Our Story (The American Version) Part III

January, 2006
Towards the end of my November 2005 trip to France, I had tried to convince Cécile to come back to Phoenix for a visit. It was getting so cold in France. Cold and rainy and grey. Surely she would want to be where the sun was shining and the weather was warm. She was slightly reluctant.

"Perhaps you could come back to Paris?"

"Paris in January?" I don't know about that.

I told her we could go down to Mexico and visit Aztec ruins. The idea intrigued her and she agreed. We looked into it after I got back home. We decided on Belize instead. Mayan ruins would be cool. Belize would be cool. I bought two round trip tickets. I sent a deposit down to a really cool hotel that was in the jungle. I went to a doctor and got some pills for dysentery and malaria.

I bought a steam-cleaner. I disinfected the house.

It was 2:00AM on the day she was supposed to arrive when the phone rang. It was Cécile. She was at the airport...Charles de Gaulle airport. She was crying. They wouldn't let her on the plane. Apparently, the passport she had used last June was no longer good enough. Travelers to the U.S. now needed a visa. She didn't know anything about it. It seems that most of the people in France didn't know anything about it. They wouldn't let her on the plane. She wasn't coming.

FUCK!

That was a bad night. If you ever saw that scene in Pulp Fiction when Bruce Willis finds out that Maria de Medeiros didn't remember to bring his father's watch, that was me.

After calming down, it was time to rethink. Ok, if she couldn't come here, I could still go there (January in Paris...hmm...all of a sudden, it doesn't sound so bad). I exchanged my ticket to Belize for one to Paris. Cécile was so excited. She immediately planned the whole trip. She would pick me up at the airport and we would drive to Mont St. Michel. Then we would take a tour of Brittany. Her great grandmother had passed away a few years ago but the family had held onto the house in Maël Carhaix. We could stay there. It sounded great to me.

And it was.

Mont St. Michele was just as magical as I imagined it would be. In January, there aren't a lot of people there. We stayed at La Mere Poulard. It was beautiful. Cold, but beautiful. We ate mussels that were pulled from the sea that morning. That's kind of a big deal when you're a guy living in Phoenix.




Then we drove to Maël Carhaix. A small town! The house was cute. Aside from the little problem we had with the hot water heater, everything was great. Cécile had brought sheets and blankets and food.

Then it snowed. It never snows. I didn't mind. I liked it. Snow is also a big deal when you're from Phoenix.



The snow was pretty much gone the next day so we went hiking in a granite gorge.



We drove up north to Perros Guirec and the surrounding area (Le Côte de Granit Rose). Along with all the other lovely things to see, there was a store there that sold knives...beautiful knives. I saw one in the window that I really wanted, un couteau de poche avec un tire-bouchon. Unfortuantely, the store was closed. I thought that was strange. It was Monday. The store was closed on a Monday? Cécile said that Mondays are like Sundays in France. Vraiment? Very well, then. We went back the next day and the store was still closed. Whomever owned the place just didn't feel like opening that day. Cécile said that it happens all the time. It was so strange to me. How can you have a store and not open it? Now, I had to have a pocket knife. But not just any pocket knife. I had to have that pocket knife...just out of principle.





In every town we stopped in, we tried to find a store that sold knives. Ploumanach, Treguier, Carhaix-Plouguer, Huelgoat, Châteauneuf-du-Faou, Châteaulin, Quimper. I was obsessed. Finally, in Concarneau, we managed to convince a guy to open his store at 2:00PM (Can you imagine that? Trying to convince a store owner to open in the middle of the afternoon.) I ended up getting one without the cork screw. The handle is made from South African Cow Horn.

After that, we ate lunch at the old town wall of Concarneau. I sliced the bread. I cut the pepper. I spread the Pâté de Campagne. I love this knife. We used it almost every day after that. I still carry it around sometimes just to have it with me. Funny how things bring back memories.



We were having a great time. We drove to Auray to visit some of Cécile's family. Her aunt, Christianne, was staying with Cécile's cousins Justine and Julien. I thought "ok, that would be nice to stop by and say hi." Cécile neglected to tell me that we would be staying there overnight. After we got there, it turned out that we were staying for 2 days.

Two Days???!!!! With your family???!!! In Auray???!!!

I was angry. I thought she could have at least asked me what I wanted to do before committing us to 2 days with her family. It's not like I had a lot of time to spend there. I would have prefered to have spent that time alone with her.

This was our first fight.

But, of course, I was wrong and Cécile was right. Je suis égoïste. Her family was great and we had so much fun with them.



Stupid me. After having made such a fuss, I was so sad to leave them. But I learned something very valuable. Trust Cécile's judgement. As it turns out, she's always right. (No...seriously...she is. It's the strangest thing. Since I've known her, she's been right about everything. Not necessarily about what's the best train to take or what metro exit to get out at but that's another story. About anything that really matters, she just seems to know.)

