Paris Is Always a Good Idea

Paris Is Always a Good Idea Read Free

Book: Paris Is Always a Good Idea Read Free
Author: Nicolas Barreau
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actually know how much fat there is in those things?”)
    Rosalie, who had her own idea of what makes for a happy life (which did not necessarily include power training, muesli, or soy milkshakes), was not at all impressed, and all her boyfriend’s missionary efforts had so far failed miserably. Rosalie just couldn’t see why she should eat “grain.” “Grain is cow fodder and I’m not a cow,” she used to say and then spread thick layers of butter and jelly on a piece of croissant and stick it in her mouth.
    René watched her with a pained expression.
    â€œAnd anyway, nothing tastes better with a café crème than a croissant or a baguette,” she went on, brushing a few crumbs off the bedclothes. “You have to admit that.”
    â€œThen just leave out the café crème, a kiwi and spinach smoothie is healthier in the morning anyway,” retorted René, and Rosalie nearly choked on her croissant with laughter. That was really the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. A morning without coffee was like—Rosalie tried to find a suitable comparison—was … just unimaginable, she concluded to herself.
    At the very beginning, when she’d only just met René, she had allowed herself to be persuaded to join him on his early-morning run through the Jardin du Luxembourg. “It’ll be great—you’ll see,” he had said. “At six in the morning Paris is a totally different city!”
    He might well have been right, but the old, pleasantly familiar Paris, where you stayed up late at night and drew, wrote, read, debated, and drank red wine, then began the next day comfortably in bed—best of all with a large cup of milky coffee—was much more to Rosalie’s taste. And while René ran beside her under the old chestnut trees with great gazellelike strides, trying to involve her in relaxed conversation (“you should only run at a pace that allows you to chat properly”), she started to puff after the first hundred meters and finally stopped with a stitch.
    â€œThe beginning is always the hardest,” said her coach. “Don’t give up now!”
    Like everyone who’s in love and tries very hard at the outset to merge symbiotically with their partner and adopt their preferences, Rosalie had even given in to René’s entreaties and tried it one more time—but alone, and not at six o’clock in the morning—but after a centenarian with a tottering gait, his body bent terrifyingly forward, his arms swinging wildly, had overtaken her, she finally said goodbye to the idea of becoming sporty.
    â€œI think my walks with William Morris are enough for me,” she explained with a laugh.
    â€œWho’s William Morris? Should I be jealous?” René was concerned. (At that point he had not yet been in her shop, and he had no clue about William Morris the artist. But that was forgivable—after all, she didn’t know the name of all the bones and ligaments in her body, either.)
    She’d given René a kiss and explained that William Morris was her little dog, whom she—as the owner of a stationery store—had named after the legendary Victorian painter and architect, among other reasons because he had produced the most wonderful designs for fabrics and wallpaper.
    William Morris—the dog—was an extremely agreeable Lhasa Apso, and he was now almost as old as the postcard store. During the day he lay peacefully in his basket near the entrance; at night he slept behind the kitchen door on a blanket, and sometimes, when he was dreaming, his paws would jerk in his sleep and bang against the door frame. As the man from the animal shelter had explained to her when she got him, this small breed of dog was so particularly peaceful because they had in the past accompanied wandering Tibetan monks who had taken a vow of silence.
    René liked the Tibetan connection, and William

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