Paris by the Book(57)

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Blue, then purple, then a white flash, then black. Stairs—crowded into a vertiginous spiral staircase, no railing—at one end. A tiny, tight stage. A chandelier, a real one, dripping light. Video projections sliding off the walls onto the ceiling, the floor, the patrons, the bar. I find Declan at the bar. I yell at him for abandoning me at the doorway. He can’t hear me; I can’t hear myself. The music throbs, surrounds, more pulse than sound, and I feel it there, right there, in my chest, then lower. Declan turns away from me, still smiling, and then, a moment later, turns back, a drink in his hand, something clear, vodka. I shake my head. One of the slinky girls comes up to Declan and he nods, laughs, and hands her his drink. She disappears onto the dance floor. But—I am on the dance floor, which is a sticky matte black. Everyone is on the dance floor. This room—is all music, all dancing.

Declan is a voice in my ear. My left, my right. He says this, that. Look there, here. I do not know if this is what he does when he is drunk or if this is what he does all day long. Regardez this church, that corner, that window. Tonight he asks if I see the man in the tux over there; how cool, how funny, how Paris is that? I don’t look, because if he’s in a tux, it’s not Robert. I look. It’s not Robert. I nod, I smile, I dance. Platforms suspended from chains sway in two corners of the room, or I’m swaying. Declan leans back to my ear: the DJ is a friend of a friend of a friend. Leans away, dances, spins, is at my ear again: I was prom king. I smile, nod. I can’t stop dancing. He can’t stop talking. I want to be annoyed, but can’t, because each line comes with a laugh, with his breath at my ear, with his hands at my arms to steady himself or keep me from floating away. I know a café nearby, he finally says and I finally say to him, one word at one ear, stop, one word at the other, talking.

The parted-lip look on his face, equal parts delight and desire: I did that, I think. I dance. I can do anything, I think. I dance. Anything. I ride the music, slick with sweat, and watch and wait for Declan to lean in again, which he finally does. Let’s go.



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We didn’t go far enough. We got distracted by a little café two streets down. Or I did. A short man, wide white mustache, rumpled apron, insisted we stop. He waved menus at us. Declan waved him away. But I stopped. The rest of the city’s cafés—that is, cafés that need such assistance—now employ young women, Eastern Europeans mostly, beautiful universally, as their touts. But not here. Here, this man. From another era, from another world, and he bowed, he took my left hand, he kissed it deeply. One more millisecond and it would have been too long, but he knew this. He had kissed, and held, hands for decades. He lifted his face, he swept us into two seats, he lit a tiny cupped candle between us.

Declan ordered a coffee, but I suddenly wanted a beer, and so he switched his order, too. And then we spent a good deal of time laughing. In my Paris scrapbook—and I have one, which I shoplifted from my own store, beautiful creamy pages and a little pouch of old-fashioned photo corners to affix photos, which I someday intend to do, so long as I am permitted to travel back in time and take all the photos I failed to snap the first time around—I will have one page devoted to those two beers, that little table, that night. We talked and we laughed. Really laughed. Somehow, everything became funny. Declan was so beautiful, and so smart, and so good with kids—especially my kids. And, of course, he was good with taxis. Finding clubs. Finding ears.

“You’d think a ring would keep a man away!” I said, raising a glass toward the mustachioed tout, who was back at work on the sidewalk, reaching toward other hands to kiss. Our beers had been delicately decanted into pear-shaped glasses, but I took a swig right from the bottle now, eyeing my little ring as I did. It winked at me. I winked back. Just having fun.

But Declan wasn’t. He sipped his beer, too, and turned away.

“What?” I said.

He looked at me carefully, waiting.

“Excusez-moi de vous déranger,” I said and smiled. He did not. “Carl said that was a disarmament treaty,” I mumbled.

“What—? Wait, who’s Carl?” Declan asked.

“Oh, Carl is one of my three—” Declan’s face, an alarming mixture of disgust and pain, stopped me. “Oh, you’re jealous,” I said. “Please, I—”

“Please,” Declan said.

“Carl is a customer,” I said. “Of the bookstore. One of three, the girls joke. He likes mysteries, and he could pass for my grandfather.”

“And me?” Declan said.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “No, I don’t think you could.”

“Leah, don’t joke,” he said. It’s the one thing men (especially psychologists) have been telling me all my life. Men, save Robert. He never said this. Maybe because he never knew I was joking, but still, it was something I liked in him. Robert never told me no. That soccer-night DJ, that crowd, those noise abatement cops, and finally, the world: yes, Robert had told them nooo.

But Robert never said no to me, not until the night I’d said, let’s get you help, real help. Not toolbox help, the kind the therapist had offered us, but the inpatient kind. No, he’d said.

“I should go,” I said to Declan. “No joke.”