My heart beat a strange rhythm. It was as if something eternal had passed over my thoughts. I almost glimpsed something beyond comprehension. But what? It came so close my spirit reached with all five fingers of my senses, longing to touch whatever it was.
Was that You, God?
I wanted to run after Him. Him! God. Amy’s Papa. My almighty, omnipotent, heavenly Father who was untouchable and unfathomable.
He passed by, and my heart surged at the possibility.
A clear thought settled on me. God was the artist. Every molecule was set in obedient motion to Him in this space between Himself and His subject. That space swirled with calculated mystery. Yet I, the subject of His affection, was the maverick. Ever resisting.
“Ready, Lisa?”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Jill just said she has to get going to make her flight. Do you want to leave, too, or stay a little longer?”
“We can go. Sorry. I just got a little spacey there for a minute.”
“Ah, the joys of jet lag,” Jill said. “Try to take lots of vitamin C. And sleep, of course, when you can.”
We exchanged our contact information, and before Jill caught a taxi at the curb, she hugged us both warmly and invited us to visit her any time in Wellington. We returned the invitation, but somehow going to Kentucky didn’t sound quite as exciting as New Zealand.
“Are you okay?” Amy asked as we walked the short distance back to our hotel.
I nodded. “Just thinking. Taking it all in.”
“Do you want to see something else now? Or should we go back to our room and call it a day?”
“It’s such a calm evening, after the wind this afternoon. What about taking a boat ride?”
“I’m in,” Amy said.
“Let’s hope you’re not all the way in,” I said.
She didn’t catch my attempt to compete with her earlier joke, so I explained it to her. “You’re in, but not all the way in because if you were all the way in, that would make you in Seine.”
Apparently her earlier pun now escaped her, and she looked confused.
“Never mind.” I remembered how my dad used to say that if you had to explain a joke, it wasn’t really a joke, and therefore it didn’t bear repeating.
Retracing our steps to the Pont Royal, Amy and I walked down the steps to the river level and bought two tickets for a ride in a covered passenger boat. The bench seat we selected near the front accommodated the two of us with room to spare. Only a few others joined us for our evening cruise. By the way they were dressed, several of the passengers looked as if they were commuting or on their way to meet someone for dinner. This certainly was a leisurely way to go.
“It looks different from this level, doesn’t it?” Amy said.
“What looks different?”
“Paris. The city. The buildings. You have to look up to see anything, and none of it appears the same as it did when we were viewing it from our hotel window.”
“You know, I read in one of the guide books that if you want to get a unique view of Paris, you can take a tour of the sewers.”
“You can’t be serious,” Amy said. “That’s not my idea of a good time.”
“Mine either.”
“I like this speed.” Amy leaned back and gazed out the glass top of the boat to view the bridge we were motoring under. “I want to see as much as we can of Paris. Just not from the heights or the depths.”
“Heights?”
“I don’t do heights. You know that.”
I tried to remember if I knew that Amy had a thing about heights. It had been years since she and I had done anything that required significant elevation. She hadn’t expressed any fear when we boarded the plane or when she looked out the hotel room window.
Her next sentence began with, “Ever since your brother Will …” and then a distinct memory returned to me.
Amy and I were nine or ten years old. We were playing outside at my house when Amy threw my brother’s football onto the roof. The football got stuck at the edge along the gutter. Will brought out a ladder, and then he made Amy climb up it to retrieve the football. She accepted the task, but then my brother shook the ladder and teased her.
I yelled at him to stop. Amy froze and clung to the rungs, unable to move up or down. After I threatened to tell on him, Will finally stopped shaking the ladder. It still took a lot of coaxing before Amy tapped the football loose, and it tumbled to the ground.
Hanging on for dear life, she called down something that made Will crack up. “Gravity always works, doesn’t it?”
I knew she was afraid. But it did seem odd for her to be thinking of scientific principles at such a moment.
