One Night in Paris

As I stepped out of Shakespeare & Company with my backpack full of new paperbacks, it was nearly as dark outside as in. Barely four o'clock and the late autumn sun was rapidly losing its battle. Across the river, Notre Dame stared back at me as brilliantly cold as ever. A cold drizzle offered a stark reminder that there hadn't been a whole lot of sunshine that day anyway.

I loved every bit of it!

Grad school was over a decade in the rearview mirror, and I hadn't been back to Paris since the day after my last final exam. I still remembered all too well that last beautiful spring morning in my prewar flat in the 20th arondissement, telling myself I didn't really want to stay anyway -- too cold, too brusque -- but knowing all the while that I'd have given anything for an EU work visa. With no chance of that for an American whose grandparents had all been born in Ohio or Indiana, I'd settled for moving to Asia. The change had been good to me for the most part, but never a day had gone by that I hadn't hoped I might end up back in my favorite city.

Through a decade in first Asia, then Australia and even back home for a bit, that wish hadn't come true. At long last, a big turn of fortunes in my latest startup company had brought me back here, for a couple of weeks only, to help set up our European office -- but it was something. Four days in, I'd been too busy to bother with any of my old haunts -- until today. When my last meeting of the day had petered out just after lunch, the office manager had been downright apologetic about the "waste of an afternoon" they'd foisted upon me. I'd only just managed not to laugh as I'd told her it was perfectly fine.

And fine it was! As I lingered outside the bookstore and debated what to do next, I was truly spoiled with choice and overwhelmed with memories. Mostly good ones, a few bitter ones, but I welcomed those too. A certain Ximena Vasquez flitted across my memory yet again, and I felt only pleasure at the nice memories we'd made together before she'd moved on to other guys. I'd blocked her on Facebook ages ago and didn't even know what country she lived in now, and felt liberated to think of our study dates and dinners at the campus hotel and her arms around me after a chilly walk back to the dorm. My only lingering regret was that I could have pursued some other classmate in the time I wasted on her.

But, I reminded myself as I zipped up my jacket and stepped up to the sidewalk, time you enjoy wasting isn't really wasted. And I certainly had enjoyed my time with Ximena even if she had tossed me aside once she'd found other study partners.

I'd promised myself I wouldn't wonder about her. But here I was. Last I heard, she was one of the few in our class who was still in Paris. Maybe I ought to let bygones be bygones and give her a call...I let myself off the hook for that one when I remembered I didn't have her contact information anymore.

Next I thought of walking over the bridge to visit Notre Dame. But the memory of my last visit there -- end of term a decade ago, fresh off a broken heart and a failed exam and my ever finishing my degree in question -- called up nasty memories I was just as happy to leave in the past. I'd won that war, at least, and graduated on time, though I didn't bother flying in from Hong Kong to collect my diploma. That December night in the church a decade ago, lighting candles and praying and soaking up all the history in my quiet desperation, remained a golden memory, or had at least become one once I'd known for sure I'd be graduating.

That certainty, of course, had come only after I'd gone to Hong Kong. The bastards had reserved the right not to approve everyone's degree for any reason -- something I'd reminded myself every time they'd asked me for money since then. They'd never gotten a dime from me and they never would.

No need to tear off that scab again, I reminded myself, as I literally and figuratively turned my back on the cathedral. My heart was full of nostalgia and -- somewhat to my surprise -- not a single regret as the street lamps warmed the dusk on both sides of the Seine and I ambled toward the Rue du Petit Pont and my beloved alleys. Fondue and escargots were definitely on the menu tonight, and if I was really feeling decadent I might even stop by the grocery store and get some foie gras for later. But I wasn't feeling hungry just yet and I absolutely didn't want to retire to my rented room, lovely though it was, just yet.

Besides, I remembered as I made my way up the street I had once known so intimately, the restaurants wouldn't even open for an hour and a half yet. I laughed in spite of myself as I recalled all the many times I'd had to choose between going hungry for the afternoon or going to McDonalds like an ugly American (yes, they do call it a Royal with Cheese, as I recalled from seeing a wrapper some jerk had littered in the street just a few days after my arrival way back when). No, if I wanted to drink in the ambiance of my favorite city, there was only one thing to do: go to a pretentious sidewalk café and get an overpriced espresso.

