The Contractor

It is good to like your contractor.

We don’t just like our contractor,

we love him.

Loving your contractor—that matters to me.

I come from a family of builders.

In 1950, my father created a construction company in Phoenix, Arizona that is still going strong today.

My fearless brother, Jon, started a green building company a few years ago at the lowest depth of the recession, when the last thing you’d bet on in Phoenix was the success of a fledgling construction company. That is, if you didn’t know Jonny.

The company is flourishing, exploding, really.

Jon and his business partner, Lorenzo, have more jobs than they can handle. The city of Phoenix is so impressed with their community-enhancing projects that they are offering matching funds.

Attitude. Like my father, my brother has the most life-enhancing attitude of just about anyone I know, so magic abounds in his life. You think I’m exaggerating? Try clearing up your ‘tude and watch the magic you attract!

Back to our Paris contractor. Andrew is a quick, tall, slender man of forty, who was raised in South Africa. He came to Paris at the age of 21, and he now speaks the most perfect French of anyone we know whose first language was English.

Andrew did a renovation of our Paris apartment, and has done repairs to it since. His work is impeccable, reasonably priced and finished when he promises to finish.

So who do you think we called to make a few upgrades to our chambre de bonne? 

Andrew came by early this week and we sat around our dining room table over coffee and told stories about noisy neighbors. He, like we, lives on the fifth floor of a building, in another arrondissement. (We live in the fifth, the arrondissement of the Book People, the Latin Quarter, where teaching began at the University of Paris, the first in Europe, in the mid-eleventh century.)

A quiet young American woman lived above him. Then she attracted a French boyfriend, Big Foot.

A contractor’s life begins early in the morning and is hard-driving all day. It requires a good night of sleep. The couple upstairs banged around late at night.

Andrew knocked on their door and politely asked for quieter footsteps so late at night. She slammed the door in his face. (And he’s the president of his syndic!)

Another night, they awakened him at 2 a.m. He got out of bed, went upstairs and knocked. No response.

“I know you’re in there,” he called out, “I can hear you. Come to the door, please.”

The boyfriend opened the door and said, “Stop bothering my girlfriend.”

Andrew had no desire to bother the man’s girlfriend, he said, but they were disturbing his sleep!

Who are these people with no empathy, no compassion for others?

We know Andrew. We know his request would have been made in a tactful, reasonable way.

How was it going with our noisy neighbor, Andrew asked.

She’ll be quiet for a few days, so we turn off our white noise fan, and then each succeeding day she’s noisier and noisier.

It’s strange to me, this incapacity some people have to feel others’ reality, this narcissism: Here are my needs. Don’t bother me with yours.

Richard and I walked with Andrew to have a look at our chambre de bonne.

Andrew looked at the place with a contractor’s eyes. “What a mess,” he exclaimed. “What I’d do is knock out this wall and this, and open it into one big room.”

“But we don’t own it,” we said.

He looked around at the red tomettes (floor tiles), which were so old the floor in places rose and fell like the surface of the sea.

He looked at the overhead lights, which were strung on two low-voltage wires all across the ceiling of the kitchen and main room like circular doilies on a clothesline.

He looked at the sink, which had been painted over and was now cracking in spots as if covered with petrified yogurt.

“It does need a few repairs,” I conceded.

Andrew laughed gaily, as if to say, “A few, she says!”

“The landlord is willing to pay to refinish the sink and to fix that baseboard,” Richard said. The baseboard looked as if mice had been gnawing it. There were little holes where it met the floor.

My enchantment with the place had taken a hit. My spirits were sinking.

“It might need painting,” I allowed.

“That’s the least of what it needs,” said Andrew.

We three moved from room to room, making a list of what needed doing: shelves in the bathroom, a couple of missing shelves in the built-in bookshelf, the sink refinished, Ovideu, the whimsical Romanian electrician consulted about whether the ungrounded plugs would still protect my computer if it was plugged into a surge protector.

Andrew said he could spare a carpenter and a painter next week from another job on the Île de la Cité.

We locked the door to our chambre de bonne, waved goodbye to Andrew and headed home.

I was blue the rest of the day. So much of enchantment is subjective. You fall in love with someone or something, and you do not want to hear someone say about your beloved, “What a dog!”

But if the love is true, it lasts.

All night long, half asleep, I envisioned what I’d do to this chambre de bonne: a sisal rug with the right pad beneath would solve the sea-sick-inducing floor. A built-in horseshoe-shaped desk would fit perfectly into the room. The lighting store at the end of our street had a great selection of lights.

I envisioned the stories and poems I’d write, the creative life I’d have in this magical aerie. I began fiddling with the end of a certain short story in my mind.

And then I remembered, This has nothing to do with the surface of the room. It was a matter of atmosphere, of soul. Every writer knows that feeling of walking into a room and thinking, I could write here! It might have something to do with the proportions of the room, it might be the view or the lack thereof, but I think it has more than anything to do with the sense, Here I could work without being interrupted. That is the essential thing that writers need: deep immersion in the dream of the work.

The next morning I asked myself a question: Would Baudelaire have loved this room?

Oh yes he would! I answered.

Then it’s good enough for me. The blues fled, the enchantment returned, and I loved my contractor again.

   

A Room for Dreaming

The state we are in

as we leave agent and owner,

the lease in our hands,

the room a dream come true,

the room where a deeper dream

will unfold.

A three-year lease. He doesn’t want to sell.

His son might use it for college,

his three-year-old son.

Galettes at Breizh, a new find—

might be the best in town, though any would be

in the state we’re in, the world perfect and full.

From one end of rue Vieille du Temple

to the Seine, dark waters, shivering,

a ghost memory, I dive in

to another river from my houseboat

on the Thames, swim to a swan

who hisses and strikes like a snake

my hand, protecting her cygnets.

