Baggage claim at CDG is a lot like passport control. Which is to say it is not the most organized place. They give out luggage carts for free, so everybody takes one. Many people take two. It’s like a big game of bumper cars, only played in about sixteen different languages.
Given the crummy seat I got on the planes, it will come as no great surprise to you that my bag was one of the very last ones out. At least I had no trouble spotting it. Let us say that not everyone flying to Paris has a big pink carpet-bag suitcase.
I hauled my bag into the main terminal, which is even less organized than passport control and baggage claim. Then I really started to worry. Fret. Panic. Not just in little flashes, either. Full-blown panic. Because somebody was supposed to be meeting me—only there was nobody. Instead of saving a movie, I was in the middle of mayhem, without a clue how I might actually get to Paris on my own if I had to, or where I was even going. I was beginning to feel like Kiefer Sutherland on
24,
with a big digital clock ticking away my time. Okay Kiefer Sutherland faces somewhat weightier matters on
24,
but you get what I mean. To make matters worse, everything was in French.
And I do not speak French.
Just when I was trying to decide whether to cry or scream, I found the driver. He was standing off to the side smoking a cigarette. Lots of people in the terminal were smoking. Which right away told me I was not in Kansas anymore. Anyway, the driver was wearing a Niketown sweatshirt and big hip hop sneakers. I thought they looked silly on this somewhat middle-aged little Frenchman. Still, he was my savior.
I am not suggesting any religious connotation when I say he was my savior. Although it did seem pretty miraculous to me. In the midst of all that bedlam, I found him. And he had a sign with my name on it.
Even if it was the
tiniest
little sign.
“Excuse me,” I said. He looked up from his cigarette. I pointed to the sign. “That’s me.”
“Zat’s you?” he asked. I’m not making fun. He really said it that way.
“That’s me.”
I guess he believed me. Because he immediately grabbed the handle of my mother’s big suitcase, and off he went, running madly through the airport, weaving in and out of the huge crowds. Only he obviously knew his way around this airport, and I didn’t. Plus he already knew where he parked his car, and I didn’t. So in about ten seconds he was gone, my suitcase was gone, and may I remind you that
my Grandma’s dress was in that suitcase.
Now I was absolutely sure I wanted to cry. But I didn’t. I heard somewhere that if you are lost, you should stay put so they know where to look for you. I probably heard that on a news story about hikers lost in the Himalayas or some such. I’m not sure the same rules apply when you’re in the middle of a million people in Charles de Gaulle airport. But I stayed where I was anyway. Finally the driver came back and found me. He looked annoyed, but I didn’t care. Because he still had my suitcase. Grandma’s dress was back. I was rescued. Saved.
We got to his car. Which was not a big Lincoln Continental. It was just a car. A Renault, which is a French car. Not a very large one, either. It’s a good thing my Mom’s suitcase was not one inch bigger. Because the suitcase would’ve had to ride in the back seat and I would’ve been in the trunk.
The instant we were out of the airport, the driver started to drive very fast. I do not generally mind driving fast. But this car was very small. And it sure felt like we were going extremely fast. Some people always look at the speedometer to see how fast the car is going. I am not usually one of those people. But I looked.
The speedometer said we were going 145. Which made me very anxious.
Then I remembered: That was not 145 miles per hour. We were going fast, but not
that
fast. That was kilometers per hour. Okay, how many miles is 145 kilometers? I couldn’t remember.
I now know the answer, because I looked it up. We were going 89.5 miles an hour. Which in that tiny little car seemed awfully fast. Especially zooming in and out around the other slowpoke cars that were only going, say, 85 miles an hour.
I was about to ask the driver to slow down. But all of a sudden the traffic got quite awful, and we went from flying to crawling just like that.
After an hour, the traffic was making me even more nervous than the speeding had done. First because I kept imagining that big
24
digital clock pounding away at me. Second because I really needed to pee.
Fortunately, right about then traffic started to move. And all of a sudden I could see.
