Still holding on to my elbows, they both leaned in through the door to where the driver sat bored and blasé behind the wheel, his jaw showing a gray prickle. “This woman has promised to meet a man at the place de Châtelet. Can you make sure she gets off there and only there?”

The driver’s hair slumped dispiritedly on his head, gray and obviously wilted from neglect. He eyed me, chewing idly on something tucked against a full cheek. “Of course.” Disconcertingly, his bored expression didn’t even change.

Passengers squeezed in around me with each stop as we crept our slow way down the car-jammed boulevard St. Michel. Some of them had washed, and some of them had not, and some of them had opted for enough perfume to try to keep you guessing. Odors clogged thickly, a traffic jam in my nose, which fought back frantically, trying to close up. We lurched forward and stopped, lurched forward and stopped, while horns honked everywhere. Occasionally I had the impression we lurched backward and stopped, but I think I was just hallucinating under the effects of claustrophobia and panic. I was going to be late for the first meeting. Maybe I shouldn’t go at all. I could get off this bus. That driver had let a hundred passengers on and off already; how would he even notice me if I slipped out?

Imprisoned between masses of flesh and a smudged glass window, I enviously watched people stroll in and out of stores without a care in the world. I bet nobody was forcing them to go meet a gorgeous guy. We reached the bookstore Gibert-Jeune, with its yellow signs and vast displays of books, by the great bronze statue of Michael the Archangel that presides over the rose-pillared fountain where the boulevard St. Michel reaches the Seine.

The bus lurched its slow way over the first bridge across the Seine, the Pont St. Michel that joined the Rive Gauche to the Île de la Cité. The other bridges of Paris stretched to right and left, arches and curves marking points of history. The day was not so bad, maybe a light gray with a hint of blue in the sky. I could see, over the Pont du Change on the other side of the island, the slender column of the Fontaine du Chalet, topped with a gold angel. Only two more stops protected me from this meeting. I drew a deep breath and pressed the nearest red button.

The driver stopped and opened the doors to let more passengers on. I tried to blend in with the other passengers getting off, but just as I reached the doors, they whisked shut. Passengers piled up behind me, grabbing bars to keep their balance at the sudden halt.

“This isn’t Châtelet,” the driver told me.