Fresh off an action packed weekend filled with surfing, snowboarding, exhaustion and subsequent fighting (lovers quarrels, down-right instigation on my part), I return to an iron and padded cube, vindicated. Freed from stress that formerly rested upon on shoulders, I come prepared to yet again hit the ground running. I check in with the bosses, prepare my workload… and yet only, 51 minutes after logging into my computer my mind wanders…
I glance over at the copy of Vogue sitting on my desk. It’s flipped open to page 178, Political Heartache, the Cecilia Sarkozy story.
It takes me back…
It was just over seven months ago that I rushed through the dimly lit streets of Paris seeking refuge from the rain. The sun set over La Tour D’Eiffel, a Parisian businessman, dressed-down in khakis snapped my picture. Him, my travel companion Y, and I sucked down beer after beer at a corner side bistrot, the name of which I cannot remember. We got lost translating between French and English—his English bad and my French worse.
I tromped around in tall stilettos from lounge to red-velvet-roped disco, Paris—a club appropriately named, one filled with smoke and sweaty dancers, two aromas which when mixed and in right context reminded me of my former sinful youth.
No we weren’t “sur la liste” but my broken French and pouty lips got us in nonetheless… for a night, a single night, I felt like I belonged. J’etais elle, mysterious, happy.
By car we took to the streets, speeding avec notre guide, through the tiny streets of Paris. Through the tinted windows of our new friends Audi I watched the lights of the official builds blur by. I wonder what it would be like to work there, to live here, to sit a corner bistro every evening, to watch the tourists flock by, to smoke, and drink red wine, to slow down and enjoy.
This is a feeling that remains with me; a question that lingers: Is it better to have a taste or to eat the whole cake?
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