French Fried

by Nancy Fairbanks

  Now the plate looked wrong! Two slices in back, one in front, and that telltale space beside it. They, as Texans, might not even like pâté. Perhaps the wife was a native and, knowing no better, thought foie gras was nasty. Some Americans said that. If he ate the second slice, there would still be two left for Jason, should he want them. Obviously, it was the thing to do. The very thought of letting the pâté dry out made his lips and the inside of his mouth numb with dismay.

  Robert rose, feeling a bit light-headed. He was salivating and even somewhat breathless as he made his way to the desk and prepared four more toasts, but with some difficulty because his hands began to feel prickly. Odd. And his feet, too. Silly little chair had cut off his circulation.

  Still the prickliness didn’t prevent him from enjoying each of the four treats as he popped them in his mouth and sighed with delight. The pâté was so rich and creamy, so flavorful. And the toast crunched delightfully between his teeth as the foie gras melted onto his tongue, laving his taste buds with its matchless flavor. His eyes were already on the last two slices. If he ate those, too, would the absent Americans know the difference? But wait. Who had sent the mini-feast? He leaned forward to read the card on the champagne split and almost fell over. Now his legs were numb and rubbery. “From the Department of Chemistry,” he read aloud through tingling lips. If he ate the pâté, the Blues might thank the chairman for the champagne and be asked how they had liked the pâté. They’d say, “What pâté?” and his secret pilfering would be—

  To catch his balance, he dropped his hand onto the desk with a thud that rattled the tray and its contents, and his wrist gave way like foam so that he found himself propped up on his elbow and wobbling legs. Must sit down. No, lie down. He could straighten out the bedspread as soon as he felt better. Scrape the remains of pâté he’d eaten from the plate. He managed to fall on the bed. Wipe off the knife, he thought fuzzily. At least lying down he felt better. A few minutes of rest and he’d . . . close his eyes for a time.

  The numbness was spreading in his extremities, and his stomach hurt. Robert felt a distant panic set in. Had he had a stroke? Was paralysis overcoming him? He was too young to . . . How he wished someone would come. Anyone. Even the horrid Yvette. Or the Blues. They’d see he was in trouble and call for help. So what if they noticed the missing pâté?

  He had fallen on his side and found his breathing becoming shallow. He needed to stand. To take a deep breath. Stand up, he told himself, but when he tried, he ended up on his stomach across the two beds.

  Someone. Please come. Help me, the voice in his head called silently. He could no longer speak. His lungs cried for air, and he . . . If only help would come.

  But by the time someone entered the room, Robert Levasseur, still marginally conscious, could make no sound but a faint cough, a slight wheeze of failing muscles.

  Pâté de foie gras is made from the liver of a goose that has been force-fed until both goose and liver are huge. Archetratus, a famous Greek cook of the third millennium B.C., called that liver the “soul of the goose.” Pliny mentions that the force-fed geese of Gaul were herded from Picardy to Rome, where they were refreshed with honey and figs to make them fatter and sicker but, therefore, all the more delectable to the Romans.

  In modern times hand forcing of feed down the goose’s throat is giving way to electric force feeding and even shocking the goose’s brain with electricity or chemicals, after which the goose eats madly, grows hugely, and hallucinates. The result is that the foie gras we savor so avidly comes from a goose that is certainly diabetic and probably schizophrenic, and yet its liver is absolutely irresistible to the connoisseur. Personally I try not to think about the process because I’m addicted, too.

  Carolyn Blue,

  “Have Fork, Will Travel,”

  Providence Star-News

  3

  Welcome to Lyon

  Carolyn

  Jet-lagged and apprehensive, I stood at the far end of the elevated Perrache Station, high above the district where our hotel was located—in theory. Goodness knows what I’d do if I couldn’t find it. “Go down to street level and straight up Charlemagne Cour,” my husband had said. “The hotel can’t be more than a block or two. Hotel Charlemagne.” Then, having already stowed his suitcase in a locker, Jason had hustled off to catch another train, which would take him to the university.

