“You know, like a dramatic spin in front of your castle.”
“This is a museum. There was a whole revolution. Did you miss that memo?” I teased.
“Hey, I went to public school in Florida.” She made a face.
“And I was stuck in a cellar the first eleven years of my life, so no excuses,” I joked. It might have been the first time I’d joked about it.
“You should eat a crêpe next. That was on your list.” She clapped her hands, and her breasts jiggled under the white fabric.
“I don’t think anything is open.”
“Hmm.” Her phone moved down, and her breasts filled the screen as she typed in the phone.
“Sorry,” she said. “Your assistant is finding you an opencrêperie. Five blocks south there’s a place still open. You need to eat a Nutella and banana crêpe.”
“I don’t want Nutella,” I said as I took off at a run.
“You don’t want any crêpe,” Lexi replied with a laugh.
The guy at thecrêperiestand took a swig of coffee then asked me what I wanted.
“Nutella crêpe,” Lexi shouted from the phone.
I asked the guy if he had anything that wasn’t sweet.
“Du fromage?”
“S’il vous plait.”
We chatted in French while he made the crêpe.
He used two of the wide flat circular griddles, poured the batter on paper-thin, and sprinkled cheese and dried onion flaked on one.
“Merci.”
The other was smeared with warm, chocolaty Nutella.
“Your girlfriend wants you to have Nutella,” he said and handed the second crêpe to me.
“I cannot believe you speak French,” Lexi’s voice echoed from the phone when I stepped out of the tiny shop.
“My mother wanted to learn it,” I said, knowing she would understand.
“How is it? How is it?”
I took a bite of the cheese crêpe.
“Fucking amazing,” I said around the hot food.
“Eat the Nutella one,” she begged.
I took a cautious bite. “It is pretty good,” I admitted.
“Yes!”
I jogged back to the hotel, feeling lighter than I had in years, even after eating those crêpes. ***
A few nights later, when we’d flown to Berlin after a series of successful meetings, Anthym came up to me after I’d seen off the CEO of another company we were potentially going to purchase.
