Sugar and Spice

Chapter 2: An American in Paris I

La Belle Epoque was not a place that was easy to find.

It was halfway down the kind of narrow, quiet street that everyone called the 'real' Paris - specialized, family-run shops with apartments above, and small, smoky cafes with tables and chairs spilling out onto the pavement in such a haphazard fashion that, when you took a seat, it was hard to know which establishment you were actually patronizing. It was the kind of democratic enclave where young and old, Parisian and non-Parisian, successful and not-so-successful mixed together quite happily without too much bother. And it was the kind of street that formed the center of a miniature community and where, if you looked hard enough, you could get anything and everything that you might possibly need.

This particular street, rue Saint Benedict, was not far from the center of the city. If you stood in the right place and craned your neck in the right direction, you would be able to see the top of the Eiffel Tower from it, and it would take just half an hour of slow walking to reach it from the Left Bank of the Seine. But that thirty minute walk would take you on a journey through a maze of similar, narrow streets, through the Latin Quarter and the Jardin de Luxembourg, into the department known as Montparnasse. It was not the kind of place that you went to deliberately unless you were a local. Tourists often stumbled upon it on those days when they had museum fatigue and decided to wander and explore instead, but, even if they wanted to, they very rarely managed to find it again.

Lalisa Manoban was finding that out the hard way.

Almost an hour after she had left Chitthip, her mother, at the hotel to have a nap - 'Getting old and divorced does that to you, you know, it makes you sleepy' - she still hadn't found the pâtisserie. She knew that she was in the right area, but she also knew that she could wander around for hours and not get any closer. And her French wasn't just appalling. It was non-existently appalling, and rendered it pointless to even try and ask for directions. She cursed herself for not taking more notice earlier of where they were walking...but then again, she had not known that she would want to retrace her steps.

Lisa wasn't sure, exactly, why she wanted to go back to the pâtisserie. The cakes that they had bought - what were they called again? Fraisier, that was one. Like the TV program. And chocofambass...or something like that. They had been incredible, really incredible. But, at six euros a pop, Lisa didn't think that she was going back for more of those. Her wallet wouldn't stand it, and neither would her waistline. No, there was something else drawing her back.

Something...or someone.

It was luck rather than any kind of judgment that eventually brought her to the top of rue Saint Benedict - named, Lisa assumed, for the convent and Catholic school of the Benedictine sisters that they had walked past earlier. She grimaced as, once more, she passed the heavy wooden doors. Twenty five years had passed since she had left the Catholic elementary school in Boston, and she was still terrified of anything in a wimple. Memories of sharp rulers, forced confessions and seemingly endless catechism tests had left their mark, but at least she knew she was on the right street.