Scenes from a Bastille Cafe
Tonight, I broke a rule.
I usually make a point of not eating at any of the places actually on the Bastille, on the grounds that they are A)chock full of tourists B)prone to the tourist surcharge on every meal and C)by all accounts, not nearly as good as the places you can find two blocks off the Bastille, but tonight I was in a hurry. And when you're in a hurry in Paris and want more than a crepe - and don't get me started on the giant stacks of pre-made crepes at the corner stands - you go to a tourist joint, because they're used to impatient Americans who don't know that meals are to be lingered over and enjoyed, but who instead want their Frenchified cheeseburgers and glass of red wine ASAP, damnit.
Yes, the place I ate dinner tonight had a cheeseburger on the menu. I restrained myself. It wasn't hard.
But I was in a hurry, so I ate there anyway. It was one of those places with indoor seating, and indoor-outdoor seating that could be placed under a protective canopy with plastic walls with needed, and then outdoor-outdoor seating for people who just wanted drinks. There weren't any of the latter tonight, as the temperature was skydiving noticeably, and as I sat there in the outside-inside portion of things, white-jacketed busboys hastily unrolled and put up those plastic walls.
There was symmetry in the seating, chairs to the left of the main door, and chairs to the right. At the first table on each side, closest to the building, there was an attractive young woman seated and nursing a drink of some sort. And that's where the symmetry ended.
On the right side, the lovely young lady was American. She was blonde. And she was chatting energetically with one of the waiters about her time working as a waitress, and as a restaurant manager, and what she was doing in Paris, and how her family had lived for a year on a houseboat, and all sorts of other pleasant things. The waiter (or perhaps manager; I really wasn't trying to eavesdrop) was a youngish sort of fella himself, good looking and clearly smitten, and he hovered around her table like a hummingbird in a Kool-Aid plant. There were other tables on that side, with other customers, but I'm not sure he made it back to them. At least, not while I was watching.
The woman on the other side was French. She was dark-haired, and she was reading, and the waiter who came over to talk to her was older. He had grey hair, parted down the middle instead of being spiked up with hair gel, and he didn't seem quite as impressed. They had an exchange, a short, sharp one, and then she got up. She threw a little cash on the table, yelled at him, stomped to the entrance to the plastic enclosure, yelled at him some more, left the enclosure, yelled one more time, and then left.
I looked around. Nobody else looked up. The waiter shrugged and walked back inside, but not before he picked up the cash.
Priorities, after all. Priorities.
I usually make a point of not eating at any of the places actually on the Bastille, on the grounds that they are A)chock full of tourists B)prone to the tourist surcharge on every meal and C)by all accounts, not nearly as good as the places you can find two blocks off the Bastille, but tonight I was in a hurry. And when you're in a hurry in Paris and want more than a crepe - and don't get me started on the giant stacks of pre-made crepes at the corner stands - you go to a tourist joint, because they're used to impatient Americans who don't know that meals are to be lingered over and enjoyed, but who instead want their Frenchified cheeseburgers and glass of red wine ASAP, damnit.
Yes, the place I ate dinner tonight had a cheeseburger on the menu. I restrained myself. It wasn't hard.
But I was in a hurry, so I ate there anyway. It was one of those places with indoor seating, and indoor-outdoor seating that could be placed under a protective canopy with plastic walls with needed, and then outdoor-outdoor seating for people who just wanted drinks. There weren't any of the latter tonight, as the temperature was skydiving noticeably, and as I sat there in the outside-inside portion of things, white-jacketed busboys hastily unrolled and put up those plastic walls.
There was symmetry in the seating, chairs to the left of the main door, and chairs to the right. At the first table on each side, closest to the building, there was an attractive young woman seated and nursing a drink of some sort. And that's where the symmetry ended.
On the right side, the lovely young lady was American. She was blonde. And she was chatting energetically with one of the waiters about her time working as a waitress, and as a restaurant manager, and what she was doing in Paris, and how her family had lived for a year on a houseboat, and all sorts of other pleasant things. The waiter (or perhaps manager; I really wasn't trying to eavesdrop) was a youngish sort of fella himself, good looking and clearly smitten, and he hovered around her table like a hummingbird in a Kool-Aid plant. There were other tables on that side, with other customers, but I'm not sure he made it back to them. At least, not while I was watching.
The woman on the other side was French. She was dark-haired, and she was reading, and the waiter who came over to talk to her was older. He had grey hair, parted down the middle instead of being spiked up with hair gel, and he didn't seem quite as impressed. They had an exchange, a short, sharp one, and then she got up. She threw a little cash on the table, yelled at him, stomped to the entrance to the plastic enclosure, yelled at him some more, left the enclosure, yelled one more time, and then left.
I looked around. Nobody else looked up. The waiter shrugged and walked back inside, but not before he picked up the cash.
Priorities, after all. Priorities.
No comments have been added yet.