  I still had my suitcase. No matter how much trouble trundling it to the hotel might prove to be, I refused to enter a strange hotel in a strange city without any luggage. I made that point to Jason, who replied, “Why not? You don’t have to have your nightgown to fall asleep.”

  I sighed and headed for the curved marble stairs that would take me down to street level. At least the street had tall, leafy trees on both sides, even if the buildings looked somewhat shabby from where I stood. Surely marble was unusual in an el station that had very hard-used wooden floors where we got off and seedy-looking shops selling newspapers, unappealing souvenirs, and hot dogs—hardly the fare to be expected in a city reputed to be the cuisine capital of France. Maybe the hot dogs were actually sausages. Lyon was famous for those. I don’t even like sausages, I thought grimly, as I bumped my wheeled suitcase down the first marble step and followed after.

  Bump. Step. Bump, bump, bump. Whoops. The weight of my suitcase pulled it down several steps and almost took me with it. I managed to catch my balance and my bag on the fourth step but had to stop, hand pressed against my pounding chest. I felt like sitting down right there to indulge in a bout of exhausted tears, but a man stopped beside me, lectured me sternly in French, slammed down the handle of my wheeled bag, and carried it away.

  “Here, you! Give that back! Help! He’s stealing my suitcase!” I chased him down the curved stair to the next level while people from a newly arrived train galloped down around me, paying my predicament no mind. How very French of them! When I caught him, the thief was standing in front of heavily scuffed, red-brown doors, pushing a button.

  As they opened, he said, “Elevator,” and shoved my bag inside. As if I was going to get on an elevator with a strange French luggage snatcher. Evidently that wasn’t his plan, for he nodded to me and stalked away. I had no idea what button to select, and before I could decide, a woman pushing a stroller crowded in and sent the elevator down to a floor that didn’t look promising. She and her wailing child exited, and I stayed on. When the doors whipped open again, I yanked my suitcase out hastily, lest it be carried off by the impatient elevator, onto which an impatient Frenchman had directed me.

  After looking confusedly in all directions, I spotted a door with a light above it, so I headed across the grungy, white-tiled floor and stepped out into—what was it? A smelly tunnel with cars, vans, streetcars, and buses whipping by. I must have gone down a floor too far, but I could see daylight toward my right, and there was a walkway, so I took it.

  Alas, the walkway ended when I emerged, and I was confronted with a maze of crisscrossing tracks and roadways. Beyond that an even larger street, lined on one side by grimy, industrial buildings, disappeared to my left. That couldn’t be Charlemagne Cour. To my right what I took to be the end of the station jutted out, and the leafy-tree street led away from the entrance. Charlemagne Cour. But how was I to get to the street when everywhere I looked vehicles were cutting me off? Gritting my teeth, I stayed as close to the curving wall as I could. When I heard a motor hurtling toward me, I stopped and closed my eyes. A lot of honking went on, no doubt at me, before I arrived, trembling, at the front, or back, of the station.

  There I waited for a light and trudged across while cars slammed on their brakes and honked at me. Evidently I hadn’t chosen a light meant for pedestrians. Once across, I leaned against the window of a shop and took deep, calming breaths until the shopkeeper frightened me half to death by tapping loudly on the window behind me.

  Needless to say, our trip to Lyon and Avignon did not start out well. We had been invited by Adrien Guillot, a chemist we met at a me
eting in Sorrento. Jason was to give talks at Professor Guillot’s university in Lyon, after which we would travel to Avignon for an international meeting, at which both men would be speakers. Naturally I had been quite excited at the prospect, Lyon being so well known for its food and Avignon for its history. It had been the residence of the papacy for a hundred years, and the general area was the seat of the Albigensian heresy and the resulting crusade of the Northern French against the Southern French. All very fascinating, not to mention the delights of the Provençal cuisine to be savored in Avignon.

  My enthusiasm had begun to wane when Jason rejected, as too expensive, the hotel recommended by the Guillots. He’d gone on the Internet and found the Hotel Charlemagne. Since he liked the price, the hotel was bound to be less than comfortable, but as he pointed out, his attempts to find me in the spring, when my cruise ship went missing, had been very costly. True, but the money was well spent. I had been so very happy to see him on the deck of the destroyer when the United States Navy hauled me up from my lifeboat.