Minutes later, I was happily set with my piping hot drink at a café I remembered, but had never before visited, just down the block from the Caveau de la Huchette (which I had visited many a time). It was a bit too cold to be really comfortable outside and my first sip reminded me that I had likely just sentenced myself to a night of tossing and turning, but there I was once again watching Paris go by. With the pleasant memory of how well the day's meetings had gone, I finally allowed myself to start entertaining the possibility, however remote, that I just might be moving back here one of these days. Surely a decent IPO would raise enough money to get a place in the Latin Quarter, and then who knew if I'd ever leave again?

I guess I was smiling through the chill at that idea when I heard her voice just up the block. The almost comically Russian accent I still heard in all her posts on Facebook, and there it was for real for the first time in a decade. "No! Is it you?"

It took a moment to place the voice, but no time to match it to her face when I looked up. "Tanya!" I exclaimed, jumping up from the rickety old table, sloshing my coffee but not spilling it.

"Adam! It is you!" Before I knew it, she was throwing herself at me and catching the eye of the hard-nosed locals at the next table; I welcomed their contempt. "I thought you were in Sydney?" she asked.

"I was," I said. "I'm with a new startup and we're opening an office here. I'm just in town for a couple of weeks and I wanted to leave it off Facebook because..."

"Ximena?" she asked, pulling back but still clasping her arms around my back. "She isn't here anymore, she got a job in Madrid years ago."

I grinned, and didn't bother to deny anything. "Thank you. I didn't know that. I also didn't know you were still here, Tanya. I remember when you got your French citizenship, but I thought you and Mattieu moved to...where was it, the Maldives?"

She nodded and finally let me go. "We did, but..."

"Oh, Tanya, I'm sorry!" I said, recalling all at once how she used to post photos of her husband and baby daughter on Facebook nearly every day -- and had stopped cold somewhere along the line.

"Hey, it meant I could come back here," she said. "And I got the house. Speaking of which, Adam, where are you staying?"

"I sublet a place in the tenth," I said. "I was just here looking for an excuse not to go back there just yet."

"That bad?" she said.

"It's a nice little place," I said. "But, you know, a little lonely when I think of the late nights we used to have. Studying, drinking wine, watching DVDs on weekends -- I still miss that, you know?"

"Don't even tell me!" Tanya said. "Adam..." She looked down at my rapidly cooling coffee. "Can I join you?"

"I was just trying to figure out how to ask you," I said, retaking my seat.

"Trying to figure out!" Tanya laughed and gathered up her trenchcoat, and plopped down graciously somehow in the seat beside mine. She crossed her long legs, which were clad in black tights just as in most of my memories of her, and brushed her long dark hair over her shoulders. "Aren't we old friends? There's no need to figure anything out, you just ask!"

"Well said," I agreed, once I'd gulped down the last of my now-lukewarm coffee. "It's just...it has been a long time, hasn't it? And we never got to know one another all that well, you know?"

"What?!" Tanya said. "I mean, I don't remember you at too many of our parties, I guess, but that wasn't about making friends, that was about going wild, wasn't it? I remember your presentations in class, the only American who did it in French...maybe the only non-French person who did! And that speech about the marketing for electric trains? That was so funny!"

"I'd forgotten all about that," I admitted, feeling a lot more comfortable all at once with the classmate I mostly recalled as a party girl who never seemed to worry about grades. She had a rich family back in Moscow, after all -- not that I'd ever resented her for that, since she was never a snob, but she'd still seemed the exact opposite of little ol' me. Already I was having second thoughts about my long-ago impressions of her. "I'm impressed that you remember it."

"Everybody loved your presentations, Adam. So unpretentious and straightforward -- so American! But in a good way!"

"I didn't expect to hear much of that when I came here," I reflected.

"Oh, you don't still believe all the stereotypes about Paris, do you? Even after living here two years yourself?"

"Not most of them, no," I said. Then I chuckled, recalling how everyone always thought I was British and became a little bit friendlier when they learned I was American. "No, I've been living overseas for fifteen years now, I learned a long time ago the world doesn't really hate Americans the way we used to think."

"Do you ever feel like you don't really belong anywhere anymore, Adam?" she asked.

