I can be REALLY stupid
My spousal unit and I were sitting in a Parisian café sipping wine - evokes images doesn't it? You're visualizing a left-bank striped-umbrella-and-arrogant-waiter scene with both of us moodily staring into the Seine. Let me correct that image. We'd had a slow easy morning prowling around Notre Dame Cathedral, spent time in the museum imagining medieval bishops comparing reliquary collections: "Hey, Jean I have two pieces of the true cross." "Nom de dieu! I'll trade you a leg bone of Saint Stephen for one of them."
We were a tad tired, tourist grubby, and thirsty. We ducked into a charmless little café that sold inexpensive sauvignon and microwave hot dogs. Our table had a romantic view of the traffic and was festooned with embedded stains from previous patrons. We were together in Paris on a sunny afternoon and it was quiet.
Blissfully quiet in that odd lull between lunch and early afternoon where one can occupy table space, hold hands and daydream.
It was, after all, Paris.
A shriek reminiscent of the storming of the Bastille broke the afternoon calm. A short hyper-kinetic woman on dangerously high stiletto heels rushed into the restaurant as if pursued by revolting peasants eager to drag her off to the guillotine. Her hair shouted blonde and she punctuated her staccato speech with violent thrusts of her cigarette. She tumbled into the counter jangling bracelets and swishing her Miss Piggy mane.
What horrible catastrophe had she escaped? My limited French was not sufficient to translate the machine gun of words she sprayed onto the waiter. Her huge handbag vomited bills, lipsticks, and coins across the counter. Hurriedly she paid the waiter for a toilet token, that peculiarly French variation on pay toilets whereby restaurants attempt to ensure that their restroom are used by customers.
Clutching the token, she turned and put it into the palm of a drab bovine woman in polyester pants that had lumbered into the café behind her. Speaking as if she were addressing a small child she said, "You must have this to use the toilet. Go down the stairs and put it into the door then turn the handle."
The red faced behemoth shuffled off. The stairs protested her heavy footsteps.
The blonde lit another cigarette off the end of her first one. She seemed to not actually smoke them so much as wave them about. Her high-heeled foot tapped, her rhinestone earrings caught light, and her body shimmered with movement. Words tripped over themselves tumbling out of her mouth. The waiter stood diligently behind the counter his expression one of resignation.
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