Paris by the Book(2)

Would he look? No.

I couldn’t not, but pausing almost made me lose him, and I had to skip a step or two to catch him as he exited, crossed the street, and started north along the rue de Valois.

And now I set before him another test. If he turned right toward the Banque de France, I would drop him immediately; if left, into the Palais-Royal, with its gorgeous gardens and stately rows of trees that I might weave among, I would follow.

He turned left. So did I. He walked faster. I tried not to. He exited through a forest of columns in the northeast corner. Now west, then north; we passed the gates of the Bibliothèque nationale Richelieu, where black-clad pods of researchers and staff milled about on the sidewalk, in the courtyard, attending to the better work of talking, smoking, sipping coffee from tiny plastic cups. Onward. The old stock exchange. Banks. Cafés. Coin dealers and les philatélistes, and I began to think that he was going to walk all the way to Montmartre and that I would walk all that way, too. Because.

Because even I will admit that Paris is a theater, ornate, gilded (if worn at the edges), and to live here is to spend most of your time waiting outside to get in, or, once in, to wait staring at the stage, wondering when the rich red curtain will rise. And then something happens. The lights dim, people hush, something somewhere stirs, and you know the show is finally about to start.

I’m talking about the drifts of flowers cascading from window boxes high above the hidden side street; or the busy museum corridor where you realize a statue is staring right at you, just at you, and that its still smile is still sly after centuries; or the meal when the simplest ingredients on a plate before you (perhaps you made it yourself, following the ebullient butcher’s instructions to the letter) combine to best, in one bite, anything you’ve ever eaten before. You wait and wait for the curtain to rise, precisely because you don’t know when it will, where it will, or what will appear.

A man, say. Your husband.

I texted Ellie. I told her I would be late, to unlock our store, flip the sign to OUVERT-OPEN to attract the rare customer—

And here, the man I was following interrupted.

Oui? he said.

Not a proper hello at all. I’d been too busy with my phone. I’d kept walking but not kept watch. And now, here I was, this man before me, speaking to me, as had never happened before.

He stood too close. His breath smelled sharp. Pedestrians, dogs, deliverymen, trottinettes swirled around us, rocks in a river.

Non, I said. Non, when I should have said, I’m sorry, and in English, so he would know I was stupid. But I’ve had more practice with non than any other word in France, and so he took me for a local. His voice fell a register as he asked, in French, what was I doing, following him?

Here is what I did not say. That I had lost my husband. That I’d spent the first months going through all the stages various pamphlets and websites and too many books said I would go through—shock, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, despair—except that I cycled through them repeatedly, rapidly, never quite making it to the acceptance stage invariably promised.

Until I did make it to that final stage, or rather, until I came to accept something else, that the temporary situation I’d found for my family—running a Parisian bookstore we live above—could or had become permanent.

And so began some new stages. French stages. Which, like so much else over here, can feel analogous to things American but turn out to be profoundly different. In America, you see a man who resembles your husband and smile sadly to yourself. In France, you chase him.

In America, you think, well, of course you’re curious—it’s like an unfinished book.

In France, I knew it was because of an unfinished book.

In America, you say, I lost my husband, and everyone thinks they know what you mean.

In France, they know better. When I say I lost him, they don’t say, I’m so sorry.

They say, where did he go?

And so when I answered the man I’d been chasing, I spoke quietly and clearly, and told him what I told the police when I was still talking to the police.

I said, I’m looking for my husband.

What I did not say next, because at the time, the time of this story, my story, I could not yet have known?

My husband is looking for me.





PARIS,

WISCONSIN





CHAPTER 1


I’ve long considered the front of our bookstore a trap, one carefully set.

This is as it must be. Although we are in the wearyingly popular Marais district, we are in the lower Marais, closer to the Seine but farther from the falafel stands and crêperies, the pedestrian streets, and thus the crowds, and thus, customers. One side of our block is almost entirely taken up with the blank back wall of a monastery, which may or may not be occupied. Despite all the bells, I’ve never seen a monk on the sidewalk. Opposite the monastery, a succession of shops like ours, peering out from the ground floors of anonymous flat-front buildings in various shades of cream forever staining yellow. High above, zinc roofs slowly bruise black, windows shrug away shutters. Here and there appear flowers, or their remains. So, too, wrought iron railings, or their remains.

And our store, bright red, like an apple, a wound.

The store has always been red, but it was deeper, bluer, more toward the color of Cabernet when I first saw it. It was my choice to update it to cherry, almost fire truck, red. This caused a mild scandal even though I’d cleared it with our landlord, the store’s original proprietor, Madame Brouillard; one painter quit on me before he got started and another quit after scraping and priming. Upon the recommendation of my UPS driver (and unofficial street concierge), Laurent, I finally hired a Polish man who spoke almost as little French as I did and thus didn’t care what anyone thought. I asked Laurent what he thought when the job was done. Laurent looked up and down the street. The painter had not only gotten exactly right the clarion red I wanted, he’d layered what looked to be thirty-six coats of clear lacquer on top. The place shone as if it had been enameled in molten lollipop.