"Well, I've got my Aussie citizenship now, and I'm still a US citizen too, so if the place doesn't actually turn into Nazi Germany before we send that piece of garbage back to Atlantic City..."

"That's not what I mean," she said. "I mean, not being a citizen of anywhere, but actually belonging there? I ask because I really don't anymore, not since I came back here. What's the English saying, you can't go home anymore?"

"Can't go home again, but I agree," I said. "It's been great this week being back here, but it sure doesn't feel the same as before. And that's without...I'm sorry, Tanya."

"It's okay," she said. "I miss Kristene horribly, but I do get her for the summers, and she gets to grow up in that tropical paradise. And Mattieu and I...well, she's better off without the two of us at each other's throats all the time. I should know, that's no way to grow up." She blinked back a tear or two and looked up and down the now lamplit street, and forced a smile. "Don't you hate this weather? Every night I feel like selling the house and going back to the islands!" Before I could respond, she burst out laughing -- a fake, bitter laugh. "Isn't that stupid, Adam? I own a townhouse in Paris in my thirties, and I'm thinking of throwing that away!"

"I don't blame you," I said, chancing a tentative touch on her hand, to which she responded by gripping back and rubbing my fingers. "If it's got some memories you can't work past. But I have to admit, I kind of like the weather. Miserable or not, it wouldn't be Paris without it."

"You like it?! You live in Sydney and you like this? Have you had a sunstroke down under, Adam?"

"Well, it has memories for me, too, you know? Bittersweet ones, but not bad ones. So many cozy nights studying in my old place in the Twentieth, or afternoons at the coffee shop -- and most of all, the night I got back from Brussels, but I probably told you all about that already."

"No!" Tanya said. "I remember you had an internship in Brussels, and I heard it didn't go very well..."

"Understatement of the year," I said. "Silly me, I thought as an intern I was there to learn, turned out they wanted someone who already knew how to do the job. And I met a beautiful woman there, too, but..."

"She dumped you for her boss, wasn't it?"

"Yep."

"Oh, Adam, you were better off without her, I'm sure you see that now?"

"I do now, all right," I said. "But at the time, well, my head knew it but my heart didn't, you know?"

"Of course I do."

"And that was fresh on the heels of my striking out with Ximena, remember," I said. "Anyway, that was a good two months I spent up there in my tiny little apartment, looking for a new internship or a job and never finding one, and the weather there is even more depressing than here. Then on top of everything else, I found out I had to retake corporate finance back here -- and honestly, I was delighted with that!"

"Because it meant you had to move back here," Tanya said.

"Exactly. So I came back here and registered for the class and found my place to stay -- God, I loved that apartment, the Twentieth is such an underrated neighborhood, you know?"

"I've never been there," Tanya confessed.

"I highly recommend it," I said. "Anyway. I get things all set up here, then I need to go back to Brussels and pack up my flat there, and I spent that whole miserable afternoon recalling the day I moved in the summer before -- so much promise for my internship and for moving on after Ximena, and now I knew I'd failed big time at both of those -- and on top of everything else it rained hard. I managed to get a taxi to the train station, but my shoes were soaked by the time I got inside with my suitcases, then I had an hour or more to kill before the next TGV. So there I was with my sandwich and a beer for dinner, and all I could think was, well, this'll be a lousy memory for all time. And I was right, it is."

"And this is a happy memory, Adam?"

I laughed. "Yes, and here's why! I finally get on the train and it's jammed, and I think I stepped on a couple of people's toes getting to my seat, then it's a nice long ride, still damp from the rain, nothing to do but try not to think too much about how miserable the past few months had been -- but at least they're over -- and when I finally got into Gare de L'Est, it's pouring here too! But then..." I paused and smiled to remember the bliss of what had come next.

"But then you got home?" Tanya asked.

"Yes. I got home and had a nice hot shower and a change of clothes, and did a little studying just to get a jump on the class, and what I'll always remember is when I turned out the light and got in bed, looking out the window where it was still raining and here I was, safe and dry in bed and I never had to go back to Brussels again. The nightmare was over!"

"Oh, that's beautiful, Adam," Tanya said. "I wish I had a memory like that after the divorce."

"Just because you don't yet doesn't mean you never will," I said. "It just means that chapter isn't over yet."

