatch the call back. The days stretched out, empty, before me. Ten days was a long time. Why had I come? Maybe I could find an earlier plane home.
I burrowed into the pillows, ready to escape back into sleep. In the morning I would make a program, keep myself busy. I’d go to Beaubourg, spend a day at the Louvre, wander through the market on the rue du Cherche-Midi. If Colman called, I’d have lots to tell him …
But what if he called tomorrow? I had never had a fancy meal by myself. I wasn’t even hungry. But Colman would not waste his time in Paris making omelettes. What would he do? He would probably go to Taillevent or Tour d’Argent and eat a ten-course meal capped off with cognac and a fat cigar. Well, if he could do it, so could I; I was not going to tell him I had fasted on my first night in Paris.
Taillevent and Tour d’Argent were booked, but Guy Savoy was happy to provide a table for a single cover. How soon could I be there?
On the Métro I eavesdropped on my neighbors, trying to fix the sound of French in my ear. I did not want to seem like a tourist in the restaurant. When I arrived I said my name as carefully as possible, hoping that they would not know I was American. The maître d’hôtel seated me at a small table near the bar and asked if I would like an aperitif.
“Une coupe de champagne,” I heard myself saying, to my surprise. He went to get it, returning with a little dish of salted, buttered nuts, tiny puffs of warm cheese gougères, and the menu.
I asked for the wine list as well, and the captain looked pleased with me. He returned, and we gravely discussed the possibilities for the evening. It took us fifteen minutes to arrive at a decision, but when we were done he assured me that I would be very content with my meal.
Though uninvited, my mother appeared with the first course. “Is this how you will spend the next ten days?” she inquired. “Eating absurdly expensive food all by yourself? Trying to impress waiters? Where will the money come from?”
“Be quiet, please,” I said. “I’m busy. I want to remember every detail of this soup.” I described it for myself, the cream, the truffles, the faintly nutty flavor that could only be sherry.
“He won’t call anyway,” she said, meanly I thought. I ordered a half bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet to go with the terrine de poisson and tried to describe the captain’s demeanor as he served it. “When I came in,” I told my phantom mother, “he thought to himself, Oh, a woman, she’ll have the salad and some plain fish, and he was sorry he had taken the reservation. But I have turned out to be someone who likes to eat, and now he is a happy man.”
“You’re not going to order more wine, are you?” she asked with some alarm.
“Try me,” I said, ordering a half bottle of ’70 Palmer. Mom looked at the price and was scandalized, but the captain looked at me with serious interest and leaned in to ask how I liked it. I took one sip and thought how there is nothing, really nothing, like great wine. Mom just faded, like the Cheshire cat, as I began to describe the taste of the special lamb raised on the salt marshes of the Landes to myself. And to Colman. I was not lonely.
I had dacquoise for dessert, thinking of Los Angeles, and then, just because it seemed sporting, I ordered cognac with my coffee.
The room was practically empty now, but my captain urged me to have another glass of cognac as he set down the petits fours and macaroons and chocolates. I was sated and sleepy, however, and wanted nothing so much as to be in bed. “Our driver will take you home,” said the captain as I paid the (enormous) bill. I added another hundred francs to the tip; it was still cheaper than a taxi.
I barely remember walking up the stairs, and I don’t remember taking off my clothes or getting into bed. But when the phone’s irritating beeping began to sound, that is where I was. I groped for the receiver, knocking the phone off the stand as I did so.
“Bonjour!” said Colman’s voice in my ear. “Tu dormais?”
“Yes,” I said, “I was asleep.”
“Well, you’re wasting your time in Paris. Get up. Get out. Come meet me for coffee.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Time to get up,” he said. “It’s nine. Meet me in half an hour at the café at the foot of the boulevard Saint-Michel, just before the bridge. It’s called Le Départ. I’ll be there at nine-thirty.”
I thought you were busy.
I can’t possibly be there in half an hour.
You can’t just snap your fingers.
I contemplated saying all those things, but what I really said was “Okay.”
As soon as I hung up, I began to worry. Why had he called now? I knew that he was going to tell me that I should not have come, that he did not want to see me. It was like him to do it in person instead of on the phone. And to get it out of the way.
Well, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. I took my time, changed my clothes three times, wanting to make him regret what he was about to lose. I put on my green velvet skirt and a purple silk blouse, and then I changed it for a pair of plain black pants and then went back to velvet. Was this best? I didn’t know, but now I was so late that I threw on the silver wolf and left.
* * *
Colman was sitting at a table by himself, tapping his paper irritably against the table. He stopped in mid-tap when he saw me and just looked up, without saying anything. I had planned to shake his hand, but instead I just sat down across from him and stared.
