“Paris is always glamorous, no?”
I nodded.
He looked distracted for a moment. “We were good friends, her and I,” he said, then stared at my bread and grinned broadly.
“It is very sexy, a woman who eats,” said Thierry. “You will find a boyfriend in less than five minutes, I am sure. Stay away from the Bourse; they are all bad, bad men.”
The Bourse, it turned out, was the stock exchange, and he launched into a very funny attack railing against privileged bankers, and then lunch was over.
Thierry sat back in contentment after his meal, ordering us both another coffee, which came accompanied by a tiny flute of clear spirit.
“Eau de vie,” said Thierry. “Essential.”
He swigged it down and I did likewise, only to find out it was a ludicrously hard spirit that made my eyes water, and I started to cough. Thierry laughed.
“Nice to make acquaintance,” he said in stilted English, then reverted back to French.
“Likewise,” I said.
“And now, a nap!”
I had a tiny moment of wondering if this wasn’t some kind of ridiculous seduction technique—surely not—but no. Thierry headed back to the shop, and I clambered up the many steps to the tiny apartment (half crawling the last flight), tumbled into bed, and fell fast asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.
Thank goodness for Sami. At about three o’clock, he emerged from his bedroom where he’d only just gotten up, loudly singing an operatic song that was far too high for him (he rather bounced about) and making coffee hiss on the stove. When I came around, still a little drunk on food and eau de vie, I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was.
“Cherie!” said Sami as I emerged, blinking, into the warm afternoon light in the apartment. He glanced at his watch. “I thought you had a job.”
My heart leapt in my mouth.
“I do!” I said, panicking. “I did. Shit.”
“Arrête!” Stop, said Sami. He came over and deliberately smoothed down my hair and wiped under my eyes where, presumably, I was all streaked with mascara. “Do not worry about it, cherie. You may be a little late.”
“It’s my first day!” I moaned. In the factory, you had to clock in and clock out; otherwise, you got your money docked. Not to mention the fact that it was ridiculously rude, and I was an idiot not to set my alarm.
Sami eyed me up carefully. “It is a siesta,” he declared. “Not an invitation to become completely unconscious.”
A slender slip of a person hurried out of Sami’s room to the little bathroom. I smiled at Sami, who completely ignored me.
“Allons, go,” he said. “Rush. And do not say you are sorry. British people say they are sorry one thousand times a day. Why? You do not mean it. You are not really sorry. You should save it for when you are actually sorry. Otherwise, it is meaningless.”
“Sorry,” I said without thinking. He gave me a stern look.
“Now. Go. Do not get drunk.”
“I’m not drunk,” I said, offended.
“No, but you’re English. So it can happen at any time without warning. Come home later. I might have some friends here.”
I catapulted down the stairs, deciding to save time by not switching on the lights, which turned out to be a terrible plan as I jarred my ankles on the bottom steps, then hared out of the block. I heard the first floor door open and close quickly. Ugh, nosey old woman.
As I turned into the rue Chanoinesse, my heart sank. The shop was opened up once again, its striped awning rolled out, its subtle gray frontage glinting in the afternoon sun, a line of happy punters queuing up outside. But worse—Thierry, I saw, was already there, with Alice. Her lip curled when she saw me. Why was she being so snooty?
“Ah, it’s you,” she said, not even bothering to search for my name. “We thought you’d found the work too hard and gone home.”
“I fell asleep,” I said, feeling my cheeks flare up bright red. With the others, I might have managed to laugh it off, but this woman was like a scary headmistress. She looked disapproving.
“Well, I don’t think the most successful artisan business in Paris runs particularly well on people being asleep,” she said icily. “I’m not sure this is going to work out.”
I bit my lip. She couldn’t mean to fire me, could she? Not when I’d just started. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
Thierry turned around with a huge grin as I scampered in under Alice’s gimlet gaze.
“We thought you had escaped! And taken all my secrets to Patrick Roger, huh? He would love to get his eyes on my workshop.”
I shook my head vigorously, tears stinging behind the lids.
Thierry turned to Alice. “I took her to Le Brulot,” he said, looking mock-sad, like a little boy. “So you see, it is all my fault.”
“Who paid?” asked Alice immediately and neither of us answered—I’d never even seen the bill.
“She is a new girl in Paris,” said Thierry. “She should understand lunch, yes?”
Alice still looked mutinous. His voice softened. “You were a new girl in Paris once, non?”
“I don’t eat lunch,” said Alice. But the aggression had gone out of her and she tutted and shook her head at Thierry, not me, who shot me a glance of secret triumph. I couldn’t help but smile.
- - -
The afternoon showed the other side of Thierry, away from his quick perfectionist bent in the workshop at the back. As I tidied, fetched, and scrubbed, I watched him with the customers, flirting, cajoling, letting them taste a little bit, giving tiny sips of the hot chocolate to children. He was as much a master out here as he was through the back of the shop, and when the enormous bills arrived, he would stare them out manfully so they handed over their credit cards without a murmur. It was a class act, I decided. He believed in his product so thoroughly he couldn’t help but transmit his enthusiasm, and the queues outside onto the cobbles were there to see him as much as anything.
At seven promptly, the shutters were pulled down and I looked around. The shop was almost entirely empty, like a baker’s at the end of the day. Anything not sold was immediately thrown out, and I cleaned like a demon. Eventually Thierry came into the back of the shop, smiling to see me polishing the brass.
“Ça va?” he said. “All right?”