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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

It was one in the morning. I headed up the canal alone, and a flake fell down and caught on my eyelashes. I tilted my head back in astonishment and discovered the whole sky filled with flakes, drifting down in the light from the lamps and the windows. It was snowing, big, thick flakes, rare in Paris, where the city holds the heat at a couple of degrees higher than the surrounding countryside. I walked and walked along the canal, with the flakes swirling slowly past the lamps and into the water. Although it was late at night, nobody bothered me at all. Two men coming out of a bar called out, “It’s snowing, it’s snowing!” delightedly. And that was the most human contact I had. Cars still whisked past on the moistened streets, but there was a sense of magic stillness to the city, as if we could all escape out of it into its movie version.

Twenty-one

I stood on that bridge for a long time, watching the snow. Stood on it until my heart started to ache at the fact that Sébastien wasn’t there to share it with me. Finally, I started back, determined to find him and try to make up so that I could drag him outside and show him the snow.

A figure sitting on the steps of a bridge three bridges down lifted his head as I passed, and I realized he wasn’t a homeless man but Sébastien in a hastily donned sweater and jacket. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. I knew he had followed me, even though he was as angry as I was, to make sure nothing happened to me alone out here at one in the morning. Our eyes met. I hesitated, beset by anger at him again for making this hard time necessary by being so wonderful. But I knew that wasn’t fair. I turned and sat down beside him on the steps. The concrete froze right through my jacket to my butt instantly. I peeked sideways. Sébastien had more snowflakes caught in his long lashes than I did. He reached out and shook a handful of my hair, knocking flakes loose.

“I feel like you’re breaking in my hands,” he said, low. He brought his hands back to clasp them between his knees and stared at them, not at me. “And that it’s my fault, because I tried to hold you in them in the first place.”

A car passed, whooshing slowly, its lights swirling snow.

“I feel like the most important thing in my life, us, is slipping through my fingers and shattering as it hits the floor. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.” He flexed his fingers helplessly against the backs of his palms and just stared at them.