Once again, time was running out on this trip and we made our way back to Paris. To avoid the traffic, we decided to stop in Chartres for the evening. (Here's a travel tip. If you're going to Chartres, try to go when they're ordaining a new bishop. It's really a lot of fun.)




We had dinner at a creperie. It was the only place open.

Let me back track a little. Before I left on this trip, I was hanging out one night at the Pit and talking with my friend Grant. He was in town, back from the Czech Republic, thinking about asking some girl to marry him. I never thought Grant was the marrying type. Over the course of our discussion, he planted a question in my head that I found was impossible to answer any other way. When I asked him why he wanted to do this 'thing,' he said "I asked myself, and maybe you should ask yourself, 'am I ever going to meet somebody better than her?'"

No. I'm not that lucky.

There's never been anyone that has made me feel the way I feel when I'm with Cécile.

This is what I was thinking about when we were sitting at the creperie. I was looking across the table at the most wonderful woman I had ever met. I wanted to bring up something with her and I was so nervous about it. "Hey Baby (I call her "Baby." I'm the only one that's ever been allowed to call her "Baby."), would you ever consider maybe moving to Phoenix and living with me?"

Could I be anymore lame?

She paused..."Barry, are you asking me to marry you?"

Until she said that, I wasn't sure what I was asking. I stuttered..."Yeah, I guess I am."

She said yes. She wondered why I waited so long to ask. I wondered the same thing.

Walking back to our hotel, through the medieval cobblestone streets of Chartres, three words ran through my mind. She...said...yes. I thought about that...that and how strange it was that my feet couldn't feel the ground. She said yes.

Our Story (The American Version) Part II

November, 2005
Cécile didn’t have a computer at the time but we still managed to email each other almost everyday. She would use an internet café when she was in Paris but, on weekends, she would go to Chars to her parents to get away from the city. There was no internet access there.

I had planned on going to Paris to see her in November. I wasn’t sure what would happen. Our emails were always very affectionate. “I miss you so very much.” “I can’t wait to see you again.”

I wondered about "the boyfriend?" She hadn't mentioned anything about him. Were they still together? I didn’t know. (To tell you the truth, I thought he was gay.)

We were planning on spending a couple of days in Paris and then going down to Toulouse to see Pierre-Yves, her brother. He was going to have a party for her birthday. They had planned on going hiking in the Pyrénées one day. Then we would go back to Paris.

Was the boyfriend going with us? That would suck. There were riots going on at the time, as well. Civil unrest by mostly African Muslim and North African youth. Traveling with the woman I love and her boyfriend...burning cars in the street...I had a suspicion that this was going to be a different kind of trip.

What to get for a birthday present? Hmmm. I thought about it for a while and decided on a digital camera. On our drive back from Flagstaff last summer, she had borrowed a digital camera and was like a little kid on Christmas morning with it. I thought it would be overtly sentimental but not too personal (in case the boyfriend was still there). To make a statement though, I got her a really nice one.

Let's just say that the flight sucked.

When it landed at Charles De Gaul Airport, there was some strike going on with Airport Bus Drivers so we had to wait an extra hour on the tarmac to get to the terminal. Welcome to France. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and see Cécile (I also really wanted a cigarette). I even forgot to pick up my luggage. I rushed out the doors and there she was. She was more beautiful than I remembered.

We drove to Cécile’s apartment in Fontenay-aux-Roses to drop off the car. She made me a lovely lunch with some soup that her mom had made and some pasta and some roast beef from the boucherie around the corner. And bread (oh, the bread is so good there). Then we took the train back to Paris to bring the luggage to our hotel. “Our hotel.” I still wasn’t sure what “our hotel” meant. I knew we only had one room. Was I sleeping on the floor? I hate sleeping on the floor.




It was the Hôtel du Levant, a nice little hotel on a busy street. The room was very small. The bed wasn’t very big but big enough so that there wasn't a lot of floor space. OK. I was pretty tired from not sleeping on the plane but I was too excited to go to sleep. Cécile took me on the métro to the top of the Champs Elysées by the Arc de Triomphe and we walked all the way down through the Jardin des Tuileries to the Louvre. Then we got something to eat nearby. The whole time, I was entranced. Paris is beautiful. And Cécile is so beautiful. She had a certain confidence she didn’t seem to show back in Phoenix. We were in her city now. I liked this side of her. I liked it a lot.



It was getting late. We went back to the hotel. It never escaped my mind, the doubt, not knowing where I stood with Cécile. Was I just her friend from Phoenix? I was so happy to be with her then that I decided not to think about it anymore. Of course, I couldn't.

