Sitting in a cafe is one of the main activities in Paris.It`s what Parisian do instead of walking or joggong.



they have natural talent for it,the way Americans are good at going to the pool,cooking meat or driving highways.





The crucial skill in a cafe is the ability to gear down,from second to first,and then down yet again to a special,



Gallic gear.It`s a bit like being dead,but with better coffee.





The chairs in the cafes are lined up in rows,facing outward,toward the theater of Paris street life.Their postures



says:Here,look at us,as we sit in the cafe so brilliantly,thinking our big French thoughts.





Like the other day,I was nursing an expensive but small glass of wine in a cafe,and to my immediate left sat a



Frenchman.He was doing nothing,and doing it with style.Between two fingers dangled a cigarette that remained lit



even though he never did anything so animated as puff.It was hard to tell if he was truly drinking his glass of



red wine;the level went down so slowly it may have been merely evaporating.





Why did he not try to achieve something? The cafe advertised WiFi,but no one had laptop.This was not Starbucks.There



was no American compulsion to multitask,to use the cafe as a broadband platform for accomplishment.





I could have spoken to the Frenchman,but the language barrier is significant;I am afraid to attempt anything in



French lest it be incorrect both grammatically and existentially.Perhaps the Frenchman was dreaming up an elaborate



sociohistorical theory,arguing that human civilization has been in decline since the invention of the croissant.Or



perhaps he was just enjoying the Latin Quarter,a section so old that I am pretty sure its residents still speak in



Latin.





I had an urge to blast the Frenchman out of his peacefulness."Excuse me,I`m from Wal-Mart,"I could say."We`re puting



in a superstore right over there on the Rue Dauphine."Then,as though he could hear me thinking,the enervated Frenchman



finally did something:He looked at his cellphone.Action in the cafe!He didn`t make a call,let`s be clear on that,but



he studied the cellphone.It dawned on me:He wwas going over all the speed-dial listings of his mistresses.





Now we`re getting down to business.Sure,he ponders the big Frency thoughts as he camps in the front row of the cafe,



but he`s also looking at the Parisian women!These women tend to be slinky and stylish and sophisticated,and they make



American women look,by contrast,as though they just fell off a hay wagon.





Eventually,I reached the obvious conclusion that the man beside me was a professional sensualist.It`s a job that



doesn`t exist in America,except in a few places.For the sensualist there are long recessions,even depressions,as



the economy of romance goes into a dive.One sits in the cafe and hopes for an upturn in market.



I sypmpathize:It`s hard work.But it`s surely better than doing nothing.
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