with a roiling, heavy heat as thick as puréed pumpkins. Very few buildings have air conditioning, yet there are also no fans. When I asked a French friend about this, she gave me a perplexed look. Then she replied politely, as if explaining Why The Sky is Blue: “I’d use it for two, maybe three days. Then what would I do with it for the rest of the year? Put it in the bathtub?” My fault for asking: I’d forgotten the Space Rule. This is . . .
Eight. There is room for only one of everything.
Over the years, I’ve stayed in various apartments in Paris, and none had space for a fan. Most barely had space for me. I suspect this is the reason why Parisians are so thin, as they live in studios that only have enough space for one glass, one fork, and one spoon. Who has time to wash the dirty dish in the sink? Wherefore Parisians, who really can’t be bothered, zip around the city tearing off great hunks of baguette with their teeth.
Conclusion: Aerobic eating is a wonderful sport. As with most things, however, skill levels vary. It’s harder to do than you think.
Nine. There is always a line, and the line is very long.
There are different reasons for this phenomenon. In checkout lines, for example, locals pay in cash, and give exact change. The cashier will take this change and count it back, often making a mistake and having to start over. This process can repeat itself two, three, even five times. Frustrated diners give up and head to McDonald’s, thinking that “fast food” means “fast line.” Disputes, haggling, and warm beer will ensue, leading to days of standing in long, defeated lines at the Préfecture de la Police.
Moral: In Paris, it’s always better to go to a sit-down restaurant with waiters, because they carry machines that take Visa. Food will not arrive quickly, but eating will happen sooner.
Ten. The toilets do not flush. They concede.
When American toilets flush, they suck the refuse through a black hole that ejects the contents into outer space with the force of a thousand jet engines. French toilets sigh depressively at the bleakness of their job. “Merde!” they complain, and then they go on strike. When they do, the shit doesn’t hit the fan, because there aren’t any (see “Seven”). The shit hits your shoes. In Paris, there are delightful toilets called “Turkish” designed to send women straight to Chanel for an emergency pair of replacements.
At the Bon Marché, the bathrooms were upstairs. So were L. L. Bean camping clothes appropriate for “Le Week End,” just in case tourists decided that fishing was the quickest way to sushi (see “Nine”).
On this trip, because I was thinking about fast food, I made my way to the Great Wall of Canned Pâtés. Deer pâté, boar pâté, goose liver pâté, duck liver pâté, and random wild meat mashed with mushrooms, all in pretty glass containers small enough to go through airport security, and far better as gifts than nearby cans of cassoulet that were the size of small televisions. (No good: they required rolling suitcases to get home and would never make it past the bomb detectors.) Because I liked the label, I picked up a pâté jar with the rustic drawing of a rooting pig, and was busily inspecting the snout when the sound of a shrill voice screaming “Ajax!” broke my concentration.
“Ajax!” the voice screamed again.
If the accent had been American I would have assumed it was a brand-loyal woman desperate to find her favorite household cleanser. However, the accent was British, and it was coming from a fortyish woman with bright blue hair and black lipstick, a black tube top, an iridescent flowered miniskirt, no stockings, and combat boots, standing near the display of miniature vegetables. A small red-haired boy streaked past.
“Ajax!” she yelled. “Come here!”
The child did not comply, taking off instead in the direction of the domestic wines. This was much better than the honey lady. Blue Hair was definitely worth following.
Pig pâté in hand, I started tracking her.
She advanced with an aggressive, forward-hunched, lock-kneed step. “Ajax!” she shrieked, apparently uncaring that the entire store could hear her. “Bloody ‘ell!” she muttered under her breath. “Leave him ‘ere, I will. Let ‘im find his own way back to the bleedin’ hotel.”
Ajax was nowhere in sight and not coming back on his own. She, however, had shifted her attention to a row of tomato pastes, which she studied with a disgruntled look on her face. “Bloody ‘ell,” she muttered again to herself.
As she spat and stomped and swore to herself, a small man at the fruit section started heading towards her. He had shorn gray hair, a prominent Adam’s apple, ruddy jowls, and was bony except for a beer belly, giving him the look of a ferret whose biggest accomplishment in life was swallowing a whole watermelon. He wore a white oxford shirt and brown pants, both badly wrinkled, and clutched an empty picnic basket close to his body. As he sidled into view, Blue Hair’s head jerked violently up. She glared at him.
His face turned ashen.
“Did you find the coffee?” she demanded angrily. “Well? Did you?”
He shook his head and blinked rapidly, a defeated look in his bleary eyes.
“Go on then, keep looking,” she snapped, yanking up her tube top so high that her tummy popped out. He nodded his shorn head obediently and shuffled off in the wrong direction.
Still muttering and empty handed, she clumped off towards the region of the cheeses.
Ajax had still not returned. I thought it quite sensible of him.
Keeping one eye on Blue Hair, I wandered over to the barrel sacks of loose grains and started fishing through them, mostly to hear the pleasing sound they made as they tumbled. Suddenly, Ajax popped up on the other side of the barrel, throwing me a hopeful look. With the prescience of childhood, he recognized I’d been playing a game.
I nodded. He beamed. We began a curious round of hide and seek.
Ajax, running off to hide behind a kiosk of berries.
Me, fleeing over to the fresh fish.
Mr. Blue Hair, on a doomed quest for coffee.
“Ajax!” Blue Hair screamed.
I looked around and spotted Ajax skipping past the iced fish display. He’d grabbed one of the fresh octopuses out of a bucket and was mercilessly shaking its tentacles in the air.
“Do you know that boy?” an elderly French lady asked me in aggrieved tones.
“Which boy?”
“The one with the octopus.” She gestured with her chin. She clearly thought I was his nanny.
“Nope!” I replied cheerfully.
She scowled at me. The pain aux raisins in her hands did not look convinced.
“He belongs to her!” I pointed nonchalantly towards the deli. As I did so, I realized that I’d been clutching a jar of pig pâté this whole time, and I brought it to my face, staring at it with a kind of wonder.
Blue Hair had trapped Ajax by a sack of couscous. She’d grabbed him by the back of his t-shirt and was dragging him forward with an air of dogged determination. His limbs were thrashing wildly but he wasn’t screaming at