He looked wonderful in Paris. His hair was very black, and in his good clothes he looked like neither a Frenchman nor a tourist but some prosperous cosmopolitan who was at home in the world.
“Café?” he asked. I nodded. “Un crème,” he said to the waiter; his accent wasn’t bad, but it was clear he was not French. For the first time in my life I was glad my mother had sent me off to that French school. Just to show off, I said to the waiter, “Je voudrais aussi une tartine,” because the words are hard for an American to pronounce correctly.
“Why is everybody ordering bread and butter this morning?” the waiter wondered in French. “I haven’t sold a croissant.”
“Oh,” I replied, “it’s the weather. Some days are just bread-and-butter days.”
Colman seemed impressed by the exchange.
The coffee was just bitter enough. The bread, a skinny ficelle, crackled when I bit into the crust. The crumb was white and soft, and the butter was cold and sweet against it. “This is why I came,” I said to Colman, and for that moment I meant it. “It’s like having France in my mouth. If I stay away too long I forget the flavor.”
Colman leaned across the table and took both my hands in his. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. “How long are you staying?”
“Ten days,” I said.
“Well, we have to make them count.”
I had clearly said the right thing.
* * *
My Paris was uncomfortable pensions on the outskirts of town, cheap meals that started with watery soup and ended with watery flan. It was always being cold. It was hours peering through the gloom of the badly lighted Louvre.
Colman’s Paris was not mine.
He liked to start the day by strolling through the flower market and listening to the birds. Every morning he woke me with fresh flowers. Then he took me to Ladurée for coffee and croissants and we sat there, beneath the ancient paintings of nymphs and angels, bantering with the waitresses in their black dresses and white aprons. After three days we were regulars, and they didn’t even ask what we wanted, but simply put out the pots of coffee and hot milk, and the plates of croissants.
He showed me streets I had never seen before and small, out-of-the-way museums. He took me to the cemetery and we danced around Proust’s tomb, and afterward we went to Le Petit Zinc and ate platters of claires and spéciales washed down with a cold, crisp Sancerre. We walked along the Seine in the damp November air, and when my feet got cold he insisted on taking me to the nearest shop to buy me a pair of boots.
“But I’ve never spent two hundred dollars on a pair of boots,” I protested, looking at the soft maroon leather he’d picked out.
“And you aren’t now,” he said.
“It’s so extravagant,” I protested.
“But do you like them?” he wanted to know. And of course I did.
Colman never considered the price. Of anything. He bought first-class tickets for the Métro and front-row seats for the Opéra. At night, walking along Saint-Michel, we went in and out of jazz clubs and he introduced me to the joys of La Vieille Prune. I loved the way it tasted, like gentle cognac.
“That first day,” I said one night, after my third Prune, “you were going to tell me to go away. Weren’t you?”
Colman looked down at me. “Was I?” he asked. “I don’t remember.” It wasn’t like him to be clumsy, and I had a fleeting thought that there might have been another woman. If there was, I didn’t want to know about it. “Besides,” he said, catching himself, “that was a different time. It was before we had Paris.”
* * *
“You think these things happen,” I wrote one night in my journal as Colman lay in the other room, sleeping. He, no surprise, had not just a room but a suite. “And of course they do—sometimes—but never to you. Or you think that when they do you’ll be too dumb to recognize it. But there it is, it’s actually happening, and even I’m not so stupid that I don’t enjoy every second. Both of us keep pinching ourselves. Is this really taking place?”
I watched us as if we were strangers, kissing and laughing on the Métro, incapable of keeping our hands off each other. I envied us, even as I lived it. We were the people everyone smiles at. It wouldn’t last. This was the least sensible thing I had ever done in my life.
* * *
“Wear your best dress tonight,” said Colman.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
He took me the long way round, to get me lost, and then he made me close my eyes for the last few blocks. When I opened them we were standing in front of Tour d’Argent. “This is where we are dining.”
“My first three-star restaurant,” I said. And for a moment I thought what it would be like to go to a three-star restaurant with Doug. I was a restaurant critic, but I was still green enough that fancy places made me nervous. If I were with Doug we would both be embarrassed, and we’d get the worst table in the house and spend the whole night worrying about how much money we were spending.
But Colman had no shame. He gave his name at the front and the owner rushed up to shake his hand and lead us to a table by the window. “My nephew told me to take very good care of you,” he said as he pulled out the chair. “Is that chef he has at Ma Maison really as good as he says?”
Colman nodded. “Better,” he said.
