On the Brink of Paris by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel Page B

satisfaction in powdered Nestlé’s or Swiss Miss again. It is a moment I will remember until I take my last breath (which I may use asking for another French hot chocolate). I slurped desperately at the last dregs of chocolate, while Charlotte paid the bill (she was incharge of all Official French Transactions) and declared we needed to get going if were going to reach the Louvre on time.
    But we were interrupted.
    â€œLook!” Janet said, pointing. “Look at her, you guys. Look at that woman, right there!”
    Janet was gesturing at a woman coming down the sidewalk with a tiny white dog. She didn’t look like anything special to me—just a woman in a short skirt and a top that might be more appropriate for someone a tad younger. A decade or two.
    â€œThat,” whispered Janet reverently, “is a real Parisienne . Look at her posture! Those pearls! That outfit! Have you ever seen anything so chic? So sophisticated? So positively formidable ? They simply do not make women like that in America. They simply do not . Edith Piaf could NEVER have been an American.”
    â€œWho is this Edith Piaf you keep going on about?” I asked.
    But Janet was fixated on the approaching figure of alleged chicness. Oh, crapstick. It looked like Janet was going to try to TALK to the woman. The situation was morphing from Simply Stupid to Enormously Embarrassing. I thought about hiding under the table, but the quarters were too cramped. So I attempted to look like I didn’t know Janet, like she’d just sat down withus accidentally. Then, to my horror, my fears were realized. Janet leaped up and extended a hand toward the woman.
    â€œBonjour! Je m’appelle Jah-nay!” she cried brightly.
    â€œWatch the dawg—he bites,” said the woman in a distinctly Long Island accent. “I don’t speak French,” she added, as an afterthought.
    Now, I’m not all that fond of Janet, as you might have guessed. But even I felt a teeny bit bad for her when I saw her face collapse in disappointment.
    â€œI thought…I thought…you were French …,” Janet stuttered.
    The woman, who I could now see was actually CHEWING GUM, grinned.
    â€œYou ain’t the only one, doll. I got the look down to my toes. Louis Vuitton,” she said, patting her bag. “Chanel suit— not off the rack, mind you—cawst more than yaw fathah makes in a month. I only let Jean Louis David touch my hair. Shoes, of cawss, are Louboutin. And I’m sure you noticed my dawg’s collar. Christian Lacroix! Cawst me nine hundred bucks! That’s why you thought I was French, doll. I’m wearing thirty thousand dollahs’ worth of the country as we speak!”
    â€œWell, it’s certainly…it’s quite…chic,” Janet said.
    The woman pointed a manicured finger at her Chanel-encased torso.
    â€œI speak chic, doll. I am chic.” Then she tottered away on her improbably high heels. Janet looked thoroughly deflated.
    But Charlotte was urging us on, so I hopped up and followed her toward the nearby metro station.
    Now I freely admit it, Dear Readers. I was not paying attention because I knew Charlotte was taking care of everything. I was actually thinking, twisted as it was, that the stinking-rich American broad in Parisian couture might be a PERFECT character for my novel. What a great way to start the book! This creature is toodling around Paris in her million-dollar French garb, and she thinks she’s All That. But what the reader instantly sees, because I so deftly and subtly render it so, is that this woman doesn’t represent Paris at all. That she isn’t the real thing. That she’s more like Lindy Sloane trying to perform Shakespeare. Totally out of place, totally out of her league. And she has no idea. But WE know.
    I was on a ROLL! This was why I was in Paris! To experience an Unprecedented Stream of Creative Consciousness! I started