A Meeting in Paris

They were going to meet in Paris in November.

Not in summer, when the city is too sure of itself and the sky is blue in every photograph. In November—when you already have to button your coat, but the sun still sometimes comes out and warms one side of your face.

She was to arrive on Friday morning. He would come the evening before, so he could find the apartment, buy some bread, and not be tired from the flight when he met her.

They had never met. He knew her voice, her pauses, and the way she typed “listen,” but he did not know whether he would recognize her at the airport.

They had chosen an apartment in Montmartre, just under the roof of a tall building. The photograph showed a steep wooden staircase, two rooms on different floors, and a small window overlooking chimneys, rooftops, and a patch of sky. In the listing, the host had given fair warning: there was no elevator.

“So you’ll carry my suitcase,” she said.

“So don’t bring any extra baggage.”

“I’m the extra baggage.”

“I’ll carry you separately.”

They discussed the staircase for a long time, as though the apartment had already been rented and only the stairs could keep them from meeting.

In the morning they would stand in line at a tiny bakery with black walls. He would buy the baguette; she would choose pastries whose names she did not know. Then they would go home, put the hot bread straight on the table, and break it with their hands because they had not found the knife yet.

They were piecing Paris together in advance.

A note called “Paris” lived in her phone. Into it went everything that was supposed to happen to them one day: absinthe at the Musée d’Orsay, oysters to settle an old debt, the apartment under the roof, tango, and their most private stories in the Luxembourg Gardens.

They both understood that the note was less an itinerary than a way of making it to November.

The first day—the Musée d’Orsay.

They would freeze in line, shifting from foot to foot. She would forget her gloves though he would remind her twice, and warm her hands in his pockets.

Inside, in the museum café, they would find absinthe.

That was the agreement. The Impressionists had to be viewed with absinthe; otherwise there was no way to understand fully where their light came from, why shadows had color, and how an ordinary railway station could suddenly become more beautiful than a palace.

They would wait while the water slowly dripped through the sugar and the clear green liquor turned cloudy.

“Any clearer now?” she would ask in front of one of Degas’s dancers in blue.

He would look first at the painting, then at her.

“Much clearer. Though I think we need a little more.”

She would laugh too loudly for a museum, and an elderly attendant would give them a disapproving look.

Then they would move from painting to painting, gradually growing tipsy either on the absinthe or on the red poppies, violet shadows, and patches of sunlight on the water.

She would tire quickly and sit down on a bench.

“But you wanted to come to the Orsay.”

“I wanted to come to the Orsay with you. And with absinthe. That’s different.”

The next day they were going to Monet’s.

She wanted to see the real lily pond, though in November it would probably have neither lilies nor the light Monet mixed into his paintings. He said that made it even better.

First they would look at the pond—dark and cold, with fallen leaves on the water. Then they would return to Paris and go to the Orangerie to compare.

“So which one is real?” she would ask.

“Both.”

“That can’t be.”

“It can in Paris.”

They were also going to eat oysters.

She owed him—not money, but something from long ago, known only to the two of them. They had once agreed that in Paris she would repay the debt in oysters.

By then, it was hard to remember why oysters, exactly. Perhaps because at the time both oysters and Paris seemed to belong to the same slightly improbable life.

“You remember the debt?” he would ask sometimes.

“Of course.”

“It’s growing.”

“So we’ll order a large platter.”

They imagined a restaurant with small tables standing too close together, white wine, and shells lying open on ice.

She would push the platter toward him and say:

“Now we’re even.”

And galettes. Chestnuts in a paper bag. Onion soup hot enough to burn the tongue. Coffee at a little round table with nowhere to put your elbows. A fresh baguette that leaves scratches on the roof of your mouth.

She used to say that you had to remember Paris not with your eyes, but with your mouth.

He would answer that in that case, by the end of the trip they would remember nothing at all.

They set aside one evening for the Canal Saint-Martin.

They would sit right by the water with wine in plastic cups and watch old men with sly faces play pétanque. A ball would strike the ground with a short, heavy sound. Someone nearby would inevitably laugh so loudly that everyone else would start laughing too, though they had not heard the joke.

They would be in no hurry to go anywhere. That was what they called the evening: “Doing Nothing by the Canal.”

Every evening they added new details.

Along the Boulevard des Invalides, they would rustle through dry leaves. She would be sure to gather the prettiest ones, then forget them in the pocket of her coat. The air would smell of roasted chestnuts, fresh bread, and wet stone.

The Seine would hold the autumn sky turned upside down and the top of Notre-Dame.

