My Favorite French Philosopher
Jim Brennan
The assignment was an opportunity to redeem myself. If I worked hard enough, “the Boston debacle”—the name that grew out of the notoriety surrounding my ill-timed foray into the network gateway business, because no one saw the dot com bust coming—would become a distant memory. It would be replaced in corporate lore by the more compelling story of how I turned our European business around, starting with that bastion of European indifference to the American Way—the Paris office.
Adjusting to life as an expatriate in France wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I remember what Nick told me over beers after my first day on the job: “France would be a rather nice place if it weren’t for so many bloody French people living here.” The only other non-French person in the Paris office when I was there, he was a Brit working on the finance team who took the Chunnel back home on weekends. By my third week, though, I had settled down a bit and was starting to breathe normally again. By that I mean I was more conscious of when I was holding my breath, releasing the pent-up air in a slow audible gust as soon as I became aware of a constricted sensation. I would learn later that this is a quite common reaction to stress and one that can easily go unnoticed when it happens. It was also in my third week that I started my private French lessons.
“So where is she?” I demanded to know.
“She will arrive, Monsieur. I assure you,” replied the Director of École de Langue de Monde—Institut Supérieur Privé. The director and I sat in the executive classroom, where I would be having my weekly lessons, waiting for my teacher to arrive. Keeping me waiting didn’t seem very smart. I was supposed to be an important client. My company was paying a nice piece of change for this.
“Well, she’s five minutes late.” I felt my whole body tightening up. “When she does get here, I’ll get my full two hours, right?”
The director of the school rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes. Of course.”
After taking in my classroom—Salon Versailles, according to the plastic nameplate to the right of the door—with its boarded up fireplace, faded prints of the French countryside arranged in perfect symmetry on the sea foam-colored walls, and a blackboard on wheels that looked old enough for Dick and Jane to have used when they weren’t watching Spot run, I decided to stare at Madame Directrice until my teacher arrived. This seemed to make her nervous. She tapped her Mont Blanc pen on the table, chin in hand, while looking at me over her cat-eyed glasses every few seconds. She tried to make conversation.
“You’ve been in Paris two weeks now. How are you finding it?”
“Three weeks.” I struggled for air. “But it feels more like three years.”
She tapped harder.
“I mean, you should’ve seen what I had to go through just to get a shower curtain installed.”
The tapping stopped.
“Well, we don’t have the habit to take showers in France.”
I can admit now that I was not capable of rising above an opening like that. And if I hadn’t been trying so hard to catch my breath, I would’ve delivered the punch line called for in this situation with great gusto.
Madame Directrice stared at me, arms folded in front of her on the table. She held her pen between two fingers and tapped it silently on her arm. When it looked like she was about to say something, a light double rap made us both turn to the door as it opened. And Dominique entered my life with a quick and soft, “Bonjour.”
“Ah, bonjour, Dominique.” The director rose to greet her with open arms, and they chatted for a couple of minutes. Dominique spoke very quickly, waving her hands frantically. Of course, I didn’t understand a word she was saying. The director stared at Dominique, looking as though she had just been goosed, and interjected an occasional “la la la.” When it was the director’s turn to speak, she moved a little closer to Dominique. Whatever she was saying came out in hushed bursts sandwiched between loud inhalations. She looked intently at Dominique, giving me a quick glance every so often. It was Dominique’s turn to say “la la la.”
When they finished speaking, they turned to me in unison, and the director nodded her head saying, “Metro strike.” She wore a sheepish grin, and Dominique looked as if she had motion sickness. Metro strike. I learned to hate those two words as much as anything else I hated about being in Paris at the time.
“Metro strike? Does that have anything to do with the one-hour wait for my train this morning and the snail-paced ride…”
“Monsieur.” The director tried to interrupt me, but I was rolling.
“…I shared in an extra-crowded car…”
“Monsieur.”
“…I mean, at every stop people just kept getting on…”
“Monsieur.”
“…and getting on…”
“Monsieur.”
