Recently, I emerged from Boule as a proud owner of a small bag of French macarons.

I made the short walk back to my car, got in and buckled my seatbelt. But instead of starting the engine, I placed the bag on the passenger’s seat and selected a caramel macaron to devour before the long drive home. Its smooth crust cracked softly against my lips.

At once, I catapult through the upper echelons of social class. My driver’s seat is a plush throne, and I’m perched in it with a silk sash draped across my velvet robes. In my left hand sits the royal caramel delicacy, in my right, a jeweled scepter.

Chewing slowly, I peer out of my carriage as peasants walk by, oblivious to my transformation. “Ha!” I guffaw at them with my mouth full. “You’ll never sample a dessert as elegant as this.” I taste a quick burst of caramel, with notes of almonds and vanilla. The flavors fade, and I shove the final morsel into my mouth. And in that instant, the macaron is gone.

With nothing more than a lap full of crumbs, I plummet back to the sober land of lower-middle class. My velvet robe melts away to reveal a $10 cardigan. In my right hands is a beige transmission lever. My left hand is cupped around an invisible macaron, still quivering from the sudden fall from grace. I’m just a nobody sitting in the driver’s seat of an illegally parked Corolla.

So I have another.

– Cynthia Furey

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 12:58 pm and is filed under At the table. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.