I was in Paris.
For all I know, we had probably been in Paris for quite some time. But now it looked the way somebody who has never been to Paris expects it to look.
The driver turned left, onto a pretty old bridge across a river that even I knew must be the Seine. On an island in the middle of the river, up soared a huge ancient cathedral with wings that seemed to fly everywhere, and two enormous towers, and even I knew that was Notre Dame. I recognized it from the Walt Disney movie, which I watch with my cousin Paris sometimes when I babysit. Every time we see that movie, I tell her that someday I will take her there, and then she will be Paris in Paris. Which she finds extremely amusing. Of course, every time I ever said that, it was just silly talk. Only now it wasn’t so silly. Because there was the real Notre Dame—and here I was.
And do you know? Even though I was tired and stiff, and desperately needed to pee . . . even with all that, being in Paris felt pretty good.
Who am I kidding? I was in Paris,
France.
It was amazing.
Remember, I grew up in Kirland, Indiana. And growing up in Kirland does not give you the very broadest horizons. So I never
really
believed I would find myself in Paris. Although the thought had occurred to me—probably starting six years ago, when my cousin Mary named her daughter Paris. Which she picked on account of her and Nick planning to go to Paris, France, someday. Which never happened. The whole tragic aspect of it—that Nick and Mary would never get there—made it seem like Paris must be this perfect place where everything worked out. Romantically, anyway. And if things worked out for you romantically, everything else just fell into place, right?
I was only nineteen years old when I got that notion about Paris. Everything about life and love seemed very straightforward to me then. Whereas now I am a jaded twenty-five-year-old cynic. Only perhaps I am not totally jaded. Because suddenly I was in Paris, France. And just being there made me feel like I was glowing. Even better, I had Grandma’s dress with me. Grandma’s dress, which came from Paris all those years ago, had come back—and it was bringing me along on a wild and wonderful ride. At that moment, I felt like absolutely anything and everything was possible.
The car turned right, onto a big street that paralleled the river. It was a bright sunny afternoon, just the way you would want your first day in Paris to be. There were hundreds of people out walking. Maybe thousands. All just strolling along the Seine, holding hands, laughing, smiling. Not one of them looked like they had a care in the world.
I thought,
I could be one of those people. I could be anyone I felt like being. I could eat, and drink, and shop. I could find romance. Real romance, too, nothing like Jimmy Krasna fumbling at me with his clammy cold hands in the back seat of his mom’s Chrysler in the parking lot at Kirland Park.
I was in
Paris.
Happiness would be so easy.
11
E
xcept. I am willing to bet that not one of those happy free romantic people strolling along the Seine had just two days to find the perfect antique dress to save a movie. Suddenly I wasn’t glowing anymore: I was panicking.
The driver turned left, onto a tiny narrow little street. Then he made kind of a right turn, and a couple of kind of lefts, which took us to an even tinier street. I say
kind of
because these streets did not run at right angles. Like maybe the guy who drew the plan for this part of town had too much to drink first.
Then the driver stopped. “I am too far,” he said, looking over his shoulder. He put the car in reverse and backed up—fast. Down this narrow little street. For a whole block.
So when he stopped the car, yanked my suitcase out of the trunk, and dropped it unceremoniously onto the sidewalk, that was fine with me. All that mattered was that I had survived the ride and gotten to my hotel. It is called the Hotel Jacob, I guess because it’s on Rue Jacob. It’s an old building, four stories high. The lobby is dark old wood, and it makes you feel like you just walked into the 1920s.
When I checked in, the desk clerk asked me for a credit card. I thought that was a little strange, since I was here working on the movie. The clerk told me my room number, 302, handed me the key, and pointed to the elevator.
Nobody carried my suitcase upstairs. Which is actually a good thing. Because the elevator was small. You may have been in small elevators before. But you only
think
you have been in small elevators. This elevator was big enough for my mom’s suitcase. And my little duffel baggy carry-on. And me. And that is all. In fact, the elevator had one of those old-fashioned gates you pull closed before it will go, and if for instance I had been wearing my Miracle Bra, I’m not sure it would have closed.
