My Stool

I’m standing there thinking it's my bar and you’re sitting in my place. I know I can’t command the prime position on every visit, but if I must be left to stand at the bar, I'd much prefer that our stools be inhabited by regulars.

She is a pretend blond and overly eye-shadowed, talking in unnecessary decibels and flailing her hands around. Everyone in the bar is trying not to listen in on her banal conversation, the one about the complicated itinerary of her next trip and how she'll have too much time at the airport on the way back from New York – understandably frustrating to her but frankly, inconsequential to the rest of us. Her recurrent use of the word “like” is not enhancing her credibility with anyone standing beside me. I’m thinking, honey, could you please, like, lower your voice?

I’m chatting up the barman – quietly – while offering a knowing smile to the older man across the bar. We would roll our eyes at each other but for the mirrors on every wall, so we just flirt instead. We have a common nemesis, the loud one speaking English proclaiming her frequent flyer status for the whole bar to hear.

She is with a young guy with a two-day old beard. They are now both on their phones, both leaning over almost on top of me, stretching to see out the front windows, trying to assess the address, presumably to tell whomever they've called precisely where they are.

“I can’t see any number,” she says, loud and very close to my ear.

“Thirty,” I say, in a dulcet but mono tone.

They look at me like I have spoken in Greek.

“It’s number thirty,” I say, “The address. Here.”

“Oh." She did not expect me to speak English. “Yeah, thanks.”

They resume their conversation, with lower voices.

That worked.

Later she asks the barman about the toilet. He points to the back. I smile, but it’s a devious one. I know the toilet here, a chrome sided, Star Trek styled Turkish toilet, if you can imagine, built for a superhero like Iron Man. I never use it. I’m capable of squatting, but why bother? Half the bars on this street are owned by the same guy, all the barmen know me, at least by sight. Usually I walk next door or across the street where I can sit like a civilized woman.

She slides off the stool – my stool – and walks around the horseshoe shaped bar toward the restroom.  I mutter, under my breath so her English-listening French boyfriend won’t hear, “Good luck with that.”

In her absence he takes out his iPhone and dials nimbly, chatting away in a rough French accent, peppered with slang. I wonder if she hears this in his French. Has she been here long enough to detect the subtleties of the language, or is she still in the just-lucky-to-barely-understand stage?  (I've been there.)  The fact is, she may not listen to him enough to hear it; she was rather adept at talking and they'd been conversing in her language, not his.

The clock ticks forward, that pumpkin-hour-when-I-must-be-home approaches. My little factures are assembled, change waits on the counter. She returns, walking around the bar, tugging at her clothing, the way women should before they leave the restroom but inevitably we’re still checking that everything’s falling correctly on our way out.

“How’d that go for you?” I said aloud, emboldened by the last, fast sip of my second Leffe.

She looked at me, uncertain. “Huh?”

I tilted my head the direction of the toilet.

“Oh, yeah.  It was fine.”

I looked down at her shoes, medium-high heels with a leopard-pattern. They were splashed with water, or something. I tried not to smile, but I couldn't hold it back. She tucked her feet under the bar stool, my stool, drawing them in and out of sight.

After the Boys of Summer Have Gone

Sadly, the summer season comes around to a close. It flew by too fast, but all the good summery things that are part of our Paris summer came to pass. Rituals were re-enacted, like champagne on the Big Roue at sunset, followed by the wild ride on the swings and a late dinner at Pipos. Kirs were ordered. Leffes were replenished. Once there were even Coca-Colas commanded from those corner bar stools, in homage to the previous day's activity. A weekend brunch stretched from just after noon until nearly midnight, on more than one occasion.

There were pheromones and trains. Navel to Spine. A perplexing bench, finally removed. Pedro Páramo. An American was coming to dinner. Dunk and Squat. A room full of kittens. Whites were washed and worn and washed again. Renovation scheduled and unscheduled and rescheduled. Memories were made and lost. An American came to dinner. Did I mention that?

Okay we had to endure a knucklehead or two. A few aches and pains dampened the party - backs and ankles didn't always cooperate - but we kept our good humor and twittered something pithy.

Summer sped by like the TGV. And while I readily welcome the return to more peaceful days of children-at-school, a quick glance back over the shoulder at the last three months of fun, foolishness and fiesta confirms that life could be a whole lot worse. And honestly, it couldn't get much better.

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The Corner One

It won't be empty for long, that coveted corner stool.

Dee Dee Sue is coming back to town. She's swinging in on Saturday, and it seems that activity at the office might finally start picking up.

She arrives like the migrating birds. A sign that summer is coming. The days begin to last longer. It's time to drink rosé at lunch. The bar smells of the crushed mint of a Mohito. Your liver gets exercised after a long, lonely winter.

There are sunny, silly months ahead.
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The Office

I don't think either one of us could work in an office, it would be far too respectable. But actually, I can imagine dee dee sue's office cubicle: plastered with pictures of bulls and bullfighters, a tiny shrine to San Fermin, empty agave bottles used as paper-weights, tall stacks of books on the floor, most of them read and ready to be given to me for consumption. Of course, if it really was her cubicle, or for that matter, even her corner executive suite, it wouldn't be hers unless she wasn't there. But that's another story.

Here's the quick and dirty on the office: It's a café bar that we've both frequented for at least 20 years (longer for her, even). In the beginning, I went in the mornings, taking my place on the corner stool, chatting up the barman, ordering more than one café-crème and spending a few hours scribbling in my journal. She was more of a night-time patron, drinking things stronger than coffee, but also chatting up the barman. And always with her eye on the same prize: the corner stool.

But we'd never been there together.

While all this was going on, a mutual friend, mother theresa, kept trying to introduce us - we were neighbors after all - and when she finally succeeded (it took 7 years) we realized we had a lot in common, including this little café.

It was about the same time that I rented my own writing studio, so I didn't need to go to the café every morning. And about that same time, I started having babies, so what I really needed was that late afternoon Leffe-break, or the coveted kitchen pass for an extended girls night out. My hours started to coincide with dee dee sue's.

Need I say more? We've spent a lot of time on those corner stools. Once, she counted how many hours she'd been there during the course of a week: 35 hours, the length of the official French work-week. Therefore, that made it official, this must be the office.