Lessons in Savoir-Vivre – Part 2

Note: This is Part 2 of a previously published story.

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Was I waiting for serendipity to save me again, as it had with meeting Malik on the grassy sprawl at Invalides? And encountering Henri and friends as that last metro pulled away from the platform in Belleville?

A former college roommate traveling through South America had sent me a letter – I devoured it in those pre-virtual days, re-reading it and savoring every word – in which she related her own stories of joblessness and despondency.

She described how she and her Israeli friend had hiked up the hill to the La Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Enjoying the sun, they sat in a park and discussed their plans to save money and then travel to Brazil just in time for carnival. And to do that, they both needed jobs. The eternal problem.

While sitting there on the hill, a sudden breeze blew a loose page of newspaper onto my friend’s leg. Unable to shake the leaf of paper, my friend finally picked it up and read it. Bingo: there was the ad that procured them both jobs in a restaurant. Her story inspired me to magical thinking, and I really began to imagine that the universe would hand me a job on a silver platter.

But the hole in my old shoe galvanized me to action: it even seemed like it was that new pair of Kickers that propelled me to the American Church. After all, it was a quick jaunt down rue Jean Nicot, and I walked my new shoes there to join the throngs of other young people inside. They were all searching for employment through the ads offered on the bulletin board in the courtyard of the gothic church.

Photo American Church courtesy Mbzt.

After scouring the petites annonces, or job ads, I’d pick up a glossy copy of FUSAC magazine – France USA Contacts. Piles of them were displayed in metal box racks at the entrance to the church. But the jobs listed there required experience and working papers, and I had neither.

I’d had high hopes coming to Paris. Maybe I could work in a kitchen? But I’d run from my apprenticeship at a fine-dining restaurant in Virginia just 6 months before: I’d never worked in such difficult conditions in my thus-far short and comfortable professional life.

Home decorating was something I’d enjoyed in college as a hobby, but the ambitious letter and resumé I’d sent to interiors giant Jacques Grange went unanswered. I’d pinned some blind faith on that one, and understood only years later how foolish a prospect it had been.

I had no inroad, and a human connection to the employer would have been preferable to sending the overly-effusive letter of recommendation my historic preservation professor had written me before the end of my last semester in college.

No one in France cared about those overblown letters. I needed a professional or personal relationship to the prestigious decorator, or a family member to pull some strings for me, what the French call pistonner.

I was still operating on the maxim “chance favors the bold.” Spurred on by having read a bit of Anaïs Nin in high school after the release of Philip Kaufman’s racy film Henry and June, one of Nin’s most famous quotes was always top of mind.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”

I knew Nin’s courage was far from penniless, and it was never soon-to-be shoeless. But how did she do it?