Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
A couple of days after I got back, I had a strange experience. No, the sun didn’t come out or anything; I’d been told that didn’t happen until May. I got off work just at six. It was already dark, with the early, depressing winters of this northern city. I stopped at a tabac to buy a stamp, and the owner yelled at me and pounded his fist on the counter because I forgot and tried to put the money directly into his hand instead of sliding it to him on the counter as Parisians did. I sighed, wishing I had the guts to tell him he was an asshole. But I didn’t, and I humbly took my stamp, then continued to the Métro. On the long descent of the sloping street, the Eiffel Tower was clearly visible across the city. She really was growing on me, the Eiffel Tower. She had a certain Auntie Mame style. I was thinking this as I descended the street, and a guy in pink grunted at me like a pig and tried to bite me. I dodged him and continued on without breaking pace, by now used to this kind of thing; and a couple of seconds later, the Eiffel Tower started sparkling. She went up like a bottle of champagne, in white lights like a horde of escaping Tinkerbells. She just fizzed and danced and sparkled her little heart out, there above the gray, winter city.
Two
I was hard at work the next day when the e-mail came in, from a friend I hadn’t seen since last summer. Her baby sister was coming to Paris and needed someone to look out for her for a few days. “Sure,” I typed back, little knowing that the request was a crossroads and I’d chosen the turn that would eventually have me locked in a small room spattered with feces. Paris sends too many mixed messages. The promise I’d imagined in that magical moment with the fizzing Eiffel Tower hadn’t included Turkish toilets in it at all.
The phone rang before I could go ask Valérie for help with the baby sister issue. “Where am I?”
I just loved it when phone conversations started like this. It happened a lot more than anyone who hadn’t worked in study abroad could suppose. “I couldn’t begin to guess. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to know.”
A light clicked on as I recognized the voice and remembered the student earlier that day asking me to show him on a map how to get to Charles V, one of the various branches of the University of Paris. “Did you find Charles V?”
“No, I can’t.”