51

The truth was, we snuck out. There was no honest way to say goodbye. We inventoried our apartment, packed our duffel bags, and walked Paris from end to end. We ate another dinner with Lindsay at a little restaurant near Montmartre. We read French newspapers. We closed accounts and left forwarding addresses.

Vincent the film director e-mailed me: “See you in Obama land.”

Three nights before leaving, the agency threw me a goodbye party. There were four cases of champagne, a case of liquor, and four platters of charcuterie. People gave me goodbye bises. They said they’d heard from Pierre that I was having a novel published—the idea was met with disbelief. Where had I lived my secret life?

They also asked where I’d be moving. I explained that we were returning to the United States, to the woods of Caroline du Nord. No one could grasp this—me with cows and pigs, “with a big truck and a big gun?”

I explained it was more like we were moving to the countryside, la campagne.

“Ah bon,” people said reverently, nodding, “la campagne.”

Around two, when the party was still loud, I told people I was going out to find more champagne. Instead I rode the Métro home and crawled into bed. At four a.m., a text message woke me up, Pierre writing to say that he and some people were going out to find something to eat, did I want to join them?

That same day, prior to the party, Bruno had taken me out for lunch. “Please,” he’d said, “you should at least see my neighborhood one time before you go.”

“Of course,” I said. “Avec plaisir.”

Bruno drove us on his scooter up to the seventeenth arrondissement. We ate on Rue Jacquemont at La Tête de Goinfre, a restaurant dedicated to pork. Bruno did all the ordering. First came an amuse-bouche of sausages and pickles, plus champagne. Next, a charcuterie platter meant for four people that we split, of more sausages, hams, pâtés. Then a 1.5-kilo steak to share, plus pommes sautées and a green salad, with two bottles of Côtes du Rhône. One hour, two hours. We talked about office politics a little, not much. Dessert we skipped, but we ordered calvados and coffee. Mostly Bruno wanted to talk about his family, his girlfriend, a recent fishing trip, some upcoming plans to visit Lisbon.

He asked me, Don’t you like the restaurant? Isn’t the food exceptional?

I did, I said. It was.

This is true Paris, Bruno said. Family Paris. Shame it had taken me so long to see it.

I agreed, I apologized, we toasted.

On our way back to the office, Bruno proposed billiards. Fantastic! I yelled into his helmet. Now time had no influence. In Paris, the past was all around you, but from the back of Bruno’s scooter, the present was boisterous and pulsing. We buzzed past markets I didn’t recognize. Down streets I’d never seen. For eighteen months, people had told me Paris was finished, a city fading, cauterized by tourism and a reluctance to change. But I hadn’t seen it. I knew too many Parisians now—passionate, self-aware Parisians. The day that Parisians stopped being so Parisian, then maybe. But the Parisians I knew were nowhere near done.

What my friend Bruno taught me about being Parisian: never let the heart languish.

Bruno drove us to the Académie de Billard Clichy-Montmartre. Bruno shouted at a stoplight that he had wanted to show it to me for some time. It was an architectural wonder inside, Bruno said, with a glass ceiling and ancient tables. And it was beautiful, from what I saw, though I got to see it only through the window. Bruno went inside to book a table, but a clerk said the hall was members-only.

We stood outside and Bruno smoked.

“Imagine if the Germans had bombed everything,” Bruno said. “Maybe no one would like Paris.” We shivered from the cold. “Next time you’re in Paris, we go,” he said, nodding to the billiards hall. Then Bruno remounted his Yamaha, tiptoed it backward into the street, and waited for me to board.

That night at the party, Bruno found me late and stubbed his thick fingers into my chest, shouting over the music, “Hey, you remember the billiards from today? So beautiful. Look, from lunch?” Bruno pulled up his shirt to show me his brown gut. He laughed. He shouted, pointing, “I gotta start a diet soon!”

Then he clenched my arm. He had something he wanted to tell me. He said, “Wait, I’ll get us more to drink, I’ll be right back, okay?”

Bruno disappeared into the crowd. I ducked out the entrance. I told people on the staircase I was going out to find more champagne. From the bottom of the stairwell I heard Sabine’s voice above me: “Where does he expect to find champagne at this hour? Hey, did he say goodbye to any of you?”

But that was the thing. I couldn’t figure out how to say goodbye. I would not—not to Bruno or any of them. Saying goodbye to Paris was something a person did when he knew he was dying. Otherwise, Paris was forever one day soon.