The Vintage Caper

Angeles.
    It had been one of his regular outings with Bookman. They had decided to try a wildly fashionable restaurant in Santa Monica, a temple dedicated to the extremes of fusion cuisine and daring culinary experimentation. It was, according to one breathless restaurant review, a gastronomic laboratory. They should have known better. There were multiple tiny courses—some of which arrived perched on a teaspoon, others contained in a glass eyedropper. Sauces were served in a syringe, and precise instructions were given, by a rather precious waiter, as to exactly how to eat each course. As the meal tiptoed from one edible bijou to the next, Bookman became increasingly morose. He asked for bread, only to be told that the chef didn’t approve of bread with his cooking. Bookman’s patience was finally exhausted when the waiter went into raptures about the dessert du jour , which was bacon-and-egg ice cream. That did it for both of them. They left and went off to find something to eat.
    The tables around Sam were beginning to fill up, and his eye was caught by the couple sitting side by side at a table opposite him. The man was middle-aged, nicely dressed, and seemed to be well known by the waiters. His companion was an exquisite girl of perhaps eighteen, with a face like a young Jeanne Moreau. She was listening intently to what the man was saying. They sat very close to one another, sharing the same menu. Sam realized that he was staring.
    “Elle est mignonne, eh?” s aid Sam’s waiter, cocking an eyebrow toward the girl as he arrived with the lamb chops. Sam nodded, and the waiter lowered his voice. “Monsieur is an old client of ours, and the girl is his daughter. He is teaching her how to have dinner with a man.” Only in France, Sam thought. Only in France.
    Later, as he took a turn around the side streets on the way back to the hotel, Sam reflected on his off-duty day. From Manet and Monet to the lamb chops and the memorable caramel soufflé, it had been a voyage of rediscovery mixed with frequent twinges of nostalgia. Despite the absence of leaves on the trees, Paris looked ravishing. The Parisians, who seemed to be in danger of losing their reputation for arrogance and froideur , had been affable. The music of the French language spoken around him, the warm whiff of freshly baked bread from the boulangeries , the steel-gray glint of the Seine—it was all as he remembered it. And yet, somehow, it felt new. Paris does that to you.
    It had been a day well spent. Pleasantly weary, he soaked the jet lag out of his bones in a hot tub and slept like a stone.

Eight

    The next day, during the short flight down to Bordeaux, Sam passed the time by considering the differences between a plane full of Frenchmen and a plane full of Americans. Settling into his seat, his first impression was that the sound level in the cabin was lower. Conversations were muted, reflecting the French horror of being overheard. The passengers were smaller and darker; there were fewer blonds of either sex. There were also fewer iPods, but more books. The American addiction to drinking bottled water throughout the day hadn’t yet reached the French passengers (although since many of them were from Bordeaux it was possible that, for medical reasons, they restricted themselves to wine). There was no snacking. Sartorially, the style was somewhere between a day at the office and a day of bird hunting. Moss-colored, hip-length shooting jackets were worn over business suits, and Sam half expected to see the head of a dead pheasant poking out of a side pocket. Men’s hair was longer, and there were significant gusts of aftershave, but there were no masculine earrings or baseball caps to be seen. In general, the look was more formal.
    There was, however, one overwhelming similarity between the Frenchman and his American cousin. Once the plane had reached the arrivals gate, two hundred cell phones appeared, as if on a preordained maneuver, so that passengers could tell wives, mistresses, lovers, secretaries, and business colleagues that, yet again, the pilot had foiled death and had managed a safe landing. Sam, who tended to agree with the theory that ninety percent of cell phone calls were unnecessary, was happy to wait for his bag in silence, a mute among babblers.
    Looking for his contact, Madame Costes, he scanned the crowd in the arrivals area until his eye fell on a woman standing alone. She was holding a piece of cardboard with his name on