Méfiez-Vous de Paris

[mrs_persson]

Who: Una Persson, O'Brien, Bertie Wooster, and anyone else who wants to encounter Ms P. in Paris.
What: What to do with O'Brien, an accidental proposal, and open threads.
Where: A student café, somewhere in Montparnasse, and other places.
When: Day 1 of the port, an evening, and other times.
Warnings: Unlikely, honestly.

[I'm putting in a couple

Comments

O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

After she'd gotten them settled at the hotel, Una was determined to at least try and see that O'Brien experienced something of Paris.

It wasn't going well.

By now, they'd reached a neighbourhood rich with bookstores, student cafés, and all the other sorts of things one finds near an urban university, and Una was beginning to wonder if there was anything O'Brien could find halfway amusing in Paris. Tired of Paris, tired of life? Or was it London? She couldn't remember.

"Look, let's stop for some coffee at least, all right? I'm hungry."

Re: O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

She turned with some relief into the first café she saw that had an empty table. She ordered coffee, and noticed with some amusement that the half-dozen students at the next table all seemed to be studying politics and philosophy, judging by the books on the table and the tenor of their conversation. They were a polyglot bunch too, switching gears from English to French frequently, with a smattering of German.

Re: O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

"We're near the university; it's only to be expected." She smirked and sipped her coffee. "Cheer up; they could be debating literature or art history."

Re: O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

Una listened for a moment, discreetly. "There's a Marxist in the bunch there, if I'm not mistaken," she said. "A feminist Marxist, no less."

Re: O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

"Of course she is. She can't be more than twenty-one? Twenty-two?" she chided. "One's allowed to be at least a bit naive at that age."

It slowly began to dawn on her that O'Brien getting into a debate with a bunch of students was either the very best or very worst thing that could possibly happen here. Worst, of course, because he could all too easily offend someone and so lead to a ruckus that would involve getting tossed out. Best, on the other hand, because he must be dying for a good debate with someone who wasn't one of the same hundred people on the Barge, and this might be the only thing in Paris that could cheer him up.

Re: O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

"Mm. Being naive is, perhaps, a bit of a luxury." Una tilted her head slightly. "Mostly varying degrees of left-wing, this crew," she murmured. "One of them seems to have quite the libertarian streak, though, which is no doubt contributing to the-" she winced a little, "increasing volume of the debate."

A waiter told the loud young man in no uncertain terms to cool it, and they subsided for a little, but the discussion was still a very long way from running out of steam.

Re: O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

Una sank back in her chair a little, raising her cup to her lips and watching O'Brien and the students over the rim. Should she stop him? Maybe, but ... she also really wanted to see what was going to happen.

The students all fell silent at once when they realised they were being addressed, and they turned to stare at him with an unmistakable "who is this old fart" expression on each face. "'Comrades'?" interjected one of the girls. "Even my father never used that."

Re: O'Brien

[mrs_persson]

One of the boys snorted derisively, but the girl elbowed him and said something in French that Una translated roughly as "be nice, arsehole". He gave the girl a sardonic look and spoke up. "Equals? What century are you in, eh? It's a nice ideal, sure, but let's face it-it's oligarchies wherever you look, my friend. Capitalism fucking won. My uncle was part of that Occupy London bollocks and where'd it get him? Nowhere."

Una was still hiding behind her coffee cup. The students seemed to have not noticed her-or if they had, they'd written her off or decided to ignore her. Just as well.