Read Online Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La! by Robin Jones Gunn - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robin Jones Gunn
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to retrieve our luggage.
The clerk handed Amy the map along with the keys to our hotel room. We stomped out of the hotel’s automatic door with our arms linked and our purses smashed in between us for added theft protection from sidewalk hooligans.
Our march down the Rue de Rivoli seemed safe enough. Then we turned left at the first narrow side street. The uneven pavement took us past a small convenience store.
“I need some water,” Amy said. “I’m feeling really woozy.”
Entering the small store, Amy greeted the swarthy man behind the register. He was looking at a magazine with a naked woman on the cover.
“Come on.” I nudged her back out of the store. “Let’s keep going. We can get water at the police station.”
“What are you doing?” Amy protested, as I took her arm and pulled her onward.
“What were you doing, trying to start a conversation with that guy?”
“I was being polite. You know, manners? Grandmere taught me a long time ago that when you’re in Paris you’re supposed to greet the shop people and say good-bye when you leave. That’s the Parisian way.”
“Amy, that may have applied when your grandmere lived here, but if you start being polite to every unsavory sort of character in Paris, you’re going to be sorry.”
She looked at me as if I were crazy. “Okay, fine. Let’s just find the police station.”
We forged ahead a few more blocks. The exercise and cool air gave us both a chance to calm down. Turning a corner, we came into an open square encompassed by old stone buildings that looked as though they hadn’t changed for several hundred years. I could almost picture the window shutters on the second story of one of the houses opening up and a maid tossing out a bucket of vegetable peels.
“Look at this!” Amy stopped and took in the slice of Parisian life.
On the corner, accordion music danced its way from under a gathering of café umbrellas looped with twinkle lights. At nearly every table relaxed groups of people sat talking and drinking wine from rounded goblets. A man in a business suit arrived at the café on a Vespa-style motor scooter and parked in front. The streets were too narrow for cars, but plenty of locals were out walking, even though it was past ten o’clock.
“It looks like a movie set.” Amy gazed across the open square to the gathering of human moths fluttering around the flickering lights.
I had to agree. It was magical.
“Look at how happy those people are,” Amy said.
“Yeah, well, that’s because they’re putting food in their mouths, and better still, all of them know where their next change of clean underwear is coming from.”
“Lisa, who cares about underwear at a time like this? Don’t you just want to go over there and start our introduction to Paris all over again?”
I was too numb to answer.
“I do,” she said. “I want to sit at that café with all those French people. I want to eat something deliciously French and listen to them speaking French.”
I wanted to cry. I wanted to sit on that cobblestone street and burst into tears and get it over with. I was tootired, too hungry, and too angry about our stolen luggage to entertain Amy’s dreamy reflections. Using my firmest, nonnegotiable voice, I said, “Amy, we have to file the police report. We can come back and have a leisurely dinner later.”
She sighed, as if the enchanting slice of behind-the-scenes Paris was beginning to evaporate like a mythical Brigadoon and wouldn’t appear for another hundred years. “You’re right.” She fell in step beside me.
We wove our way down another narrow street lined with what looked like front doors to dozens of homes where the lights were off for the evening.
“You know what?” Amy stopped at the comer next to a closed bookshop. “I just realized something. We haven’t prayed yet. God knows where our luggage is. He can direct that driver to come back to the hotel and return our suitcases. Lets ask Him to do
The clerk handed Amy the map along with the keys to our hotel room. We stomped out of the hotel’s automatic door with our arms linked and our purses smashed in between us for added theft protection from sidewalk hooligans.
Our march down the Rue de Rivoli seemed safe enough. Then we turned left at the first narrow side street. The uneven pavement took us past a small convenience store.
“I need some water,” Amy said. “I’m feeling really woozy.”
Entering the small store, Amy greeted the swarthy man behind the register. He was looking at a magazine with a naked woman on the cover.
“Come on.” I nudged her back out of the store. “Let’s keep going. We can get water at the police station.”
“What are you doing?” Amy protested, as I took her arm and pulled her onward.
“What were you doing, trying to start a conversation with that guy?”
“I was being polite. You know, manners? Grandmere taught me a long time ago that when you’re in Paris you’re supposed to greet the shop people and say good-bye when you leave. That’s the Parisian way.”
“Amy, that may have applied when your grandmere lived here, but if you start being polite to every unsavory sort of character in Paris, you’re going to be sorry.”
She looked at me as if I were crazy. “Okay, fine. Let’s just find the police station.”
We forged ahead a few more blocks. The exercise and cool air gave us both a chance to calm down. Turning a corner, we came into an open square encompassed by old stone buildings that looked as though they hadn’t changed for several hundred years. I could almost picture the window shutters on the second story of one of the houses opening up and a maid tossing out a bucket of vegetable peels.
“Look at this!” Amy stopped and took in the slice of Parisian life.
On the corner, accordion music danced its way from under a gathering of café umbrellas looped with twinkle lights. At nearly every table relaxed groups of people sat talking and drinking wine from rounded goblets. A man in a business suit arrived at the café on a Vespa-style motor scooter and parked in front. The streets were too narrow for cars, but plenty of locals were out walking, even though it was past ten o’clock.
“It looks like a movie set.” Amy gazed across the open square to the gathering of human moths fluttering around the flickering lights.
I had to agree. It was magical.
“Look at how happy those people are,” Amy said.
“Yeah, well, that’s because they’re putting food in their mouths, and better still, all of them know where their next change of clean underwear is coming from.”
“Lisa, who cares about underwear at a time like this? Don’t you just want to go over there and start our introduction to Paris all over again?”
I was too numb to answer.
“I do,” she said. “I want to sit at that café with all those French people. I want to eat something deliciously French and listen to them speaking French.”
I wanted to cry. I wanted to sit on that cobblestone street and burst into tears and get it over with. I was tootired, too hungry, and too angry about our stolen luggage to entertain Amy’s dreamy reflections. Using my firmest, nonnegotiable voice, I said, “Amy, we have to file the police report. We can come back and have a leisurely dinner later.”
She sighed, as if the enchanting slice of behind-the-scenes Paris was beginning to evaporate like a mythical Brigadoon and wouldn’t appear for another hundred years. “You’re right.” She fell in step beside me.
We wove our way down another narrow street lined with what looked like front doors to dozens of homes where the lights were off for the evening.
“You know what?” Amy stopped at the comer next to a closed bookshop. “I just realized something. We haven’t prayed yet. God knows where our luggage is. He can direct that driver to come back to the hotel and return our suitcases. Lets ask Him to do
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