Is That For One Night, Or Two?

Wrinkled Lotharios With Gussied-Up Doxies...

“If you're blue, and you don't know where to go to
Why don't you go where fashion sits, Puttin' on the Ritz…”

The razzle-dazzle George V Hotel, in Paris. An art deco world wonder just off the Champs-Elysees. One of the grandest hotels in town. In 1974, three years after we got married, a very generous relative offered to treat us to a couple of nights at his favorite Paris hotel during a trip Barbara and I were planning to France and Italy.

 I wasn’t a sophisticated guy, but with the help of a wise and patient woman I had grown more confident. I thought I could now acquit myself with aplomb, even at the daunting George V. Face it. If I could pull off a phrase like “acquit myself with aplomb,” the sky was the limit.

At the end of two enchanting days at the hotel, when it was time to check out, I was ready. I casually stopped at the front desk, turned in my room key with its hubcap-size keychain, and paid my bill without feigning a heart attack. I told the clerk that we would be recommending this place to all our friends, as though some word of mouth from us was finally going to put the George V on the map. Au revoir, mes amis!

“Bob, remember, you need to tip the concierge,” Barbara reminded me.

I boldly strode across the grand lobby, took out a bunch of francs, slipped them discreetly to the concierge and bid him adieu. Honestly, why did everyone  think it would be so difficult for me to be suave? I walked back to Barbara, and I was still beaming over my success at getting a well-dressed total stranger to accept cash from me.

Barbara, too,  was smiling. “Um, did you happen to see the sign in front of the ‘concierge’ you just tipped so generously?”

Shifting my gaze ever so slightly, I caught what she meant: “Hertz Car Rental Desk.” I like to think that Hertz guy is still telling his own version of this story.

Listeners, thank you for tuning in to this week’s podcast from our award-winning series, “Why Bob Can’t Go Nice Places.” Coming up next week, we take Bob to tea at Buckingham Palace. Hilarity will no doubt ensue. Bob never fails to delight us with his Hoosier antics and homespun ways, so please join in the fun.

I grew up in Indiana.  Shoot me. Sophistication was in short supply among my people. Cosmopolitan was just a fancy cocktail that hadn’t been created yet. We took any opportunity to march to a different - if inarticulate - drummer.

If a word seemed so simple that nobody could  mispronounce it, Hoosiers considered that a challenge. “Want some more PARMEEGIAN cheese for your spaghetti, Bobby?” as the distinctive green Kraft shaker tube made its rounds at a family supper.

I was still saying  PARMEEGIAN when I went to my first Italian restaurant with Barbara, where my mispronunciation of the word came to an abrupt halt. I guess she found it grating, if you get what I just did there... I could go on and on, but why should I invite more open ridicule when I already have more than I can use?

(Four Guests at the Paris George V)

Let’s now return to our excellent George V adventure. Looking back on it, I think Barbara began to worry about me from the very moment we checked into our room. Wide-eyed, we gleefully explored the nooks and crannies, and then I discovered the motherlode. “Huzzah! Look at this! Little bottles of free booze! I’m never leaving!”

I had never seen a minibar before if that’s what you’re wondering.

“I’m pretty sure they charge for those, Bob.”

“Nonsense! It all comes with the room,” I insisted, twisting off the top of an airplane-bottle-size Chivas Regal. “What will you have?”

“Look, here’s the room menu. That little Scotch you just opened costs about as much as our airfare to Paris did.” Goddamn it! That screw top just wouldn’t fit back on, no matter how hard I twisted.

Barbara worried because she had good reason to. She had seen me in action before, many times. For our honeymoon, three years earlier, I had booked a room at the Plaza Hotel, in New York. I reserved it by phone for two nights and had to bite my tongue to keep from asking the price.

But a person can only stay debonaire for so long and as we checked in, I asked, very casually, “Um, not that it matters in the least, but how much will this cost?”

“Sir, that will be $59 dollars,” said the imperious desk clerk.

“Ah,” I nodded, “Is that for one night, or two?”

“Sir that is our nightly rate.”

“Of course, it is,” I replied.

My new bride, who was a witness to this, was still smiling as we took the elevator to the 10th floor, to our room overlooking Central Park. She told me this was our first cute story as a married couple, and that we would be retelling it for many years to come. She used the wrong pronoun. She would be telling it for many years to come.

As would so often happen, Barbara had seen our future clearly. As I write this, 50 years later, Barbara used the phrase “One night or two?” just last weekend, and we both smiled at the shared private memory. It is part of our story, and it never gets old.

As the years passed, no matter how many times I traveled abroad, no matter the status of my aplomb, Paris relentlessly continued to undo me. Once, with many years of world travel behind us, we found ourselves in Paris on Reuters business, on our anniversary.

That called for a blow-out, which to me meant dinner at The Ritz Hotel. The same Paris Ritz whose bar Ernest Hemingway famously “liberated” at the end of World War II, running up a bar tab for 51 dry martinis for himself and members of the French resistance.

I telephoned The Ritz from my business hotel when we got to Paris, and the grand restaurant told me they were fully booked for Friday night. I was frantic. I had promised we would celebrate there! They suggested I book a table instead at another restaurant in the same hotel.

“It is below street level. Very secluded, very discreet, monsieur.” It sounded romantic, so that’s what I did. What did I know? Not enough, as it turned out.

We were the first people to arrive, which surprised me because, you know, it was 7:30 p.m. How much later than that could somebody possibly eat dinner? The place was very dark and private. We ordered cocktails, and as we waited for them, other couples began drifting in. Well-dressed, very attractive. Was this place classy, or what?

“Bob, do you notice a pattern here?”

“You mean, they’re all French? Yes.”

“No, sweetie. I mean older men with much younger women.”

“So?”

“These are men bringing their mistresses where they won’t be seen.”

“Huh? No kidding?” I craned my neck to see what a mistress looked like.

“Yes. And it’s really creeping me out. I don’t want to be here. Especially on our anniversary. I hate this place. We have to leave. Now.”

My wife is not a prude. Nor is she judgmental. Nor is she some kind of religious fanatic. But she clearly was upset, and her visceral reaction surprised me. Celebrating our anniversary awash in such a sea of unseemliness was just a little too much for her.

We left quickly. Lost lambs adrift in the Ritz Hotel on a Friday night, facing imminent starvation. We stumbled along like French zombies through the corridors of splendor until we came to a bar, where we slumped into shiny leather chairs.

Our waiter there spoke very good English. Were we having a good evening? No, we confided, we were celebrating our anniversary, but we had nowhere to go for food. That is so sad, he said. He brought us a cocktail along with some menus he borrowed from other Ritz restaurants off the lobby, and we put together a celebratory feast. That waiter brought over a posse of other waiters, all eager to applaud our years together.

Those waiters, in turn, brought around other bar patrons to wish us well. It seemed that despite what was happening one floor beneath us, an adulterers’ orgy atop a fiery escalator to hell, The Ritz was still a place where love mattered. The ad hoc dinner we put together from the borrowed menus was served to us in the bar, and nothing could have been sweeter.

We finished and paid our bill, but it turned out our evening wasn’t quite over. The waiters brought us desserts, for which they would accept no money, and a hodgepodge of anniversary gifts whose provenance was quite clear. A porcelain Ritz ashtray which we still treasure, some ballpoint pens with Ritz logos and some Ritz stationery. This was the Paris we had signed up for, not the one with the wrinkled lotharios and their gussied-up doxies.

There were hugs, sweet words, and first-name farewells with the garçons and fellow diners. Gathering our loot, we buttoned up, headed outside and leaned into a light October mist, walking hand in hand across the Place Vendôme.