“Come on, Isaac Newton,” Will called up to her. “I have to put away the ladder.” Then he gave the ladder another shake.
I screamed at him and told him to bug off.
Poor Amy couldn’t move. She stayed on that ladder, clinging to the rungs for a long time before I could make my annoying brother go away. Once he left with his heckling laughter, I talked Amy down one rung at a time. She crumpled to the ground, patting the earth like a lost pet that had returned. I’d never seen her so shaken.
“Lisa,” she had said with a quivering voice, “promise me you’ll never make me climb up a ladder again for the rest of my life.”
I promised her I wouldn’t, and as far as I knew, she never had climbed a ladder again.
That memory made me realize something I suppose I knew from the beginning of our friendship: Amy needed to know she could trust people. That’s why she continually extracted promises from me during our childhood. She was testing my loyalty. My devotion must have no longer been in question because she hadn’t asked me to promise her anything for years.
I had a feeling that might change before this trip was over.
Our boat slowed as it approached the landing near the Eiffel Tower. The evening had pacified itself with a soft blanket of twilight. Amber flecks of sunlight seemed to evaporate from the sky dot by dot. They transferred their glow to dozens of lights in the city that rose above us.
As we left the boat and climbed the steps, we saw where the dots of broken sun had gone. Streetlights, car lights, lights in cafés, and lights in apartment windows all began to come on one by one. The City of Lights was warming up. Soon she would show us her symphony of brilliance.
We stood together at street level, speechless. Before us stood the magnificent icon of Paris. La Tour Eiffel. The enormous structure rose from the earth with a grandeur that confused the senses.
At first approach, the Eiffel Tower seemed of such mountainous proportions that it appeared to have sprouted from the earth on its own. It was like a fixture that had always been there, like the Seine. At the same time, the monstrosity looked so see-through and fragile that one gale-force wind would be all that was needed to blow the whole thing down like a child’s tower of toothpicks. I remembered feeling the same overwhelming sense of complexities the first time I walked underneath the Eiffel Tower more than two decades ago.
“You know the Eiffel Tower shouldn’t still be here,” I said. “It was set up for a world’s fair and was supposed to be taken down afterward, but they bolstered it up, and it’s still here.”
“And exactly when was it supposed to be demolished?” Amy asked.
“I don’t remember. The late 1800s, I think.”
Amy had redirected her attention to a Parisian vendor who sported a white chef’s hat and coat. He stood inside a small trailer holding a shallow frying pan and working over a small set of burners. A wonderful fragrance wafted our way.
“What does that smell like to you? Waffle cones?” I asked.
“Or crepes.” Amy sniffed the air with a more developed sensitivity for French food. “Ooh, doesn’t a crepe sound delicious right now?”
“Crěpe suzette,” I said, reading the sign that came into view over the trailer as Amy and I approached. A line had formed, and we soon knew why. This chef deliver
ed a puppet show along with his gourmet crepes-to-go. His right hand was covered with a thick oven mitt that was shaped like an alligator. The alligator gripped the long handle of the frying pan and randomly would pop up and have a look at the crowd with googly eyes on top of its head.
Two small children who stood to the side with their watchful parents called out to the alligator. The alligator was busy shaking the pan and not responding. They called out again and giggled. I had no idea what language they were speaking.
The alligator suddenly seemed to notice them and lunged forward with a snap. They were thrilled. And so were the rest of us. The entire time the chef was at work, he didn’t appear to look up at the customers or interact with them. Mr. Alligator handled all his public relations.
Amy and I stepped to the front of the line, and the alligator asked in French what we wanted. I poked Amy and told her in a whisper to order for me. The alligator was staring at me, and I didn’t want to get snapped at. Amy chose something from the list of five options on the menu posted on the side of the trailer. She paid the woman who was sitting in a covert corner inside the trailer, balancing the cash box on her lap.
