Frenchuality

Frenchuality

     John comes home with some unsettling news. “Gloria, my TV land wife is with child and wants to be a stay-at-home Mom.”                  
     “You called her wife instead of the leading lady.”              
     “Think but this, and all is mended, that every pout advertises some lipstick and each wink is a sales pitch for mascara, while kisses are the promise of a lost passion to find its song again with Aloe Vera skin glow.”
     “Your kissy-face costar is a sore subject, but not so different from me. You need a new girl on the set.”    
      “That is the thing she has to speak French and English.”                  
       “John, my lingua franca is French. I still look good in the film noir outfit from my Dietrich emulation days. Write in scenes with me happily lighting your cigar and we’ll be the song in every TV watcher’s heart. Fandom will be assured when I accent my entreaties to you with my best whisky-inflected Garbo tone.”
     John replies, “That would be too real. Having you in front of the camera could open Pandora’s box.”      
     “Our marriage will make our scenes genuine because as sultry as Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr rolling in the surf is nothing compares to the real thing.”      
     “Brush up on your French because you’re my new TV wife.”  
     “Wouldn’t you like to sip Chardonnay where Anaïs Nin penned her fantasies?”
     “Gloria, why don’t we just armchair travel via a DVD of ‘La Vie en Rose?’”                  
     “That is the perfect in-flight movie on our plane to France. I’ll make a request.”                  
     “We’ll have to eat ramen noodle soup.”
     “How gauche, but I’ll spice it up into a bisque that would make any chef proud. Since as your stage partner, I’ll be bringing home half the bread it gives me equal say in money matters.”                  
     “A diet of noodles won’t sustain aerobic exercise such as Anaïs envisioned.”
     “We’ll dine on my homemade spinach pie and pretend we’re in a Parisian pastry shop.”
     “Your quiche is as French as the timbre of Edith Piaf on the radio when Paris was liberated.”
     “Even Simone de Beauvoir took a shine to men when the spirit moved her. For me, having you as my man is the essential ingredient that keeps my soufflé inflated.”