We lived halfway between Belleville, the heart of ethnic Paris where one only occasionally saw a store sign in the Latin alphabet, and the place de la République, the vast roundabout that filled with crowds on every occasion Parisians could imagine to form one—concerts, Gay Pride parades, endless demonstrations. We were used to seeing white vans filled with riot police parked up and down all the side streets. None were there now. The street was empty. My boots sounded dully into nothing. I passed a homeless man, curled up in cardboard under the eave of a theater. I knew I could have it worse. In Paris, there was always proof I could have it worse.

On our street, half the stores were called by ethnicities and no other name: the Arabes or tiny épiceries that functioned as mini-supermarkets; the Chinois restaurants that were mostly run by Vietnamese; the five Pakistanais dime stores, where dark-skinned men would sell me a ten-franc pack of rough pink toilet paper, liquid for blowing bubbles, and packs of nails, but not super-balls, because the superballs might give me a headache. (“It’s the petroleum products,” said a twinkling young owner.) Behind a barrier of interlaced steel, the video Anal Vixens still held pride of place in the papeterie display window, among magazines and postcards. Our favorite florist had pulled her sweet-smelling gardenia in off the sidewalk and completely covered her store in corrugated metal, but at the base of the hill, a few stores past the bakery, McDonald’s still shone its golden beacon of artery-clogging food into the night.

To my left at this intersection stretched the smooth, gray stone promenade that followed the underground canal all the way to the Bastille and, more importantly, one of the last Parisian chocolatiers to still make his chocolate on the premises and fill the street around him with the scent. Sébastien and I walked down that way some days, for the market. Mostly I walked it by myself while he was at work. To my right, the Canal St. Martin surfaced, the old-fashioned streetlamps glowed off its dark waters, and a dozen little bridges arched over it. Often, often, when Sébastien came home and wanted to relax, he went out for a walk with me along the canal instead. During the summer, people used to take over our favorite bridge, couples sitting all up and down its steps, drinking beer from a nearby bar out of plastic cups. But now it was winter and empty, except occasionally for a homeless man asking for a cigarette. We often walked along the canal at night and stood on that bridge, huddled close under one umbrella as we gazed at the dark water, dimpled with rain, the streetlamps reflecting off it and the golden warmth of apartment windows stretching away under barren winter trees.