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Chapters (45)
  1. Cover
  2. Blame Iton Paris
  3. Copyright Notice
  4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  5. Book One
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-one
  27. Book Two
  28. Twenty-two
  29. Twenty-three
  30. Twenty-four
  31. Twenty-five
  32. Twenty-six
  33. Twenty-seven
  34. Twenty-eight
  35. Twenty-nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-one
  38. Thirty-two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-four
  41. Thirty-five
  42. Thirty-six
  43. Thirty-seven
  44. Thirty-eight
  45. Thirty-nine

Sébastien set my suitcases down, which effectively took up the only remaining floor space in the apartment. I looked around in something approaching desperate terror.

The apartment was nineteen square meters, smaller than most American cars. Our tiny refrigerator was tucked under two stove burners, in a minuscule kitchen unit against one wall. I had good memories of that kitchen unit and of Sébastien cooking there in an unbuttoned white shirt, but still, it was a small place to live. Two enormous windows let in the day’s gray light and saved the apartment from being completely claustrophobic. The bed took up half the space, while a small table a foot high, my suitcases, and a computer occupied the rest. The table had been added in my absence; we used to eat sitting on the floor with our plates in our laps. The computer was also a foot off the floor. Sébastien didn’t want to have to try to fit chairs in.

When we opened the windows a crack to get rid of some of the cat smell, the noise of the traffic below immediately boomed into the room like a freight train. Memories of this street’s unfortunate acoustics came flooding back. Something about it amplified every sound: delivery people blocking the street at seven in the morning while commuters pounded on their horns; former sleepers leaning from the window to tell them to shut the putain de merde up; that Peugeot’s alarm that seemed to go off every single morning at 3:00 A.M. and go on for hours and hours. Of course, there were some good memories mixed in with all this, and not just the night someone threw a brick through that Peugeot’s window, or else I wouldn’t have been in the apartment at 3:00 A.M. I would have been in my own old place at the Cité U. But. I sighed, turned around to put down my carry-on, and discovered Indy in the process of peeing in the only corner left.

I put a hand to my temple. We were both just out of school; we both had no savings and even quite a bit in student loans to pay off; and I had no job and a long, excruciating job search to go before I could get one, get a work visa, and start earning money. So this was our apartment for the immediate future, if our couple could survive it.

“Are you still glad I came?” I asked Sébastien.

“Yes,” he said.

So we went to bed and slept until it was morning again and time for me to get up and face the in-laws.