“It’s a good thing I always allow myself extra time. It was…”
“Okay, okay, okay.”
“…like sardines, okay? I’ll tell you…”
“Monsieur…please!”
“…and it was ripe…”
“Monsieur!” The director yelled, clapping her hands and stamping her foot. She had my attention.
“Permit me to introduce your teacher, Dominique,” she said, holding a hand toward Dominique as if she were showing me what was behind curtain number three—the one savvy contestants know as the high-risk curtain, hiding what could be the grand prize or something that will remind them for the rest of their lives that they’re big losers. The director then held Dominique by the arm, as if she were afraid my teacher was going to go somewhere. I gave her the once over. “Dominique, your student, Monsieur Mike.”
Madame Directrice looked greatly relieved, and I think she was actually smiling as she backed her way to the door. “Enjoy your lesson, Monsieur. Dominique, bon courage.”
Dominique walked over to the table and let her big black leather bag slip off her shoulder. It landed on the table with a thud. Dominique was tall, willowy, and refreshing. I was finally able to draw a deep breath of sweet air and detected just a hint of the perfume she wore.
“You sure have a heavy bag for someone so…uh…petite. That’s a French word for a slender but shapely young woman, I believe.” I decided to lighten things up a bit so that we could relax and get to know one another. Oh, I thought I was so smooth.
Dominique looked at me for a long time, then looked at the door even longer. Finally, she turned back to me and with a hand on her hip and a nod in my direction said, “So what do you do in Paris…Mike?”
She hesitated on my name, saying it as though it took everything she had to get it out and then felt foolish for having uttered such a word. I remember thinking that her accent was awfully thick. I ignored all that, however, because she wanted to know what I did. I was only too happy to tell her. I had been working my entire career on perfecting my elevator pitch—that hypothetical thirty seconds that a person gets someday with an important potential client as they ride together in the elevator.
“Well, Dominique, my company sent me over to bring an American perspective to sales management in Europe. I’m going to help them develop new business, starting right here in France.” I should’ve stopped there. “Ever since we acquired them, our French subsidiary has been losing revenue. They really struggled when we had to make the shift from our traditional component business to whole communications solutions, but the shift had to be made. Too many folks wanting in on the component business shrunk the margins to almost nothing. Our whole business model went…”
“Oui, oui, oui,” she interrupted with a hand in the air, sounding a little bored. “And do you work in French or English?” she asked, arching her left eyebrow as if she already knew the answer and was testing me.
“In English. Isn’t that the official working language here? But…”
“So! In fact, you do not need to speak French.” Now she was starting to sound a little miffed, which puzzled me at the time because I was her customer. “It’s a luxury, in fact.”
“A luxury? I don’t know about that,” I replied. “Look, I don’t really need it, but our French colleagues insisted that I learn French, so why not?”
She stood there for a moment, arms crossed and foot tapping, as though she were trying to come up with a list of reasons to my rhetorical question. “Yes, why not?” she finally said, walking to the blackboard. After writing several French words on the board, she spun around to face me, pointed to the words, and started speaking in French.
“Whoa. What are you doing?” I asked.
She planted her hands on her hips with a huff and replied, “I’m teaching you French.”
“Yeah, but how do you expect me to learn anything if you’re going to be speaking French?”
Dominique wagged her finger at me. Either she chose to ignore my logic or was too distracted by then to notice. “We will make our lessons in French.”
At that point, I mentally added to my goal list—right under Revise compensation plans and Set up sales calls with Cocteau—Teach the French about customer service. I would start with Dominique. I quickly decided that the best course of action would be a friendly approach. Sure it was something right out of Dale Carnegie that my father would have used, but it was all I could come up with.
“Look, Dominique. My company is paying good money for this, and I’ve got a lot going on already. So I’d really prefer to have you speak English. Okay?”
She looked pensive, and I thought that I had reached her. When I started to congratulate myself silently, she began speaking.
