The Best Women's Travel Writing Read Online Free PDF Page B

daughters, so my parents were eager to foot the bill for whatever I chose for the fifty people we planned to invite—family, a few good friends from the States and, mostly, those who comprised our life in France.
    I had already lived in Paris long enough to dress the part, but some other things remained difficult for a young American woman. Like finding a wedding venue. I aimed high, but Paris was shutting me out. I inquired at what seemed like the city’s entire varsity restaurant line-up: L’Orangerie and l’Amboiserie, Taillevent and Maison Blanche. In each dining room, the gatekeeper shook his head, topped it off with a puckered expression of Gallic scorn, and sent me packing. They seemed to be telling me what I suspected: we had no business getting married in such a place. Yankee, go home.
    I hadn’t dared approach Le Grand Véfour; it was considered a sanctum, impenetrable and holy, despite a perceived decline I’d read about following the recent death of its chef of thirty-six years. But one day, while getting a haircut at a salon in the Galerie Vivienne, I realized I was a stone’s throw from the restaurant.
    â€œYour hair looks very sad,” my coiffeuse, Monique, told me flatly, referring to my brunette locks.
    â€œReally?” I asked. Two hours later I walked out a blonde—and not a classy-looking one.
    Maybe it was the hair that made me lose my guile, because something marched me straight over to Le Grand Véfour. I stopped to read the placard in memory of Colette, who had lived upstairs and who, at the end of her life, was carried down each day for lunch at her lavish personal canteen. I turned the corner on the rue de Beaujolais and walked inside, where I was greeted by an imposing woman with a spray of silk ruffles at her neck.
    â€œHello,” I said. “I’m getting married on September 7th at the
mairie
of the 3rd arrondissement, and afterwards, I would like to have my dinner here.”
    To my astonishment, her face lit up.
    â€œI’m Madame Ruggieri,” she said. “Congratulations. We would be delighted to host your celebration.”
    When our wedding party arrived at Le Grand Véfour on an unusually sultry Saturday in September, waiters greeted us beneath the colonnade with flutes of pink Champagne on silver trays. At the time, the wine giant Taittinger owned the restaurant, and it had been closed for a month—officially, this was the final day of its summer hiatus, during which it had been buffed, shined, and spruced up. Tomorrow it would open to the public again, but today it was ours. With the sun pouring in and reflecting off its many mirrors, the room shimmered. A solo cellist played a Bach suite as we trickled inside.
    Above the tables in Le Grand Véfour are small plaques in memoriam to those who occupied them. Mark and I sat side by side on Napoleon and Josephine’s banquette. Our lamb medallions were drizzled with basil sauce this time, and our wedding cake was topped with pulled sugar roses. The freesia and lilies that Madame Ruggieri and I had chosen for the tables were almost unnecessary, upstaged by the room itself.
    â€œI’m your wife,” I whispered to Mark at some point during dinner. He reached around me on the banquette, grasped my hip and pulled me toward him, sensing my incredulity at the pronouncement. I wasn’t thinking about how long, or if, we’d last. I simply needed to name what I had become, as if saying the word meant I had simultaneously transformed into a more true and worthy soul. But I didn’t feel the least bit changed. Instead, I sensed I had boarded the finest and sturdiest of ships but was terrified of water, and furthermore, it was too late for me to disembark. Now, my destiny was choosing me.
    â€œI guess that makes me your husband,” he whispered.
    â€œForever,” I said, and shrugged, punctuating the word with finality, rather than doubt.
    â€œI’m