Someone would be dancing on the embankment.

Someone is always dancing in Paris, even if you have never seen it yourself.

One day he wrote that in the evening they would go to Boulevard Haussmann, where Parisian music would drift from the open doors of bars, and he would dance a tango with her.

“Do you know how?”

“No.”

“Then why tango?”

“So it’ll be scary.”

She sent a laughing emoji and wrote:

“Good. Neither do I.”

They were planning to go up the Montparnasse Tower.

An old photograph of Paris from above hung on her wall: buildings all the way to the horizon, gray rooftops, and the Eiffel Tower like a black hairpin.

She would bring the photograph. They would find the same angle, hold it against the glass, and compare.

Perhaps the city would turn out to have changed less than they had.

Then they would come down from the tower and walk to the Luxembourg Gardens.

On the way, they would buy a baguette and immediately break off both crisp ends. He would say they should not do that because only the middle would be left by the time they reached the gardens. She would answer that the middle was bread too.

In the Luxembourg Gardens, they would sit on green iron chairs more uncomfortable than any other chairs in the world.

Children would run around them, old men would read newspapers, and women in good coats would talk with their heads inclined toward each other.

That was where they were going to tell each other their most private stories.

Each of them was to bring one.

Several times he asked whether she had chosen hers.

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me now?”

“No. Only in Paris.”

“What if we don’t make it there?”

“Then you’ll never know.”

He chose a story too and told it to no one. Sometimes he thought it was too small and would disappoint her. Sometimes he thought it was too big and that afterward everything would change.

But Paris was far away, and there was still time before November.

First her vacation was rescheduled.

Then the tickets became too expensive.

Then the tickets grew cheaper, but by then that week was already spoken for.

Then someone close to them fell ill.

Then she wrote that perhaps spring would be better: it would be cold in November, Monet’s pond would be empty, and the leaves in the Luxembourg Gardens would already have been cleared away.

In spring he couldn’t.

In autumn she could, but no longer in November.

Then they stopped naming a month.

They continued to talk about Paris, only less and less often.

The Montmartre apartment disappeared from the website. Someone else must have rented it and carried a stranger’s suitcase up the steep staircase.

Sometimes she would send a photograph of chestnuts or a wet embankment and write:

“Almost Paris.”

He would reply:

“Doesn’t count.”

Several years later, he did end up there alone.

Not on purpose. His route just happened to take him through.

It was October, warm and sunny.

Paris turned out to be a city where happiness really is mixed into the water.

Late one evening, in an empty little park in the suburbs, a group of young people was belting out songs, each one looking like Netflix’s Lupin.

On the parapet by a riverboat landing, a few middle-aged women—Arab, by the look of them—suddenly broke into “Bésame Mucho.”

Couples danced on the embankment.

In a crowded morning tram, a girl stood across from him with neatly cut hair and the profile of Botticelli’s Venus. She was looking at her phone and smiling at someone who was not there.

He went to the Orsay.

There was no absinthe in the museum café.

In line ahead of him, a woman without gloves was warming her hands in a man’s pockets. The man said something; she laughed and rested her head on his shoulder.

He looked at Degas’s dancers, at the poppies, the colored shadows, and the patches of sunlight on the water.

It was all clear even without absinthe. But not quite the same.

He ate galettes, bought chestnuts in a paper bag, and once passed a restaurant where oysters lay on ice.

He stopped, looked at them through the window, and walked on.

He made it to the Canal Saint-Martin too.

Old men with sly faces really were playing pétanque. Young people sat by the water with wine in plastic cups. Someone laughed, and everyone around them immediately began laughing too.

Everything turned out exactly as they had imagined it.

He sat down by the water. The space beside him on the stone was left empty.

Then he went up the Montparnasse Tower, though he did not have the photograph with him.

The city lay spread out all the way to the horizon. Gray rooftops, straight streets, and the Eiffel Tower like a black hairpin.

He tried to remember the photograph on her wall and decided that the angle was probably the same.

Then he came down and walked to the Luxembourg Gardens.

On the way he bought a baguette. He broke off one crisp end and left the other.

There were almost no empty green chairs. He found one by the water, sat down, and watched the children sail their little boats for a long time.

He still remembered his most private story.

It had neither grown smaller nor faded from memory. The agreement was simple: only in Paris, and only to her.

The warm October sun lay across his knees. Children laughed around him, old men read newspapers, and women in good coats talked with their heads inclined toward each other.

There was still one crisp end of the baguette left in the paper bag.

He thought he would have to ask her whether she remembered the oysters.