Page 37 of French Kiss

She pointed behind me to the left, and I followed her gaze to a lovely sunny room with yellow curtains over the windows that faced the street. Eight tiny tables filled the room, each already prepared with place settings for the next morning.

“Breakfast is served in the sunroom each morning from seven to ten.” She clicked a few more keys on her computer and reached behind her, where a few keys hung on hooks. She took one of them down and handed it to me by the circle of polished wood with the number seventeen carved into its surface. My fingers ran over the smooth surface, and I wondered again if I was crazy for having come here to meet Maddox. It was like a transborder booty call.

The desk clerk pointed me to a small elevator. “Your room is on the fourth floor.”

“Merci,” I said, picking up my bags and going to the elevator, which had a wood-framed glass door that wouldn’t open automatically. I pushed the button and waited for the elevator to come down to the ground floor. Then a set of metal bars slid back, and the door latch released so I could step inside. The elevator just barely fit me and my bag. I wondered what people would do if they came in a group of three or four with multiple pieces of luggage.

My question was answered when I got to the fourth floor and saw a man waiting with two large black roller suitcases and two tote bags. “Bonjour,” he said as I exited the elevator. I turned to watch him load his four bags into the elevator cab and send it downstairs without him. He then trotted down the stairs.

When I turned the key in the lock of room seventeen, I caught a whiff of lavender before I’d even entered the room. In a small dish next to the bed, a bundle of dried blooms sat next to a burning candle, filling the room with a scent I associated with sprawling fields in the South of France, which I’d only seen in photos. I imagined myself cycling through acres of fragrant lavender in Provence and eating farm-to-table cuisine.

A soaring antique headboard dwarfed the queen-sized bed, and the room had twelve-foot-high ceilings. A chandelier with pale-pink shimmering crystals hung over the bed, reminiscent of the one in my hallway bathroom back home. In case I felt like writing a note, there was stationery set out on an antique wooden writing desk in front of a pair of tall double-glazed windows. Heavy burgundy-and-rose-striped drapes hung on either side of the windows, tied back by a sash with tassels hanging nearly to the floor.

I flopped onto the cool white pillows on the bed and pulled up a map on my phone to orient myself to the city. It turned out that my hotel was in the middle of the sixth arrondissement, which was right next to the Latin Quarter, where the Sorbonne University was, and also near a lot of art galleries and museums.

I’d read that Paris was laid out in arrondissements—small sections of the city—starting with the Île de la Cité, an island in the middle of the Seine River, where the Notre-Dame Cathedral was located. Starting at ground zero on the Île de la Cité, the arrondissements wound outward like a snail shell, the second, third, and fourth on the Rive Droite—the Right Bank—and the fifth, sixth, and seventh on the Rive Gauche, or Left Bank.

I’d never been the type of person to unpack my bags in a hotel and tuck all my clothes away into drawers and iron everything before hanging it in the closets. Living out of a suitcase never bothered me, and if I needed something to be less wrinkled, I just hung it in the bathroom while I took a shower and let the steam do the work for me. So after examining the map, I dug through the contents of my bag and found a dress that would be appropriate both for walking around the city and for meeting a guy.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about exactly what I’d want to wear when I met up with Maddox and I’d packed this dress with him in mind. It was a long navy blue T-shirt dress that made me look curvy in the right places but still seemed casual with leather sandals. I pulled about half my clothes out of the bag, hung them on the desk chair, and kicked off my running shoes.

Changing out of my train-worn shorts and a T-shirt, I felt a transformed into a sexier version of myself and I hoped Maddox would look at me the way he often did, with hunger in his eyes and that wicked smile.

I had a few hours before our meeting time, so I dropped my key off at the front desk and went out to explore the Rive Droite. The weather was perfect—sunny and warm but not too hot to spend a lot of time walking. As I wound through the small streets on foot, I thought about Josh, who I had no doubt would be willing to walk all over the city with me rather than setting foot in a Metro train or hopping in a taxi.

I snapped a photo of the Rue de Buci, which was just a couple of blocks from the hotel and had at least five busy cafés in one direction and an open-air produce vendor and cheese shop in another direction down Rue de Seine.

I texted the photo to Josh. “I’m about to put some serious miles on my shoes. Wish you were here.”

I waited for a few seconds to see if there were any telltale dots letting me know he was in the process of responding, but my message dangled there, just like the last messages I’d sent him from Amsterdam. He was usually good about responding to texts, but that was when we were at home. For traveling abroad, I had to factor in our different schedules. I wondered what he was up to with his family. Maybe he was out hiking in a Bavarian forest, which he’d mentioned was a possibility.

