Almost Parisian: How To Survive Your Late Twenties... In Paris

Chapter Three.

‘No. No one is that stupid.’

‘I’d love to agree with you. But, according to her, I practically told her I’m speaking hypocritically.’

Max could not remove his wide smile, the kind that just invades your face and even if you tried, you couldn’t remove it. I was telling him about the café conflict and as he was always amused by people who had low IQ and at the same time thought highly of themselves, he kept asking questions.

‘But why would anyone even produce a sentence like speaking hypocritically? Isn’t the point of hypocrisy to screw someone over? Without telling them?’

‘Max, I have no idea, I haven’t got the capacity to answer that, or withstand the power of such a brilliant mind like hers.’

The break was almost over. It was so lovely that the French valued their free time and the lunch breaks were long. You could go eat something, then enjoy yourself, have some coffee, watch Max have some wine, beg Max not to have another glass so he could work properly later, implore Max not to have a third one, and then go back to work.

Paris was still muddy and wet and looked very unlike itself.

‘I really hate it when it’s like this,’ Max commented while we were walking to the office.

‘You can’t just say that about Paris, Max. There is a reason people are fascinated by it. You can’t even imagine how many people dream to see it, just once in their life, even if it is in this light you hate. You know, this might seem shallow, but Paris is a little like Johnny Depp. You can put all the shit in the world on his face, he’ll still be handsome. All the art in the world lies on Paris grounds,’ I spoke lovingly. ‘But you can’t understand that, Max, because you’re a little paperboy from Blackpool. Who knows what they teach you in school there.’

Max smiled and pulled my hair in revenge. But that was our thing, he teased me about being incapable of chewing on the French language, calling me a “diagnose waiting to happen”, and I always made it look like he was born in an illiterate mountain tribe, and not in Blackpool, by a charming Field College professor and a sharp and beautiful lady from Rouen. His parents fell in love, and after they had him and his sister (yet another poor excuse for a person), they decided to move to Paris. Max graduated machine engineering and got a job in Basile’s magazine. That’s how I knew him.

After work, I felt like going to Montparnasse in a small store that I once saw when I was passing by. When I got there, I found it closed. I didn’t have any ideas what else to do while I was there, I didn’t feel like going home, so I sat on a bench and watched the people who walked by. It was never boring in Montparnasse. Whenever I had an image of Paris in my mind, it wasn’t Champs-Élysées, or the Eiffel Tower. It was Montparnasse, in all its glory, history, people and streets.

On the bench next to mine, sat a guy and a girl, both in the middle of a fiery argument. Whose fault was it? Did he cheat on her? Is she pestering him for a birthday present?

Then, an older woman passed, holding the hand of a little girl, about a year old. Is she her grandmother? Was she happy when she was born? Did she maybe want a grandson instead of a granddaughter? Is she still sexually active?

I could never explain why those questions kept popping in my head, but it helped me be more sympathetic to people. I always thought that every man or woman had a different story and everyone had a novel inside them. If I was the main character in my novel, then the rude saleswoman in Galeries Lafayette was probably the protagonist of her own, and she was probably made to be like that because of her own villain. Nevertheless, something or someone made her a moron, so she deserved at least a bit of respect, being a protagonist and bearing the weight of heroism and all.