Sure enough, Charlotte and I heard footsteps behind us. A tired, bored-looking man in a guard"s uniform approached us, shaking his head in disgust.
"I"m so sorry!" I cried. "We ran back for my friend"s camera, and when we came back, the gates were locked."
The man ignored me, pulling a key from a large chain he wore around his waist.
"We told them to just climb over it," called Chaz or Bud.
The guard hesitated, squinting through the gate and sizing up the Football Twins.
"Climbing ees streectly forbeeden," he said, scowling. "Ees for to go to jail."
"We never intended to climb," Charlotte said.
"They"re something of a pair of dunderheads," I added.
The guard unlocked the gate and opened it enough for Charlotte and me to scamper through. We all began saying thank you at the same time. Janet, I"m sorry to say, was the only one with both the presence of mind and the elementary good breeding to say it in French.
"Merci bien, monsieur!" she practically cooed.
The guard paused and looked at Janet.
"Il n"ya pas de quoi, pet.i.te demoiselle. J"espere que ta voyage est bien agreable."
"Oh, merci bien!" cried Janet. The guard walked slowly and sadly, a bit like Eyeore from Winnie the Pooh, back to whatever office he"d magically appeared from.
"We"d better move if we"re going to get back to the VEI on time," I said.
"Does anyone know where we"re supposed to have dinner?" asked Tim.
"I think we"re supposed to pick. Madame Chavotte said it was our last night here, so we could have the kind of meal we wanted."
"Italian," said Tim.
"Burgers," said Bud (or Chaz).
"Sushi," said Bonnie.
"Jah-nay is the hero of the hour," I said. "I think she ought to pick where we"re going to eat."
Janet practically quivered with happiness.
"Oh, Lily, that"s so agreable of you. I do know a place. I know just the place."
This time I would be sure to write down both the name and address of the restaurant we were going to beforehand. Just in case. And I had of course drummed into my memory banks the location of the VEI. It was, with the Perfection of the Universe"s Touch, located on the Rue Charlot.
Looked like Charlotte Street to me.
Eleven.
True to her Francophilian form, Janet had found us a restaurant that looked directly onto the Eiffel Tower. It was a nice little place with outdoor tables, one of which had been set for ten people-especially for us.
"Who"s the tenth?" I asked. "There are eight of us, plus Madame Chavotte, if she ever gets here, which makes nine."
I had a brief, surreal flash of hope that Lindy Sloane would be joining us.
"Maybe the spirit of Jim Morrison followed us, and the seat is for him," said Bonnie, sitting down in one of the chairs next to me and folding her legs into her customary lotus dining position.
Charlotte took a seat on my right, and I noticed that she didn"t object when I waved Lewis over to sit on her other side.
"No, this is all wrong!" cried Janet. "It has to be garcon-fille, garcon-fille."
My opinion of Janet had, in fact, improved, but not enough to agree that during our final dinner in France we were required to sit boy-girl, boy-girl.
A dapper-looking man dressed all in white appeared with a stack of menus, which he handed to each of us. Glancing at mine, I felt suddenly as if I had been asked to provide an accurate translation of the glyphs on the Rosetta Stone.
Well, this was French food. Presumably, everything would be good. Abats a l"etouffee, for example, sounded exciting.
"Do you know what abats is?" I asked Charlotte.
Charlotte had a miniature French-English dictionary, which she produced from her purse.
"Organ meats," she said.
Ew.
I was feeling adventurous, but I didn"t want to eat anything"s liver or spleen, no matter how much mouth-watering sauce it was covered in. I scanned the menu for another interesting word.
"What about civelles?" I asked. This one took Charlotte longer to find.
"Baby eel," she replied.
Heaven forfend! Didn"t they have anything made by Chef Boyardee?
"Look for boeuf, poulet, and poisson," Charlotte said with confidence.
"Because..."
"Because they are beef, chicken, and fish," Charlotte replied.
Now we were talking! Though I might stay away from the chicken, having acquired a new affection for all things poulette.
Lewis leaned around Charlotte and tapped me on the shoulder.
"What do you usually like, Lily?" he asked. "I found a French cuisine translation site on my Sidekick."
