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One

M

The night before

Mira had always believed that laughter was infectious. It had the power to spread from one delighted face to the next, but here, in the corner of this chic Paris bistro where the brash American laughter surrounded her in waves, she managed to stay immune.

She pressed her lips together tight, a defensive move to avoid being lumped in with the rowdiness of her tablemates. Mira was simply different from the loud tourist stereotype too often proven right in the train cars, cafés, and cobblestoned streets of Paris. She was different from them, dammit, and everyone in this bistro needed to know.

The staff seemed unbothered by the elevated noise, but was it any surprise? Each successive round of laughter meant another round of drinks: more champagne, more pricey vintage reds.

The husband-and-wife owners exchanged a knowing look as they brought out a few more bottles from the cellar. Given that they owned a restaurant off Avenue Montaigne—a notable street in the 8th arrondissement and home to the famous Plaza Athenée—Mira could only assume they were well acquainted with the platinum-card-carrying demographic. Early summer was a notably busy period, with swarms of jetsetters descending on Paris, especially on a night like this, when the glitzy Haute Couture Fashion Week had just gotten underway.

Not that Mira and her crew had anything to do with fashion. They were merely another rowdy group of white-collar Americans who just happened to be in Paris on business. The business of pushing the latest in sparkling beverages, to be exact.

The owners now made a beeline to Frank, Mira’s fifty-something boss, who sat at the head of the long wooden table. Even in the soft glow of candlelight, his tailored suit and looming presence made it clear he was the one in charge. In their office back in New York, that meant rejecting an idea with a simple shake of the head. In this bistro, however, that meant being the one in charge of appraising the wine, which he now carefully did by examining the labels.

“Not a bad selection,” he acknowledged, his accent a faded tribute to a childhood growing up in Queens. “We’ll take both.”

The owners shifted their focus to refilling everyone’s glasses. They worked their way down the table slowly, starting with the smartly dressed middle-aged executives, and moving on to the younger more fashion-forward employees.