  How gallant and chivalrous my dear husband had been, and what a lovely summer we’d had together in New York while he was consulting for Hodge, Brune—a sort of second honeymoon, although our daughter Gwen was sharing the apartment, and son Chris came down from Boston on the weekends. And, of course, Jason insisted that we live as economically as possible, which is hard to do in New York. What with eating two desserts at every opportunity because the situation was so stressful, the ten pounds I gained during the cruise had to be shed, but the family wasn’t at all appreciative of my experiments in “diet gourmet.” In fact, by the end of the summer, Jason declared that he never wanted to see another salad.

  Still, we got along wonderfully, which, sadly, hadn’t been the case earlier that year. Jason had hinted that our problems might be due to menopause, but I am not menopausal! I’m only in my forties. I attributed our problems to—well, no matter. She wasn’t in New York, so that took care of that. We had a lovely summer.

  And maybe our Lyon hotel would be nicer than I expected, although a second bad omen had occurred as soon as we landed at the airport. Our hosts, Adrien and Albertine Guillot, were not there to meet us. We were paged and informed that a family emergency had taken them out of town, but they hoped to be back before departure for Avignon. Naturally, Jason was disappointed. He and Adrien had been planning a joint research project.

  Albertine was to show me around Lyon, but without bringing her dreadful dog, Charles de Gaulle—I hoped. Now I didn’t have to worry about the dog. No doubt she had taken him with her to the emergency, but her absence left me to find my way around Lyon, and it’s a very large city with a very intimidating airport. Not the inside; that was fine. But once we went outside to look for ground transportation, the terminal building loomed up like a black and silver bird with gigantic wings upraised. In my sleep-deprived state, I had the shocked perception that the bird building was about to pounce on me.

  And the final blow fell here at Perrache, where Jason deserted me. It was bad enough that he refused to take a taxi to our hotel. Too expensive, he insisted, and quite unnecessary when he’d bought a map and plotted our way by bus and subway. What other husband, jet-lagged and exhausted, would be so besotted with chemistry that he felt it necessary to rush off to a university, where he probably knew no one?

  Lost in morose thought, I had been limping along, tugging my heavy suitcase behind me, when I spotted, across the street, the sign HOTEL CHARLEMAGNE. Wouldn’t you know that I’d chosen the wrong side of the street? Well, I was not walking to a corner so that I could cross safely and sensibly.

  “Never make eye contact with a foreign driver,” someone had told me in Italy, so I tried it in France, peeking from the corners of my eyes and barging into traffic when it appeared that oncoming cars could brake before hitting me. They did brake, and I walked straight through the door of the hotel without catching a single eye of a single outraged French driver. If jaywalking is a crime in Lyon, I

  became a criminal on my very first day. Fortunately, no gendarmes were about to arrest me, and weren’t they lucky? I was in no mood to put up with annoying French policemen. Bad enough that drivers for two blocks in every direction had seen fit to honk their horns at me.

  4

  Goldilocks at the Hotel Charlemagne

  Carolyn

  Actually, the Hotel Charlemagne was nicer than I expected. Potted, ball-trimmed trees and sizable stone lions guarded a rounded glass-and-metal door that led into a modern lobby. Inside, colorful abstract paintings, leather couches, and handsome contemporary rugs greeted me. In a raised section, large, healthy cacti provided privacy for groups of tables served by a rounded bar, while the reception counter, made of glowing, lighted glass, was backed by a deep red wall. All very chic. What I didn’t see was a welcoming presence—no bellhop, no receptionist, just a woman working at a computer. I had to clear my throat twice before she said something snippy in French.

  When I replied irritably in English, she said, “I am busy.”

  “Fine,” I replied. “We’ve prepaid our room; just take my passport and give me my key. I’ve had a long trip, and I want to go to bed.”