“Oh…Mike.” Now she said my name as though she were tapping the bottom of a baby to get him to stop crying. “I’m afraid I don’t speak English very well at all. I’m sorry.”
“What? But you’re my French teacher.”
“Yes, I speak French perfectly,” she snapped back while pulling a notebook and pen out of her bag.
Her English seemed okay to me and I had thought that a language teacher should be fluent in the language of her beginning student, but I decided not to make a big deal out of it. If I asked to change teachers, there was no telling what the next one would be like. As far as Dominique’s attitude? No problem. I would whip Dominique into shape just like I would Cocteau and his sales team.
Cocteau was the guy at whose feet our mess in Europe fell. He was the Director of European Sales. Who else was the Home Office going to blame? He didn’t like my being on his turf one bit, but I wasn’t going to let him stop me from getting Europe on track. I wanted this one so badly. So I showed Cocteau and his team who was in charge right from our first sales review.
“Voila. Our situation. What is your feeling?” Cocteau asked as he shut off the projector at the end of the long rectangular table. Like air conditioning, PowerPoint presentations hadn’t caught on there yet. The fifth-floor conference room—Salle de Réunion E —was feeling a little stuffy, even with the narrow roll-out windows extended as far as they could go. I was sitting at the opposite end of the table, and Cocteau’s salesmen—he had no women on his sales team—lined either side of the table between him and me. I felt his entire team trying to will me back to the US with the collective power of their stares.
“Where’s your revenue after Q3?” I asked.
“Well…uh…it is hard to see that far out, no? But don’t worry. We will find the revenue when the time comes.”
“That’s just so much bullshit,” I replied. I was going to let these guys know that I meant business. “We need to know where the revenue is going to come from now.”
I could hear a few coughs along with the sounds of chairs scraping the floor. I shot a look around the room. No one would make eye contact with me now. Except for Cocteau.
“Okay, okay, okay. Don’t worry.” Cocteau was fiddling with the middle button on his suit jacket, but he never took his eyes off me. “We have made the contact with Verifone and HeyTalk. I think there could be something very good there.”
“What?” I wasn’t letting him off the hook. “Those aren’t even tier three companies. They’re dismissed out of hand.” I don’t know why, but I showed him my open hand like I was begging for spare change to add to our bottom line.
“Well, we must have more time to study the situation. I will get back to you,” Cocteau said in a way that made it clear he wasn’t asking.
I figured that I would have the last word on this.
“You don’t have a whole lot of time.”
“I know,” he replied.
So I thought that if I could handle Cocteau I could handle Dominique. Let her play her little mind games. She was no match for me.
Because of Dominique’s French-only policy, I found myself thinking about other things in class than learning French. Like how Dominique wore the same clothes all the time, but they were always clean. I noticed how those tight black pants that flared out ever so slightly at the cuff accentuated her long slender legs and how the white shirt really complemented her dark shoulder-length hair. The silver bracelets she wore on either arm seemed to shine even more against her maple syrup-colored skin—golden maple syrup, the pure amber liquid for which people are willing to pay more. I wondered if Dominique realized that I was lost after our first meeting.
One day, these thoughts were interrupted when I thought I heard Dominique speaking to me in English. “What? What did you say?”
“I said that perhaps we could take a coffee together after class. This will give you more practice, and you really need it, I can tell you.”
I was sure that I had missed something.
“You’re asking me to have coffee with you?”
“I’m speaking English, Mike. Are you having the problem now with that language, too?”
That one stung. I gave her my best corporate smile and said, “Let’s do it.”
Even though she called it a practice session for me, Dominique ended up carrying on most of our conversation at Brasserie d’Amitié in English, as painful as that seemed for her.
“I will speak English now because it is too difficult to speak French with you and I want to enjoy my coffee,” she declared as she dipped a piece of chocolate into her demitasse.
“We do it with donuts back home,” I said. I gave up trying to cross my legs.
She gave me a blank stare.
“You know the dunking in the coffee thing.”
