"You might never get arrested for stealing from a souvenir shop because quite simply it's more cost-effective to demand thieves caught to buy all they stole at double the price on the spot. There's a lot less paperwork as well. Unfortunately, it also cost Max twelve euro for a six euro pair of shitty sunglasses worth two euro. He had gotten rusty under the hot summer sun and sheer exhaustion of the day. Grant and I managed to get out of that nest of shops clean with a handful of pretty somethings for relatives and a bottle of orange soda (not orangina) for the road ahead, back to chez Marie. Neither the soda nor its nourishment lasted long, and not much farther than the Academie de Musique down those canyons of multi-storied tope stone walls with tall, blue-trimmed windows. After so many blocks and with dehydration drawing ever nearer, it was hard not to feel like one mousing around in a city-sized maze with each approaching corner teasing with that miraculous cheese, the meal for which we so longed. Nut we were now in wealthy high-to-do part of the city, and no matter how many numerous corners we came to there was not a doner-kebab hole-in-the-wall place in sight. And we didn't necessarily want to go to any of these fancy sit-downs with awnings and umbrellas and seats casually strewn across the sidewalk and old French couples in expensive looking attire eating their single serving of tiramisu and their single shot espresso. And if we did, we certainly couldn't afford it. I don't think we saw one doner place on the whole way back, but now that I think about it, we most probably jumped on that fateful metro after a good while and ended up just buying bread and wine and stealing cheese and meats from the supermarche around the block from the girls' apartment. That was the night of our feast, I believe.
We went with our go-to; homemade pasta and meat sauce, several bottles of wine, and sometimes a none-too-shabby garlic bread, ingredients permitting. That night they were, and we got the wine that mattered. I forget what it's called but it's dark and it's rad and it's 14.5% by volume per bottle, and it all felt very French. In that tiny French apartment, table littered with empty and half empty wine bottles, Marie sitting on the window rail with one leg crossed, facing us, but holding her Lucky Strike politely in the window's out-draft and now and again blowing her smoke over her right shoulder towards her outstretched cigarette hand. She was eloquent and so sophisticatedly French and we all secretly loved it about her more than we would care to admit. And she could dance.