We got back to the hotel. We showered and got ready for bed. I was nervous. We talked. I found out there was no more boyfriend. I didn't end up sleeping on the floor.

That’s all I’m going to say about that.

We went down to Toulouse to hang out with PY and his friends. They were all so interesting and fun. They were very forgiving about my inability to speak French. Thankfully, Cécile was always there with me to translate. PY couldn't have been nicer. And Charlène was awesome. That hike in the Pyrénées was a little more than I had expected. I thought we were going on a little walk. I didn’t know we were going to climb a mountain.

(exported from a Flash slide show)























Other than that, the time we spent there was something I will never forget.

Cécile’s party the next night was great too. PY and Charlène did such a nice job putting it together. I enjoyed all the people I met there. I love Toulouse. Thank you, PY. Thank you, Charlène.




Thank you, Cécile.

Riding back on the train to Paris, I couldn’t help thinking how much I loved this woman. She was reading Homer's Ulysses while I read the French dictionary. She slept and I watched her sleep.

We still had a few days left. We went to Versailles and St. Germain and Le Pecq. We went to Sceaux. We walked around Paris. If you told me I could be happier, I wouldn’t believe you.

Before I knew it, the trip was over.


















My time was up. I had to leave.

Our Story (The American Version) Part I

The Summer, 2005

My friends and I used to hang out at this dive hotel bar downtown that we affectionately called The Pit. It was convenient for all of us, it was cheap to drink there, and on any given night, someone you know would show up to unwind after a hard day.



One typical night in June, I was hanging out with two of my friends, Dale and Rhonda. We were talking about the typical things that people typically talk about after work. It was all very typical. It was a Wednesday.


Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a girl walking by, a very attractive girl. That wasn't typical. An attractive girl at The Pit?

A little later on, that same girl came over to our table and asked if she might have a cigarette. That's happened at the Pit all the time but no one ever asked with a French accent before.

That’s the moment my life changed forever.

“You know, you can join us if you like.” She said “thank you” and sat down. My heart was beating like a hummingbird's wings.

She told us she had arrived in Phoenix yesterday for a summer internship at the Phoenix Art Museum. She was looking for a room to rent through the local New Times classified ads and was staying at the Ramada until she found one. I would have asked her to move in with me right then but I was thinking “Shit, I should have cleaned the house last weekend.” Knowing that our friend Michelle had a recently vacated room, I suggested that. "What a good idea!" Rhonda called her.



Michelle wasn’t too keen on the idea. She said "No way am I going to let someone you met at The Pit in my house!" But Rhonda talked her into at least meeting her first before she said no. So she did...a few days later. Michelle fell in love with Cécile just like I did. Well, not quite like I did.



I got to spend the whole summer with her. It was the greatest summer of my life. Unfortunately, she had a boyfriend back in Paris. Shit.

Because she had to take the bus to and from the museum everyday (and anyone that's been in Phoenix in the summer time knows how much that sucks), I would leave work early to drive downtown to pick her up just so I could drive her back to Michelle's or maybe take her out to dinner or a drink. I spent every moment I could with her.

One night during our trip to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, we sneaked away from the rest of the group we were with and watched a jazz fusion band playing outside. I put my arm around her shoulder (hey, it gets cold in Flagstaff at night) but I felt her kind of tense up so I removed it (but in a cool way...yeah...right). Oh well.

But, the next day, she made me so happy when she said she would ride back to Phoenix with me in my truck. Cool. Two and half hours of just her and me. It was awesome.



As the summer was winding down, it was time for Cécile to finish her internship paper. She had decided to write it in English and asked if I would help her edit it. We were up until 2:00AM finishing it. We sat side by side for 6 hours. Sometimes our legs would touch or a shoulder would brush against the other's as we would lean towards the screen or point to something. That was the sexiest editing job I ever had.

Alas, the summer was over. She was going back to France. As a surprise for her going away party, I put a cooler in the back of my pickup with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. As the party wound down, I asked Cécile to come outside and take a walk with me. We drank the champagne out of plastic cups and then took a walk around the neighborhood. That was the first time I kissed her. It was only a little kiss on the lips. Nothing that anyone but me would have thought was earth shattering (unfortunately, she was a little tipsy and, to this day, doesn't remember it).

As a going away present, I bought her a bell from Arcosanti. This one was designed by Paulo Solari in honor of his departed wife. I bought one for myself too. I knew every time I heard it ring, I would think of Cécile. I was hoping that it would be the same for her.



That day at the airport was a really hard one for me. When it was my turn to say good bye, I hugged her so tight (that, she remembers). Later, she told me that it felt so great to be in my arms. I wished I had known that then. I would have gotten right on the plane with her so I would never have to let her go. As it was, I wondered if I ever would see her again.

Flappybats

Photographs courtesy of Michelle Saldano. Merci Beaucoup.