French girls read Dostoyevsky for fun in the Luxembourg Gardens, sitting on rock-hard green chairs meant to blend into the grass. Two chairs per person, one for you and one for your feet, and of course, it works well should a friend come by and want to chat. Older men set canes by their chairs, take off their shoes, and put their feet in the grass, smiles of bliss on their faces. Even the pigeons relax, cooing gently, feet folded beneath plump gray bodies in the cool, damp green.

Sutton followed suit, taking care to make the same fuss she had seen the girl next to her do—a performance, really—adjusting the chair to the exact, perfect spot. Once she was as comfortably uncomfortable as she could be, she took off her shoes and dug her toes into the grass. There was something sticky in the green growth. Disgusted, she moved the chair, the rattle of the metal legs against the stone path as jarring and grating as the tacky grass.

The girl reading Dostoyevsky was laughing quietly to herself as she marked a passage in the book. Only a student could find humor in the horrors of those pages.

The trees moved slightly in the breeze, small leaves waving. A feather floated down from the sky. A mottled white pigeon flew away over her seat, and the man to her right played an Enya CD, and the smart girl with the short hair turned a page and sighed. The French around her sat at the edge of the green expanse, staring longingly at the grass as if they wanted to frolic but were held back by an invisible barrier. The girl sighed again, and Sutton thought, This is Paris.

We Meet a Friend

WE MEET A FRIEND

Eventually, her legs fell asleep against the hard green chair, so she rose, stretched, rewound her scarf, and headed toward her flat.

The story, her dying Queen, reasserted itself as she walked past the École Militaire Metro. She was thirsty and hungry and needed the loo, so she stopped at the café down the street from her flat. Once she’d eaten, she ordered a coffee, brought out the notebook, and began to work again, amazed at how quickly she was able to slip into the scene she’d been working on.

So lost she was in this new world that the sirens didn’t penetrate her fugue until they were directly outside the bar, screaming.

Her back stiffened; she dropped the pen. Her mouth was suddenly dry, her heart pounding. The coffee at her elbow was cold, with a rime of brownish scum around the edge of the cup.

The flics, as she knew the Paris police were called, barreled down the street toward her, the alien sound of their sirens making chills run down her back. Her breath came short.

No, no, no, no, no.