Paris Is Always a Good Idea Read Free Page B

quiet and let your little night owl sleep in—I worked very late tonight,” she would write, and put a note with a little owl perching on a paintbrush beside his bed.
    She’d left her little messages all over the place: tucked in behind the mirror, on his pillow, on the table, in his sneakers, or in a side pocket of his carryall—but one day, she couldn’t really remember exactly when, she’d given up.
    Fortunately they each had their own apartment and a certain degree of tolerance, and René was a positive, life-affirming guy without any hidden depths to speak of. He seemed to her as calm as her little Lhasa Apso. And when they did occasionally quarrel (about little things), they always ended up in bed where their conflicts and frictions faded away in the soothing darkness of the night.
    When Rosalie spent the night at René’s place, which happened relatively seldom, because she liked to be close to her store and he lived in the Bastille Quarter, she would, just to please him, eat a couple of spoonfuls of the mush with the dried fruits and nuts that he kept on preparing for her with such enthusiasm—he never ceased to assure her that she would one day develop a taste for it.
    She would then smile half-heartedly and say “I’m sure I will, someday,” and as soon as he’d gone she’d scrape what was left in the muesli bowl down the toilet; then on her way to the store she’d buy a croissant, still warm from the oven, from a boulangerie.
    Still on the street, she’d tear off a hunk and stick it in her mouth, happy that such heavenly things existed. But of course she didn’t say a word about that to René, and since her boyfriend didn’t exactly have a lively imagination he would certainly have been astounded to catch his girlfriend in this little affair with a croissant.
    The croissant led Rosalie back to Monsieur Picard and his annoying rent increase. She frowned as she stared anxiously at the figures in the letter, which seemed quite threatening to her. Even if Luna Luna did by now enjoy a regular clientele, and there were always new customers and tourists who stopped outside the little stationer’s with its lovingly decorated display window, and then went in and, with exclamations of delight, picked up gift cards, pretty notebooks, or paperweights and never left the shop without buying something, Rosalie was still not in a position to live it up. There was no way of making big money with postcards and beautiful stationery these days, not even in the former literary quarter of Saint-Germain.
    Nevertheless, Rosalie had never regretted her decision. Her mother, who had eventually provided her with a little start-up capital out of her father’s estate, had in the end breathed a resigned sigh and said that of course she would do what she wanted anyway, and that it was at least better to run a store, no matter what kind, than to be a painter in free fall. But still, only a little better.
    Cathérine Laurent would probably never accept the fact that her daughter had not studied for a sensible profession. Or at least married an ambitious young (or, as far as she was concerned, older) man. (Oh please not that good-natured fitness trainer with the gigantic feet, so boring he almost brought her to tears!) Cathérine almost never visited her daughter’s store, and she told her friends from the genteel 7th arrondissement that Rosalie was now running an office supplies store—that at least sounded a bit more serious.
    Well, “office supplies” wasn’t exactly right—in fact, it was totally wrong. You would search in vain for ring binders, staplers, hole punches, plastic folders, glue, in-boxes, and paperclips in the magical paper store that was Luna Luna. But Rosalie considered it superfluous to throw light on this confusion. She smiled and said nothing and felt happy every morning when she went down into her little store and