stairs lead. I can practically hear Willem’s voice:
So I do. And take them, and take them. No sooner do I reach one landing than I find another set of stairs. At the top of the stairs, I cross a small cobblestoned medieval street and then,
I follow the crowds around the corner, and at the end of a street full of cafes advertising menus in English, Spanish, French, and German is a huge white-domed cathedral.
He rolls his eyes.
Oh, Sacre-Coeur. Of course. I walk closer and see three domes, two smaller ones flanking the big one the middle, reigning regal over the rooftops of Paris. In front of the cathedral, which is glowing golden in the afternoon sun, is a grassy hillside esplanade, bisected by marble staircases leading down the other side of the hill. There are people everywhere: the tourists with their video cameras rolling, backpackers lolling in the sun, artists with easels out, young couples leaning into each other, whispering secrets. Paris! Life!
At the end of the tour, I’d sworn off setting foot in another moldering old church. But for some reason, I follow the crowds inside. Even with the golden mosaics, looming statues and swelling crowds, it somehow still manages to feel like a neighborhood church, with people quietly praying, fingering rosaries, or just lost in thought.
There’s a stand of candles, and you can pay a few euros and light one yourself. I’m not Catholic, and I’m not entirely clear on this ritual, but I feel the need to commemorate this somehow. I hand over some change and am given a candle, and when I light it, it occurs to me that I should say a prayer. Should I pray for someone who’s died, like my grandfather? Or should I pray for Dee? For my mom? Should I pray to find Willem?
But none of that feels right. What feels right is just
I’m getting hungry, and the long twilight is starting. I decide to go down the back steps into that typical neighborhood and try to find an inexpensive bistro for dinner. But first, I need to get a macaron before all the patisseries close for the day.
At the base of the steps, I wander for a few blocks before I find a patisserie. At first I think it’s closed because a shade is drawn down the door, but I hear voices, lots and lots of voices, inside, so hesitantly, I push the door open.
It seems like a party is going on. The air is humid with so many people crammed together, and there are bottles of booze and bouquets of flowers. I begin to edge back out, but there is a huge booming protest from inside, so I open it up again, and they wave me in. Inside, there are maybe ten people, some of them still in bakers’ aprons, others in street clothes. They all have cups in hands, faces flushed with excitement.
In halting French, I ask if it might be possible to buy a macaron. There is much shuffling, and a macaron is produced. When I reach for my wallet, my money is refused. I start to head for the door, but before I get to it, I’m handed some Champagne in a paper cup. I raise the cup and everyone clinks with me and drinks. Then a burly guy with a handlebar mustache starts to cry and everyone pats him on the back.
I have no idea what’s going on. I look around questioningly, and one of the women starts talking very fast, in a very strong accent, so I don’t catch much, but I do catch
“Baby?” I exclaim in English.
The guy with the handlebar mustache hands me his telephone. On it is a photo of a puckered, red-faced thing in a blue cap. “Remy!” he declares.
“Your son?” I ask.
Handlebar Mustache nods, then his eyes fill with tears.
A bottle of amber booze is passed around. When all our paper cups have been filled, people hold them up and offer different toasts or just say some version of cheers. Everyone takes a turn, and when it gets to me, I shout out what Jewish people say at times like this:
“It means ‘to life,’” I explain. And as I say it, I think that maybe this is what I was saying a prayer for back in the cathedral. To life.
Thirty-three
After breakfast, we all get onto the Metro toward the Louvre. Nico and Shazzer are showing off some of their new clothes, which they got from a street market, and Kelly is making fun of them for coming to Paris to buy clothes made in China. “At least I got something local.” She thrusts out her wrist to show off her new high-tech digital French- manufactured watch. “There’s this huge store near VendOme, all they sell is watches.”
“Why do you need a watch when you’re traveling?” Nick asks.
“How many bloody trains have we missed because someone’s phone alarm failed to go off?”
Nick gives her that one.
“You should see this place. It’s bloody enormous. They sell watches from all over; some of them cost a hundred thousand euros. Imagine spending that on a watch,” Kelly goes on, but I’ve stopped listening because I’m suddenly thinking of Celine. About what she said. About how I could get
The Metro is pulling into a station, “I’m sorry,” I tell Kelly and the gang. “I’ve gotta go.”
_ _ _
“Where’s my watch? And where’s Willem?”
I find Celine in the club’s office, surrounded by stacks of paperwork, wearing a thick pair of eyeglasses that somehow makes her both more and less intimidating.
She looks up from her papers, all sleepy-eyed and, maddeningly, unsurprised.
“You said I could get
I expect her to deny it, to shoot me down. Instead, she gives me a dismissive little shrug. “Why would you do that? Give him such an expensive watch after one day? It is a little desperate, no?”
“As desperate as lying to me?”
She shrugs again, lazily taps on her computer. “I did not lie. You asked if I knew where to find him. I do not.”
“But you didn’t tell me everything, either. You saw him, after . . . after he, he left me.”
She does this thing, neither a nod nor a shake of the head, somewhere in between. A perfect expression of ambiguity. A diamond-encrusted stonewall.
And at just that moment, another one of Nathaniel’s French lessons comes back to me:
One eyebrow goes up, but her cigarette goes into the ashtray. “You speak French now?” she asks, in French.
She shuffles the paperwork, stubs out the smoldering cigarette.