"I sure wish it would end, then!" Tanya looked crestfallen. "But thanks for sharing that memory, Adam. It's great to know you can find peace on these things."

"Hey, that which doesn't kill you," I said.

"That which doesn't kill you?"

"Makes you stronger. It's a saying in English."

"Oh, right. I like that. I like it a lot." Tanya looked at her watch. "I'm sorry, Adam. It's been great to see you. I just really don't feel like going home alone after this."

"Then don't," I said. "I'm just waiting for the fondue place over there to open for dinner. Join me? My treat?"

Her face lit up again. "You're a struggling entrepreneur, Adam. My treat. I insist."

We still had half an hour or so to kill, but that was easily passed browsing around the Latin Quarter. Once again I was reminded of how hardy Parisians are to the weather, as there were plenty of others out and about.

"Nothing like this in Sydney," I mused out loud.

"You sound like a tourist," Tanya replied.

"Hey, the world is my home," I rejoined.

"What a poet," she said. "But I missed that!"

"You missed what?"

"The way you talk like that," she said. "We all used to love your sense of wonder."

"I had no idea."

"No one ever does, not about what other people think of them," Tanya said. "Believe me."

I was bursting with curiosity as to what had inspired that. But I figured best not to ask.

I was careful to steer us towards my favorite fondue place -- I'd never bothered learning the name and just knew it as 'the place with the red awning on the corner' -- just in time to get a table when they reopened for dinner. "God, this is just like I remember!" I said as we stepped into the warm, dimly lit room.

"I've never been here," Tanya said as soon as the maître d' had seated us at a table in the corner. "When we went out to eat it was always someplace near the clubs so we could hit them as soon as we were done eating. Who'd you come here with?"

"I don't think I ever came with anyone else," I said. "I used to treat myself once every couple of weeks if studying was going well. Always wanted to bring Ximena here, but that never happened."

"Why didn't you ever come clubbing with us?" Tanya asked.

"I hate dance music, for one," I said, "And the cover charges were ridiculous."

"You do know Ximena was with us a lot of those nights?" she asked, a tentative look on her face as if she were afraid she'd be ripping open an old wound.

She wasn't. "Yes, I do know," I recalled with a grin. "Because she'd always call me on Sunday afternoon to whine about what the Dutch-Danish gang did to her the night before."

"Oh, God, Adam, she worshipped those guys!" Tanya said. The half dozen or so Dutch and Danish guys in our class had always been the life of every party, the gang to get in with for anyone who just had to be in on the next big event.

"I know it!" I said. "That's just why I got over my crush on her, to tell you the truth. She'd go out with them every weekend and party until dawn, and then she'd call me to whine about how insensitive they all were, how they were always stringing her along and never really letting her in, and I mean, that's just who they were, everyone knew that!"

"Including Ximena," Tanya said. "I remember talking with her about them a couple of times too. She was just trying to make them something they weren't."

"Exactly," I said. "That's why I finally gave up on her. Always whining about how lonely she was even in a crowd, and here I was right in front of her, but she just had to toss her self-respect aside yet again at the next party because maybe this time it'd be different."

"Do you miss her still?"

"It was ten years ago," I said. "No, listen, for a while in Brussels I did. But I also knew I was walking away from something that never would've worked, before I really got my heart broken. Then, of course, I did get it broken, but at least that put Ximena that much farther from my mind."

"I'm impressed," Tanya said, sipping on the wine we'd ordered.

"I have to admit, sometimes when I see her comment on a mutual friend's post on Facebook, there's still that stab of, hey, we used to be so close and that's gone. But good riddance, really."

"You two did look cute together, you know," Tanya said. "Everybody thought so. But you probably knew that."

"Not really," I admitted. "I knew everyone knew we were good friends, but that's it."

"Most of my memories of you were with her, really."

Our dinner arrived at that moment, and I was left to ponder what she'd said as we dug into our fondue. It was just as labor intensive as I remembered, making sure not to use too much or too little of the cheese on each piece of bread so we wouldn't end up with leftovers of either. For the next fifteen minutes or so, the conversation mostly centered around that when we weren't busy eating. Tanya looked lovely in the dim warm light, and by the time the meal was finished I scarcely recalled that we'd barely known one another back in the day.