Page 5 of From Paris, with Butter
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,” Leïla 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 deservedeverything 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 longday, 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’ 15tharrondissement, 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 7tharrondissement, 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 15tharrondissement 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.
