A la prochaine
We faire another dusty walk around our little block, in search of the neighborhood baguette seller. On the first segment on the main road, each taxi beeps politely at us. At the corner, we chat it up with a woman standing in an indigo robe and turban selling sweet rolls. She proudly produces a phone. Indeed, it’s a phone, the kind your parents got in the 1980’s when they upgraded from a rotary phone to one with all those buttons. We examine it obediently. The coiled cord still attaches the part you talk into to the part with the buttons. Mais….it is lacking any cord that attaches the phone to a phone line or to anything else. She holds it aloft, insisting that we can call the United States with her phone. I squint at her, as if she’s just suggested that we call Santa at the North Pole.
C’est vrai?” we question.
C’est mobile”, the entrepreneur insists, beginning to press buttons.
“A la prochaine”, we blurt as we scuffle away before the call is placed. “Until next time”.