We passed a sleek French-inspired bakery on the way to flamenco class. ‘Inspired’ is a hardworking classifier here. The architectural choices were indistinguishable from any other focus-grouped franchise that private equity was spitting by the thousands. Clara absentmindedly spoke the name while playing with her keychain, and made a funny face while doing it.
“Too Lay Jhoo”
The sign read “Tous Les Jours.” Her guess was as good as mine. All the letters were present on it, which made it an outlier among signs on the street. Then without a tinge of self awareness she continued enjoying an in-between moment she was unlikely to bring to the grave. She.
“I think it means something in French. Like ‘today’ or something.” I tried to keep the moment going to cover the auditory stench of midday Hanoi.
“Well I didn’t think it didn’t mean something.”
Her words didn’t sting. They weren’t meant to. I think sometimes she knew exactly what I wanted from her: just enough flavor to remind me neither of us had been snatched by a murderer or poof’d away like we were never there.
We had to cross the street now onto Đường Bạch Đằng. I took the lead on the maneuver. By that point Clara had moved on from her keychain to a pull in her skirt. Really quite going at it, actually. Like many geniuses before, her passion was about to render her a fool.
That night I searched up ‘Tous Les Jours’.
“It means ‘every day’” I called to Clara, like she cared about this as much as I did.
“Ok” she said at me, barely remembering what I was referring to. I smiled anyway.
Leave a comment