“Well,” said Monsieur Terrail, “we’ll have to see if we can’t impress you even more than he does.” He opened a bottle of Krug ’66 and poured us each a glass. Then he disappeared. Colman raised his glass and suddenly I saw, through the bubbles, Notre Dame flooded with silvery light just across the Seine.
Dinner was a dance. Colman and Monsieur Terrail were moving in perfect time to the music, and I floated along between them as they dipped and swayed. What would we drink with the foie gras frais? Colman thought perhaps a Meursault, an older one. Ah yes, Monsieur Terrail was in perfect agreement; it was a fine thing, he thought, to have such a sympathetic guest. The wine would be very nice, did he not agree, with the brouillade aux truffes?
The foie gras was molten velvet in my mouth, and when I took a sip of wine the flavor became even more intense, richer and rounder than it already was. Colman looked at me, and I felt the thrill all the way down to my fingertips. I understood, for the first time ever, why those turn-of-the-century restaurants had private rooms with velvet couches. I would have liked a couch.
The scrambled eggs with truffles were even better than the foie gras. Minutes earlier I would not have thought it possible. Each forkful was like biting off a piece of the sun. It was like musk and light, all at once, and suddenly I burst out, “This is what I always imagined sex would taste like.”
Colman put back his head and roared. “Being with you,” he said, “is just like being by myself. Only better.” And he picked up my hand, across the table, and kissed it.
Monsieur Terrail was back now, lighting a candle. He crooned a little as he decanted the wine, and I knew it must be very, very good.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Oh,” said Colman. “A Petit-Village from my birth year.” He looked a bit smug and said, “You know, ’45 was a very good year.”
“And ’48?” I asked.
“Not as good,” he said. And then, quickly, “But a very good year for women.”
I thought, briefly, of what the world was like when the wine was put into the bottle. Paris was being liberated; there was dancing in the streets. I imagined I could taste all that. Afterward there was sorbet and framboises Chantilly and an ancient cognac. “This is probably costing more than I make in a year,” I said to Colman.
“Probably,” he said. “You know, I was thinking that tomorrow we could take the train to Boyer for lunch. It’s only got two stars, but it will probably get its third this year. I want you to taste la fameuse truffe en croûte.”
We were very drunk walking back to his hotel, and I put my head on his chest as we walked, listening to his deep, wonderful voice resonating through his coat. I wanted the night to never end.
We did go to Boyer the next day, where we drank antique Roederer champagne from 1911. “I hope I’m this vibrant when I’m sixty-seven,” said Colman. There was a kind of magic to champagne that old, a wine bottled before automobiles or airplanes or either of the major wars. A wine bottled before women had the vote. Watching the liquid come sparkling into my glass, I thought of all the years it had been waiting in that dark bottle, what a different world it was emerging into. I was drinking history; I liked the taste.
The whole truffle was incredible too; it looked like a lump of coal wrapped up in pastry. The crust was flaky, but once I got through I hit the truffle, which tasted the way a forest smells in autumn when the leaves are turning colors and someone, far off, is burning them.
Colman watched as I ate; I could feel my cheeks get flushed. “I always thought truffles were overrated,” I said. “I had no idea. Thank you.”
He took my hand, caressed it. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I have another surprise.” There was an odd look on his face, dreamy and wistful. “I am going to introduce you to someone very special.”
I couldn’t imagine who it might be.
* * *
A marcassin, the hide of a young wild boar, was stretched across the door of the restaurant we were approaching. “You don’t see that much anymore,” said Colman. “But this is an old-fashioned bistro, the real thing.”
“Chez Isadore,” I read, looking at the writing above the boar’s prickly speckled fur. “Is it Isadore I’m here to meet?”
“No,” he said. He led me inside, where it was warm and steamy and smelled like butter, onions, wine, and meat. The room was filled with solid people, planted firmly at their tables. A man in a long white apron, platters stacked up his arms, whirled through the room, bantering as he delivered food. “Monsieur Colman!” he cried joyfully when he spotted us. He cocked his head and looked quizzically at me. “Is this …?” he asked. Colman shook his head, almost imperceptibly, and then quickly said, “This is my good friend Ruth, from California.”
With a puzzled look on his face, Isadore took my hand politely.
“Monsieur awaits you,” he said, leading us to a large table beneath the mirror in the corner.
A short, quite stout older man with a bald, shiny head was sitting there reading a newspaper. He beckoned happily when he saw us—he had beautiful hands—and stood up, painfully, as we approached. He looked exactly the way I have always imagined A. J. Liebling, which I found oddly disconcerting.
The man embraced Colman as well as he could, given that he was half his size. He showered upon him one of those loving looks usually reserved for one’s children, and I wondered if he might be Colman’s father. I thought he had told me that his parents were dead.
