It was at a party on a Tuesday night where we met T----, a charming Frenchman born in Africa, now living in London.* With a grey jacket, vest, and a button-down shirt (and of course the obligatory square gasses), he looked like someone I’d have been more likely to meet in Oxford than in New York. He had stopped in the city for a week on his way back from New Zealand. His intent, he told us, was to visit with friends and look at apartments. On this, his last night, he had to admit that he’d done much of the former but very little of the latter.
“I like it,” he says of the Upper West Side. “I have a friend who lives at 96th and Broadway.” Right in my neck of the woods—only she lives in one of the pristine condominiums and I live in a building that was once a convent.
“It’s nice,” he says, “but too many prams. Not for me.”
“I know,” I concede, “but the dogs have such wonderful, pretentious names. You walk down the street and hear ‘Chekov! Chekov! No, Chekov!’”
He is amused by this, and it is decided that I should start a blog, even though I don’t have the internet.
*But then, I don’t suppose an un-charming Frenchman has ever existed.
With all of the tumults of Africa, the "pied-noir", may not have all of the charm* (to kate's disbelief) of the common Frenchman.
ReplyDelete