Corkscrew

   788  
No surprise, a small swarm of American men and women here, garrulous as the day is long, even after the equinox. The park is pretty, though I can’t think of a truly homely Parisian park, and near many must-sees—or tourist traps, depending. Perched on a bench and few metal chairs they’ve dragged up, they’re sitting in a convivial clump and having the time of their loud lives, just as the guide books guaranteed in black and white. Most of the conversation is coming from or going to a woman, mid-forties, if you want to trust my artless estimates of age, and she’s the one creating single-throated about two-thirds of the sound. She’s jolly enough, looks good in her tight jeans, has a good-natured air, welcoming, I think, and could probably cheer up a funeral or a mass for the dead. But she also projects, as I get closer, maybe just two metres away now, a sense of contradiction. She looks like a woman it would be fun to have a couple of drinks with and take to bed—provided you didn’t have to wake up with her, ever. Sometimes stasis and quiet are better than her perpetual motion and crash. I start to accelerate. As I pass, not looking, she says, I think, “Monsieur, wait please,” in French, and I decide to put her out of her misery, or me out of mine anyway, stop, and address her in grammatical and up-to-date, but still noticeably accented, American. I wish Messieurs-dames a good day and pose, wondering what now. She lets me know: “Do you know the rules?” About what? “About drinking wine in the park? Is it legal?” I tell her I think I know the rules, thinking anyone who pretends to know French law who is not an elderly French avocat or the prefect of police is sticking his neck out and is too dim to know that the law in the land of light, love, and liberté is, like a cassoulet, the offspring of a dozen competing traditions, each of them insisting that it is the exclusively authentic one-and-only. It is legal, I explain, if you are not too close to a children’s playground and you are in a picnic area. “Is this a picnic area?” You are having a picnic? Yes? It is a picnic area. They produce sandwiches and a couple of slices of pâté. I give them the thumbs up, something I can’t remember ever having seen a Frenchman do, but the clue passes them by, and I start moving on again. She stops me by getting up, telling me her name is Susie, she and her friends all met by chance waiting for a tourist bus early this morning, and wouldn’t I like to have a glass of wine with them, seeing as I how I explained the law and they aren’t afraid now to take their wine out of their canvas bags and have a drink or two. My habitual timidity and my discomfort with loud voices make me want to run for it, but my timidity and discomfort have also glued my shoes to the pebbles on the pathway—and anyway, she is not to be denied. I say of course and sit on a chair kitty-corner from the undeniable Susie. I breathe deeply, waiting. For what I’m no longer sure, but maybe a moment of calm. No soap, no luck—only a sudden uproar or updraft as Susie exclaims with a chorus of answering wails that they have no corkscrew, and can you imagine that? I say nothing, but she asks me if I have a corkscrew by any chance, and I cannot tell a lie, another old and deep-seated social failing. I say I have one in my pocket. This is embarrassing—not because they’ll think I’m a wino or a professional sponge, the kind with a corkscrew and a lighter always at the ready, but no wine or cigarettes. It’s embarrassing to be walking around with a corkscrew in my pocket, period. Why would I do that? Because someone gave me one? Because I picked one up off a café table thanks to an absent-minded waiter? Because I just bought one? I don’t know why, and I can’t think of anything plausible to say. But it’s worse than that. Admitting to a corkscrew in my pocket also blows my chance to escape, telling them what a pity it is, but no, I don’t have one, and I guess we’ll have a drink some other time, and bolting. I hand it over, hoping Susie or one of her friends will smash up the cork and we’ll have to do without. No, again. The style is not up to Le Sélect or Lipp, but the job gets done, and they begin to pass around plastic cups. And again it’s worse than I could have imagined. Why in the name of God or red grapes would anyone buy an Australian Shiraz in Paris, where a decent Bordeaux or Rhône, if not at ça-se-laisse-boire level, is at least something you can swallow without gagging and doesn’t cost very much? Why would anyone anywhere? Monty Python got it right: these aren’t wines for laying down; these are wines for picking up and hitting someone over the head with. After that, the plastic cups aren’t even the cherry on the poison cupcake. I sit still, a cup with too much Shiraz in my hand, hoping it will shake and I’ll spill the wine. I don’t. Susie is talking all this time: she can talk while drinking and doesn’t even drool or sputter, though I can’t tell what she is talking about. A papal anathema of the Middle Ages I once read proposed that the mortification of the excommunicate should include that the wax in his ears turn to stone, and I am thinking that maybe…
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • ALREADY SUBSCRIBED?

More in American expats, Bonjour Paris, cultural differences, Eating in Paris, French wine, Paris parks, Paris sightseeing, Paris tourism, Paris tourist tips, Paris travel

Previous Article Writing from the Heart…in the Heart of Champagne
Next Article Paris Bound