Paris by the Book(27)

Our pending departure glowed brighter and brighter in my brain until it was a headache, more than a headache, really, more like a hangover, which I suppose it was. Arriving in Paris had delivered the initial buzz, and then the fantastical idea of somehow staying—this touring of schools, neighborhoods—had gotten me drunk.

And now it was the morning of the last day and we were out walking and what was Robert doing across a narrow street from me in a nameless store?

Robert.

I squinted to be sure; he’d lost weight, had new glasses I didn’t much like and a new haircut I did. I didn’t startle or scream; what happened next happened too fast. He’d been looking down at something on a table, and then he looked up at me, saw me looking at him, and smiled a slow smile, and then returned to browsing. Like I said, this took almost no time, just long enough for me to realize it wasn’t Robert.

Now I saw something else, something even stranger than the man I’d mistaken for Robert: behind him were two girls the same age as our daughters. Wait. Those were our daughters. I’d forgotten that they’d asked to go across the street into some store.

And it wasn’t some store. It was, finally, Robert’s store. It was not the color Robert’s manuscript had specified, and it was in the Marais, not across the Seine, as he’d described. But otherwise: the narrow edifice, the luminous windows, the carefully lettered LIBRAIRIE, all of this appeared in his manuscript.

A debate Robert and I occasionally took up was the role of coincidence in fiction—especially his fiction. He favored it. His books often relied on it. I said it was barely plausible in his novels for kids and wholly out of place in his adult work. I may have drawn a line from this to his reviews, sales, and so on.

He said real life was ruled by coincidence. If anything, his fiction didn’t rely on it enough.

I said, enough. And then I swore. And then he left.

Whoever swore first lost: his rule. Whoever left first lost: my rule.



* * *



—

Daphne and Ellie set upon me as soon as I entered, each pulling in different directions. Not that there were many directions to go: had we stretched out our arms end to end, the three of us could have almost spanned the store.

But we could not stretch our arms out; the space was filled floor to ceiling with books. A long, broad wooden counter ran along the right side just inside the door, like an old-fashioned grocer’s. Atop this counter, more books, piled in varying heights. The floor was unusual—wide, heavy wooden planks answered footsteps with creaks and knocks, like the deck of a very old ship. I felt like I was swaying, anyway. Everything—every last book—seemed both about to fall and yet perfectly placed. If this was disorder, it was a very precise disorder, and it was also very precisely something else, something I’d read, come to life. More than that, it was an earlier chapter of my own life, come to life once more: the books, the disorder, the teetering stalagmites of paper. It even smelled like Robert’s old apartment.

But not every detail matched the memory, or the manuscript. I didn’t recall the filigreed spiral iron staircase that Daphne was pointing to; she said there was an upstairs, a children’s section with books en fran?ais! Robert’s manuscript did not have this. Nor did Robert’s store have what Ellie was calling a “secret door,” a bookcase in the rear of the room that slid forward on casters. Behind this was a tiny space, the proprietor’s office.

And here she was, the proprietor. She’d greeted me earlier with a bonjour and then let the girls tug me about. But now she was at my elbow, perhaps because Ellie was showing off the store’s inner sanctum.

“Hello,” the woman said, her voice round and low. She ducked her head slightly without losing eye contact. “Marjorie Brouillard.”

“Ellie!” shouted Daphne from the top of the stairs. “You have got to see this.”

Ellie ran away.

“Hi,” I said to the proprietor. “Leah Eady.” I shook my head. “‘Hi’? I’m sorry. Bonjour. Or—I should probably say—pardonnez-moi.”

She shook her head, which made me think I’d gotten that wrong, too.

And I saw that I had: I needed to beg pardon not just for myself but the whole unruly three of us. Scrolling through old microfilmed Cahiers du Cinéma in the library basement had taught me many things, but not necessarily plural pronouns and imperative verb inversion. “Oh!” I said. “Pardonnez-nous.”

Again, from Robert’s manuscript: the bookstore is run by a Frenchman, a handsome middle-aged widower. Maybe the manuscript didn’t say handsome. But I definitely do recall sensing that the French widower and the abandoned wife were on a collision course, that in the pages Robert had yet to write, they’d embrace, a relief for them and readers both.

But my real-life relief was meeting Madame. It had felt odd while reading to think that Robert had been somehow setting me up.

And yet—and this felt far more odd—this was the shop from Robert’s manuscript.

“They are très jolies,” Madame said, looking upstairs. “They—is this the word? They ‘favor’ you,” she added. “Yes,” she said, before I could.

We stood there for a moment; I struggled to find something to say in French, until I remembered we were speaking English.

“You are kind,” I said. “I apologize for not following them into the store sooner—letting them run amok—”