A warm bed in a cozy garret. A garden with green ferns and white flowers. Cafés and rain, a good book, a comfortable pen to write with. Long walks, watching lovers stroll arm in arm, and painters’ brushes sparkling in the dew. Solitude. I asked for solitude.

And I asked for inspiration, enough to fill four hundred pages, yes. I don’t believe it is too much to ask for, is it? The desire to sit and write, to pour words onto the page, to create. It is what I do. What I did. Lusciously, deliberately. In the comforting absence of my life.

I did not expect the company of loneliness.

I did not ask to become involved.

I did not ask for the sharpness of a blade, flashing silver in the moonlight. The chaos, the cries. The sirens and rough questions and the thick wetness of blood on my palms.

Nor the stares, the stares, the stares.

Elle est Arrivée

ELLE EST ARRIVÉE

It was a dream Sutton Montclair had, moving to Paris.

She spent time on this dream. Invested energy. Imagined what it would be like: feeling a bit like Goldilocks as she worked her way through the possible housing list, hunting high and low for the perfect flat. The apartment on the Rue Faubourg would be much too expensive, the one near Notre-Dame too shabby.

When the dream became a plan, she did most of her research by watching reality television shows catering to international clients—Sutton Montclair is moving 4,300 miles from Franklin, Tennessee, to Paris, France! She narrowed down which arrondissement would be right for her. She wanted something slightly off the beaten path, residential, away from the tourist areas. She would hire the same real estate agent featured on the show to find her the perfect spot.

“A garret, that’s what I’m looking for, something with Parisian charm, a good café nearby, and Metro access. Private, anonymous, French.”

The agent immoblier would come through. She always came through. The woman had a reputation to uphold, after all.

It would take three days, but Sutton would end up in a charming furnished one bedroom in the 7th Arrondissement, on the Left Bank, with a picture-perfect view of the Eiffel Tower from the open living room. It would cost her a small fortune, but she had the advance money. After a brief negotiation, she’d secure the flat for a pirate’s ransom, but she’d still have enough to live on for a year, if necessary. She was grateful her publisher hadn’t asked for the money back when they canceled her contract. She was free of them, free of her old life. She could do what she wanted, write for herself. Escape. She just needed a small, brief escape from the vagaries of her life.