Two crepes were prepared efficiently in two separate pans, but with alligator’s watchful attention to each as they cooked simultaneously. One of the crepes simmered with a mixture of ham, cheese, and shallots. The other one was stuffed with sliced strawberries, drizzled with chocolate sauce, and dolloped with a dab of whipping cream. With his un-puppeted hand, the chef flipped the thin pancake into the shape of what looked to me like a neatly folded burrito.
Receiving our tidy treats, we both offered a “merci” to the glaring alligator that seemed to watch us walk away. We found an open bench and shared our dinner, in plein air, lounging in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
Suddenly the four-legged giant before us lit up. The lights ran up all four sides at the same moment and pulsated several times, like a strobe light.
“Come on.” I urged Amy to take the last bite. “Let’s cross the street and take a closer look.”
Amy seemed to hang back as I boldly approached the great edifice. I grinned at her over my shoulder. “It’s not going to bite you.”
“I know.” Amy picked up her pace and arrived at the underbelly of the creature three full steps before me. She looked up at the optical illusion of so many “sticks” holding the tower in place.
I pulled out my camera and took a picture of Amy looking up with her mouth open. Then I took a picture of the internal inversion. I doubted the shot would come out, even with the flash, because it was so dark.
“We’re going to come back later to take pictures of us in front,” I said.
“Take a picture of me over here.” Amy wove her way through the throng of tourists milling around, and I followed. I found it amazing to be around so many people and to hear different languages. Some of the tourists stood in line to buy tickets for one of the elevators that would take them to the top. Others came down from their ride to one of the three levels and talked with their friends. Their gestures were animated, and their expressions were flushed.
Amy reached one of the four “legs” of the Eiffel Tower and put both her hands on the huge metal support. “Here. Take my picture.” She leaned so it looked as if she were single-handedly holding up the column.
I made sure the flash was on as she warmed up to the beast. “Beauty and the Beast!” I called out as I snapped the picture. Amy didn’t catch the connection, but that was okay. She was slowly making friends with the Eiffel Tower, and I knew that was going to be an important first step before she would be willing to step into one of the compact elevators and take the ride of her life to the top.
I just hoped she didn’t view the triangle-shaped structure as the world’s largest ladder, because from up at the top, there would be no doubt that gravity worked. All the time.
We didn’t go up the Eiffel Tower that second night in Paris. I didn’t even bring it up as an option. We had time. I knew Amy would want to come back.
The next morning she was up before I was. I woke when I heard her singing in the shower. Joel was a morning person, too. It never ceased to amaze me how chipper morning people could be. It wasn’t natural.
Rolling over and reaching for the phone, I called room service. Fortunately, the hotel employee taking calls was willing to answer me in English and even asked if I wanted cream with the coffee.
“I ordered an omelet,” I told Amy when she emerged with a towel wrapped around her wet hair. “And coffee.”
“Oh, good. I was just thinking I could go for an omelet this morning. Thanks, Lisa.”
By the time I was out of the shower, the food had arrived, and Amy was pouring the fragrant French roast coffee. She was dressed in a skirt and sweater accessorized with a scarf around her neck.
“Don’t you look lovely?” I wondered if this meant I needed to dress up a bit as well. “What’s on the tour schedule for today?”
“It’s sunny, so I thought this might be our day to hit the Champs-Elysées. We could walk there, through the park. What do you think?”
Clearly, this was Amy’s D-day in France. Forget the World War II landing on the beaches of Normandy. Today was “Debutante Day,” and Amy was ready!
I tried to select a “fancy” outfit to wear, but I wasn’t a fancy sort of dresser. What I had brought with me was practical and not very exciting. Nevertheless, I was out the door with Amy before ten o’clock and armed with all my spending money. The stores wouldn’t know what hit them!
Strolling the length of the covered arcade of the Rue de Rivoli, Amy and I took our time, window shopping but not buying anything yet. It didn’t make sense to us to buy something that was down the way from our hotel and then carry it with us for the rest of the day.
