David Lebovitz - L’appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Dianne Jacob, Miranda Junowicz Bothe, Paule Caillat, Emily Cunningham, Marc Desportes, Susan Friedland, Mara Goldberg, Jeannette Hermann, Steve Horton, Mohammed Issa, Hlne Le Cheviller, David Leite, Romina Rasmussen, lisabeth de Rothschild, Lauren Seaver, and Carolyn Touquet. My appreciation to Cindy Meyers for testing the recipes and her valuable feedback.

At Crown Publishing, thanks to Domenica Alioto for being such a diligent editor, helping me put the story (and keep my head) together, and being exceptionally understanding of such a spcial author. And to her assistant, Claire Potter, for additional advice and support. Merci beaucoup to proofreader Benjamin Hamilton and production editor Ada Yonenaka. And publisher Aaron Wehner, for making sure I was in a good home.

To my agent, Bonnie Nadell, for feedback on the proposal and beyond, and to Austen Rachlis, for taking care of the details.

And to Romain Pellas, even though you dont always understand mesomehow, you do.

ALSO BY DAVID LEBOVITZ

The Sweet Life in Paris

My Paris Kitchen

Ready for Dessert

The Perfect Scoop

The Great Book of Chocolate

Authors Note

In some instances, for the sake of continuity, events have been condensed for clarity. Most names have been changed in this book. The only person whose name didnt get changed was Romains, since theres nothing about him that I would ever want to change.

Ive mostly used the euro as currency since it seemed incongruent to talk in U.S. dollars when mentioning purchases in France. Although the dollar sank to an all-time low while I was in the process of buying the apartment, at the time of the publication of this book it had stabilized to roughly the equivalent of the U.S. dollar, give or take 10 percent. (In my case, it always seemed to be take.)

Lastly, the story and descriptions in this book are a snapshot of a certain time in Paris. Paris changes frequently, so some of the incidents, social and business customs, and places mentioned in the book may not be the same as they are today.

Index of Recipes

Pee in this cup.

The stern doctor sat behind the desk in her dim beige office, under-illuminated by a metal desk lamp fitted with a bulb that cast a dull glow over everything and seemed to have been last changed when De Gaulle was president. She handed me a paper receptacle that felt like it was made of newsprint and averted her eyessomewhat.

It had been eight exasperating months since Id signed the first promesse de vente and finally, I was close to the day when I would sign the acte de vente , the deed to my apartment in Paris. Or as time-pressed Parisians shorten it: lappart .

And here I was. The last acte I had to do wasjustrelaxWhich, considering the circumstancesbeing vaguely scrutinized by a doctor while standing in the middle of her cabinet , anxiously trying to fill a paper cup that threatened to crumple in my free handis not an easy task.

Maybe if Id had a grand caf crme beforehandor better yet, a big glass of ros, I thought, while sheand Iwaited for me to breathe a shudder of relief, so she could go home and I could get the final approval on my bank loan. We were in the same position (well, not literally), waiting for the same thing. Shed already taken a blood sample and rigorously checked my vital signs to make sure I was in the bonne sant required by the French bank to approve my mortgage.

Id applied for a few mortgages before, in the United States, but a medical screening had never been part of the approval process. I was puzzled, until a banker explained it to me: Monsieur Lebovitz, we dont want you to die. Which was something I couldnt disagree withthey wanted confirmation that I would live long enough to pay for the place. (Later I learned that they had good reason to worry, because that almost didnt happen.) I urgently needed to complete this final task before theyd release the funds for the loan and I could finally take possession of the apartment Id spent years looking for.

Ever since my arrival in Paris a decade earlier, I had been living in a charming chambre de bonne , one of the minuscule top-floor apartments tucked just under the curving roof of a blocky yet regal Haussmannian building in the Bastille quarter of Paris. Chambres de bonne are single rooms where the maids ( les bonnes ) once lived. Nowadays, theyre sought after by Parisians because they are often the cheapest places to buy, especially the ones in buildings without elevators. (Which is why you rarely see Parisians needing to engage in the unsightly spectacle of le jogging although Id recently spotted one woman running in the Tuileries, doing her laps in espadrilles.) Other advantages are the spectacular views, and best of all, there are no neighbors in heels clomping around above you.

In Paris, the more high-strung the woman, the higher the heels, which I know from firsthand experience. And not just from one of the many narrow misses Ive had with them playing the Parisian version of chicken (not sure if they call it poulet ) on the sidewalks to see who will move first. (Ive learned that holding a baguette and swinging it parallel to the ground, just below waist level, gets anyone youre up against to move first.) But because there was one living below me who was so hyperactive that I could hear her racing around at all hoursmost often between one and four thirty in the morning, when her heels resonated so loudly that the noise woke me up a full floor above her.

Another thing that made it hard to sleep in that apartment was the weather, though I didnt mind staying awake, listening to the pounding thunderstorms that lash down on Paris. The pelting rain in the fall and winter drowned out the traffic noises on the busy boulevard below and would eventually soothe me to sleep. But come summer, sleepingor doing anything elsebecame impossible, as the temperatures soared under the zinc roof (which I lived directly beneath) to as high as 110F. The only upside was that I had a lot of premelted chocolate always on hand.

The chambres de bonne were built to house the help, so were intentionally Spartan. The apartments didnt have kitchens and some had separate back staircases so the domestics could discreetly slip into the familys apartment without having to pass through the front door. Bathrooms were shared Turkish toilets in the hallways. So next time youre in Paris and lusting over a rooftop apartment listed in a real estate agency window, check to see if there is a bathroomand an elevator, unless you dont mind climbing up seven flights of stairs. More and more of the buildings do have elevators now, but many still share one bathroom with everyone else on the floor. (And speaking of floors, theyre often Turkish toilets, which consist of a hole in the floor with two places to stand your ground.) Fortunately, my landlord had previously lived in the apartment, so I wasnt sharing any bathrooms, which was good for my neighbors considering the length of time it was taking for me to finalize my real estate transaction. Sure, the chambres de bonne are charming, or cozy, as theyd say in American real estate lingo, but most are just a single room, 200 to 300 square feet (18 to 28 square meters), or roughly the size of an American kitchen.

I tried to buy the apartment I had been living in, because it was incredibly well situated. My place had been joined with another chambre next door, so I actually had two rooms, which made all my other friends who lived in a chambre de bonne (singular) jealous. It also had a phone boothsize elevator that I took for granteduntil it broke. I was crammed in there when it malfunctioned, and barely managed to crook my elbow to lift the emergency phone to my ear to call the elevator company. Eventually, someone picked up, but the woman on the other end told me to call back in two hours because all the repair people were at lunch. Then she hung up. I broke the door to get out, which I didnt get punished for, but walking up seven flights of stairs for the next four months was definitely punishment enough.