Paris by the Book(64)

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Dramatic acceleration means different things to different people; for Eleanor, it meant that she’d arrive in a week’s time, late morning.

During the school day, in other words. Ellie asked to stay home, not just to greet Eleanor but to take care of Daphne. But Daphne stubbornly insisted on attending school—the doctors had cautiously said an abbreviated schedule was okay—and I’d stubbornly insisted that Ellie go to school, too, just in case anything happened. Similarly, I was not going to go out to the airport but would stay nearby, at the store, on call.

“Perhaps Declan could meet Eleanor?” Daphne asked, confused.

They had told us to be alert to any changes in her hearing, among other things, but so far Daphne seemed her old self, if a paler version.

“He’s busy,” I said.

And he was, sending me one solicitous text after another, all of which I’d ignored: is everything all right? Can I help?

Everyone in the world knows more about texting than I do, but no one has been able to tell me how to send a text retroactively, a message like the one I’d like to send now that would arrive to Declan back when Eleanor first arrived in Paris. I could—should—have answered the first question, no. And the second, yes.

Because Eleanor had much more news than she’d first shared.



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Her accommodations weren’t commensurate with the business-class air ticket I learned she’d purchased—she had not booked the Ritz—but they were comfortable and awfully close. Awfully. Three doors down, to be precise: the H?tel du Cinéma.

In all our time of living on the street, I had not realized that it was a hotel. In my defense, its storefront was as narrow as ours and it looked like a storefront—large glass windows that, yes, said H?TEL DU CINéMA, but behind those windows, piles of hats and wigs and old movie cameras. Classic movie posters on the walls. It should have intrigued me, but instead, had long depressed me. No one ever went in or out. I assumed it was yet another Paris boutique whose existence as a money-making concern, past or future, was impossible to envision.

I was peering in the windows, trying to decide if it was, in fact, a money-making concern, when Eleanor’s car arrived.

“Look who’s here!” Eleanor called as she extricated herself.

“Bienvenue en France!” I said, spinning. I tried to move into a hug, but she was already busily overtipping the driver, who bowed gratefully, and thoughtfully opened the trunk so that Eleanor could remove her own five suitcases.

As soon as Eleanor was done, he sped off, and we looked at each other.

“You look good,” she said, appraising.

“By which you mean I don’t,” I said.

“You’re thin,” she said.

“Not so thin,” I said. “Which may be the first time I’ve heard anyone deflect that comment. Or heard two university women un-ironically take up body image issues within seconds of greeting each other.”

“Hardly,” Eleanor said, and then she grinned and grabbed me, and gave me a long, deep All-American hug.

We eased out of our embrace, but not fully, each of us staring at the other’s distress.

“Oh, it’s a damnable thing,” Eleanor said. “Damn it all to hell.”

“What is?” I said.

“Daphne, sick—”

“Daphne’s better,” I said.

“Robert—”

“Robert?”

“Oh,” Eleanor said. “I mean—just being here, seeing you, I—”

“Robert’s still gone,” I said. We let go.

“But—”

But it was a long flight, I thought—too long, really, if all she did during it was turn the events of the last thirteen months over and over in her head. It was May. It had been just over a year since he’d been gone. Less than a year since we’d been here. Just weeks since I’d found, and lost, Robert’s book with the scribbled sorry. “Can we—can we not—not just right now?” I said. I swept my hand up and down the street, which looked like it did most weekdays, gray and gritty and perfect. “Eleanor,” I said, “you’re in Paris.”

She smiled. It looked like her eyes were filling with tears; I tried to remember if she’d been to Paris before.

“I am,” she said. “And my god, so are you!” She looked around. “Now where are the two most extraordinary young Americans in France?”

“School,” I said. “But they’ll be along soon. Let’s get you moved in to your—hotel?” We took this as a cue to study the strange fa?ade. “At least I think it’s a hotel.”

“Let’s give it a shot,” she said.

We needed to give it a lot more than that to get everything inside, and once in, everything only looked more bizarre, less like a cinema-themed hotel than the set of a movie about a cinema-themed hotel.

A narrow young man with a mustache so faint it may have been drawn on appeared from behind a door. “Bonjour,” he said solemnly.

“Bon-jour,” Eleanor said. “This is a hotel?”

He looked at Eleanor carefully, and at me. “Oui,” he said.