Amy spotted a designer shop, and we took a detour down a side street that opened up into another wide boulevard lined with impressive, classy old buildings. We ended up passing the Ritz Hotel, and that’s when we knew we were out of our element. The first shop we went into was a clothing store that carried a designer label I wasn’t familiar with. Amy took one quick look around, and we exited with a polite “au revoir” to the shop attendant who looked at us with disdain.
“This was not what I had in mind when I thought we could do some shopping,” Amy said once we were outside the exclusive shop. “Let’s find some stores where we can afford to buy something.”
We headed back the way we had entered the high-end area and came out at the Place de la Concorde. I pulled out the map to get our bearings. To our left was the main section of the Tuileries Gardens that we had viewed from our hotel window. That portion of the gardens covered well over a mile and seemed to roll itself out from the Louvre’s courtyard. A note on the map said that the far-reaching gardens were begun in the 1600s and showed meticulous attention to symmetry. It was the Central Park of Paris with rows of shady trees, gravel walkways, ponds for floating toy sailboats, open-air cafés, and elaborate fountains. The park came to an abrupt halt at a wide intersection where we now stood. In front of us zoomed a steady flow of traffic.
“Look.” Amy pointed to the front of a gated compound to our right. “It’s the American Embassy.”
“That’s always good to know,” I said with a nod to the two uniformed marines who stood at the entrance.
“Do you have any idea what that is?” Amy motioned to a pointed obelisk in the center of the traffic circle that punctuated the air like an exclamation mark. In front of it was a huge fountain with an imposing statue.
“I have no idea.” I looked around to get a point of reference from the landmarks and to make sure I was reading the map correctly. “If that’s the Fleur de Lis Hotel behind us, then this is the Place de la Concorde.”
“That’s the Fleur de Lis Hotel?” Amy spun around. “You’re kidding! Grandmere talked about that hotel. She went there one time when she was young. For tea. She said she wore gloves and had to sit up straight the whole time. We should
go there, Lisa. For tea. Just like Grandmere did.”
“Sounds good to me. Do you still want to know about this seventy-two-foot obelisk here at the Place de la Concorde?”
“Sure.”
“The book says it’s a 2,300-year-old-relic and was a gift to Paris in the early 1800s from Egypt.” I read the final line from the guidebook. “ ‘A plaque in front of the obelisk marks the location where the guillotine was used during the French Revolution to remove over two thousand citizens from their heads.’ ”
Amy and I looked at each other with a matching expression of discomfort. Neither of us was prepared for this gruesome bit of French history. Especially when the small detail of the loss of two thousand lives was delivered with a poor attempt at humor.
Amy looked at the book and finished the last paragraph for me. “ ‘Marie Antoinette was among the thousands who met with the guillotine’s blade on this square.’ ”
We looked at each other in solemn remembrance as the swirl of vehicles made their whiplash turns around the fountain and obelisk, heading for the bridge across the Seine.
“Do you know much about the French Revolution?” Amy asked.
“No. All I remember was that the peasants went crazy and stormed the Bastille prison to set the prisoners free.”
“I know that was the start,” Amy said. “But once the royalty had been removed from the throne, no one trusted anyone to make decisions and run the new republic. Grandmere used to say the birth of liberty in France was a bloody birth. Too many innocents were wrongly accused and beheaded along with the rebels.”
“So many lives lost.” I glanced at the tour book. A side note caught my eye. “Wow,” I said under my breath.
“What?”
“It says the bridge underpass where Princess Diana lost her life is three bridges downstream from here at Pont de l’Alma.”
“Wasn’t she coming from the Ritz Hotel that night? We just walked past that hotel.”
“I know.”
We stood together looking at the map in the tour book. All around us rushed the city’s noise. Diesel fumes floated our way from a large truck that aggressively took the turn. We were within walking distance of original art that had filled our imaginations yesterday with freedom and life. Yet at the same time we were within walking distance of where two princesses had died a hundred and fifty years apart from each other.