French Like Moi by Scott Dominic Carpenter

Author:Scott Dominic Carpenter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Travelers’ Tales
Published: 2020-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

Some Assembly Required

IT STARTED WITH MERDE—buckets of it. Dave had borrowed our place while we were on vacation, and he called in a panic. Sewage was backing up, and he was bailing.

“How’s that even possible?” I said. After all, the apartment was on the third floor. Had I missed a news flash about the City of Light foundering in a sea of filth? What had become of those giant sewers, the ones so big that Jean Valjean could run through them in Les Misérables?

Turned out the building had a gastric problem, and an old drainpipe proved to be the weak link. Dave contained the tsunami with a plastic plug and a roll of duct tape, known locally as scotch américain.

When we returned, I crept to the end of the hallway and creaked open the door. A bulge showed where the tape bound the pipe. It was holding—for the moment.

I hadn’t thought about this room for months—not since we’d added on the tiny apartment next door to gain a bedroom for our daughter. But since we didn’t need two kitchens, I’d stripped out the cabinets and countertops before abandoning it. Now it looked like one of those bombed-out ruins you see on the History Channel—gutted, the ceiling sick with leprosy, tiles lifting from the walls, the plaster wounded, wires dangling where appliances used to live, varicose veins of copper pipe running along the baseboard. A behemoth basin of chipped ceramic sat enthroned in one corner, cemented in place back when the building went up.

“Come to think of it,” Anne said, “we could turn this into a guest bedroom.”

By “we” she meant “you,” and by “you” I mean “me.”

Worst of all, she was right. So, the next day I cracked my knuckles and the project began: the former kitchen would wrap itself in a chrysalis of plastic sheeting, later to emerge as a butterfly, or at least a moth.

Like my wife, I often wish I were my brother-in-law. He enters projects like a gunslinger, palms poised over the sides of a hip-hugging tool belt. Back in the States, he owns a four-by-four truck, useful for schlepping ladders and generators and air compressors, all of which he owns, probably in duplicate. In Paris, my workshop consists of a drawer in the kitchen. It’s jammed with (as I look in it now) picture hooks, wire, Ikea hinges, old screwdrivers, a putty knife, a broken pair of pliers, and a hammer. Somewhere else (I can never remember where) a hacksaw and a few other tools have made a nest for themselves. In addition to being inexperienced at home repair, I am ill-equipped.

I am also stingy, which makes for a troubling combination. In Paris, if you have enough money, you can find people to do just about anything. When we expanded our quarters, for instance, we paid a company to create a passageway between the two apartments, opening the wall that supported the six stories above us. But the bill left me clutching my chest from angina.

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