Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

Paris
Last night after dinner, David and I returned to the Hôtel Costes to have a drink in the lobby. He’s
writing about the fashion shows and thought it might be a good idea to listen in on a few
conversations. The bar, or series of bars, encircles the courtyard restaurant, and passing from one
area to the next, I realized that I’d never seen such a good-looking group of people in my life. There
were no exceptions. As David said, the place made the recent Prada and Gucci ads seem like
documentary footage. This was a gene-pool convention, an ark of beauty. I felt ugly and
uncomfortable, so we ran over to the Tuileries and shot pellet rifles, pretending the balloons were our
own physical flaws. I won a dart gun and a deck of cards. David won a model airplane and then we
walked around for a while. I got to come home, but David had to return to the hotel and pass through
the lobby.
July 13, 2000
Paris
All week David’s been imitating an Englishwoman who’s one of the editors of Harper’s Bazaar. I
haven’t met her, but it’s a moneyed, self-satisfied accent that sounds pretty good to me. Every day he
memorizes another perfect bit of dialogue that I force him to do over and over. Yesterday’s went
something like this: “‘So of course again last year Yves offered me something from the collection. He
thought I might like the wedding dress, but I much preferred the smo-king, which was brilliant. I
mean, the line! It was like this!’ She holds out her hands and moves them up and down as though she
were running them along the sides of my office trash can. ‘And I remember saying to Jean Paul—
whom I adore because my husband’s name is Jean Paul—I said, “A cut like this could support an
army, couldn’t it?”’”
What makes the stories so funny is that they lead to nothing. The cut “could support an army.” What
does that even mean?
July 14, 2000
Paris
Yesterday afternoon Rakoff and I had lunch at Le Petit Saint Benoit. It was his first time, and my
last. Once, with Steven, they were nice, but on every other occasion I’ve felt rushed and bullied by
the staff. Yesterday we were waited on by a black-haired woman in her thirties who blamed Rakoff
when the table she was yanking caught on the edge of her shoe. We were seated against the wall,
meaning that when we eventually left, we had to inconvenience a total of seven other people. They
really pack them in there and when the place is full you feel as if you’re eating on a plane. The bill
came to 185 francs, and when Rakoff placed 205 francs on the tray, the waitress had a fit, insisting
that he’d overpaid.
“The extra,” he said, “the extra is…well, it’s for you.” He had to apologize for leaving a tip and
basically beg to be forgiven.