Dishwasher Dialogues; Cobblestones and the Sorbonne
Des Lecons D'amour
By: Greg Ligbht and Rafael Mahdavi - Nov 19, 2025
Rafael: Remember that evening, when you were still making salads, and I asked you to slip a folded note under the lettuce? From the bar I had seen these two couples come in with an unaccompanied, elegantly dressed, young woman. The waitress placed them at table five. I asked the waitress serving them to remember the salad the single woman ordered. I went back to you in the kitchen, and said, ‘Greg, slip this in her salad, it’s a note I wrote to her’.
Greg: I remember you being very interested in this woman. Instantly obsessed. We ran through a few scenarios. You suggested I tell her you liked her if she came back to use the toilet. I suggested you serve the wine at her table and so on. The note idea came as we were talking at the salads station. You hesitated for a moment, then wrote it out. Fortunately, she ordered a salad and Laura passed on the information. Just a short note under the lettuce. I think I slipped it between two pieces of lettuce which were at the bottom of the salad––two base leaves on which the main salad was served. Pretty straightforward.
Rafael: By the time the young woman started eating the salad, the staff knew all about my note. We were all staring at the woman as she ate her salad. Soon she’ll come across my billet-doux, I thought, open it, and look at me behind the bar. In the message I had asked if she’d like to have a drink later. But nothing doing. As we watched, she ate and ate––the whole damn salad, including my piece of paper. The waitresses were laughing.
Greg: The plate came back clean. There was no note on the floor or left on the table. Sometimes customers did not eat the lettuce, but she evidently had. We assumed she had rolled the leaves and the note together and eaten it all at the same time. It was the best working theory we had. But who knows?
Rafael: These customers paid their bill, and as they passed the bar on their way out, I leaned forward toward the woman and said:
“Do you know there was a note from me in your salad, and you ate it. You didn’t even see it, let alone read it”.
She stopped, looked at me, and said: “That’s one of the best come-on lines I’ve ever heard, but the answer is still no.”
“Why not?” I asked. She turned to her friends who were already at the door and said to them “I’ll be right with you”. Then she turned back to me and added, “do you really think I’d go out with you?” “Well, yes,” I said.
“Look again,” she said. “You look like a nice young man.” She leaned forward across the bar, her breasts showing just enough. She beckoned I come closer and then she said quietly, in perfect unaccented English, “don’t you see? The two guys are getting rid of the two bimbos, and I’m taking both johns to a very expensive hotel.”
“Which hotel? Can I meet you there later,” I asked?
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “I make in one night what you make in two months.” She waved at me from the door, but she didn’t wink. She couldn’t have been more than thirty.
Greg: Heart break is part of the deal when you work in a restaurant. Especially if you fall in love with a prostitute. They are way too smart to ‘date’ a penniless barman or dishwasher. No matter how much we thought our good looks, deep personality, future fame would be enough. The only time any kind of money was exchanged on my behalf for a prostitute did not come out of my pocket. One of our regulars, Quentin, an Englishman from Sussex, suggested we go out for a drink after Chez Haynes closed. He wanted to take a closer look at one of the late-night bars up around the corner closer to Pigalle. More than curious, I was happy to tag along so long as he was paying the bill, which he was.
Immediately upon entering I could see that the prices were out of my league. Not even close. Quentin bought an exceptionally overpriced bottle of Champagne, (certainly over 500F, a month’s rent). The deal was that we paid for the bottle, and two of the bar’s lovely ‘hostesses’ would sit and ‘talk’ to us as we drank, kindly refraining from taking more than a sip or two. Quentin was very specific about the woman he wanted to ‘talk’ to. He was very keen to converse with an African French hostess. I was very happy with the young woman who stepped forward and smiled at me.
Quentin paid for the bottle, and they led us to a secluded table in a back corner. Of course, even a bottle of champagne didn’t get you very far. So, the evening became an interesting game of them exchanging introductory kisses, fondling, and fumbling for the opportunity to negotiate another bottle of champagne and/or sell us the supreme package, which involved taking us to a room in the back for more involved play. Quentin seriously contemplated it but ultimately declined. It was an easy choice for me as I did not have any money. My ‘date’ had clearly figured that out long before I told her. Nevertheless, she kept to her side of the bargain.
Rafael: The prostitutes I talked to at Le Trafalgar up the street were not in the same league, clearly, but they were often educated. I asked them about their métier, and they were straightforward about it. Fifteen minutes, a hundred francs, in a small hotel room nearby, rented by the month or maybe longer, I suppose. One of the women called her room her bureau, her office. And she told me she was an ex-schoolteacher, ex-institutrice. What did you talk about?
Greg: We had a conversation about writing. She didn’t write but she liked poetry, which I thought was kind of her to say. I think I even recited one of my shorter poems. Given her English, I don’t believe she fully followed it; even less so when I tried explaining it in French. But she nodded appreciatively, which also went well beyond what she was reasonably expected to do. Later, of course, I realized she would have been adept at listening to client’s stories, boasts, grievances, regrets, and poems. Although, I don’t think I figured that out until the next night, back behind the Chez Haynes bar, listening to Quentin’s regret at not paying to go to the back room with his hostess.
‘She was beautiful. I should have bought a second bottle’, he grumbled.
‘Another beer?’ I asked him.
He nodded. I slid a fourth or fifth Heineken towards him. He paid, but I didn’t have to go into the backroom with him. I did have to listen to his regrets for another hour, plus a little bit of swearing, followed by the jingle of a few coins tossed into Genghis.
Rafael: I didn’t know how to react to the high-class call girl who ate my note, and I probably blushed. Leroy, ever observant, came over to the bar and said:
“Her name is Sarah. I don’t know what she told you. But you can’t afford her. Nor can I. When she was starting out, she gave me a freebie once in a rare while because I would give her and her clients the royal treatment here, and her high rollers appreciated it. They liked the exotic Southern atmosphere. And get this, she used to be a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne.” “What?” I blurted out.
“Yeah,” Leroy continued, “can you picture it? In a Sorbonne amphitheatre, teaching all those snot-nosed, existentially angst-ridden students with enough wood between their legs for New York Yankees baseball bats.”
Greg: I cannot recall my companion’s name and I’m sure she forgot mine the minute Quentin and I left the bar. But she was very pretty, very sweet, and about my age. In another life, maybe? I wonder.
Rafael: Leroy never mentioned Sarah again to me, but once in a while when some clients came in, he’d come to the bar and would say ‘that one’s like Sarah’. After a few weeks he’d just give me a nod.
Greg: Never too old, or young, to receive des leçons d’amour.