I felt transformed and told Amy so. She smiled. “Voilá! We are suddenly très chic.”
With our spirits splendidly elevated, Amy and I ventured into three more stores. None of them had anything we considered a “find,” so we window-shopped the rest of the boulevard. By the time we had scoped out the last shop, Amy was looking at her watch.
“We can still make it to Napoleon’s tomb.”
I thought she was kidding and said, “Oh, goodie! I was hoping we would have time for that today.”
Her expression let me know that unless I wanted to be left to find my way back to the hotel on foot or at the mercy of the next Parisian taxi driver who came along, I better stow my sarcasm and stick with her. I decided it was a French thing to want to visit Napoleon’s tomb and looked at the map with her. The most direct route to the Invalides was via the underground Metro.
Our feet led us to down under the city at the first Metro station we came to. I had forgotten how impressive this elaborate transportation system was and how strange it felt to be walking through long well-lit tunnels underground.
Amy’s French proved useful once again, as we figured out how to buy tickets and board the right train. We had no problem slipping through the sliding doors as they opened and joining the startlingly wide variety of people sitting and standing in the modern train.
“Look around,” Amy whispered to me as we stood near each other, our shoulder bags in protective mode. I had fixed my gaze out the window and was watching the walls flash past as we sped to the next stop.
“Look at all the faces,” Amy whispered.
I looked at the faces around us. Within our train car we had a mix of skin color, hair color, and apparel that made our group look as if we were headed to a photo shoot for an ad about honoring diversity.
When we slipped out of the train at Invalides, Amy smiled widely. “It was like heaven in there.”
“Heaven?”
“Yes. All those different people. So much variety. I loved it!”
Then, as if to back up her impression of the heavenlies, music suddenly filled the hollowed-out underground tunnels. A musician stood in the center of the main connecting tunnel playing a pan flute. A woman sat beside him, a blanket wrapped around her legs and holding a small wooden bowl in her outstretched hand, soliciting donations for the free concert.
Amy stepped to the side and closed her eyes to listen. The haunting melody echoed off the tiled chamber and came back to face us. Like a lonely hitchhiker, the song was looking for a free ride out of the underground chambers. We had stopped long enough for the tune to hop in.
That’s all it took for the graceful notes to settle inside our heads and catch a free ride as far as we were willing to take it. Amy placed a large bill in the wooden bowl of the music-givers and walked away humming.
We came up topside to the other world where car horns and screeching brakes created the melodies that echoed off the tall, plastered walls of the weary buildings. A fine rain fell on our faces at an angle and continued to mist us all the way to the golden dome of the Invalides museum. We toured the war museum and marched with a host of interested viewers past the tomb of Napoleon I.
I don’t know if it was a memorable experience for Amy or not. We were both so weary by the time we found a nearby bistro that our dinner conversation consisted of comments on the excellent French onion soup and amazement at how much rain was now pelting the streets outside.
We were soaked by the time we hurried from the bistro to the curb, where we hailed a taxi and made sure we didn’t put our shopping bags in the trunk.
The rain still was coming down in earnest when we reached our hotel and paid the taxi driver nine euros. That’s when Amy realized how much the unscrupulous driver had overcharged us for the ride from the airport.
“I’m not going to let it get to me.” She turned to me in the compact elevator. “It’s not worth being mad about. Thanks for not making a big deal about it, Lisa. You could have scolded me royally that first night when I overpaid him, but you didn’t.”
I didn’t tell Amy that I’d thought about it. Wasn’t that the same as actually saying something?
“Grace upon grace,” Amy said as she slipped the key into our hotel room door. “That’s what you have always given me.”
“Actually, I would say that’s what you’ve given me, Amy.”
“You give me more.”
“No, Amy, you give me more.”
She laughed. “I’m not going to fight with you over which one of us is better at heaping grace upon grace. Let’s just say that God is the One who pours the grace on us every day, and every now and then you and I have so much left over that we manage to share some of it with each other.”
“Okay. I’ll agree to that.”
Upon entering our room, we found a sealed envelope that apparently had been slipped under our door while we were away. Inside was a handwritten note from the inspector who had dashed out of the hotel in pursuit of the taxi driver. As best as Amy could decipher, the inspector was asking her to call him when we returned.
“I think we better wait till morning to call,” Amy said. “It’s so late.”
“I wonder if he wants more details.” I slipped into the bathroom. “Because I don’t think there’s much else we could tell him. Hey, I’m going to take a shower to warm up, unless you want to take one first.”
“No, I’m too tired.”
By the time I emerged ready for bed, Amy already was asleep. She had the television news on low. I watched CNN for a while in the dim light, curious to see what was happening at home and in the rest of the world. It struck me that with only one station available, it could influence a viewer’s opinion of world events without the person even realizing it. At home we had several news channels to choose from, so we heard various angles on the same story. I felt far from home for the first time on our trip.
I didn’t miss home very much. I missed Joel but not too much. Mostly I felt privileged to be in Paris with Amy and even more privileged to experience this adventure with her in such comfort.
