I’m hungry,” He said.  “Me too,” Me replied. Happy to be back in Paris, we dropped our bags off at the apartment we had rented in the Marais and made straight to a local bistro for lunch.  Grateful to find a table for two, we unwrapped our layers of wool and prepared to order.  En Francaise.  Badly, sil vous plait.

Wine poured, Me started to do what Me does most, if not best – talk.  There was so much to talk about.  The flight, the queue at the airport, what I forgot to pack, what I wished I had packed, how much we love Paris, how much we hate the snow at home but love the snow in Paris, how good the bread was, what we would order next time, how much Me loves He and how we really belong in Paris and should spend as much time here as we possibly can.

“Do you think you could maybe try to talk a little bit less with your hands?” He asked trying to remove some droplets of the sauce brunoise that had leapt across the table from my fork to his sweater.  “I don’t mean to,” Me said.  “It just happens.”  He smiled or sighed. Actually it was something in between. “I don’t talk with my hands,” Me explained.  “I gesture. It’s a kind of punctuation.  A form of expression, sort of.”  He ordered a second desert.

The two handsome Frenchmen who had been seated next to us rose to leave, continuing their animated conversation as they bundled up and exited out into the cinematic snowflakes continuing to fall outside.

“There!  There, did you see?” Me persisted.  “Did you notice the couple next to us?  Both of them! They never stopped using their hands the entire time they were talking!”

“I did see that,” He said. “But they, my love, were both deaf and using sign language.”  “Oh,” Me said. The only thing I had noticed were two people very much in love.