“Where did all these people come from?” Nick frets.
“This is where we keep them,” I say, because otherwise I will be tempted to point out that it has been less than an hour since he was bragging about Paris’s superior ability to draw tourists. Paris, however, has neither Fifth Avenue nor fallout from Black Friday to offer, so score one for New York. If you’re into keeping score about incredibly annoying things, I mean.
Honestly, since he’s gotten back, all he has wanted to do is shop. Following his amusing stint as The Foreign Guy at my family’s Thanksgiving (“This is real wine. Nick, did you bring this?”), he has been on a consumer bender.
I get it, though. Snarky observations about the robust performance of the euro aside, there are some things that home (or even this rough approximation thereof) is just better for. Here, he can ask fifty questions about rolling garment bags; in France he has to think to remember “durable,” and is entirely out of luck with, “Could you show me the thing with the snap over the zipper on that inside pocket again? And is that lined?” Not to mention that “Ou se trouve le Shuffle®?” just sounds stupid. Throw in English-language books minus the 80% markup, and who wouldn’t be sold?
The most memorable, of course, was the trip to CVS. In his new home country, Nick cannot buy NyQuil® without seeing a licensed pharmacist. Not aspirin, either. There is no such thing as OTC medication; the highly-trained professional listens to the list of symptoms, and then sells you whatever she feels is best. It is extremely disconcerting for someone like me–I pop ibuprofen like it’s candy, and I am extremely choosy about what I take should I have the misfortune to actually fall ill.
Apparently, Nick feels similarly, because our basket was full to bursting by the time we reached the cashiers, where he rang up a total previously unheard of at CVS.
Whatever. It’s probably, like, 73 cents in euros.