The Tip

“Vous n’êtes pas chien sur le pourboire.” I guess if the waiter appeared wearing a pink tutu, I would be more surprised, but this gets my attention and my adrenalin. The man speaking to me is not a complete stranger: we’ve probably seen each other a dozen or two times in the last couple of months and more often than not nodded, but that’s the alpha and the omega of it. We are one another’s supernumeraries, the spear-carriers in the other guy’s opera, regulars in this neighborhood café right next to an old and famous one that neither of us—I’m making an assumption about him—would ever think of going into. Why spend an extra euro for a glass of indifferent wine just to look at tourists looking at one another? So we come here, nod back and forth the way the other regulars do, and continue our lives in silence. It’s the French way. An American friend and his French wife have been living in a small town in Normandy for years and the only time anyone said hello to him was the day after the elections and he was wearing an Obama baseball cap. For the first time in twenty years people in the grocery store greeted him, one even slapped him on the back—signaling the imminent end of French civilization and grandeur—and a few people actually said Vive l’Amérique! The next day, silence and business as usual. It’s the French way. It certainly isn’t the French way to start a conversation with another anonymous and silent pillar of the establishment, especially by observing of all things that I am not a stingy tipper.

I’m not, but it is one of those habits that I have never been able to break and marks me obviously as a foreigner or a bumpkin. The service charge is always built into the bill, but the custom of the country, or the city, is to add a little, and Parisians tend to be precise, if not actually miserly, and for a drink or a cup of coffee count out fifty or sixty centimes while I say the hell with it and leave a euro coin. How he managed to notice this sitting in his usual chair about five metres from my usual, I cannot begin to figure. But here he is, standing an arm’s length from my table, with the becoming smile of a salesman, his head cocked boyishly to one side, and more to the point apparently French, praising my generosity in current argot: yeah, I’m not a dog with a tip. He makes a gesture, asking if he may have my permission to join me at my table: if the waiter took off his pink tutu and danced buck-naked it would no longer make an impression. I manage a shrug which he takes as assent and sits.

“I notice things like that,” he says. Like what? You mean the tips people leave? “Yes, exactly. To my way of thinking, it is a sign of character, good character, distinction—and it seems à propos with you, I must say.” This isn’t a gay bar, I think, at least I’m pretty sure, and I don’t get the sense that he is coming on, but he reminds me of an aging queen in Washington who asked to share my table in a crowded café and said I looked so distinguished that he was nervous about asking to sit down. I shrug again. “It is also,” he continues, “unusual in Paris, so I always make a note when I see someone tip generously.” Finding a voice that does not sound like the one I have been using since mine changed at fourteen, I suggest it may be because I am not Parisian. He is surprised, not by my statement, but he has caught my accent. “Ah, so I see, but that does not mean much. It’s true everywhere in France. You are from…?” Not from France. “Oh, I thought you were from the north, Amiens or Lille.” I think the amiénois wouldn’t agree with you and the lillois might be offended. I’m American.

“Now that does surprise me. The typical American in my experience leaves too much tip. That’s not generosity. It’s ignorance or, worse, it’s criard, tape-à-l’œil. How would you say that in English?” Flashy. “Good word. I like that. Flashy people,” he says this in pretty good American English, then returns to French “are not people I trust. Generous people, I do.” Trust for what? “As business partners, investors.” Somehow you are getting to the point, I think. “Oh, no, there is no point. Just an observation from my experience. Would you like another glass of wine?” Thanks.

He orders two glasses of Bordeaux, peanuts, and olives—he has been watching more than my tipping habits and must have the ears of a lynx to keep company with his eyes of a hawk because my voice so soft in public places that waiters can barely hear me ask for Bordeaux. I wonder if he knows my blood type. “No, no I do not…” Don’t know my blood type? He looks startled. “No, I mean I do not have a point. Salut,” he says and raises his glass. I eat a couple of olives and wait. “You have picked a perfect time to visit Paris… or do you live here?” Part of the year, but I think of myself as visiting. “Really, part of the year? But you are not retired? You don’t look old enough.” I’m not. Je travaille à mon compte. “That means you’re self-employed, right?” again in pretty good American English. Right, I say in English, and decide to stick with it.

So does he: you can buy in your own language, but you sell in the customer’s. He asks, “How’s business?” Lousy, it’s been in all the papers. He laughs. “Actually, mine’s not so bad, all things considered.” You mean your investments, with your partners? “Exactly. With the European Union expansion to the east, you can get people who can read and write…” I decide to try something, saying in my fastest American, And count to ten without taking their hands out of their pockets? He laughs again. “Yes, and who actually have a work ethic who’ll work for practically nothing. It’s like Ireland before they went insane.” And that’s where you are making money these days? “Quite a bit. A year and a half ago, we put only about a hundred thousand euros into a tool factory in Hungary and just sold our share last month for nearly a million.” Really? What’s the next stop on the trolley? “Latvia, Estonia. Still cheap. Slovenia used to be the best, but it’s getting too pricey. We’re looking at a factory in Liepaja—it’s port city, cheap transportation from the Baltic through the Skagerrak to the Atlantic, and there we are. They make cheap socks and underwear. They’re going nowhere, trying to sell to department stores in Europe because their stuff isn’t so hot. We want to sell directly to the overstock market in America.” That pays? “It will. All things considered, it costs about the same as the junk from China, but it has a European Union label on it. People think it’s stylish, definitely not Wal-Mart. About two hundred thousand will do the trick. Want another glass of wine?” Make it a double calvados, please. He does, but he has barely touched his wine, only raising his glass with another Salut when the applejack comes to the table. I ask the waiter for sucre en pierre and, when he brings it, drop the lump of brown sugar into my glass. He looks surprised. “Is that an American custom?” Hardly. They do it where they make calvados. It’s called un sucré.

I’m getting disappointed. His accent in French is a cut above mine, the trilled r in his throat clearer, his sentences running together more readily, never looking for the right word. But his English is getting better by the moment. The accent is gone, he gets those bedeviling sounds, like the vowels in but and is, just right. Which, all things considered and exactly, as he might say, is hysterical since he has pretty much turned the tables on Monsieur Joe who always addresses Americans with a faint accent. But J. Lestrange points them to the Luxembourg Garden, not a Latvian sock factory.

Only two hundred thousand, you said? “Exactly.” You sell in tranches? “I’m not selling anything. I simply organize other investors—I’m the bird-dog. We try to keep the pool small, so we’re looking at a basic buy-in of twenty thousand euros. And up, if you’re interested.” You’re planning on flipping it? “Exactly. Less than two years. We know some Russians and South Americans who always want to export some money.” When is this going to happen? “Within the next two weeks. I already have commitments for more than half the money, and the sellers are very interested. We’re paying their price, which they think is stupid. I always like it when people think I’m stupid.” Why is that? “Because it makes them feel superior. They like the idea that they’re screwing me, and the investors will walk away with at least ten times as much money because we know what we’re doing.”

I guess that’s why I’m not a businessman. That never would have occurred to me. “That’s my trade. What do you think?” You said this was going to happen in two weeks, right? “Two weeks, three at most.” Well, thanks for the wine and the calva. And the tip. “The tip? It’s not a tip. It’s a business proposition.” No, I mean about the two weeks. I always wanted to know when hell was going to freeze over. Thanks.

I put a euro coin on top of the check. Time to go.

© Joseph Lestrange

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