French Kiss

The flight attendant dimmed the cabin lights hours ago. Only three reading lights glowed, casting an eerie pall on the few passengers under them who, like me, couldn’t sleep. The man behind me was awake and staring out the window as I stood and pirouetted toward the lavatory. He turned in his seat and looked up at me, the spitting image of William Shatner in the Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” which I had watched two days earlier. He had the same pensive way of lifting the inner corners of his eyebrows, His hair was razor cut around the ears and nape, combed away from his face. Almost everyone else on the airplane was dressed in jeans, but he wore a charcoal suit with his tie still knotted. I hoped he wasn’t seeing little gremlins scurrying on the wings, trying to disable the plane. He smiled at me, and murmured, “Something is on the wing.” Damn, I thought. I knew it! I knew this would go badly. I must have looked like I had not understood him, because he repeated what he said: “Bonne nuit, Mademoiselle.” Relieved, I whispered, “Good night to you, too, Monsieur.” Thank God there were no hairy gremlins far above the Atlantic Ocean, only the twinkling lights that made us visible in the velvet night as we sliced through it toward Paris. My jitters were a product of my active imagination --- and what I had done.

I tucked the tiny airline-issued blanket around my five-foot-ten body and sipped the Merlot I had saved from dinner service. I wondered if this was the beginning of another huge mistake. I had never traveled anywhere by myself, but here I was in October 2005 leaving behind for three weeks life as I knew it. I thought by now my life would be stable, and I would be content, but I wasn’t. Everything that I thought was important had become elusive, as if my goals and dreams had been written on scraps of torn paper now blowing about in the winds of a Florida hurricane. I could see them swirling in front of my face, but I couldn’t quite catch them. Maybe I was looking for calm, but I didn’t think so. I had left behind my old Victorian house near Orlando, a gingerbread confection painted cheery pink, green, and blue, but in need of a $38,000 roof that had to be approved by the city’s historic board. I had left a once-successful, drunken, estranged, soon-to-be-ex-husband. I had left my first job out of law school as a lawyer on the in-house counsel staff of a company that processed credit cards for X-rated websites whose largest corporate asset was a class of preferred stock in Penthouse Media.

I was running from a job and house and marriage. And where was I headed? To Paris and a man. I hadn’t told anyone, not even my mother or my best friend, Cheryl, who found humor in most things. Cheryl had driven me to the Orlando airport, where we toasted the trip I was giving myself for graduating from law school, a mid-life career change at forty-three. I had packed two large Hartmann tweed suitcases, with little brass wheels and leather straps I used as leashes, walking the valises like pet dogs. They were stuffed with eight pairs of shoes and boots for any occasion, in addition to sweaters, suits, jeans and assorted lingerie --- enough for a year’s stay. In case I was abducted into slavery by some swarthy gangster lurking around Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, I had carefully penned the names and phone numbers of eight friends on the blank page in the front of my Fodor’s French for Travelers so that I could call them on my pink cell phone, complete with an international SIM card. I had tucked a change of underwear --- my mother told me before I left that if I am in a wreck and have to go to some foreign hospital, I must make sure I am wearing good, clean underwear --- and a fashionable money belt into my carry-on bag, after warnings about gypsy pickpockets in Paris. I was dressed in a classic black linen suit and black tights because I read that you can catch athlete’s foot from being barefoot in the security lines at airports. As sophisticated as I obviously thought I was, I had never traveled to Europe before.

I wondered what my dad would have said about this big adventure. His opinion as young dad would have differed from that of old dad. Young dad would have told me to follow my dreams and go for it. He had been among the brave soldiers in the first wave at Normandy Beach during WWII. When I was a child, he had regaled me with charming stories about the beautiful French women and how much he would love to go back to France for a visit. His stories always closed with, “Don’t tell your mother!” When he met her several years after the war, my dad was a charming rogue juggling two fiancées. He broke with them to marry my mom. Old dad seemed resigned to doing what was expected of him, which he did flawlessly, raising four children, being loyal to my mom, making us all feel secure and loved. But I always knew, deep in my heart, that he felt he had compromised, missed out, didn’t do something rogues long to do.

My lingering memory is of him sitting at the kitchen table with a dogeared deck of cards, dealing hands of Solitaire over and over. Waiting. Old dad had lost his sense of humor. Maybe that’s what killed him at sixty-four.

Now I was sitting on this airplane, on my way to Paris, listening to young dad. Almost a year earlier, Frédéric Vincent had purchased WWII military buttons from me on eBay. I had worked three jobs to put myself through law school so I would have no debt and selling treasures on eBay was one of them. My primary job was as a newspaper reporter and editor, but small-town daily papers were struggling and didn’t pay well. The idea of becoming Perry Mason had appealed to me.

Frédéric’s English, as we brokered the deal on eBay, was flawless. I thought he might be an expatriate, but no, he was a Frenchman who loved American culture. Our communications continued long after the Paypal payment and confirmation of shipping. He told me he had studied in England but learned some English by listening to American rock music and watching American movies. He was forty-four, never married, and fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, and German, as well as in his native French. He did not drink. “I know it seems incredible that a Frenchman doesn’t drink wine, but I swear to you I am French,” he told me. He was passionate about his books and World War II. His parents were happily retired, and he was close to them and to his only sister, Nadine. He asked about my dad’s war service and told me he would research his journey at Normandy. He was worried because he had read American women like muscled men, “like that actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.” I assured him that my preference was not that. From his pictures I learned that Frédéric was tall and lean, with a thatch of dark hair just beginning to thin on top and gray at the temples, soulful brown eyes with caterpillar eyebrows, perfect lips, and an aquiline nose that he hated but I thought was patrician. By the end of the day, his five o’clock shadow showed. He wore studious glasses, creased jeans, and silk scarves knotted and tucked into the necks of his sweaters, topped by a leather aviator’s jacket on casual days, and Italian business suits with starched, long-sleeved white shirts and gold cufflinks under a blue cashmere coat on chilly workdays in Paris.

About six months after our eBay transaction, I spoke to him about traveling to Provence for my French vacation, but he told me it would make him happy if I came to Paris. He offered to be my guide, no strings attached, and said that I was welcome to stay at his home. “I can show you my Paris,” he explained. I accepted. As Plan B, I booked a hotel room at the Holiday Inn Paris. France had not spawned near the number of serial killers America had, and my woman’s intuition was not sending me red flags, but it is best to be prepared for anything.

So, there it is, I told myself as I finished the last of my wine; I am running away from home. Running to a handsome, multilingual Frenchman who has a great job, and makes me laugh. Over the past ten months, we had exchanged numerous photos, weekly hours-long phone calls, and daily emails. And in five hours, I would meet him for the first time.

***

When I awoke, dawn was breaking over Europe, and an aerial view of Paris soon replaced grand expanses of the Atlantic Ocean. I had packed my carry-on bag with a full complement of makeup and a change of clothes, and while passengers ate sweet rolls, I powdered my nose and weighed my choices. I knew I was teetering on the brink of either a safe, mediocre life, or the unknown, jeweled question mark. My hair bounced from my head in radiating curls I couldn’t contain, my face had broken out a little from wearing makeup for nineteen hours, but it will be okay, I told myself. It’s my adventure. Self, embrace the unknown, face forward, the pimples are irrelevant. I returned to my seat for the final approach into Paris.

William Shatner wished me bonne journée as we inched toward the plane’s exit. Somehow, I felt I would see him again. And then we were all in the labyrinth of Charles de Gaulle airport, a maze of construction, a puzzle for a virgin visitor. Deep breath. Like Alice through the looking glass, I burst into a new world.