Perfume and Pipes

Marc and I slug up my
seven flights of stairs. I lag behind him because I have eaten too many
potatoes and am trying to balance a gold paper crown on my head. Yes,
it’s true, congratulate me, I broke my tooth on the small porcelain
figurine in the Gallette cake.

I have just come from a 1 p.m.
Sunday brunch in the 16th arrondissement at the home of Marc’s aunt and
uncle and their daughter, Constance, and son, Benjamin (whom I intend
to marry in order to gain my French citizenship). At the end of the
meal, we celebrated a French tradition for the New Year and welcomed
Epiphany with Gallette des Rois, a flaky cake built like a pie that
contains a fève ( small figurine). Whoever bites into the piece with
the fève is the King or Queen.

Three hours and four courses
later, including an extra two helpings of lamb and potato purée, I can
barely make it up my stairs and am wishing I were a real queen. If I
were a queen I would be napping on a red velvet settée with my Siamese
cat while my four coachmen hoisted me up the 98 stairs.

Marc and
I reach the top of the seventh flight, and I am so out of breath that I
fall against the door. I hand him my purse, too weak to search for my
keys, which I expect have fallen out of the coin purse attached to my
wallet and are lost in the midst of Ricola orange-menthe cough drop
wrappers and left over coinage from the United States.

Marc
opens the door. I fall into my studio and throw my bag onto my bed and
respectfully place my gold paper crown on the red plastic dresser. I
undress quickly, anxious to get into the shower and wash off the métro
residue and maybe even a couple pounds of potatoes.

This is
when I see it. A peculiar orange fluid that has taken over my shower
and kitchen sink. It is filling the bathtub, coming up from the drain.
“Marc!”

…But there was nothing Marc, a metro-sexual, could do.

The
first six days without working plumbing were not terrible, as I was
able to shower at Marc’s place. I carry a small bottle of Purell hand
sanitizer in my purse; so washing my hands was not a problem either. I
don’t do many dishes because most of my meals consist of tuna, eggs and
soup, due to my 530-euro purchase of Dolce & Gabbana boots, which
were lost at Laura’s office party when I was forced to dress up as an
elf and trade my boots for a pair of avocado-green velvet slippers
lined with white faux fur that curved upward into a pointed toe with a
gold jingle bell on the tip.

The last three days, however, have
posed a real challenge, when Marc moved out of his Paris apartment,
leaving me no place to shower. Yes, I have gone three days without a
proper shower. And I feel…well, French.

My landlord did have a
plumber come out to look at the shower last Monday–I called him the
Friday before, when I found my shower filled with Orangina. When the
plumber came, I was not there because I was showering at Marc’s, but I
received a message from my landlord in a very thick French accent,
“Plumber came. I don’t see what you are talking about. I assure you the
plumbing is having no problem.”

How could this be? Had the
orange fluid just evaporated? Was it all in my imagination? Or was it
that the entire bottle of Destop that Marc poured down the drain had
finally worked its way through the goo after a long 48 hours?

On
Tuesday I returned home to my studio looking forward to a comfortable
American-style shower. In Marc’s shower I have to stand sideways in the
tub with my back against the cold pink tiles, while trying to wet my
hair with the hand shower without falling over the edge of the tub and
into the open toilet bowl where Marc has forgotten to put the seat
down. (Note: Ask Laura if leaving the toilet seat up is the behavior of
a metro-sexual, I think, maybe not.)

I go to the kitchen sink to
wash my hands because I accidentally touched petrified mint gum on the
métro. The water is freezing. I turn the knob towards the red (hot
water) dot–the water stops. I turn the knob back towards the middle of
the dial and it shoots out so cold I jump back, knocking my hip into
the plastic red dresser, causing a family of 25-cent toys Marc bestowed
upon me that he collected from his boxes of Cheerios.

I hear a
strange tinkle sound coming from the bathroom, so I turn the kitchen
sink off to listen. It stops. I turn the kitchen sink on, it starts
again. I’m going crazy.

This time I leave the kitchen sink on
and walk into the bathroom to inspect. The shower is on. I reach in to
turn it off but it won’t, and cold water is spraying all over me. I run
to the kitchen and turn off the sink. The water in the shower stops.

Perfect.
The lines have somehow been crossed. Now, I can control my cold showers
from the kitchen. I look outside, it’s snowing. I take a breath and
enjoy the view, forgetting that I am going to have to go about my day
un-showered.

I call my landlord, who lives on the third floor
of my building, and explain to him the problem with the hot water. He
offers to let me to use his shower until it is working, and then says,
“I assure you the plumbing is having no problem.”

I call Marc
in tears. Marc rushes over and calls my landlord, who says, “The
plumber must have forgotten to turn back on the hot water. It should be
very simple. Look for a lever. Because I assure you the plumbing is
having no problem.”

So, Marc begins to tug on a lever. The
advantage to having a metro-sexual for a boyfriend is that there is no
plumber butt. The disadvantage is that they are not good at taking
things apart or putting things together or fixing anything other than
their hair.

The lever won’t budge and Marc has to go to meet a
friend for a café. I turn on the shower and try to brave the cold. I
last 30 seconds and come out shivering. I will no doubt get sick. I
boil some water and clean myself with a washcloth.

Over the
next two days six phone calls were made to my landlord, four e-mails
were sent to my editor pleading for an extension needed for my latest
article due to emotional stress, and the fact that I smelled too bad to
go out and interview anybody without providing them with an air mask.
Marc called his ex-landlord to see if she knew of a plumber who could
fix the problem; he called a company who makes hot water systems, but
they knew nothing of the “simple lever.”

Finally, I suggested
that Marc call my landlord and ask him for the phone number of the
plumber that created this problem in the first place.

Marc
spoke to the plumber, who was very apologetic and explained that he had
turned the hot water off while examining the shower and that the lever
(located underneath the redial directly above the toilet) just needed
to be pulled back, in order to allow the hot water to flow through the
pipes. Marc tried pulling on the lever for five minutes before calling
the plumber again, claiming that that lever was pulled too tight.

The
plumber arrived the next morning between 9-10 and pulled the lever. (In
Marc‘s defense, with a pair of super pliers.) He was here all of five
minutes and would not even accept a tip.

As I undressed for my
first shower in three days, I thought about the week’s unnecessary
struggle. Why did something so simple have to be so difficult?
Archimedes designed the lever in 260 B.C., and in 2004 A.D. my
boyfriend can’t even pull it? Why had my landlord been so reluctant to
take me and my plumbing problems seriously? In the States, lawsuits
result in situations like this one.

I glanced at my bulletin
board hanging above my kitchen sink and my eyes caught the golden gleam
from my paper crown from last Sunday’s brunch. That was over a week
ago, when I was crowned Queen of Gallette, and discovered the orange
fluid in my shower.

I stepped into my perfectly white shower
scrubbed clean with Windex and a French “409” substitute. As the hot
water trickled over my body, I stripped away the stress of the last
three un-showered days with my louffah and Spanish Gardenia bath gel
and finally felt a sense of relief. I parted my lips and took in a very
deep breath…

If I were Queen, my landlord would work for me. He
would be one of the many lords of my land. He would maintain my white
horses, my properties, my plumbing; and his uncompromising behavior
would not be tolerated. And if he were so unlucky to live under the
reign of Marie-Antoinette, and she were to go nine days without hot
water, well, he simply wouldn’t have said “the plumbing is having no
problem.” For he couldn’t with no head.

(But alas, if I were
Queen, a rightful apology would save the lord his life. This is
however, after rereading several key pages of the Dali Lama’s The Art
of Compassion.)