Starving In A Train Station

Yesterday I took a nice, relaxing 5-hour train ride from Paris to Biarritz. I looked out the window as we sailed through corn fields, sunflower fields, then finally vinyards in Bordeaux. In between I read David Sedaris' When You Are Engulfed In Flames, and laughed.

My friend Marla Maples sent me the train ticket, and I was delighted to accept her invitation. She used to be my neighbor in Paris, but recently moved to Biarritz to live with her man, a Tunisian cardiologist. He's a pacemaker defibrillator kind of guy. Always handy to have one of those in the family. (As Lisa grabs at her heart.) I'll call him Larry. I like Larry because he's the second A-Rab I know, and he and I agree on everything political, and we both yell at the TeeVee when Bush comes on. But Larry sounds better than me when he calls Bush names: ee-dee-yuht!

Marla eats like a bird. And so, she has little birdie arms and little birdie legs and an adorable face and cute blonde hair and I fucking hate her. Oh. Sorry. I mean, I wish I could learn to eat like a bird too. Larry, on the other hand, Likes To Eat. He is of the everywhere-but-America opinion that eating should be a slow and sensual and fulfilling pleasure, where everything looks good and is amazingly fresh, and each bite makes you close your eyes and swoon with pleasure. Marla doesn't exactly see things that way. She has already run three times around the block before Larry and I finish swooning over the Basque cheese and fig/walnut bread. She's a busy girl. Not a moment to waste.

This afternoon, Marla went out jogging, which means she ran down to Spain and back. When she got back to the house she told me that she was going to the grocery store (probably in Belgium). She said that the weather was amazing and the ocean had huge pounding waves and so while she was shopping, I should walk to the beach. "You mean, there's no jitney or anything?" She was already gone, pulling her market cart in one hand, and hefting a 65-pound barbell in the other, so she couldn't laugh at me.

I'm eggagerating, but just a little.

I walked down to the beach. It was beautiful, so she wasn't fibbing. I even took some pictures. Then I sat down on a wall and watched every other tourist stand exactly where I had stood and take the same damn picture. We think we are all so different, when actually, we just aren't.

When I returned to the house, Marla had made a fresh tomato tart and a beet salad. Half of the tart had tuna on top. The other half didn't.

"What's this?" I inquired of birdie legs.
"I don't like tuna, so I left it off of my side of the tart."
"Oh yeah. You don't like fish that much, do you?"
"I'll eat fish, but it has to be really mild. I have never liked tuna, though. I would have to be starving in a train station to eat it."

Starving in a train station. For some reason, that made me laugh out loud. I got this visual of her at Gare du Nord, amidst all the snoring bums, with this sad little smudgy face, scooping tuna out of a can with a plastic spoon, and putting it slowly, reluctantly, into her pouty mouth. Then with a closed-eyed grimace, swallowing it with a loud gulp. I couldn't express this visual to her though. I was too busy laughing. It was like I had just smoked some of that old Mexican weed that you probably can't get anymore. I gasped out, "Starving in a train station!" and she started laughing too. Then we couldn't stop. We were lying outside beside the pool on some chaise lounges, and it was one of those girl laughs where we put our hands into fists, close to our chests, and throw our legs up kicking in the air, and roll from side to side with our mouths open and our eyes squinty shut, howling.

So satisfying, laughing like that. I don't think boys laugh like that. But they should.

Marla confided that Larry never stops talking about how little she eats, how fast she eats, and how she doesn't like fish. So, I get all tough-like and tell her she will have to lay down the law and say, "Well, honey, it's either me or the fish! Take your pick." (Don't ever ask me to give you realtionship advice.) I told her, "Hey, you never know how serious these food arguments can be. My Aunt Suzie told me the story about when my Uncle Tom left her, they had a big yelling fight and finally he went out and slammed the door behind him. But within seconds he came back in and this was his final, devastating, parting shot:

'AND BY THE WAY? I NEVER LIKED YOUR CHICKEN SALAD!'"

Up into the air went our legs again. One birdie set. One lovely, soft, shapely set (ahem). We laughed again. I gasped, "From that day forward, she called it...hahahaha!...the chicken salad divorce! buhahahahaha!"

When we calmed down I said, "Marla, are you sure you can't learn to like tuna?"