Wrapping the extra blanket from the closet around my shoulders, I pulled the corner chair up to the window. A wonder-world of glimmering lights filled my view. For a long time I hid behind the fold of the open drapes and watched Paris sleep.
In the solitude I thought about Gerard. I thought about my childhood. I thought about all the expectations placed on me in my early years and how diligently I had tried to follow the rules and stay off the punishment radar screen at my house. I thought about how old I was and how Amy seemed so much younger than me. She retained some sort of lovely strain of lightheartedness from our childhood while I … well, I mostly hid. Hiding felt familiar. It seemed the only way to keep from feeling overwhelmed.
Padding over to my bed, I burrowed under the covers and recalled the hitchhiking flute notes from the Metro. They played an evening serenade for me. Sleep came with a snuffer and put out all my flickering thoughts.
I woke to the sound of Amy dialing the phone.
“What time is it?” I mumbled.
“Eight o’clock, sleepyhead.”
“I hope you’re calling room service for a pot of coffee, Little Miss Merry Sunshine.”
“No, I’m calling the inspector.”
I rolled over in bed and tried to snatch another few moments of precious sleep while Amy engaged in a lengthy phone conversation accompanied by a lot of note taking on a piece of hotel stationery.
“You’re not going to believe this!” Amy exclaimed after she hung up.
“Are you going to call for coffee now?” I muttered.
“Lisa, forget the coffee. You and I are heroes!”
“Good.” I still hadn’t opened my eyes. “When the people of Paris decide to construct a statue to commemorate our ability to be duped by a local con artist, may I pretty please pose with a cup of coffee in my hand?”
“You didn’t even hear why we’re heroes!” Amy came over and bounc
ed on the end of my bed. “Wake up! Look at me. They got the guy. The inspector caught the taxi driver. He said it was because of us!”
I forced myself up on my elbows and squinted at the beaming Amy Morning Glory. “Really?”
“Yes! How’s that for making our mark on this fine city?”
“We don’t have to identify the guy in a lineup or anything, do we?”
“No. The inspector was calling to say that as his way of personally thanking us, he would like to treat us to dinner tomorrow night at his brother’s restaurant.”
I looked at Amy skeptically. “Is that normal?”
“It’s a very French thing to do. I have the directions. Our reservations are for eight o’clock. So, let’s get going and see what we can see between now and eight o’clock tomorrow night.”
I flopped back in bed. “You call for the coffee, and I’ll lie here and decide what to wear to our award ceremony.”
“Come on.” Amy tugged at my blankets and shone her bright mood all over me. “The day awaits us! Let’s get out in it and find some breakfast. It will be something new, instead of the same old croissants and coffee.”
I failed to see how scrumptious flaky croissants and splendid French roast coffee with real cream had turned into “the same old” after only two mornings. But I knew better than to argue, so I tumbled out of bed in an effort to keep up with Amy-girl. She seemed determined to kick our sightseeing up a notch and demonstrate to me how to “shake what my mama gave me.” Shirleene would have been proud of her.
I, on the other hand, wanted to slip her a sleeping pill.
I can describe our day of sightseeing with one word. Exasperating.
We ate a leisurely breakfast at a café three doors down from our hotel. The rain from the night before continued to keep the streets slick, and as a result, we witnessed a fender bender out the window. It seemed like a good day for the Louvre. And a good day for umbrellas, which we purchased from a sidewalk vendor for five euros each. Mine broke within two blocks on our way to the Louvre when a sharp wind popped it inside out. As the wind rose, the April shower turned fierce.
Huddling under Amy’s umbrella, we tromped through puddles and arrived at the Louvre’s entrance only to find it closed. Who closes a major museum on a Tuesday?
Chilled on the outside and slightly steamed on the inside, we slipped into a taxi and asked to go to Montmartre. The quaint restaurants and sidewalk artists painting portraits sounded so appealing when Jill had told us about this district outside the city.
Again, we weren’t thinking. Or reading our travel guides. As the driver took us through the mangle of traffic, we only managed to inch our way through the main intersections. We should have taken the Metro.
“This is ridiculous.” I watched the meter click as we sat still. “Amy, would you mind trying this another day? It’s cold, and we’re not going to want to linger at the outdoor artists’ stands. They might not even be painting today because of the weather.”
“You’re right.” She asked the driver to turn around the first chance he got and take us to Hotel Isabella.
That minor accomplishment took forty-five minutes. I don’t want to talk about how much the cab cost us.
It was almost two in the afternoon when we unlocked the door to our room. We both immediately noted that our room hadn’t yet received maid service.
“I can’t believe this day!” Amy dropped her wet umbrella in the corner and marched over to the phone to request the room be cleaned.
All I wanted to do was soak in a hot bath to remove the chill. Instead, I changed into my warmest sweater and a dry pair of pants. Amy changed as well and told me we needed to leave when the maid came in to clean up.
“The room isn’t that bad,” I said. “We can tidy it up. Just ask for some dry towels, and we’ll be fine.”
