March 2011

So now I am sitting in the Opera Suite, with its black-and-white photos of famous people I have never heard of—all French, no doubt—eating chocolate and waiting for Diane to call and tell me where I can pick up some cheese.

After half an hour, she rings me up. She is very excited. “I have found a place for you. Marie-Anne Cantin. It is not far.”

I tell Jan I’m off to get le cheese. She doesn’t care. She has half a bottle of the Veuve Clicquot left and the bathwater is still hot. So, with Diane’s meticulous but complicated directions in hand, I head off in the general direction f the golden cupola heralding Napoleon’s tomb, which, evidently, is near the cheese shop.

Let’s pause right here while I’m getting a bit lost wandering up and down streets that, for some reason, all seem to end at the Parc du Champ de Mars. I want to give you some information that, at this point in our story, I’m unaware of but I’m about to discover. It’s about this cheese. Epoisses. Epoisses de Bourgogne, as it is officially called.

Two weeks later, my wife is sitting in a bathtub drinking Veuve Clicquot. She is in total heaven. She loves the antique stores around Carré Rive Gauche, the wild strawberry sorbet at Berthillon, and the silk underwear at Sabbia Rosa, but mostly she loves lounging in the oversize tub in our hotel room sipping champagne and admiring the Eiffel Tower, which juts up into the cloudy sky just blocks away.

I am sitting shirtless and shoeless on a green couch in the Hôtel Lutétia’s Opera Suite, eating a nougat bar, wedge by wedge, speaking on the phone with Diane Mincel, an extraordinarily beautiful and charming (aren’t all French women?) jeune femme from the hotel’s marketing department who, during our three-day stay, has done everything but walk our dog—and I’m sure she would have done that if we’d had one. I have waited until the last minute to secure Elaine’s cheese, but we are leaving tomorrow, early, so I have asked Diane where, s’il vous plaît, I might find a little “Ay-pwoss.”

Diane makes that peculiarly French blowing noise, like giving the raspberry without sticking your tongue out, which, loosely translated, means either “Your guess is as good as mine” or “What a silly question.”

“Perhaps I can find out for you,” she says. The French always qualify everything by saying “perhaps.” This way they always look like heroes when they actually do something. “I will call you back immediately.”

Elaine has done me a favor. A huge favor. As the public relations account executive for a major European hotel chain, she’s managed to arrange several nights accommodation for my wife and me at a very swanky establishment in Paris, the Hôtel Lutétia. During the high season, mind you.

“Darling”—that’s Elaine talking, not my wife; Elaine is very continental and always calls me darling—“Darling, you’re a very lucky man. The Lutétia is très chic.”

Elaine is from Los Angeles but she can get away with nonsense like this because she’s married to a Parisian, though I doubt if her husband has ever said “très chic” in his life.

Anyway, I’m indebted. “Sweetheart,” I say to her (these silly endearments are a game we play), “what can I bring you back from the City of Light? Foie gras from Fauchon? A lacquered tray from Palladio? Tell me, mon petit écureuil, what do you desire?”

Elaine does a little trilling laugh over the phone that she knows drives me crazy. “Rien, rien, rien,” she says. And then she pauses. “Unless….”

Ah hah! I think. Payback time. “Yes?”

“No, nothing. It would be an inconvenience.”

“Tell me, my little ferret. What do you desire?”

“Well, I was just thinking….Perhaps some cheese?” she replies, phrasing it as a question.

That’s it? I’m going to Paris and she wants a wedge of fromage? Meaning to be generous, I suggest something special. “Pepper roll, perhaps? Cranberry-flavored Neufchâtel?”

“Epoisses,” she growls. Of course, this is before I know what it is, so to me it sounds like she’s just said “I pass” with a Brooklyn accent.

I ask her to repeat herself. “Ay-pwoss,” she cries, and I have to admit it is the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard her say.

“But of course,” I say, having no idea what she’s just asked for. “A little Ay-pwoss.”