  She scowled and informed me that she was in charge of billing, not reception. Much I cared. I scowled back. After relenting and checking me in, she told me that my room was on the fourth floor and that the bellhop was otherwise engaged. Then she pointed me toward the elevator and handed me one of those huge keys that are so heavy they have to be returned before one goes out. Surrounded by so much modern décor, I couldn’t imagine why they didn’t provide key cards, but with no bellhop, I wouldn’t have to tip, so I headed in the direction of the elevator.

  Like the key, the elevator didn’t fit the interior decoration. It was so small there was barely room for my bag and me. The room provided another unpleasant surprise, not that it was unattractive. Cream walls slightly tinged with orange, a modern painting overhanging twin beds, yellow patterned spreads contrasting with dark gray headboards and lamp tables, most of one wall covered with gray-and-pale-orange-striped drapes, partially opened, and on the left against a pale green wall a gray desk and mirror, a gray chair upholstered in orange, a wall TV, and the opening to a hall that evidently contained bath and closet facilities—quite nice, I decided in passing.

  The surprises included a dark-haired man sprawled across both beds, asleep on his stomach and making a strange rattling-wheezing sound. He obviously had a sinus condition. On the desk sat a split of champagne in an ice bucket and a plate with two delicious-looking slices of pâté de foie gras in back, two slices obviously missing in front, a smeared knife, and toast in a small bowl. The envelope attached by a ribbon to the bottle was addressed to Jason and me.

  I glanced at the sleeping man and then tiptoed over to open the envelope. The chemistry department had sent us this welcome snack, which was very thoughtful, except that the strange man had come into our room, slathered foie gras onto toasts with the little knife, and eaten it, after which he had evidently fallen asleep across our beds. Who did he think he was? Goldilocks invading the house of the three bears? Well, I, as Mama Bear, resented having my pâté filched. I could call downstairs, but in doing so, I might awaken the man. No telling what he’d do.

  Accordingly, I wheeled my heavy suitcase into the hall and closed the door quietly behind me. I was so tired, and now I had to convince that rude Frenchwoman that there was a pâté thief sleeping on my bed. When she again ignored me, I said loudly, “There’s a stranger in my room. He ate half of the pâté sent to my husband and me and then fell asleep on the bed.” She raised her eyebrows before returning to her computer. “I demand that you call the manager.”

  “Our manager, madam, is having his midmorning snack in the dining room and cannot be disturbed.”

  “Very well, then,” I replied. “Go up there and deal with the intruder yourself. Otherwise, I shall have to call the police. He is occupying a room for which we paid and has eaten food that
was sent to us. That makes him a thief. I’m quite prepared to sign a warrant for his arrest.”

  That got her attention. She plucked a page from her printer, folded it neatly in thirds, and popped it into an envelope. Then she slotted the envelope carefully into a cubbyhole and, sighing, rose from the desk. “Louis,” she called to a fellow polishing glasses behind the bar, “you must watch the desk for me while I investigate this report of an interloper. It is, without doubt, another guest who wandered into the wrong room.”

  “Why would another guest have the key to my room?” I demanded as I trailed her to the elevator, still dragging my suitcase.

  “Leave the suitcase here, madam. The elevator will not hold the three of us,” she instructed.

  “Nonsense. We can squeeze in, or I’ll ride up with my suitcase, and you can walk,” I retorted, at that point thoroughly irritated by her haughty attitude. We did manage to edge in, but the elevator emitted alarming groans as it labored upward. I stared at Yvette, as her nametag identified her, just waiting for her to make some unkind remark about the weight of Americans. She stared at the ceiling, lips pursed primly. Her attitude convinced me that I should insist the hotel replace the pâté missing from our welcome gift.

  Since this hotel was Jason’s unfortunate choice, it seemed only fair that, once the pâté thief was taken away, the two remaining slices should be mine, not to mention as much of the champagne as I felt like drinking before I went to bed.

  Yvette plucked the key from my hand, inserted it in the door, and told me to wait outside while she investigated. Fine. There was a sofa in the hall, and I sat down, glad for a little rest. “Please come in now, madam,” she called from inside. “This man is not asleep. He is dead.” She was standing with arms crossed over her chest, staring with disapproval at the figure sprawled across our beds.