21 Steps To Happiness. F. Gerson G.

like about goat’s cheese explodes in my mouth.

      I want to spit it out and scream but I manage to articulate, “Excuse me’, stand and walk to the maître d’.

      “Toilet!” I bark, trying to keep the cheese in a corner of my mouth and not spit it out on his lovely dark purple tie. He points downstairs.

      I walk fast and make it to the toilets. I run into a cubicle and spit out the piece of cheese. I am so pathetic. I’m tired. I haven’t slept for the last twenty-four hours. My nerves are about to snap. I’m having lunch with the cutest man I’ve ever met, and I’m a freak show.

      I sit, lock the door and go for it. I just cry. It’s a good thing to cry. Men can’t stand it when women cry. They think something’s wrong. It’s quite the opposite sometimes. Like now. It’s just a way to release pressure and move on.

      

      When I walk back to the table, Nicolas has finished his steak. He must have hurried while I was away.

      The maître d’ comes to our table and asks if we have finished.

      “Yes, I am finished, thank you,” I say.

      He exchanges one of those looks with Nicolas. Those American women, all nuts, they seem to agree.

      “Any dessert?”

      “Just coffee,” Nicolas says.

      “A trim latte, no foam,” I ask, and by the dirty look I get from the maître d’ it’s like I just ordered the murder of his family.

      “Trim latte, no foam,” Nicolas repeats and smiles.

      Oh, look at that smile. I can spend my life ordering foamless lattes if it has this effect on him.

      Then I wonder. What if I was to order a decaf non-steamed soy milk macchiato?

      

      We’re back on his scooter.

      Only this time I squeeze my arms around his chest. I close my eyes. I feel him breathing. In, out. Can’t we just drive like this forever?

      “You can let go now.”

      I open my eyes. We’re back at the hotel.

      “Oh, sorry…. I was a bit…gone.” I let go of him and his scooter.

      “See you tomorrow morning at the office, then,” he says. “I’ll send a cab. Is eight-thirty too early?”

      “I never sleep,” I hear myself say, because that’s exactly what Jodie always tells everybody, even though I’ve never heard someone snoring louder than her. “Too many things to do! I’ll sleep in my next life!”

      If only I could be mute.

      “Sure….” He makes a weird gesture that doesn’t mean much to me. Maybe he just wants to say that I am by far the weirdest, most disturbing person he has ever met.

      “See you then,” I say, but he is already gone.

      

      I fall flat on my bed in my beautiful suite.

      I pick up the phone and follow the instructions to make an international call.

      “Er…what?” Delia answers.

      Delia is my best friend. I hold her partly responsible for my being in Paris. She’s the one that said, Hey, why don’t you phone your mother. She can get you a job as a receptionist or something.

      But she didn’t know that Jodie doesn’t do anything like normal folks.

      Like, if you suggest a gym subscription for your birthday, she sends her chauffeur with an Australian personal trainer that you’re also supposed to lodge.

      “I met someone,” I say on the phone.

      “What? Lynn?”

      “I met someone.”

      “You…Do you know what time it is?”

      I lie on the bed. If only she could see the smile on my face.

      “I’m in bed,” she protests. “I’m sleeping! The whole freaking city is asleep! Are you crazy?”

      “He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. And he is…so refined. And he…he…”

      She finally caves in. “What’s his name?”

      “Nicolas.”

      “French?”

      “You bet!”

      “Mmm…I don’t like it. I don’t trust those European types. Great sex. Great fun. They even seem to really listen to you. There’s definitely something suspicious about them. Are you in love?”

      I rock on the bed and play with the phone cord. I’m a teenager again!

      “I don’t know. I just met him.”

      “He’s French, use a condom.”

      “Delia!”

      “Is he hot?”

      “Aaaaaaargh!”

      “You lucky thing!”

      We laugh.

      “Delia…He doesn’t like me.”

      “Of course he likes you. Everybody likes you.”

      “No, he really doesn’t. How could he? He is so handsome and so…and so…everything…and I’m…well, I’m me.”

      “Nonsense! You’re hot!”

      “I’m so not.”

      “Miss Blanchett, you listen to me. This guy…this Nikoooolaz, he doesn’t deserve you.”

      I don’t say a thing.

      “Lynn, tell me you will come back.”

      Silence.

      “You’re not permanently moving to France for a man, are you?”

      Well…I make a quick mental calculation.

      I am ugly: -2

      I am very poorly dressed: -2

      I am exotic and foreign: +1

      I am faking anorexia: -2

      I drink trim lattes, no foam: +2

      I like to ride on the back of his scooter: +2

      I get crazy hairdos after riding on his scooter: -1

      I feel madly attracted to the most beautiful, most charming Frenchman: +2

      Total: 0

      Even Steven!

      Step #5:

       Seduction seduction seduction!

      So here is my new plan: coffee.

      I look at the clock on my nightstand and it’s only six in the morning. I know, I shouldn’t leave the sanctuary of my bed when outside there are hundreds of people waiting for me to be just like Jodie, but I must have it. And then I remember the dreams.

      I had so many! In some of them, I was being eaten alive by all sorts of fish. But mostly I had the other kind of dream. Not nightmares at all. Au contraire. They were more like…well, erotic, I guess. And they involved him (him, him, him!), a pair of very large wings and various kinds of animals.

      It’s crazy what jet lag does to you, huh?

      Or maybe it’s just the Parisian atmosphere. The air pollution here probably makes every American woman horny.

      I slide out of bed and hop to the bathroom. Where to begin? I start by looking at my body in the mirror. I feel so…Mmm?

      When I can no longer