Gordon Cope - A Paris Moment

A summer storm is imminent and, as we hurry along rue Vieille du Temple, tiny dust devils dance along the pavement beside us like scruffy dogs. We scurry past the park adjacent to the Picasso Museum and make it to the restaurant entrance just as the first raindrops pound down on the hot July asphalt.

Earlier in the evening, we had passed A 2 Pas du Dos, a charming restaurant just around the corner from our apartment on rue Barbette. The front wall, a series of hinged wood and glass panels, had been accordioned back to open the interior to the street, and tabletop candles glowed invitingly in its dark recesses. The menu posted by the front door guaranteed gustatory paradise in three courses.

We stand inside the doorway for a moment, peering at our surroundings. The dcor is a modern blend of minimalist furniture and semi-abstract paintings of well-endowed Centaurs. The matre d, sporting a rakish set of sideburns, escorts us to a table and introduces us to Adonis, our waiter for the evening. For an apratif, Adonis recommends their house specialty, Kir Royale, a mix of Crme de Cassis liqueur and champagne. Perfect, we decide. If we cant paint the town red, we can at least go for a purplish blue. Flashing a brilliant set of Attic teeth, Adonis bustles off to the bar with our order.

This gives us a chance to survey our surroundings. Casually glancing over the tops of our menus, we admire the nipple rings visible through the mesh T-shirts of the two men sitting beside us. Across the aisle, a very mature businessman in dark glasses is entertaining a very curvy young blonde. Near the door, a party of women with sensibly-shaved heads are feeding a Golden Labrador bread sticks beneath their table. Adonis arrives and, with a flourish, deposits two champagne flutes on our table. We raise our glasses and toast our move to Paris.

Linda and I had been to the city of light many times before as visitors and had always enjoyed the restaurants, museums, cafs and stores. But only in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine living herethat was for millionaires and glamorous people in celebrity magazines.

But, sometimes, fate delivers your dreams on a silver platter. In the middle of June, Linda received a call from Orlin, the manager of a big American firm based in Houston.

How would you like to work for a year in Paris?

You mean, Paris, Texas?

Hell, no, he boomed. Paris, France.

It took Linda a moment to find her voice. Do you need a decision right now?

Course not, Honey. Take a week to think about it.

We spent the next seven days in a state of giddy dread. We knew that an international assignment, even in a city as wonderful as Paris, was no promenade in the parc ; there were always obstacles. Of all the possible problems that might arise, speaking French, not unusually, was right there on top of the list.

I grew up in a town where children were arbitrarily punished with compulsory French lessons. Madame Trussler was a hatchet-faced woman who would order us to conjugate verbs for a half-hour every morning until she could stand it no more, and would harangue us in a salty French that we were never able to locate in our primers.

After two years of sufferance, I was released from Madame Trusslers ministrations and fled to senior high school where, through the kind of luck experienced by passengers on the Titanic, I was assigned to her husband, Monsieur Trussler. Although he struggled manfully to pound the niceties of French into my thick skull, the highlight of five years of lessons was my ability to order a peanut-butter and banana sandwich.

Not that I was afraid of going to a country where I did not comprehend the language I once spent a year in Australia but there are strict laws in France against abusing the language. My version of French went way past abuse, more in the area of aggravated assault. I envisioned the language police pulling me over to the curb and forcing me to speak into a voice analyzer to confirm that I was well over the limit of tolerance. I would then be cuffed and hauled before a magistrate who would sentence me to four years with Madame Trussler. Would I risk going to Paris for that?

A second concern was the matter of documentation. Linda needed to start the job immediately, and such niceties as work visas would have to wait until a later date. The agreement was that she would be hired as a consultant through our company in Calgary and merely be stationed in Paris on a temporary basis, but this was a flimsy fig leaf in the official eyes of Gallic bureaucracy. Would we have to travel to France on the undercarriage of the Concorde?