Ava Fodor, a slightly plump, frizzy-haired nineteen-year-old American au pair in Paris struggles with being less than perfect. Jean-Michel is Ava's fussy, exacting first French boyfriend whose provincialism drives her up the wall yet who educates he...
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The next day, I awoke to Pascal's sleepy eyes upon me. Gerard was still asleep. We looked at each other steadily, as I imagined waking up with him without Gerard between us.
"Tu as bien dormi? Have you slept well?" Pascal asked.
"Yes. Very well. And you?"
"Très bien." He should be, considering he was waking up in my room, if not in my arms. The golden ring was in sight.
In a minute, Gerard was up, and we all went out to greet the day. It was comical to see their drowsy, early morning faces. Gerard's eyes were puffy, with dark rings under them. Pascal's usually large, round eyes had taken on a slanted shape – exotic and sly. I didn't doubt his thoughts were both, his eyes on the prey.
Bypassing my usual boulangerie, as well as the patisserie shop, I led us to the working man's café on the corner of the Rue de Grenelle where I'd frequently stopped for a large cup of café crème on my way to French classes at the Sorbonne.
We had our coffees at the counter, and Pascal introduced me to a new custom. I'd often wondered why eggs were displayed on a vertical stand on café countertops, especially in the mornings. Now, I watched as he plucked three eggs from the stand, peeled, and salted one then handed it to me. The hard-boiled egg was fresh and delicious.
My English girlfriend, Charlotte, came to mind. I'd met her in Tokyo, where I taught English the summer between sophomore and junior years. She was ten years older, wildly sophisticated, with a penchant for black American Japanese major league baseball players; a male genre which enjoyed superstar status in Japan. Pretty, tall, and willowy, her complexion was as delicate as an English rain shower.
Her eating habits had been as carefully controlled as her love life had not. She was discipline personified. I'd soaked up everything she did, worshiping at the altar of her self-control. Every morning, she'd eat either one hard-boiled or soft-boiled egg with a piece of unbuttered whole wheat toast. She'd wash this down with a few cups of tea. I never saw her vary from this routine once. After we'd parted ways in Tokyo, she came to Yale one spring to visit me. At breakfast in the chaos of my residential college dining hall, surrounded by undergraduates wolfing down doughnuts, bowls of granola, plates of pancakes, eggs and bacon, she maintained her strict regimen by carefully unpeeling her hard-boiled egg and toasting her lone piece of bread. My girlfriends and I were in awe.
A good number of the girls in my class were anywhere from five to fifteen pounds overweight, except for the ones who were anorexic, bulimic, or naturally slim. My female colleagues and I sucked in our breaths as Charlotte rose from the table after breakfasting, her stomach flat, hip bones jutting out fashionably under her thin, flowered dress, with long slim legs ending in ankles you could wrap your fingers around. Everything about her showed us up. After dark, she was capable of drinking like a fish, another British character trait my Yale colleagues and I found impressive.
As I stood at the counter, enjoying my salted, hard-boiled egg, I connected up the dots. Pascal was showing me how to do something Charlotte had known how to do her entire adult life: carefully control her blood sugar in the morning so she didn't become enslaved to it for the rest of the day.
