Bite-size Stories

Le Baron Wine Bar, Chexbres, Swiss Alps. Just a small coffee table between us now. Ten years and ten thousand miles apart felt like only yesterday, when all we had were memories - prized, collectible possessions, once given to us with such generosity. Silver threads of rain connect us, cover the lake, tie us together. “Why does it rain every time we meet?” I ask. “It rains three hundred days a year in Chexbres,” you reply, ever practical. “No,” I laugh, “that’s not true — it would rain in the Sahara if you and I had a coffee there.” We order cognac, local cheese, fresh bread. What defence could I possibly have against this open smile, these dark eyes? None I could ever master. You, me, and Geneva Lake. Nothing between us. Not even a small coffee table.

You kept asking me why I want to go. You’d say I always leave you, and I’d remind you: I always come back. I will come back again. I just have to go and see where the Champs-Élysées flows into the Arc de Triomphe, and sit under the chestnut tree. When I return, I’ll bring you all my stories and we’ll laugh together. You know me - such a tragic case, always stumbling into ridiculous situations, unprepared, naive, childlike. Maybe that’s the reason I go: to travel, to learn, perhaps even to grow up. When I return, I’ll bring gifts from rolling lavender fields and the Côte d’Azur. My skin will still carry the salty sea air and the taste of wine baths. My stories will be sweet and cheesy. French stories always are - pastry stories, golden with butter and dipped in chocolate mousse. There will be wine too, in glasses, bottles, and barrels. And a bottle for you and me will go so well with the sweet and cheesy.

I didn’t want the night to slip away. I wanted to hold the warm spring air in my lungs and the red wine in my veins. Chez Janou - bright yellow walls, a handful of tables under chestnut trees. Laughter, small talk, plates carried outside, and the sense that Paris needs no staging. Life was simply unfolding around us. Glass in hand, I asked the bartender, “Tell me about French wine.” He looked at me, his dark southern eyes lit with laughter. “All you need to know,” he said, “is that there are two types of wine: French, and all others.”