I thought our hotel rating was another typo until I realized it had been judged by a different standard. I think in Hungary they give a star for electricity, a star for heat, a star for running water, and so on. The fourth star signifies that the Astoria has cable TV. They boast forty channels, not mentioning that twenty-three of them broadcast the exact same programs. Our hotel is fronted in scaffolding, and our rooms offer a view of a mangy, narrow side street. The one thing they excel at here is stoking the furnace. It’s below zero outdoors, while inside our rooms we could roast chickens by leaving them on the nightstand. There’s a large group of French people at the hotel and I heard one of the women saying she’s so heat-swollen that her rings no longer fit.
December 21, 2001
Paris
Gretchen’s plane was an hour late and landed at de Gaulle alongside three other flights from the United States. It took a while for her to get through passport control, and while waiting, I watched other travelers reunite with their people. Beside me was a family of Americans who’d talk in English and then launch into perfect French, the kids’ phrases ending with slangy quois. I got the idea they’d lived here for quite a while and were waiting for family members who’d gone home to the States for college.
When the young people appeared, their parents would rush forward—crying, most often. The hugging and kissing that ensued was normal, but I think the tears were for September 11.
“I’m just…I’m just so glad you’re OK,” one woman said.
Her son had arrived from Houston. “Well, I’m glad you’re…glad,” he said, embarrassed by the attention.
Don called last night, and during the course of the conversation, he forgot my name. “So Pietsch said, ‘I don’t know that we can give…can give…can give…Sedaris both the audio rights and the ten percent.’”
I was thinking he could have solved the problem by using the word you, figuring the discussion probably pertained to the person he was calling. When he forgets other people’s names, I normally help him out, but it seemed more awkward when the name was my own. “Oh, Lord,” he said, “this is going to be a tough day.”
December 29, 2001
Paris
Hugh made me a belated-birthday cake, decorated with the candles Patsy gave us for Christmas. When told to make a wish, I settled back in my chair, realizing I should have given it some prior thought. One option was an apartment in London, but in the end I wished for the opposite: the absence of things. Over the past few years I’ve fallen deeper into the luxury pit. I used to get pleasure from sitting at the pancake house with a new library book, but now I mainly buy things and work crossword puzzles. In my twenties and early thirties I was able to disguise my shallowness, but now it’s written all over my shopping bags. On my forty-fifth birthday I looked across the table at the director Mary Zimmerman and thought, That’s what I want, to be like her. I wanted the change to be immediate. Oh, but first there were perfumed soaps to be opened.
Gretchen went to the National Museum of Natural History with her friend Patty, and I walked alone to the zoo, the little one at the Jardin des Plantes. I hadn’t been in years and it was a good day for it. In the reptile house I saw two small children confined to wheelchairs. Both wore glasses and were pushed by their fathers. Crocodiles dozed on the concrete shores of their pen, and I noticed a number of dead cockroaches floating in the water. I saw a lot of unintentional animals yesterday, mainly birds and insects taking advantage of the free food. The keepers had just fed the vultures, and the floor of their cage was littered with what looked like a medium-size dog chopped in half with a hatchet. I thought vultures were always hungry, but rather than eat, they stared toward the big cats, where a man in a hat chipped away at a block of marble. You often see people drawing and painting at the zoo, but I’d never seen anyone with a chisel, sculpting.
2002
January 3, 2002
Paris
I’d always imagined Susan Sontag as delicate, almost brittle, but seated beside her at the dinner table, I noticed that her wrists were easily as thick as her ankles. She was tall and bulky, her trademark skunked hair now dyed a solid black. Steven had done the seating arrangements and it was his joke to place me beside her. We talked privately for a minute or two, but most of the conversation was central, with topics ranging from Henry James to a ninety-five-year-old Polish poet I’d never heard of. I was prepared for the worst, but aside from a few displays of obvious boredom, Susan Sontag was, if not warm, then at least well behaved. She said she couldn’t possibly eat cheese off her dinner plate, but that was her only show of fussiness. Outright hostility was reserved for an Englishwoman named Hillary who looked like Candice Bergen. “I’ve just been to Libya,” she said, “and have noticed that we’re really much better off than the rest of the world.”
Susan Sontag said she’d been “noticing” this every day of her life, but the jab went unchallenged.
“I mean, really,” Hillary continued, “there are places where one can’t find so much as an aspirin!”
Susan Sontag said that, yes, we all need aspirin.
Seated around the table were Diane Johnson and her husband, John; Paolo, Susan Sontag’s Italian translator; Steven; Hugh; James Ivory; and Ismail Merchant. James and Ismail are making a movie of Le Divorce and they start shooting in early March. Ismail was seated on my right and was just as gracious as he could be. After dessert he took us up the street and gave us a tour of his grand apartment. He made everyone feel special and interesting, while James Ivory was a bit more businesslike. Diane and her husband are lively and engaging, but for the most part, it was an uncomfortable evening. Uncomfortable meaning that I tried my best to keep my mouth shut.
January 4, 2002
Paris
Don called with a business question but lost his way while wishing me a happy New Year. One moment he was discussing the new book contract and the next thing I knew, he was in a cab with Ray Bradbury and Zero Mostel. “He had an apartment on Seventy-Second and wanted to show me this…cloth he’d put things on…painted things on. These…paintings he’d done.”
January 7, 2002
Paris
It snowed twelve inches in Raleigh, and my brother’s street was blocked off. He lives at the bottom of a hill, and people came from all over with their seldom-used sleds and toboggans. Dad dropped by late in the morning and warned Paul against overdoing it, saying, “You’re fat now and you’ve got to be careful. You might hurt yourself.”