"Well...," I said. "Do the French make tacos?"
"Not unless they"re under protest," Lewis said. "What about steak? Salmon?"
"Salmon!" I cried.
Lewis made some entries.
"How does the Sidekick know what restaurant we"re at?" I asked.
"It doesn"t. I input the entries on this menu that have the word salmon, and it"s translating them."
Paris was a beautiful world with Lewis in it.
"What about poached salmon with a light hollandaise sauce garnished with sorrel and served with sauteed slices of potatoes and a green salad with walnuts?" he asked.
"I"ll take it!" I exclaimed with delight. Lewis pointed to the entry on my menu where it was written in French. I beamed with satisfaction.
"Charlotte, did you see what Lewis just did?"
Charlotte turned and gave me a look of innocent surprise that, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, looked Really Fake. I KNEW IT! Charlotte thought I was right: Lewis might, in fact, be Boyfriend Material for her.
"Lewis, Charlotte loves steak. Can you make your Sidekick find her a good dish?"
"I"m getting steak too," Lewis said.
Charlotte and Lewis glanced at each other, then quickly looked away, then looked back again. I could swear that, just for a second as their heads bent together over the Sidekick, a few cartoon bluebirds circled over them, whistling an Edith Piaf tune. But it might just have been the light.
I wanted to ask Bonnie what she was getting, but she was deep into a conversation with Tim that was touching on the post-Doors career of a keyboardist named Ray Manzarek. I waited patiently while several tragically short fossil rock lives, including those of a Janis Joplin, a Jimi Hendrix, and a Keith Sun or Moon-I can"t remember which-were gravely discussed. Lewis momentarily interrupted to tell Bonnie and Tim not to forget Brian Jones. The conversation was substantially out of my league. Even Bud and Chaz were thoroughly immersed, though not in words. They had fashioned a miniature soccer field out of their silverware and were shooting goals at each other with ice cubes.
Janet, meanwhile, had taken hold of the arm of a pa.s.sing waiter, and in spite of his Herculean efforts to speak to her in English, she was insisting that their exchange be entirely in French. When he finally managed to wiggle free, Janet turned back to the table with her hands clasped triumphantly under her chin.
"I"m having the house special," she declared, with all the import of a celebrity announcing the winner of the Best Actor Oscar.
"What is the special?" asked Lewis.
"Cervelles de veau provencale," Janet said, smacking her lips theatrically.
"Which is...," I prompted.
"The house special!" Janet declared.
She was distracted by the pa.s.sing of a busboy, whom she physically detained as she described, in French, her need for a Diet c.o.ke with lemon.
"Hey, Lewis. Let me see that a sec," I whispered.
Lewis pa.s.sed his Sidekick. Charlotte looked at it first, then grimly handed it my way.
In the search field of his French cuisine translator, Lewis had typed "Cervelles de veau provencale."
In the English description field blinked the words Calf brains with black olives.
Phletamgah.
I WAS going to tell her. Really and honestly and truly, my intention was to tell Janet what the translation said, just to make sure it was actually her intention to order cow brains for dinner.
But just before I got to it, I happened to glance down the sidewalk.
If there was such a thing as a picture dictionary, and you looked up "Hot French Guy," THIS man"s picture would have been shown as the definition. He was tall and dark, with black hair turning gray at the temples, high cheekbones, and perfectly shaped eyebrows arched over chocolate brown eyes. He was dressed so neatly, he might have just tumbled out of the window display of a department store. He wore pleated white pants and a pale-blue cotton shirt, over which he had casually draped a cardigan sweater so that it hung neatly from his shoulders. His shoes looked as if they"d just been unwrapped from tissue paper and lifted out of their box. Under one arm he carried a little leather bag that I would not DREAM of calling a man purse. He walked confidently and easily, as if the city belonged to him.
My heart leaped into my mouth when he stopped at our cafe. Now, let me be completely clear. My heart belongs to Jake. But that happy fact did not, COULD not, distract me from this man-tastic creature. I had never seen anyone so perfect-looking up close. And he was getting closer. Was he coming HERE? I had a brief sense of a larger, older, dowdier person behind him. Must be his mother, I thought.