Dominique wore a quizzical look as she pulled a cigarette out of her bag. “Yes, as you like, Mike.”
I figured that was enough small talk, because Dominique must be champing at the bit to hear what was going on at my office. I told her that we were fighting an uphill battle all the way. When we acquired this business that became our European headquarters, we thought the French had the best signal processing technology on the market. It took us a little while to see that their business acumen was not keeping up with their technical expertise. I admitted a little uneasily that it was no picnic working with Cocteau. He was fighting me every step of the way. I started to tell her that getting him to schedule sales calls for him and me to do together was like pulling teeth.
“Okay, okay, Mike.” Dominique slipped back in her chair and crossed her legs with ease under our outdoor table. “All you Americans ever talk about is work, work, work. You only know to do, to do, to do…with your little lists and your little phones plugged in your ear…and, and, and…Oh! You must know, too, how to be.”
“How to be what, Dominique?”
“Just to be.”
And I thought she would find my work fascinating. She ended up being full of surprises.
“Oh, you smoke, Dominique.”
“That shouldn’t surprise you. This is France. We don’t have the same habits as Americans with your…jogging…and, and, and your…no smoking spaces.”
I tried changing the subject as I waved away the smoke.
“Could they make these tables any smaller?”
“Everything has to be big for Americans, hah?” Dominique scrunched up her face, raised her arms, and rocked back and forth while making “ooh – ooh” sounds. I guessed she was trying for a King Kong impersonation.
I tried again. “So, uh…how did you get into teaching?”
She took a deep breath and sighed. I braced myself for her next impression, but she actually answered my question.
“I made my studies in philosophy at the Sorbonne. It was difficult, I can tell you. And, and…you know, I can’t live on that. I need a little money for the life—to enjoy a good coffee. You know?”
“What kind of studies?”
“I was a graduate student.”
“So you’re saying like…you’re a philosopher?” I didn’t mean to laugh.
Dominique mumbled something under her breath, nodding furiously, then flicked ashes in my general direction while looking the other way.
“Hey, watch it. This is Brooks Brothers, Dominique.”
Dominique made another face. “Nyah…ooh ooh. I didn’t finish my studies. I was studying Sartre at the time. But one day I asked myself what was the point, and left.” She turned away, tossed her chin up in the air, and emphatically repositioned herself on the seat of the cane chair. “What about you, Mike?”
“What about me?”
Dominique leaned toward me while holding her cigarette down below her chair. “What do you know besides your petite mondiale, your little world of business?”
“Well, about what?”
“About the life. Who is your favorite French philosopher, for example?”
Okay, I didn’t have any favorite philosopher. If I had been forced to answer at gunpoint, I probably would’ve blurted out Steven Covey. I’m not sure how much of it was just my old competitive nature, or how much I wanted this French woman to like me, but somehow I reached deep—I’d like to say inside my mind, but this was pulled from someplace a little further south—and came up with, “Descartes!” I remembered he said something about thinking, but I was hoping that Dominique wouldn’t press me for details.
Dominique actually dismissed this with a Bronx cheer, but like most things French, it was refined and small by American standards, a “pfft” that escaped from her barely puckered lips. “Descartes? That’s too easy.”
“Why does it have to be hard? What’s there to know about life? You set some goals. You work hard. Play a little golf. Maybe buy a boat.”
“Oui, oui…un bateau. So that’s it for you?”
“Un what?” I hesitated for a moment, feeling a little off balance. I thought I recognized that word. “So what should I know about life?”
“You should know what you want out of the li…”
“ I want to make General Manager before I’m thirty…”
“Stop! Enough of your little world.”
“What do you mean ‘my little world’? Cerberus Communications did $500 million and change last year. And we have over two thousand employees worldwide.”
“Okay, okay, okay. You will know someday. But… that comes later, Mike. First, you must know the pleasure of un bon café and to discuss your favorite French philosopher.”
“I’ll put it on my list.”
“Eh oui…your list!”
