10 - Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, late 2001
POOR EYESIGHT AND BAD MEMORY

Terminal Two at the Paris Roissy airport is designed for the minimum amount of walking from roadside to aeroplane. However it is not really designed for passengers changing planes who often find themselves running late for connecting flights along interminable corridors and moving walkways or, worse, waiting for an inter-terminal bus which never came.

Jane Marc had nevertheless found a shortcut between two terminals by cutting across the car park and walking past the hire car counters. The bonus to this shortcut was an excellent newsagent with the best selection of English language books in the whole airport, the post office where Jean-Marc would mail some letters and gift packages to his family in France as he passed through on his way from America or London to wherever he was going next, and a pharmacy.

On this occasion the pharmacy was a blessing. Jean-Marc had lost his reading glasses somewhere, on the plane or maybe back in New York, and he just had the time, between planes, to buy one of those “across the counter” reading glasses.

Trying to choose the right pair of glasses from an unseemingly huge selection of sizes and colours, Jean-Marc glanced up to see Rob, the now Hollywood Studio Boss, who obviously shared the same eyesight predicament. He was thin, haggard and the eyes and smile were not the same.

“Rob, do you remember me?”

“Bob actually” was the rather cold response.

“Yeah, Chateau Marmont in the early eighties, I cooked curry and all the Belushi/Blues Brothers fan club turned up” continued Jean-Marc, “you borrowed my leather jacket.”

“Sorry, not me, have a nice life, bye” and Bob/Rob walked away.

“He used to annoy me but now I wish Denis would come and visit me more often” thought Jean-Marc as he rushed to catch the next plane in that eternal search for the next god-dollar.