It'ly

My friend Stephanie makes diagrams of people's story-telling styles, an attempt to graphically depict their individual narrative arcs. She's never made one of mine, but I think if she did it would be an arrow, sliding downhill and ultimately ending in a burning pile of poo. Most of my stories, I'm realizing, are about personal disaster and my negotiations with it. Sorry to ruin the ending, but this one will be no different.

As most of my stories begin, Elly and I made grand plans for the day; we decided to go to Italy. Our plans were rather undefined. In the spirit of the classic American road-trip, we packed some necessities (cheese, bread, blankets, wine, music) and headed in the general direction of the border. Both luckily and unluckily, we did not get more than 2 kilometers outside of Aix. Elly and I have found ourselves in perilous, gas-less situations before while in France, so we made the responsible decision to fill up the tank before we left town. I am no expert on motors, but I did know our car preferred diesel gasoline and we scrutinized our choices at the pump to figure out which one fit the bill. Elly seemed perfectly confident in her choice, so I went inside the station to peruse their chilled beverage selection. We paid and took off for our adventure, chatting about something (which I cannot remember) that seemed both important and totally engrossing at the time. So I didn't really pay much attention when Elly casually mentioned that there was something wrong with the gas pedal. Neither did it really register when she began to look more than a little worried that the car was losing power. Just when Elly was asking me if we should pull over, the car lost power completely and we found ourselves stopped on the shoulder of an off-ramp.

That is when the dream of sleeping on an Italian beach died a sudden and brutal death. Our first instinct was to call Jean-Hughes, Elly's French boyfriend and the owner of the car. He had just left for London the day before and was not available. So we started walking and eventually found a bright orange call box on the side of the freeway. This begins the Shakespearian comedy of errors portion of the tale. It turns out that our terrible French, which thus far had managed to get us by surprisingly well, did not translate AT ALL over the traffic noise from the highway and the horrible connection of the call box. After about six or seven attempts (an hang-ups) to explain our situation to the man on the other end of the line, we finally managed to get across that we needed assistance and he told us to wait by the car. Neither of us was convinced that help was really on the way, but we trudged back to car anyway, mostly out of a lack of other options and the promise of snacks.

We sat for a while on the grassy shoulder, counting the cars that passed by us, (including more than one police vehicle) honking and yelling but not stopping. Finally we got desperate and were able to wave down a taxi. We explained the situation to the man, and he offered to take us to a mechanic so that we could get some help. We got a couple of kilometers down the road when Jean-Hughes called back. He instructed us to return to the car and call the insurance company, whose number was posted on the windshield and which we had repeatedly overlooked while searching for a number to call for help. So back we went to the broken car. The taxi driver was nice enough to talk with Jean-Hughes and let us use his cell phone to call first the insurance company and then the police. I thought, "What a great fella." What I didn't realize was that he was running the meter. 25 euro later, he left us with promises that the police would be there soon to tow the car. So apparently there is a $40 fee in France for someone to call the police.

Elly and I tried to make the best of it and set out a little picnic in the grass and played UNO until the police arrived. We had thought that the police vehicle had come to tow our car out of the way, but this clearly was not their intention. Sections of the highway are contracted to different private companies and only the police really know which section belongs to which mechanic's garage, so their only reason for coming out was to radio the appropriate person. They also put out some orange cones "for safety" and rolled our car backwards a bit and slightly further into the road. They left with assurances that a mechanic was on his way. I watched the whole time and never saw them radio anyone with our location, so I was a little skeptical. One baguette, three blocks of cheese and seven hands of UNO later, a tow truck appeared. He towed us to the garage, but at this point, it was about 15 minutes til closing time and they would not be able to fix the car until the morning. Just when we were feeling like the worst was over, the secretary also informed us, after having gotten a hold of the insurance company, that the tow and repairs would not be covered by the policy because "the car is too new." The insurance seemed to feel that such things should be covered by the manufacturer's warranty, but, the secretary told us, the manufacturer probably wouldn't cover it either because it was our own stupidity in choosing the wrong fuel that has caused this mess. This was a real low point. We asked if anyone was headed towards Aix for the night and would give us a ride. They simply pointed the direction of the bus station.

What do you do when life gives you lemons? I eat lemon glacé with raspberry foam at a two star Michelin restaurant. Some turn to retail therapy for solace, Elly and I turn to cuisine therapy. That night we ate at Le Formal, a quite little underground restaurant in the heart of Aix-en-Provence that served us a wonderful seven course meal and a chilly bottle of champagne. Like my friend Ana told me this morning, "I felt really bad about spending too much money yesterday on a taxi, so when I got back I went to H&M and bought a bunch of clothes to make myself feel better." It makes no sense, but it works. With each tiny course that was brought to our table, each time the server refilled my champagne flute, I felt the waves of anxiety melt away. When the final course was served, I had completely forgotten the events of the day. All I thought about was the way that the vanilla ice cream with orange zest exploded on my palate (literally, there were Pop-Rocks in it) and made me imagine that it was the fourth of July in my mouth.