These coffees became a regular part of my lessons. Dominique said it would be a good learning strategy. And the strange thing was that I was enjoying them. I was actually seeing a little Parisian love affair in my future. Hey, this assignment wouldn’t be forever, I thought, and this would give me something great to talk about at the marina or on the links. In fact, I wasn’t able to think of a place this wouldn’t be great to talk about. And I also thought this would be good for Dominique, because by spending enough time with me, some of my American way was bound to rub off on her.
It wasn’t long before I started juggling my schedule so that I could take classes twice a week. Dominique initially expressed surprise that an American would be so motivated to learn another language, but she agreed that continuing to meet for coffee and having an occasional lunch together would be an excellent way to support the little bit of progress that I was starting to make in class.
We were walking to lunch one day. The Metro wasn’t running. This time it was a show of solidarity with the truckers, who were striking. I was looking at Dominique’s legs while we walked, so I was able to see that she was about to put down one of those black, laced-up, high-heeled ankle boots of hers into a big pile of dog crap.
“Watch out, Dominique.”
“What is it?” She stopped and turned to me, throwing her hands down by her sides like this was the hundredth time I had asked her for candy.
“You almost stepped in that.”
I pointed at the disgusting brown pile in front of her and awaited my hero’s embrace. There was a long pause and no embrace.
“Oh, really? Well, it’s good luck to step in that, you know.”
She sounded as though I had just accidentally thrown away her winning lottery ticket.
“What? How do you figure?”
“If you step in it, you step in it. You can’t change that. But if you think that it brings you good luck, then you don’t feel so bad. That is the life, Mike.”
Ridiculous, I thought; but just the same, I estimated this to be an excellent opportunity to sound like I knew something about French philosophers. I rubbed my chin and looked thoughtfully at the sky.
“Wouldn’t Sartre say that stepping in dog shit is neither good nor bad? It just is?”
Dominique folded her arms and took her turn to look up at the sky. After a couple of moments, she said, “I prefer Montaigne in this case.”
I didn’t know Montaigne and I wasn’t about to ask her who he was or why she preferred him after my little charade. I just puckered my lips and nodded like I agreed with her. We walked the rest of the way in silence until we got to where we were going for lunch—Au Pied de Cochon.
One good thing that came out of all those Metro strikes was that walking around Paris became a routine for Dominique and me. Aside from having to dodge all that dog crap, I enjoyed our walks. Dominique pointed out all the interesting sites, the best views, and—her favorite part of the tour—the less well-known but finer museums of Paris. “You Americans jog through the Louvre with your running suits and your baskets (that’s what she called running shoes) in twenty minutes, and you think you’ve seen something.”
Okay, she had a point there. But there was this other thing. Dominique had this quirky habit of pointing out what she called “reminders of humanity’s violent history” as we walked through the city. Horrific tales of the siege of Paris in 1590 were recounted in Les Halles as we passed an ancient water fountain. Walking the Quais along the Seine, Dominique told the story of the Saint Bartholomew Day Massacre. And we could never pass the Conciergerie without the Terror coming up. “Did you know, Mike, that twelve hundred men and women were kept here waiting for their turn to go to the guillotine?”
Finally, I had had it one day. “No, I didn’t know that. Wait, yes! Yes, I did know that. I think you mentioned it the last time we walked by here. In fact, I think you’ve mentioned it every time we’ve walked by here, Dominique!”
It was then that Dominique took my hands in hers, looked into my eyes, and said, “Oh, Mike. You are too hard with me.” She laughed, and we made a circle, still holding hands, while she said, “Ahh…Par—eee!”
We held hands every time we walked around Paris after that. One night on the Pont-Neuf, I stood behind Dominique with my arms wrapped around her while we stared at a crescent moon hanging softly over Notre Dame.
“Did I ever mention that this world could use a little more love, Mike?”
Dominique suggested that we go to my apartment to explore this question further. She enjoyed discussing feelings and thoughts about life. It was never something I was comfortable doing before, let alone with a woman that I found so attractive. But I did ask her that night what she saw in me.
