“I’m fine. Just go, please.” When he hesitates, I add “Allez!” We merge into traffic to join the stream of cars navigating the morning rush hour. People honk and gesture while staring at their phones, cutting off other drivers. The routine is calming, the normalcy what I need in a place and situation that feels like a constant out-of-body experience.

As I withdraw my hand from my bag, it cramps, bent in the shape of the picture frame, red where my grip wedged to it. The grooves of the wooden frame imprint a right angle on my skin, an L that remains like a pointed finger after we cross over the Seine. Thief. Evidence. Implicated.

The driver slams on his brakes, and the frame flies from my hand. It clangs to the floor and knocks against the middle console, breaking the frame’s stand. “Hey!” I look up; we are two inches from a delivery truck’s bumper. The driver shoots me an annoyed glance in the rearview mirror. I pick up the pieces of splintered wood and the frame. The glass is intact, at least. “Watch the road, please,” I mumble.

His hands scroll for a new song on his phone, ignoring me.

“Hey, s’il vous plaît, the road!” I nod my chin at the empty space before us, the delivery truck already thirty feet ahead. The car behind us honks. “Allez?”

The driver has been muttering in French since he slammed on the brakes, and his stream of commentary ticks up in volume here. He yanks the parking brake, yells that if I don’t like it I should drive in morning traffic. Then he points to the door. We’re more than a few blocks away from my destination, but I pay him for the total thus far and get out.

“Nous sommes arrivés, mademoiselle!” the driver yells when I slam the door shut. As he peels away to merge back into traffic, I try to collect myself. Nous sommes arrivés, mademoiselle. We’re here. The same words (in a much different tone) were spoken by the driver on my first day as I arrived in Montmartre. Stepping onto the sidewalk I feel exposed, raw. Like the universe is telling me a riddle in pig Latin after a round of Seb’s Calvados. There’s a trash bin nearby, and I toss my plastic bag of sick in.

Five blocks later, the crowd swells and carries me beyond the curb to the busy storefronts of the Champs-Élysées. Angela’s Tuesday outing. Two women pass wearing matching wide-brimmed black hats, exclaiming over the lucky buy they found. I find a store window with mannequins in swimsuits modeling the hats, then duck inside. Planting myself beside a rack of clothing, I wait for my pulse to settle. After what I just ran from then ran into, I wonder if I should have left Angela’s apartment at all today.