We'll Always Have Paris Read Online Free PDF

appeared beside American flags that strangled cats. Other pieces captured different slices of political history. A life-sized statue of Angela Davis with a rifle and platform shoes was constructed from sparkling beads. A spaceship built from distressed crates hung from the ceiling with Soviet flags shooting from where flames would normally be.
    Later, Katie picked up a pink beret in a shop and joined the ranks of aspiring artists in Paris. She brought a sketch pad to the Rodin Garden and drew The Thinker with a toilet beneath his bottom. The following day, she joined a group of art students who lined the floor at the Picasso Museum. A French woman eyed Katie’s sketch of Pablo’s cubist goat and raised her eyebrow at me.
    She yours? her chin-nod asked.
    My smile confirmed.
    Not bad , she grinned before moving on, clacking her high heels against the floor.
    Like all French women, the chin-nodder was beautiful, and not just because she had taken a moment to acknowledge my child. It wasn’t that French women were more genetically gifted than their American counterparts, but they were always perfectly turned out and knew how to take one fabulous item and work it. It could be pistol high heels, a belt made of handcuffs, or a lavender crocodile purse, but most often it was a scarf. I studied the scarves wrapped around necks and heads, hoping I could recreate the effect. When a woman at a shop showed me how to tie the scarf, I looked positively chic. When I tried to follow the same instructions on my own, I looked like a cheap fortune-teller.
    On our walk from the Picasso Museum, Katie and I passed what looked like a traditional French bakery, with enormous windows rimmed by black wood with gold letters that read Boulangerie . Two windows revealed not bread and pastries, however, but a bold and artistic hotel lobby. I grabbed Katie’s hand and wandered into the Hôtel du Petit Moulin. Turns out the boutique hotel used to be a bakery but was now appointed with elegantly beaded lamps, brightly colored misshapen tables, billowing drapery, and a couch with various animal print pillows. All of this was set against the backdrop of a funky mural that rivaled anything we had seen in a museum.
    The concierge told us that the hotel had recently been redesigned by Christian Lacroix, which explained why the two women in the lobby looked as though they were straight off the pages of Vogue . Typically I’d feel intimidated by a setting like this, nervous that I might break something, or worse, that people would sense I was out of my element, but desire trumped fear and I wanted to see more. This place was for people who knew how to enjoy life, and I wanted nothing more than to check in that day and treat it as my very own finishing school. I asked for a brochure, which seemed like a more genteel way of asking for the room rates.
    “That table looks like a chess rook,” Katie said of a piece in citrus green.
    The concierge smiled and handed me a high gloss, four-color booklet with a delicate slice of onion paper that listed the room prices in fancy script. I had already braced myself not to flinch and planned to nod confidently as though the prices all seemed quite reasonable.
    Much to my surprise, they were reasonable. Not reasonable for this trip, because the room at our hotels.com supersaver lodge was non-refundable. But the price was only around double what we were paying at Le Chain du Paris, not six times our current rate, which is what I had expected.
    “Would you care to see the rooms?” the concierge asked. Moments later we were touring the eclectic mix, decorated like modern art museums, planetariums, and sloped-ceiling Parisian flats.
    “ Merci beaucoup .”
    I now boldly spoke sloppy French wherever we went, borrowing simple phrases from people who answered my simple questions. On a Metro platform, two young women asked me for directions in French. Oh my God! I shrieked internally. I understand enough of the words to figure