“The first day I met you, the director told me that I would have to fight to defend myself with you,” she said. “But after only a few moments with you I realized that the only one who had to defend himself from you was you, Mike. Somewhere I saw a tender man in front of me, and I wanted to see more of that man.”
I discovered that Dominique used the words love and sex interchangeably. And she thought the world could actually use more of each.
There seemed to be no expectations on Dominique’s part as we lay spent under the sheets. But I found myself wanting to talk with her about everything, the only exception being my work in Paris.
“So how is your little world of business, my dear?”
My mind started replaying the sales meeting I had had the day before. Now Cocteau and his gang were looking at me as though it were my fault the revenue wasn’t there. We were all sitting around the table eyeing the latest forecast. I was trying to find something positive to say about a very bad situation and not having much luck. We were going down together, except that they had employment contracts and very generous government-mandated severance plans. At that point, I just wanted to save face. “I think if we forget about trying to sell integrated solutions ourselves and see if we can find some partners who…you know…” I was struggling for the words. Cocteau cut me off before I could find them.
“No,” he shouted, rising from his chair. “I don’t agree. This is too much finally.” He pointed to his open palm as if I’d find a return ticket back home there. “I…I…dismiss you, like too much bullshit in my hand.”
“I don’t really want to talk about work, Dominique.”
“Okay. We’ll talk about something else. I know.” She gave me an impish smile. “Tell me your worst experience in Paris so far.”
“Well, let’s see. My worst experience so far was when I learned that bateau is the French word for boat and not the incendiary, damning swear word I thought it to be and used as such in my first three weeks here. Pity, too. It could be such a great swear word. You can say it slowly like, “you dirty bateau”—sucking the juice out of every syllable. Or you can just put on your best crazed look and blast out a quick bateau!”
“Oui, oui, oui,” Dominique replied, pulling the hand my head was not resting in toward her and patting the back of it. “As usual, my dear, you are your own worst enemy. You simply need to find someone who doesn’t like to be called a boat and then you have a perfect word.”
“You’ve given me something to think about here, Dominique. Like, is it me or are all the French a little crazy?” Dominique seemed quite pleased with herself as she let go of my hand and clapped.
“And your best experience in Paris so far?”
I paused for effect as though that were a really tough question.
“Hmm. I guess I would have to say… that would be you. But that’s only so far,” I said as I outlined her breasts on top of the sheet with my index finger. Dominique closed her eyes and smiled a petite smile.
One day at the office, Cocteau seemed to be in a lighter mood than usual and was actually nice to me. I knew something was up. I found out a little later when I took the call from my manager in the US.
“So we didn’t hit a home run. Pud problem, as they say over there, Mike. Right?” He was so crass. And his forced, too long-laugh really rankled me.
“Are you sure everything is okay?” I wanted to see if he had it in him to be open, honest, and direct like it said in our values statement—the little blurb in a box we run with the CEO’s message to shareholders in every annual report.
“Hey, if the revenue isn’t there, it isn’t there. Right? Am I right? Just don’t worry about it.”
A missed goal and a reassurance spoken in the same sentence —Corporate America’s equivalent of the Mafia kiss of death. I decided to press him. “Look, Jeff. Just give it to me straight. Am I in trouble or not?” There was a long pause.
“I guess we put you in an impossible situation, Mike-o. No one thought you’d really be able to turn this thing around. Those French jerk-offs just aren’t going to cut it. We’re thinking—don’t say anything—about closing down the whole thing and going to channel partners for Europe.”
Well, there I had it. I remember thinking at the time that it sounded like they had sent me over there to get rid of me. I convinced myself that it couldn’t be and that I was just being paranoid. Just the same, I thought about Dominique and what I was going to say to her. I knew that I had to end it properly even though the idea of bringing her back kept popping into my head. I told myself that was crazy. How would Dominique be able to stay in the States? I was no expert on immigration, but I was pretty sure that I’d have to marry her in order for her to stay in the country. I just couldn’t see that. Dominique shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this was a fling. She knew that I was here on a temporary assignment. And coming back with me for the time that would be allowed on a visitor’s visa wouldn’t work either. It would mean saying goodbye twice, and I didn’t want that.
