Curly Hamson learns how to eat

"Hello everyone! Welcome! I'm Gary Lovett. I met many of you on the flight from New York and I believe I've spoken to many others by phone. The lovely lady at my side is Michelle Domani; she is the person you are to address with any problems about your accommodations, apart from food and wine, and for all kinds of advice on communications, shopping, and getting along in France in general. I believe all of us are here except a Mrs. Lundigard who is coming down from Paris on the TGV and will join us for dinner at Leon de Lyon.

"You'll be making your own way to the restaurant for dinner at nine. In general, you'll find that we will be eating later, at least dinner, than many of you may be accustomed to. The practice seems to be the better the restaurant the later people dine. I don't pretend to understand the psychology. In any case, our tables will be ours for the entire evening or for the afternoon during our more rare formal lunches. One point about the meals I'd like to call to your attention again. We will be eating in at least one luxury restaurant every day for the next two weeks, and in each of these restaurants, reserving as we were for a large group, twenty-four of us counting myself and Mademoiselle Domani, I arranged that a tasting menu be served to the entire group with suitable and carefully chosen wines. Now some of you may prefer to choose your own dinners from the fixed price or la carte menus. That's fine. There will be no additional charge for the most expensive fixed price menu the restaurant serves or up to the highest a Ia carte amount listed for the restaurant in the current Michelin Guide. There will be no additional charge if you choose to drink the wines or a selection of them that have been chosen to go with the tasting menu. If you wish to choose your own wines, you will be charged fifty percent of the listed price. I need to hear at least a day in advance, or right now for tonight, from those who would prefer to order for themselves so we can arrange for the seating. My suggestion would be that everyone try the tasting menu tonight, evaluate the experience, and then let me know before we dine at Paul Bocuse tomorrow whether you prefer to order for yourselves.

"Michelle has maps of Lyon to distribute. You'll find that the restaurant is an easy walk from here. For those of you, like me, who are getting hit by jet lag just about now, a short nap may do wonders."

"Where's the table for the traveling Americans? Ou sont les Americains qui tourent?"

The woman was in her late fifties or early sixties, large in all dimensions, red-haired, richly dressed, and very loud. Her French sounded so American that it took a moment for the English-speaking French staff at Leon de Lyon to realize what language she was speaking and guide her to the right table.

"Is this my table? This my seat? Thank God. The train was supposed to be a Tay Jay Vay, of Tres Grand Vitesse, but don't tell the luggage handlers or the jokers at the hotel who couldn't be bothered to move the luggage to my room if I didn't come in in person and register. After living here for fifteen years you'd think I'd be used to it. The great French word, the only one you need to know when describing France to etrangers, is 'inefficace'. The French are charming, you say, cultivated, some of them, but inefficace, tres tres inefficace. Hello, everybody. I'm Mrs. Jorgen Lundigard, but everybody has to call me Jeri, Geranium was what my parents had the terrible taste to call me. Geranium! And am I too late for a cocktail? And tell me who all of you are. I hate not knowing the names of people I'm eating with. Makes me feel like I'm at a McDo's or something. Do you all know what a McDo's is? We'll have to go for lunch one day When you're foie grassed out. Have a beeg-mack and frites, a coca, remember Home Swe et Home. I live in Paris where there are more McDo's than there were in Detroit when I left twenty years ago. Where are you all from? Tell me your names and homes while I get a garcon to bring me an aperitif."

The voices of people introducing themselves tumbled across the table while Jeri sipped her drink and nibbled at the hors d'oeuvres that the others had already explored. It became clear only later that she had actually listened to their self-descriptions with some care. Even when she began to eat apart from most of the others, at a table with at first only two and then later on three of the other guests, she kept up conversations with all the others, and always returning their names and homes and occupations or former occupations to them without an error. She must have been a salesperson once, they decided, "that personality," "that memory."

The Aldriches, whom Gary Lovett had already described to Michelle Domani as "the most distinguished of our guests, she has a degree from Yale in architecture and he went to Yale too, the kind of people I'd like to have send me their friends, even if just for the wine seminars in New York and Boston, never mind trips like this that they probably won't bite on," approached Gary right after the meal to say that they would prefer from now on to eat at a table by themselves away from the group.