Remembering the Cafe de Flore

Love your shiny shoe (an elegant signature touch to use often?) in the MESSIEURS, where we go to grab ze lemon (referring to the soap at the sink.) And the green table with the orange awning of Lipp's beyond the beautiful woman on a scooter in that autumn light...fantastic! It used to be easier and safer jaywalking the boule when it had painted lanes and you made your way from line to line; without them now it's like bullfighting in a stampede. When the Flore is not busy you can hear the rain on the glass roof; one February night I watched snow fall on it. And do you remember that great summer night we so rowdily watched the girl in a short skirt mount a moto, avid for a glimpse of her knickers, and a girl behind us asked, "Did you see them?" (And am I making it up that we said, "No. What color are yours?" And she answered,'" Pink."...?) The Solferino is a cool new bridge; I crossed it before it was finished, which is hard to say about most things in our old love Paris. -- Michael A.