I chose a quiet little restaurant in the Sixth Arrondissement where original oil paintings by local artists shared space on the stone walls with classical sculpture reproductions. Our table was set impeccably with white starched linen, shiny flatware, and gleaming glasses. Soft instrumental jazz provided the background music. Dominique leaned forward with her clasped hands under her chin and smiled at me as if sensing that some important things had to be said tonight.
I thought I would break the news to her immediately after our starters.
“You look worried, my dear. Is there something wrong with your escargot?” Dominique smiled at me as I poked at my snails. “No. No, c’est bon,” I replied softly. “And you?”
“Oui, oui. C’est bon,” she replied, nodding while looking at her goat cheese salad.
The silence that followed was finally interrupted when the waiter came over to ask if we had finished our first course. I decided that I would tell Dominique when we took our coffees. After our coffees arrived, I thought this discussion might best take place over the cheese, but then the words awkwardly tumbled out of my mouth. “Dominique…I have to go back home. It won’t be easy, but… I think we can make a go of it. Yes, I really do. You’ll like Boston. It’s the most European city in America…”
Dominique interrupted me by placing her fingers lightly against my lips. She looked as astonished as I felt. She took my hands in hers and looked into my eyes. I was pleased that I had the courage finally to speak what was in my heart and to see that it made her so happy.
“You must go back alone, my dear.”
I slipped my hands away from hers and started smoothing the tablecloth. “What? Why?”
Dominique looked off in the distance from our table as though she could see every street and alley of Paris we had walked together.
“It’s impossible for us to remain together, my dear.”
“No, it’s not. Why are you saying this?”
Dominique looked down and shook her head. “It is the life.”
“The hell with the life then.”
Dominique raised her eyebrows and tried to smile. “Mon cher, ecoute…did you learn nothing from me?”
“Is he French? He’s French, isn’t he?” I was disintegrating right before her eyes. “And I’ll bet he’s younger than me. And more intelligent. Right?”
She looked at me very tenderly with those dark eyes, and smiled.
“Please, my dear, stop. I’m sorry, but it is the life. We must part. Remember me, okay? And even though the life is hard, you must still trust in the life.” With that, Dominique stood up, leaned over the table, took my chin in her hand, and gently kissed me. She walked away quickly after that without looking back. I wanted to scream after her, call her a bitch or a bateau even… But, of course, I didn’t. I folded Dominique’s napkin and gently placed it on the table as I watched her go out the door. I dipped a piece of dark chocolate in my coffee and thought about what had just happened as I let the bittersweet taste linger on my tongue. I thought about it for a long time.
***
I’m working at the local Border’s now. The money’s not even close to what I use to make, but I get a great discount on all my books. And when it’s my turn to work the café, I can make an extra strong pot of dark roast. I still think about Dominique today, even though I’ve never heard from her since that day we had our last dinner together in Paris. She’s never replied to any of my letters, but I keep sending them every now and then. Sometimes I write to her in French and sometimes in English, like this next one that I’ll be sending off to her:
Dear Dominique,
Now I can barely tolerate American coffee. Jus de chaussette! That’s what you used to call it. Ah, the French! You can make sock juice sound elegant. Whenever I am lucky enough to find a good coffee here, which isn’t easy, I can tell you, I think of you. I think of the good times we shared. And I think that perhaps you felt that the lessons of life you had to teach me had been learned—even as poorly as I could learn them—and that it was time to teach someone else. That certainly feels better, anyway, than thinking that you dumped me. And after all, it was Montaigne who said, “A man is hurt not so much by what happens as by what he thinks about what happens.”
Amitié,
Mike
Previous | Contents | Next