“So this is why we have seen so little of you.” The man looked me up and down, very frankly, and I was a little embarrassed by the scrutiny. “Je m’appelle Claude,” he said, taking my hand. Then he turned to Colman and said—reproachfully, I thought—“Pepita has missed you.”
“How is she?” asked Colman.
He sighed. “Fragile, I am afraid. But come, what am I thinking of? Let us sit down. I have taken the liberty of ordering. Do you mind?”
Even dining with him was the way I had always imagined a meal with A. J. Liebling. We were no sooner seated than Isadore arrived with trays of oysters—spéciales and claires—balanced on each arm. He set them on the table—four of them!—and poured glasses of Sancerre. “Never stint on oysters,” said Claude. “It takes away the pleasure.” He picked up an oyster, gave it a solid squeeze of lemon, and raised it to his mouth. “Ah,” he said when he had downed it. “They are excellent! We must have more.” He beckoned Isadore to bring another platter.
As he ate he asked questions. Where was I from, why was I here, what had I thought of Boyer? He asked about my family, my work, my hopes. Before the oysters were half gone he had collected an entire dossier on me. “Are you a reporter?” I asked, taken aback by the intensity of the interview.
“Bravo, ma fille!” he said. “I was, for more than fifty years, before I retired. That is how I met Colman’s family. I was sent to California when he was a small boy. Pepita and I could never have children, and so I have always thought of Colman as a little bit my own. Now we will have some grilled sardines; Isadore says they are excellent today, and he has never misled me.” He turned to Colman. “Tell me, shall we have a different wine?”
“I was thinking of Burgundy with the sardines,” said Colman, who always sped through the whites in his rush to the reds.
“My sentiments precisely,” said Claude. “I have trained you well.”
Then there was a roast partridge with an enormous pile of crisp, hot frites. It tasted wild and funky, with that high, almost electric note you find only in birds that have never been caged. “The secret,” said Claude, “is in hanging the birds long enough. When I was a boy every bistro in Paris knew how to hang its meat, but Isadore is one of the last of the breed. In other restaurants partridge is no better than chicken. Worse, in fact; it’s dry chicken.”
Colman was saying very little, just watching the interchange between this wonderfully crusty old Frenchman and me. I thought, from the expression on his face, that I was doing pretty well. Still, when Isadore arrived with a bottle of Bordeaux and began decanting it, I felt momentary panic. More?
“The marcassin, of course,” said Claude. “You must try it. Marcassin is disappearing in France; in ten more years it will be gone.” I took a bite and words like “morne,” “farouche,” and “goût de terroir” came leaping to my lips. I was a little drunk, and Colman and Claude were egging me on.
When the boar was gone there was still wine in the bottle. “A pity to waste this, don’t you think?” asked Claude, summoning Isadore to the table. The room was starting to empty out of patrons and fill up with the scent of cigars. It was so much like going back sixty years to that fantasy Paris of the twenties that I was almost in tears. I wished I were wearing an ankle-length black skirt instead of pants, and a white lace blouse. “Do you have a piece of cheese hidden away, a piece of cheese that will do this Pauillac justice?” asked Claude.
Isadore considered. “Bien sûr,” he said. “I think perhaps the aged Gouda would do very well. I have had it in the cellar for two years, and it has a roundness the wine will like.” He rushed off to fetch it, and Colman excused himself.
“Well, ma fille,” said Claude when we were alone. “How did you come to be in Paris?”
“Oh,” I said flippantly, “I followed Colman here.”
“He didn’t invite you?” he asked gleefully. Why was he so happy about this? Did he enjoy the notion of women throwing themselves at his adopted son?
“No,” I said, “he didn’t invite me. But I hoped that he would spend some time with me if I came. I didn’t quite imagine, though, that it would be like this.”
“Like this?” he inquired.
“Love,” I breathed, taking another sip of the wine. “I didn’t expect to fall in love.”
Claude looked alarmed. “L’amour?” he asked. “Vraiment?” He peered deeply into my eyes, as if my answer really mattered. I couldn’t see why he cared so much, but once again I had the nagging thought that there might be another woman in Colman’s life. “But aren’t you married?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And are you going to tear your life up for Colman?”
I shook my head. “No, I am not. Even if I wanted to leave my husband, which I don’t, I do not think that we would make a very good married couple. This is just …” I searched for the right word. “Magique” is what I came up with. That seemed right. “A moment of pure magic,” I repeated. “I am grateful for it. But I know it would not last.”
He nodded. “I have found,” he said, “that in marriage friendship is sometimes more important than passion.”