"And "ere we are, my leetle birds. I am mortified to be late!" called a dreadfully familiar voice.
I saw with shock and dismay that Madame Chavotte seemed to be trying to push her way past Hot French Guy to get to our table. I turned red with embarra.s.sment. Madame Chavotte kept charging toward us as if Hot French Guy weren"t even there. He moved just ahead of her, as if she"d stuck a snow shovel under him and was plowing him along.
"Bon, good, I see we are just een time to order, non?"
Madame Chavotte sat down in one of the empty chairs and patted the seat of the other with her hand.
You can imagine my general state of dis...o...b..bulation when Hot French Guy sat down next to her at OUR table. Janet"s eyes almost popped out of her head. (Mine, I"m sure, behaved much more discreetly.) "Everywahn, zees ees my baby brudder, Louis-Marc," said Madame Chavotte, beaming.
The entire science of genetics, at least in my mind, became instantaneously invalid. This-this Franco Adonis was directly related to my Burly Teacher?
Hot French Guy flashed a million-dollar smile.
"He does not speak much of ze English, so we will all "ave to practice our best French, oui? Eet ees like a pop quiz for ze last night."
"Radical," murmured Bonnie.
"You can pliz forgive me for bringing "eem, but I only get to see my leetlest brudder once a year," Madame Chavotte said, flagging down a waiter and gesturing at the menu. Hot French Guy flashed his smile again and punctuated it with a wink.
I forgave her.
Hot French Guy and I were not destined to exchange any conversation during our dinner. In fact, sitting in between his sister and Janet, HFG seemed content to chat with them. And I grudgingly admit that in spite of the Overwhelming Number of Irritating Characteristics that Janet possessed, she kept her cool in the face of Parisian hotness and, from what I could tell, held up her end of the conversation pretty well.
It was actually turning out to be a quiet, introspective meal for me altogether. Bonnie and Tim had apparently returned in their discussion to the birth of Elvis and were slowly working their way forward through three decades of ensuing rock-and-roll development. Lewis and Charlotte seemed to be having an enthusiastic exchange concerning the effect of the Internet on the world business community. Bud (or possibly Chaz) scored an ice cube goal and was doing a victory dance with the salt shaker. So I just sat back and soaked up the Frenchness that lay in the streets all around me. Happy to be a Simple Tourist in the crowd.
Soaring in the distance, the Eiffel Tower glittered like an eccentric jewel. Though my French hadn"t improved greatly, the sounds of the language everywhere had become comfortingly familiar. The quaint, tidy streets were beginning to feel like home.
It was almost impossible to believe that tomorrow we would be going home. I did miss my family, but I wished they could simply come to me. I imagined my beagle, Milo, racing down the Rue de Rivoli, wearing a jaunty canine beret and gripping a baguette in his jaws. I could see my father behind the wheel of a little French Renault, meticulously maintaining the speed limit in kilometers. My mother would carry an enormous guidebook and stop to personally thank every uniformed agent de police she pa.s.sed. And Jake, aglow in the Parisian evening light, clutching a single red rose....
I felt like I had only just begun to truly experience Paris, had just started to really appreciate it, and I was being whisked back home to the Land of Big and Plenty, where the ninth grade loomed before me like a lengthy, multifaceted obstacle course.
I remained quiet, listening to my friends chatter and watching the splendor of Paris, until I had completely devoured every last morsel of my salmon. When the plates were cleared away, Madame Chavotte stood up and raised her gla.s.s.
"Mes enfants..." she began, her eyebrow quivering with emotion. "We "ave come almoss to ze end of our French voyage. For een ze regular times, I am ze guest een your country, and you are ze ones at "ome. For ze la.s.s five days, eet ees you who "ave been ze guests, and I "ave been ze one at home. Eet "ess geeven me great plizure, mes enfants, to "ave you een my "ome. You "ave made Madame Chavotte proud, and you "ave been very good representants of United States and of Mulgrew School. Per"aps you take a leetle of Paris "ome wiz you. And I am so plizzed to see dat some of you are already a leetle leeving commes les francais, like ma pet.i.te Jah-nay, yes?"