The room was clean. Not fancy, but nice, although it was definitely on the small side. The bed was a double, not even a queen. The closet was little, the bathroom was little, and the only dresser in the room had two teeny drawers that I knew wouldn’t be enough for my clothes. So I unpacked things in odd places. My panties, including the little wedgie thong, went into the nightstand drawer. My socks went into the desk drawer, right on top of the stationery. You get the idea.
Before I unpacked, though, the first thing I did was pee. Forgive me if this is an unladylike observation, but taking a pee when you really desperately need to is highly underrated.
I did not hang Grandma’s dress in the closet. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. There was no place to put it. The closet was just too small.
I was thinking what a huge coincidence it would be if Grandma had stayed in this exact same hotel. Although I am not really much of a believer in coincidence. Anyway I hoped she had. I wondered for about the millionth time how Grandma had come to own her dress. I hoped she had gotten it under the most adventurous, reckless, dangerously passionate circumstances possible.
These are odd thoughts to think about your grandma. At least, they were about mine. Because, except for her sophisticated taste in music, absolutely nothing about the Grandma I knew suggested she had ever done anything adventurous, much less reckless, much less dangerously passionate. But I knew she had to have. The dress and that old menu proved it. And she had given the dress to me. If Grandma could do and be all those things, maybe she thought I could, too.
After my clothes were stowed, I took a shower. And taking a shower in a Paris hotel, at least judging by this hotel, is highly overrated. First, there is no shower curtain, just a little glass panel that looks like somebody changed his mind midway about putting in a stall shower. The rest of the shower is wide open. Instead of a showerhead, there is a handheld spray-nozzle thing that you put in a bracket on the wall if you want to use it like a real showerhead. A word of advice: Put the nozzle thing in the bracket
before
you turn the water on. Because, what with there being no shower curtain, let me tell you, I sprayed water everywhere.
Needless to say, there was no bathrobe. There were towels, but not many, and I had to use most of them to mop all the water off the floor. I ended up drying myself with a hand towel and a wash-cloth. Which was not very satisfying. But at least I wasn’t wet.
So there I stood. I was totally, well, you know, naked. I looked around my hotel room. Sure, it was tiny. But it was a tiny hotel room in Paris, France. Which made the whole situation seem exciting. Dangerous. Sexy, even.
Then I got a crazy idea. Only standing there naked, in my Paris hotel room, feeling dangerous and sexy, it didn’t seem so crazy.
Very carefully, I took the white tissue paper off Grandma’s dress, and took the dress off its padded hanger. Then I held the dress right up against my bare skin. Which by the way is pretty much how you would wear this dress, with absolutely nothing between you and it, since there is no way to hide a bra in the bodice. Panties, yes, because as I have told you, the tulle skirt was almost transparent, and you would not want to get arrested or anything. But definitely just a thong. Like for example the teeny one I had just unpacked.
I will try to describe to you how the dress felt against my skin, although words really do not do it justice. If you have never worn silk, you must. If you have never worn old silk, which is hard to find, you should try. And if your skin has never felt a double layer of gorgeous old sheer silk satin cut on the bias to really hug your body, I feel sorry for you. I was right about the dress having magical powers: All at the same time, it made me feel hot and cold, strong and weak . . . careless, reckless, gorgeous, sexual.
Dangerous.
And I hadn’t even put it on yet.
Do not ask me where I was going to go in that dress. Or what I was going to do when I got there.
But I was about to slip it on and find out.
12
T
hen the phone rang. Which, I am afraid, broke the mood.
It was a loud double ring, kind of a
brrrr brrrr
sound. Quite an obnoxious sound, actually. I picked it up quickly, before it could assault me again.
“We need you down in the breakfast room right now,” said a woman’s voice. Before I could say anything, she hung up.
It was not breakfast time. In fact, it was past four o’clock.