Chez Antoine

I don't know why I have such a fancy for this little cafe.    
Maybe it's the quaint side street location
Or how the outside tables have a view of one leg of the Eiffel Tower.    
Undoubtedly there are better, more exclusive - meaning more expensive, cafes around.    
But this one hides in the shade of maple, oak, and lime trees which line the walk.    
They sift the Parisian sunlight like a colander casting crocheted shadows across the patio    
and three quarters the way up the wall.    
To an American it doesn't matter which cafe you choose, there's something exotic about having people all around you speaking French.    
I don't understand it, but I love it.    
It's sexy and romantic, not like German which sounds like a lot of hocking and spitting, or the rush of Spanish spoken in rapid fire succession with trills and eñes.
However, the pigeons in Paris are just like home.  
They don't speak French, but maintain their own universal language of coos, jerky-bobbing heads    
And squeaky wings.    
They wander the sidewalks like sons of heaven with no palomar to return to, never asking to appear immortal.    
Suddenly out comes the waiter, an older man, placing a menu on my table.  
He's polite and patient, but probably rolls his eyes as he walks away and who can blame him?    
We Americans have an arrogance, an air of superiority and yet, we flail around constantly needing help.    
Always lost, never learning to speak a foreign language.    
Typical tourist, but we are dreamers and I dream of dining outside at a small cafe in Paris.    
I dream it is the 1920s or 30s with poets, artists, and musicians, philosophers and free thinkers all seated around me at iconic woven tables with matching chairs.
At the center of each table a wine bottle holds a candle whose wax has dripped and run down the necks as if the glow of yesterday's evening light has been frozen forever on them.    
Enjoying food which I can't pronounce and intense conversations that excite and inspire.    
Then the waiter returns me to reality.    
I point to pictures on the menu; Duck in Brandy Sauce, Haricots Verts Almandine, and Pommes Boulangeres with Truffles.    
I say, "Please" instead of, "S'il te Plait".    
After a while my food arrives.
The duck is excellent, and the green beans are tasty, but the truffles have ruined the potatoes.
Sadly, truffles give birth to regret, a damper on my perfect evening in Paris.    
I don't like any kind of fungus.    
They have an earthy taste, like the dirt smell that hangs in the air just after a spring rain.    
Truffles are supposed to be delicacy harvested by a French farmer somewhere in the dark woods,  
rooted up by a pig.    
It's all pastorally romantic I guess, but the streetlights come on and gradually brighten as the evening wanes.    
Me at an outside cafe in Paris, I'm a lucky man.  
I try to be polite by eating everything on my plate, but these truffles are not my cup of tea.    
They remind me somehow, disgustingly, of mushrooms.