Amy shook her head. “I made too much of a fuss when I called down to the desk. Come on, I’ll treat you to a chocolate drink at Angelina’s.”
I would have argued, but my defenses were down. Angelina’s was close. The walkway was covered. There didn’t seem much to complain about.
We sat at a small table for two next to the wall and tried to medicate our tourist ills with all the goodies that had charmed us the sunny afternoon we had spent there with Jill. Today, nothing cheered us up.
“Have you noticed how crazy everything has been on this trip?” Amy asked.
Feeling sassy I said, “Well, yeah. I’ve been here, too, you know.”
“Drink some more chocolate,” Amy said. “You’re not sweetened up enough yet. All I was trying to say was that everything we’ve experienced is either over-the-moon spectacular or jump-off-a-cliff horrible.”
“I know.” I used my two thin straws to stir what remained of the chocolate. “That’s Paris for you. I tried to warn you.”
Amy scowled at me. “It’ll get better.”
We sloshed our way back to our room and spent the remainder of the stormy afternoon taking turns soaking in the bathtub. A tiny corner of my psyche said this was my fault. I knew it was ridiculous to blame myself, but that’s what I did whenever frustration set in. After all, I was the one who had wanted to give Amy a sleeping pill to slow her down. I had made that silent wish, and this is what happened.
Amy turned on the television and watched Back to the Future in French. I slept through most of it and was thankful for a day to let my wits catch up with my body.
“Feeling better?” Amy asked, when I woke up after dark. She was curled up on the chair by the window with the tour book in her lap.
“Much better.” I stretched and said nodding at the book, “I wondered why none of the tour books suggests planning a day in the schedule to adjust.”
“Do you mean going ‘back to the future’ and adjusting the flux capacitor in one’s time-space continuum?”
“What are you talking about?”
Amy laughed. “Too much TV. Hey, what do you think of taking a bus tour?”
“Tomorrow?”
“No, now. A company down the road from here offers night tours on a double-decker bus. What do you think?”
“Is it still raining?”
“Nope. Skies are clear. Stars are coming out.”
“Well, in that case, we better go join them.” As a night person, I was ready to get up and go. Amy-girl hadn’t napped. She wouldn’t know what hit her.
I bundled up, expecting to be chilled again, but the night was calm and mild. The vicious rain clouds had drifted off to pester some other city. As we left the room, Amy stuffed a box of unopened chocolate into her shoulder bag. It was our only purchase of the day from a candy store next to Angelina’s.
“Expecting to do a little snacking on the tour?” I asked.
“No, these are for the boys.”
I didn’t know why she would take the candy she had purchased for her husband and son. “For Mark and Davy?”
“No, the boys at the police station. I wanted to give them a thank-you gift.”
I sent her a motherly look over the top of my glasses. “Are you still looking for a ride on the back of a Vespa?”
“No,” Amy said coyly. “Of course not. I’m being polite. I am French, you know. This is what we do.”
I nodded and took note of an important fact: Amy was wearing her skinny jeans.
“Why don’t we go to the police station first?” I suggested, guessing that Amy wasn’t as interested in a bus tour as she had pretended to be.
“Okay.”
We retraced our steps from our first night in Paris and found the enchanting tucked-away square as inviting as it had been on our first view of it. In unison we said, “We should go to that café.”
Laughing at our spontaneous harmony of thought, we linked arms, and Amy said, “After the police station.”
I added, “Instead of the bus tour.”
“Thanks for not pointing out the obvious,” Amy said.
“Obvious what?”
“The obvious f
act that in forty-five years my priorities haven’t changed much. Boys and food always seem to make their way to the top of the list.”
I laughed some more and couldn’t stop smiling when we entered the police station. As soon as the young officers on night duty saw Amy and me, they snapped to attention and began talking to Amy with more animation than we had seen on our previous visit. Obviously the news of Amy’s and my elevation to French heroine status had spread to the station.
She presented them with the box of chocolates, and they expressed their unworthiness with a charm that even I, the skeptic, found irresistible. Coming around to our side of the counter, the boys thanked us both with airy kisses on each cheekbone. The slender one smelled like cigarettes.
“Old enough to be their mother,” I muttered to Amy with my teeth fixed in a smile.
She ignored me and gave the boys a gracious dip of her chin. With what I assumed to be words of farewell, Amy waved, and we turned to go.
The taller one stopped us. He made an appeal to Amy, looking at her with puppy dog eyes. She gleamed. I scowled. Then I pulled out my camera. I knew what was coming.
Two minutes later, I stood on the curb outside the police station, watching Amy ride off on the back of the officer’s Vespa.
Her exuberant “Wheeee!” echoed down the narrow street, and I grinned at my lighthearted friend.
As they bumped over the cobblestones on their way to the café, I murmured, “Oh, Amy-girl, you are definitely shakin’ what yo’ mama gave you!”
I caught it all, up close, in the viewfinder of my camera. Even the fluttering scarf around her neck looked like it was having a grand time. But because I’m her best friend, I didn’t press the button that would freeze-frame the view of her jolly backside for all posterity.