The streets were packed with people, some sitting at the cafés and some walking past. I decided to grab a seat at Café de Paris, which looked a little more casual than the place across the street, Bar Atlas, with its huge seafood display on ice and white cloths on the tables in front. A waiter in black pants and a long white apron walked past holding a tray of drinks on one hand while he popped the top off a bottle of Perrier with the other. He set the bottle down with a tall glass on the table next to mine, where two women about my age were deep in conversation, both smoking cigarettes. Under the table, a small brown dog sat on a napkin and rested his chin on a tiny water bowl.

The waiter put two empty wineglasses on the table for the women and filled them from a bottle on his tray then handed me a menu and moved to another table with a gracefulness that looked like choreographed dance.

I looked at the menu, which I was pleased to find was in English, but at the same time, I wondered how the waiter had immediately identified me as someone who didn’t speak French before I’d opened my mouth. I looked at the two women at the table next to mine and tried to figure out how they telegraphed simply by their look that they were French. The cigarettes, for one thing. And the dog. They wore scarves knotted around their throats and simple flat shoes which looked glamorous despite their simplicity. Tourists probably wouldn’t have dogs—or moped helmets, which I also noticed on the chairs next to theirs.

In my plain, unadorned dress, I had to admit I didn’t look particularly cosmopolitan. And since I didn’t speak a word of French, I probably looked confused. I sighed, coming to terms with the fact that I didn’t need to be everything to everyone all of the time. It was okay to look like a tourist and to read a menu in English.

The hyper-achiever in me had this idea that I needed to be worldly and bounce off the train speaking French, but that was more because I liked to be in control than because it was necessary. What I’d learned in my few days in Amsterdam was that most people spoke more than one language, and for most people, one of those languages was English. So traveling became about acting gracious and polite when the people around me accommodated me by speaking English rather than constantly consulting a language translator and trying to speak Flemish or French.

The point was that I was in Paris, a city I’d never visited before, with a few hours to walk around before going to meet Maddox. And everything on the menu sounded delicious. After considering a croque monsieur, which was a melted ham-and-cheese sandwich, and looking over the list of omelets, I decided on a salad with hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, cheese, and hearts of palm.

The waiter returned and stood in front of my table, not particularly interested in anything except getting my order written down on a tiny notepad. “Madame… vous avez décidé?”

I found it interesting that after handing me a menu in English, he still spoke to me in French. I pointed to the salad and asked for a Perrier which I knew was French and likely to be available. He nodded and took my menu away.

The two women next to me sipped their wine and chatted, looking so much more chic and cool than I felt. I wondered if having a glass of wine would change my low opinion of myself. Clearly, I needed to mellow out. I also had to cast off the nerves I’d been feeling since I boarded the train.

A small piece of my conscience kept telling me I shouldn’t have left my friends, even though they’d pretty much given me their blessing to hop on a train and have blindingly good sex. Maybe I needed wine. Later, I told myself.

A few minutes later, the waiter came back with a round paper placemat that covered the entirety of the table and set it up with a napkin, knife, and fork. He added a glass bottle of Perrier and an empty wineglass, which he filled after uncapping the bottle with one hand. I silently toasted my day in Paris and took a sip. The cool bubbles went down easily, and I immediately felt a little more Parisian.

I checked my cell phone again, still not relaxed enough on vacation to resist the constant urge to see if I was missing something. I had one text from Shelby, making sure I’d made it to Paris safely. I hit her back and let her know all was well. She sent me a picture of her and Amrita on a pedal boat in a canal in Amsterdam, both looking adorable, surrounded by hanging flower baskets on the rails above the river. The photo made me miss them, but I reminded myself I’d have company in just a few short hours.

The two women next to me ordered a plate of what looked like a pink slab of gelatinous meat, which I assumed was paté, and a second plate of oysters, which they shared. I couldn’t imagine eating that for lunch.

My salad arrived a couple of minutes after that, and it was just the right combination of ripe tomatoes and Dijon mustard dressing. I dug in and watched the people walking past. Some were clearly tourists, taking selfies and chatting in a variety of languages. Others had a more businesslike gait, heading down the street to a destination, talking on cellphones, walking more quickly than the ones who had the limited time constraints of vacation. Still others were enjoying a leisurely lunch with friends at the many cafés and seemed chill.

I couldn’t decide where I fit in. I was on vacation, but I also felt businesslike, as though I’d come here for a purpose. And I definitely wasn’t chill. I was nervous.

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