“Voodoo for Jilted Lovers?” I read the title aloud, still gazing at the cover, which featured a photograph of a male doll with dozens of pins sticking out of the general area of his crotch.
“Yes!” Poppy beamed at me and clapped her hands together. “It was perfect. Every night before I went to bed, I would stick a new pin in my Darren doll. It made me feel so much better!”
“You had a Darren doll?”
“Oh, yes!” Poppy enthused. “I still have it, in fact!” She vanished into her room for a moment and reemerged with a little doll, no bigger than her hand, that was dressed in jeans and a green shirt and had a thick shock of yellow hair and a smattering of freckles. “Whenever I think of him, I simply insert a pin somewhere that’s bound to hurt.”
“You do?” I asked. While I looked at her skeptically, Poppy cheerfully pulled a pin from a mug on her desk and stuck it into the Darren doll’s belly.
“There!” she said. “See? Now wherever he is in the world, I’ll wager he’s having a sudden and inexplicable bout of indigestion!”
Poppy looked quite pleased with herself as she held up the Darren doll for me to see. “Anyhow,” she continued, “after that, I started thinking, perhaps some of these other books out there would help me, too! And, Emma, I am a whole new woman.”
“Oh. Well, that’s, um . . . interesting.”
“Emma, it’s wonderful,” Poppy bubbled on. She put the poor Darren doll down and reached for another book on her shelf. “Like in this book, How to Date Like a Dude, Dr. Randall Fishington explains how to chuck men before they chuck you. It’s amazing. And in Secrets of Desirable Women,” she continued, reaching for another book and handing it to me, “the authors explain how to make a man want you by acting like you have no interest in him at all. I thought it would be total rubbish, but, Emma, it completely works!”
“It does?” I asked.
“Emma, I’ve discovered the secret to successful dating.” Poppy paused dramatically. “The worse you treat these wankers, the more interested they’ll be. If you blow them off, they’ll wonder what makes you so special, and they’ll fall directly in love with you. And the best thing about dating like this, Emma, is that you always get to chuck the guys before they chuck you. You never get hurt!”
“Well, I guess that sounds good,” I said uncertainly.
“Listen, Emma,” Poppy said. She knelt in front of me and smiled. “I’m going to change your life this month. I’m going to teach you everything I’ve learned. You’re never going to think of Brett again.”
Chapter Three
After I showered, changed, and had a second cup of coffee, Poppy and I went out to have dinner at one of her favorite restaurants.
I’d forgotten just how dazzling Paris could be. In the wake of a month that had stopped my life in its tracks and shattered much of what I believed in, I was, perhaps, in dire need of something magical. Maybe that’s why I found myself rooted to the spot for a whole minute after Poppy and I emerged from the underground Métro at the Saint-Michel stop.
“It’s so beautiful,” I breathed, staring up in wonder.
Beside me, Poppy put an arm around me and smiled. “It’s the most beautiful place in the world,” she agreed.
Night had fallen, and we were standing in the shadows of the Notre Dame Cathedral, surely one of the most stunning spots in the city. In the darkness, the church glowed with an ethereal light, both soaring Gothic towers lit from somewhere beneath so that they appeared to shine from within. Between them, a huge circular stained-glass window shone with muted blues and pinks. The illuminated building seemed to go on forever, with a spire rising from its middle and curved, leglike supports rounding out the back end. The light from the church spilled onto the surface of the river and across the water to the sidewalk on which we stood, bathing everything in a pale glow that made all of this feel a little like a dream.
“Wow,” I said softly.
“That’s an understatement,” Poppy bubbled. “Wait until you see where we’re eating.”
She led me a block down the quai to a café on the Left Bank, just across from Notre Dame. Its yellow-and-green neon letters spelled out CAFé LE PETIT PONT, and its umbrella-covered terrace overlooked Notre Dame across a narrow sliver of river.
“It’s one of my favorite restaurants in Paris,” Poppy said as we waited at the entrance to be seated. “I never grow tired of this view.”