Travelers' Tales Paris Read Free

He continues speaking to her with such persuasive sincerity that even I am willing to believe anything he says. But what of today? he asks. Once we leave this moment we cannot return to our passionate innocence. When at last we make love, the wanting and waiting will be over, but they will also be gone. Then we cannot go back, he says. Ever.
    There is a long moment in which neither of them moves. The sun slides away behind the buildings, and afternoon becomes twilight. An older couple enters the café to warm greetings from other habitués; on the sidewalk a man in an elegant overcoat sweeps a woman in furs into his arms; inside, the bartender is talkingon the phone with one hand and gesturing dramatically with the other. Yet somehow all is silent, waiting for love to decide the argument.
    Finally the young woman extracts her hands from his, sits back, and luxuriously smoothes her hair. It is not clear whether she is savoring victory or accepting defeat. A moment later, the two of them go out together. Do they go to her place and make love, or walk the Seine in silence for hours, arm in arm? Which one of them has prevailed? This is Paris, this is love. The argument continues.
    Thom Elkjer is wine editor for Wine Country Living and editor of Adventures in Wine: True Stories of Vineyards and Vintages around the World. His work has appeared in Wine Spectator, WINE magazine, and many Travelers’ Tales volumes. He is also the author of Escape to the Wine Country and a mystery novel , Hook, Line and Murder.

    Numerous writers have depicted the famed City of Light as a woman, and I must agree that she is definitely a sensual, voluptuous, sometimes loving, often laughing, playful spirit. She can also be cruel and cold in her sophisticated way, seeming to say, “I am all that is romance and splendor of the past, but if you do not respect my ancient history and try to understand my deeper mystery, then I will show you only one side of myself...the flat dimension of glittering night life, champagne and sequins, the odor of expensive perfume and cigarettes. But I will not unveil my inner beauty that lies within the cracks of every statue, depicting the glory I once knew. You will slumber in a drunken paradise, unable to keep the vigil as the sun rises on wings of fire that kiss the breasts of my monuments to the past. Because my light is invisible to the naked eye, it only touches and blesses those travelers who continue to dream and believe in their own muse with all their heart. For them, I will shine brightly through their tears of pain and infinite joy.”
    â€”Carole Brooks, “A Love Affair with the City of Dreams”

JOHN GREGORY DUNNE

Behind the Wheel
    Paris satisfies the drives of Private Dunne .
    I WAS 22 WHEN I WENT TO P ARIS FOR THE FIRST TIME, A MEWLING , puling first-class private in the army of the United States, on a three-day pass from an artillery battalion in divided cold war Germany. I was drawn to the City of Light by Charlie Wales in Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited and by Jake Barnes in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and by Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer , drawn by wine and by (let’s face it) what opera stage directions call “women of the town.” I spoke a little French, un petit peu , as I was always quick to say, but I did know the most thrilling word I had ever heard in any language— apéritif .
    â€œ Une fine, s’il vous plaît ,” I told the barman that first day in Paris (at the Hemingway Bar in the Ritz, where else?) when asked if I would like an apéritif . I didn’t know what a fine was, but if it was good enough for Jake Barnes the night he met Brett Ashley again at the bal musette on rue da la Montagne-Ste-Geneviève, it was good enough for me. I had a second fine à l’eau (the barman discreetly suggested that cutting the brandy with water might possibly help me make it through the rest of the afternoon) and