We head east on the Quai d’Orléans.

There! Look! Right above Notre Dame,

Venus and Jupiter shine, so close

they seem to be signaling, so bright

they seem to be speaking.

And there! Two swans on the bank

of the Seine, one with head tucked into wing,

the other grooming his feathers.

I remember Zeus disguised as swan

ravishing Leda, her hyacinth-colored eggs bearing

Castor and Clytaemnestra, Helen and Polydeuces;

remember the swan poems we wrote the year

we met, calling out to each other,

“Cob!” “Pen!”

We look back from the Pont de la Tournelle

at Our Lady’s eastern face, the skull

that shows in the dark.

The sweep of light across the heavens

from the tip of the golden tower, Jupiter and Venus

like swans curved in embrace.

And it seems to us that all that matters

is that we turn again

and again to love.

Chambre de Bonne

Have you ever wanted something so intensely that not getting it—or even getting it—made you sick? That's what happened to me last week.

When did I first see the light from a sixth floor window in Paris, one of those alluring little chambres de bonnes—maids’ rooms—attic aeries where so many writers I’d read about had written, or placed their characters?

It must have been the summer after my freshman year of college, a sad year in spite of the fact that two out of the three courses I took were splendid, one in French literature, one in anthropology.

My sister, Jane and I were about to start college at the Sorbonne (she) and Oxford (I) in the fall. But first we had several weeks in Paris before my mother and three youngest siblings arrived.

I wanted one of those writing rooms then, and I wanted it years later after rereading in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast of his climbing up to his chambre de bonne each morning and writing until he’d shaped a story to his satisfaction.

For the year and a month that Richard and I have lived in Paris, I’ve been fervently picturing getting one of these rooms.

At the February meeting of our syndic, coop board, I asked if anyone knew of a chambre de bonne for rent in our building or nearby.

“Oh no!” came the chorus. “They’re rarely available and anyway, there are waiting lines. Everyone wants one.”

Disappointing news.

Then a bit of synchronicity. It’s been happening a lot lately. When you run into the one person to whom you need to speak, though you may not see him or her again for another six months. I ran into someone we know who knows the neighborhood.

“Quick!” she said (in French). “Call this number. The tenant is moving out of her chambre de bonne.”

I called. As Richard and I met the agent to look at the room, another prospective tenant was leaving, and another was due shortly.

The room was just big enough for a writing desk and chair. There was wall space to put up index cards to map out stories and novels. And there were two windows, one facing the Pantheon. The Pantheon!

I felt sick with lust. The agent would call me, she said. She had many other appointments. Later that day, she called to say the owner would make a decision after the weekend.

After the weekend?! That was four days away!

The following Monday she called. The chambre de bonne was mine. But we wouldn’t sign a lease for another two weeks.

Are you canceling the ad? I asked.

No, she said, but we won’t show it again unless something prevents us from signing.

Prevents us from signing? But how, I wondered aloud, do I know he, or you, won’t change your mind in the next two weeks?

Confiance, she said. Trust.

Trust? In two people I don’t know, in a country whose customs are decidedly not Anglo-Saxon? In my native land, we’d have signed that lease and written that check the day the owner decided.

I had envisioned what I’d do with every square inch of space in this tiny chambre de bonne. And now I had to wait another two weeks, still not knowing that the room was definitely mine.

So I got sick. Just a cold, but enough to keep me from writing, and from posting on Paris Play. Richard caught it first and generously shared it with me. A friend said that half of Paris had it, and it was a stubborn strain. I rarely get colds. I’d forgotten what it feels like to be so exhausted that you can't imagine ever leaving your apartment again.

And then this afternoon it lifted. I went out for the first time in a week. Astonishing how vivid the world looks when you’ve been home sick for a week. I made five stops in about as many blocks.

At the enchanting little Greek shop, I had to linger in front of the window for at least five minutes to gaze at the proprietor’s miniature display. Interspersed with bottles of Cretan honey in black pots painted like ancient Greek vases with gods’ faces in orange (it was full of thyme, said the label) and spanakopita, were miniature statues of the Venus de Milo, busts of Socrates, donkeys with old men on their backs, a whole little diorama.

I went in to buy walnuts and pine nuts. The silver-haired Greek man behind the counter wore a NY Yankees cap.

Was he a fan? I asked.

Nah, he’d found it at the Acropolis.

At the dry cleaners, the proprietor said they didn’t do repairs. Verbal exchanges in Paris often begin this way. “Non, nous ne faisons pas cela ici. Il ne peut pas être fait.” (We don’t do that here. It can’t be done.) And then someone offers an exception! The woman ironing said that a friend of hers could fix my jeans whose hems were fraying because they were too long. She was ironing a shirt with a bright geometric pattern that dazzled my eyes.

At the little grocery, 8 à Huit, I found some good-looking broccoli and zucchini, but the Moroccan man at the counter said it wasn’t enough to use my credit card. But I was out of cash. We counted out my remaining coins, beautiful copper and silver discs, and there was just enough.

Our flower shop had tulips in an orangey-red for the fireplace mantel, and roses in a coral shade for Richard’s office. Les fleurs! A room full of living jewels!

Les Pâtes Vivantes was packed. I ordered a Szechuan beef soup with cilantro, scallions and noodles which a Chinese chef made in a glass box right in front of you. He tossed and rolled and pulled the dough into long cream-colored strings. This was a treat for Richard who had been out roaming all day taking photos, and would be ravenous when he returned. His studio is the whole of Paris. 

It suddenly seemed real. Next week I’d have my studio. It seems to me that I’ve been waiting for this forever.