qui peut y résister?

Our neighborhood is starting to wake up again this week, at the beginning of the rentrée. The ghost town was strangely peaceful, but I’m enjoying the new noise and bustle, especially the sound and sight of children everywhere (how could I not have noticed that G.’s voice was the only child’s I heard for almost a month?). The bakery downstairs, which we missed more than I care to admit, reopened Monday morning. We can smell baking bread again when our windows are open, and more importantly, we have renewed access to the city’s best baguette tradition – guidebooks be damned. The bakery lady has returned from her holiday tanned to exactly the same shade as the crust of this favorite baguette (while I am as pale as only someone who has spent the entire holiday month of August in a rain-soaked city can be), and she had a special smile for G. and me when we came in. And the cheese shop, oh the cheese shop – even the fresh paint job doesn’t compete with the smell of S.’s favorite Livarot.

It’s a different case at the butcher next door, which also opened on Monday morning, a week later than advertised (who’s counting days when you’re on vacation?). Here is where I have to admit that I haven’t yet visited a French butcher, that while it is among my goals to begin regularly patronizing a butcher before we leave France, I am intimidated by butchers and cuts of meat in general, and by this butcher in particular. He is young and attractive and stands in the doorway of his shop smiling out over his bloodstained apron in what can only be described as a confident leer. In the shop display window, alongside the dried sausages and foie gras, there are photographs of the fancy restaurants that he supposedly supplies. But I don’t really believe this is his business at all. I’m convinced that behind the heavy wooden doors at the back of the shop, there is no meat locker, but instead a boudoir hung in red satin awaiting the discreetly paying customer. For one thing, there are hardly ever any customers in the shop. When there are, it is always elegantly dressed women of a certain age who never leave with any packages. For another, the little “Be back later” sign on the door has four small clock faces decorated with a lipstick print instead of numbers, over which is inscribed the motto: “Le boeuf de mon boucher, qui peut y résister?” Yes, that really does translate literally to: “My butcher’s beef, who can resist it?” Me, I think I can.

This morning I noticed that the butcher has added to his display window several large, artily framed photographs (perched on easels, no less) of disturbing, glistening stacks of raw meat. I’m not sure how this fits into my gigolo butcher theory, but it does something to me. I wonder what else September has in store for us.