Page 13 of That Weekend in Paris
I smile a little. “Another layer. I like it.”
“Join me?”
My pulse skitters at the thought of actually getting to spend more time with him. “I’d love to. It’s been on my list, and I never made it there when I was here before.”
“Okay, then,” he says. “Would you like anything else?”
“No. I’m good. That was wonderful.”
He signals the waitress for the check and insists on paying the bill against my protests. When she returns with his receipt, she smiles a shy smile and says, “Would you mind giving me your autograph?”
Klein is gracious. “Ah, no, I don’t mind at all.”
She hands him a card with the restaurant’s logo on the front.
He turns it over on the back and asks what her name is.
“Aimeé,” she says, again shy.
“That’s pretty,” he says, writing her name on the card and then scrawling his signature beneath. “Thank you, Aimeé.”
“Non. Merci beaucoup.” She presses the card into her palm and wishes us both a good day.
“Nice to be recognized in Paris,” I say, noting his discomfort with the attention.
“Yeah, I was a little surprised to see we have fans here.”
“Power of streaming. And judging by the fact that the concert is sold out, I would say you do.”
His smile is marked by humility, when he says, “We better head for the museum.”
I reach for my purse, and we both stand. I do notice as we’re leaving the restaurant that Aimeé lets her gaze follow him to the front and out the door. I completely understand.
Dillon
“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree. ”
?Michael Crichton
THE TAXI DROPS us at the Louvre. We stand for a moment, taking in the majestic building before us.
“It’s huge,” Klein says.
“It is,” I say, nodding in agreement. “So while we were driving, I googled for a refresher on the history of the Louvre. It was built as a fortress around 1190 and then rebuilt in the sixteenth century to become a royal palace. Apparently, every ruler kept making it bigger until Louis the fourteenth made Versailles the royal palace.”
“Guess this one wasn’t impressive enough,” Klein says, shaking his head.
“Out with the old. In with the new.”
He smiles at this, and we walk to the ticket entrance. We end up waiting in line for nearly thirty minutes. We learn that we won’t be able to see the Mona Lisa, because the only way to do so is by online reservation. Meanwhile, we ogle the architecture of the building, marveling that such elaborate engineering could have been done so many hundreds of years ago.
“They had a lot figured out back then, didn’t they?” Klein says as we finally step inside the entrance.
“More than we give them credit for,” I agree, noticing a couple of girls staring at Klein. One taps her phone screen, and types in something, leans in and shows it to the other girl. They whisper back and forth before finally getting up the courage to walk over. The braver one of the two steps forward, flipping her long dark hair over her shoulder as she says in American-accented English, “Hi, Klein! We both love your music and have tickets to your concert tonight.”
The friend standing behind her giggles, obviously nervous. “We were wondering if we might get your autograph.”
Klein smiles a smile I’m sure he’s given to too many fans to count. It’s a smile that immediately puts the young girl at ease, tells her she’s not foolish for approaching him. “Sure,” he says. “What would you like me to write it on?”