“Yes,” I said. “And my husband is a very good friend.”
Claude looked relieved. He liked me well enough, I could see that. He liked the fact that I spoke French. He liked my appetite. But he did not think that I would suit as Colman’s wife.
Colman returned, and Claude nodded reassuringly at him. Colman looked relieved, and I felt as if something important had just taken place but I did not know what it was. But then Colman took my hand and the moment passed and we had framboises with Chantilly and cognac and the two men filled the air with the smoke from their cigars. It was dark by the time we left the restaurant, and we put Claude into a taxi and walked all the way back to Colman’s hotel, singing.
* * *
I was supposed to take the night train back to London, but Colman persuaded me to take the new fast hovercraft across the Channel and spend another day in Paris. When I wavered he just went and bought the ticket. And so we had one more day. And then it really was time for me to leave; I could hardly imagine a life without him anymore. “Stay,” he said, laying a bunch of roses on the pillow next to me. “You could take a plane tomorrow and we could still have another day in Paris.”
I shook my head. “I’m already gone. It has to end sometime.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take you to the train. We have time for coffee.”
“Vous partez?” said our wonderful waitress at Ladurée. “C’est triste. I am so in the habit of seeing you two lovers.” And she brought us each a hazelnut-filled croissant and would not let us pay. I bit into it, trying to memorize the taste. “A week from today I’ll be sitting at the kitchen table in Berkeley,” I mused, “eating a bowl of millet. And you, what will you be doing a week from this moment?”
Colman reached across the table and took my hand. “I guess the time has come,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t quite know how to tell you this. But …”
“What?” I asked. He looked so stricken that I tried to make things easier. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We can still see each other. It just won’t be the same.”
He took another breath, as if to say something, and then stopped. He took my hand and said sadly, “No, it will never be the same again.”
DACQUOISE
There was a time, in the late seventies, when it seemed that every French restaurant in Paris, Los Angeles, and New York served dacquoise. For me it is still more than a dessert; it is a promise that something wonderful is about to happen.
FOR THE ALMOND MERINGUE
1 1/4 cups whole blanched almonds
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
6 large egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
pinch of salt
FOR THE MOCHA BUTTERCREAM
1 cup granulated sugar
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons instant espresso
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
Garnish: 1/4 cup sliced toasted almonds and confectioners’ sugar for dusting
TO MAKE THE MERINGUE
Preheat the oven to 275°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper and on each draw a 10-inch circle, using the bottom of a 10-inch springform pan as a guide. Flip the paper over (the circle will show through).
Pulse the nuts in a food processor with 2 tablespoons of the granulated sugar until ground fine. Add the cornstarch and pulse until combined. Beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar and a pinch of salt in a standing electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the remaining 3/4 cup sugar on low speed, then beat on high speed until it forms stiff, glossy peaks. Fold in the almond mixture gently but thoroughly.
Divide the meringue mixture between the two parchment circles, spreading to fill in the circles evenly. Bake the meringues in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, switching the position of the baking sheets halfway through baking, until firm and pale golden, about 1 hour. Slide the parchment paper with the meringues from the sheets and place on racks to cool.
TO MAKE THE BUTTERCREAM
Beat the egg yolks with 1/2 cup sugar in a standing electric mixer on high speed until thick and pale, about 4 minutes. While the yolks are beating, whisk the heavy cream with the remaining 1/2 cup sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring, until sugar is dissolved. Gradually whisk half of the hot cream into the yolk mixture to temper the eggs; then whisk the yolk mixture into the remaining hot cream, along with the instant espresso powder and salt.
Cook the custard over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until an instant-read thermometer registers 170°F. Transfer the mixture to the clean bowl of the standing electric mixer and beat until cooled completely. Beat in butter 1 tablespoon at a time and chill, covered, for at least 30 minutes.
TO ASSEMBLE THE DACQUOISE
Carefully remove the meringues from the parchment and spread one meringue (smooth side down) evenly with the buttercream. Top the buttercream with the remaining meringue (smooth side up) and decorate the outside edges of the buttercream with toasted almonds. Chill the dacquoise, loosely covered, until firm, at least 2 hours; before serving, dust the top with confectioners’ sugar.
Serves 8 to 10.
COOK’S NOTES
Meringues may be made one day ahead and kept in an airtight container at room temperature.
For a taller dacquoise, make three 7-inch meringue circles instead of two 10-inch ones (the baking time will be slightly less). Sandwich the meringues with buttercream and decorate in the same manner.
I’ve found that the easiest way to cut dacquoise is with a serrated bread knife, sawing rather than using pressure.