Windows on the World. Frédéric Beigbeder
are in love with Cat Stevens but since he’s not around they lose their cherries to the tennis coach. My greatest trauma is the film King Kong (the 1933 version): my folks had gone out and my sister and I secretly watched it in their bedroom despite our babysitter’s injunction. The black-and-white image of this enormous gorilla scaling the Empire State Building, snatching military planes out of the sky is my worst childhood memory. They did a remake in color in the seventies which uses the World Trade Center. Any minute now I expect to see a huge gorilla scaling the towers—believe it or not I’ve got goose bumps right now, I can’t stop thinking about it.
You can thumb through my life in high school yearbooks. I thought it was happy at the time but thinking back on it, it depresses me. Maybe because I’m scared that it’s over, scared because I left my family to make a killing in real estate. I became successful the day I realized a very simple thing: you don’t make money on big properties, you make it on little ones (because you sell more of them). Middle-class families read the same magazines as rich ones: everyone wants that apartment in Wallpaper, or a loft just like Lenny Kravitz’s! So I did a deal with a credit union who agreed to lend me a couple of million dollars over thirty years, then I found a bunch of old cattle warehouses in an old cowboy section of Austin and transformed them into artists’ studios for idiots. My genius was my ability to convince couples who came to me that their loft was unique when in fact I was shifting thirty a year. That’s how I climbed the greasy pole at the agency, stole the job of the guy who hired me, then set up my own company, “Austin Maxi Real Estate.” Three point five million, soon be four. Hardly Donald Trump but it’s enough to take the long view. Like my dad used to say: “The first million is the hardest, after that the rest just follow!” Jerry and David are financially comfortable though they don’t realize that yet because I always play the part of an aristocrat on his uppers in front of Mary so she doesn’t force me to quadruple the alimony. Strangely, money is the reason I left her: I couldn’t keep going home when I had all that dough burning a hole in my pocket. What was the point of earning all that money if I was going to be stuck with the same woman every night? I wanted to be the antithesis of George Babbitt, that dumb schmuck incapable of escaping his family and his town…
“Gimme the camera,” says David.
“No, it’s mine,” says Jerry.
“You don’t know how to take photos,” says David.
“You don’t either,” says Jerry.
“You didn’t even set the flash,” says David.
“You don’t have to when it’s bright,” says Jerry.
“An’ you didn’t set the speed,” says David.
“Who cares, it’s only a disposable,” says Jerry.
“Take one of the Statue of Liberty,” says David.
“Already took one,” says Jerry.
“Last time they were all blurry,” says David.
“Shut up,” says Jerry.
“Gimp,” says David.
“Gimp yourself,” says Jerry.
“Jerry’s a gimp, Jerry’s a gimp, Jerry’s a gimp,” says David.
“Takes one to know one,” says Jerry.
“C’mon,” David says, “gimme the camera.”
If they could carefully study the photos they’re taking (photos that will never be developed), behind the Empire State Building, Jerry and David would notice a white dot moving on the horizon. Like a dazzling white gull against the blue skyline. But birds don’t fly this high, nor this fast. Sunlight ricochets off the silver shape like when one of the FBI guys in Mission Impossible flashes a mirror in his partner’s eyes to silently signal to him.
In Le Ciel de Paris, everything is designed to constantly remind you that you are higher that the normal. Even in the restrooms, the walls with the urinals depict the skyline of the City of Light, so that male customers can piss all over it.
I should come back and have dinner here: the menu is pretty tempting. “Autumn in Le Ciel de Paris as interpreted by Jean-François Oyon and his team”: among the appetizers is Seared foie gras on pain d’épices with a cream of ceps (€25.50); fish dishes include Fillet of grey mullet à la plancha with a bouillabaisse reduction and eggplant remoulade (€26.00); if you prefer meat, Jean-François Oyon suggests Pigeon roasted in honey and spices with caramelized cabbage (€33.00). For dessert I’d be tempted to go for the Luxurious warm, chocolate “Guanaja” with hazelnut cream ice. I realize it’s hardly good for your health—Karl Lagerfeld would disapprove—but I prefer something luxurious to the Tonka and morello cherry surprise or even the Roasted figs with Bourbon vanilla butter.
Behind me, a terrible drama is unfolding: an American couple are demanding ham and eggs with mushrooms for their breakfast, but the waitress in her orange uniform says, “I’m sorry, nous ne servons que du continental breakfast.” A repast composed of toast, croissants or pains au chocolat, fruit juice and coffee, the continental breakfast is rather less substantial than the breakfast Americans are accustomed to ingesting in the mornings. Accordingly, they stand up, cursing loudly, and walk out of the restaurant. They can’t understand how such a touristy place can be incapable of serving a decent, ample breakfast. From a strictly commercial viewpoint, they’re not wrong. But what’s the point in traveling if it’s to eat the same things you eat at home? In fact, it’s a terrible misunderstanding—everyone is right. Le Ciel de Paris should give its customers a choice, offer as wide a selection at breakfast as they do at dinner. And Americans should stop trying to export their lifestyle to the entire planet. That said, that’s two people who would survive if an airplane did crash into the Tour Montparnasse at 8:46 this morning, as it did into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11,2001.
What is staggering is that a plane had already flown into a New York skyscraper. On a foggy night in 1945, an American B-52 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building between floors 78 and 79. Fourteen dead and a colossal inferno several hundred feet high. But the Empire State did not collapse because the building’s steel structure did not buckle as the World Trade Center did (steel loses its rigidity at 840°F and melts at 2,500°F, whereas the heat given off by the two Boeings is estimated to have been 3,600°F). In 2001, the 10,500 gallons of flaming jet fuel destroyed the metallic structure of the buildings, and the upper floors collapsed onto those beneath. In order to build the Twin Towers, Yamasaki had used a new technique: instead of using a maze of internal columns, he chose to rest the greater part of the weight on the external walls, which were composed of tightly spaced vertical steel pillars connected by horizontal girders which girdled the towers at each floor. This architecture allowed him to maximize the interior space (and thereby earn more money for the property developers). It was these pillars, covered with a thin coating of aluminum, which gave the two towers the banded appearance of two hi-fi speakers.
Conclusion: the Twin Towers were built to withstand the impact of a plane without fuel.
Welcome to the minute before. The point at which everything is still possible. They could decide to leave on the spur of the moment. But Carthew thinks they still have time, they should make the most of their New York jaunt; the kids seem happy. Customers are leaving: at any moment, customers come and go. Look, the old lady Jerry and David were pestering earlier—the one with the lilac hair—is getting up; she’s already paid the check (not forgetting to leave a five-dollar tip); slowly she makes her way to the elevator, the two badly behaved children have reminded her that she needs to buy a present for her grandson’s birthday; she says “Have a nice day” to the receptionist and presses the button marked “Mezzanine,” the button lights up, a bell goes “ding;” she decides she’ll stroll around the mall for a little. She thinks she remembers seeing a branch of Toys