DAYS GO BY before Adrien calls and leaves a polite message saying hello, he hopes I’m well, and perhaps we could see each other soon. I sit on a stoop outside school to listen to his message, frustrated at the length of time between calls while enjoying what it is doing to my adrenaline levels. I listen to his message three more times, then, instead of calling straight back, stand and make my way up the street.
Outside the Bollywood video shop a decrepit, alcohol-bloated man asks for coins but I say no. When I started school I gave money to every soul who asked on my way from the Récollets. Then, in danger of being late for school, I started prioritising, giving only to those with a physical ailment, or those with children. Now I play a lottery based on nothing but the moment. I am horrified at how hard I’ve become, and the drunk man’s defeated ‘Fuck I’m hungry’ behind my back makes me ill at myself. I run and break my twenty in the boulangerie but he’s long gone. The sadness over the man and the delight of Adrien’s message coagulate in my stomach and I carry the mixed feeling all the way up to Montmartre, where I aimlessly wander around the department store Tati for forty minutes.
The shop is like an upmarket Festi Bazar but more organised, with junk of all kinds over two wondrous levels. I touch things, gaze at things, consider underpants and soap dishes, pick up a small wicker basket and buy it. A steady stream of lust pumps through my veins, like the druggy feeling of a first crush. I want to keep the feeling in my chest as long as possible, so to stall myself from calling back I walk out of Tati and up a cobblestoned street, where I discover a sprawling indoor fabric market called the Marché Saint-Pierre and spend an hour swimming through taffetas and silks and sequins.
The sun is going down over the railway tracks in the boulevard Barbès when I finally hit redial. Adrien answers with his chocolate voice and we try to make small talk, but I keep talking over him when he goes to say something and then he does the same to me. I manage to ask if he wants to meet for a drink. He says he’s working until eight. I say eight’s not too late. But he suggests we meet instead on Sunday for a balade au Louvre.
‘Disons fifteen o’clock.’
A Sunday walk around the Louvre? It’s only Tuesday! My skin pinches with the wait ahead.
But suddenly it’s Sunday and I’m tearing my room to shreds trying to find the right thing to wear. Day balade at the Louvre: not formal, but where will we end up? I settle on the trusty black top with the open back and a pair of black jeans. Mum’s coat. A smear of Kiki’s green eyeshadow that she says looks better on me.
I wait for him beside the inverted glass pyramid in the Carrousel du Louvre, trying not to eat the inside of my mouth. I love that, instead of somewhere dark and intimate, he arranged to meet me beside a great big overpopulated upside-down shard of light. The sky outside, reflected through the glass, is a deep, freezing grey.
Will it snow? They say it doesn’t snow every winter in Paris but I dream of seeing it in real life for the first time.
As I’m enjoying an image of Adrien in front of a log fire he appears in front of me, all eyes and hair and gloves and wool. He kisses me on both cheeks and gives an additional arm squeeze, which fuels my electric charge.
He’s forgotten that the first Sunday of the month is free, so there’s a queue all the way out to the rue de Rivoli. He suggests we ditch the museum and go to Le Marly, and I say, ‘Bon!’, though I have no clue what Le Marly is.
He leads me through a secret door and out into the Louvre courtyard, which is veiled in mist. It’s empty and quiet due to the cold and he takes my hand and guides me up the steps of an opulent old restaurant. Inside, the place is loud and cosy and bustling. Adrien suggests we sit outside, where we’ll have the terrace to ourselves. I know the cold may kill me but I agree – maybe he’ll put me under his big warm jacket. I need the Ladies first, so I walk through the warmly lit room, past decadent men and women and pedigree dogs on velvet chairs beneath chandeliers to the bathroom, where an elderly lady smiles at me as the hand dryer splits patches of mink in her coat. I can see the dead animal skin underneath. I wonder if I’ll wear fur now, now that I’m a meat-eater, a blood-guzzler, a baby-deer-killer, Satan. Vegie girl in her Room of Good feels far, far away. I piss violently and feel hot blood course through my veins. Life is fucking good. The old lady’s perfume is still in the room as I wash my hands and I breathe it in, rich and long – I will be as vile as her, fur or no.
Back outside I need that fur more than ever. Adrien has ordered two café crèmes, which puff their hotness away into the air, leaving but a trace for my insides that need it so badly. The scene is a painting, and I try to forget the petty limitations of the body, taking in every little bit. As I can’t relax in the cold, every moment is alive, all is magnified. The top of the glass pyramid glows in the middle of the vast, empty courtyard in front of us. We sit close, but not too close. His shoulders are up and he has one hand in his warm pocket, cigarette in the knuckles of the other. He smiles at me as he raises his cup to his lips. I try to talk but I just keep stammering, so I stop talking and so does he. We sit smoking and watching the tiny birds hop across the balcony near our table. I have no intention of complaining about being cold.
Just as I’m starting to freeze solid, Adrien pays the bill and we walk out along the rue de Rivoli towards the Palais Royal, past the beaded sculpture I sat next to on my first day in Paris six years ago. I don’t know why I thought it was an octopus; it’s more like an exotic crown or a headdress. I would like to stop and tell Adrien about that day but it’s too cold, and he wants to show me the Colonnes de Buren, a series of striped columns of different heights poking up from the ground. In the low afternoon light it looks like a field of poker chips. He explains the story of the columns but I can’t understand him, so I just nod and ah appreciatively. He leads me around the gardens and through the arcades of the Palais Royal, telling me about the history of kings and queens, and showing me the beautiful antique shops and fashion boutiques and fancy restaurants. We stop outside a sumptuous old restaurant called Le Grand Véfour.
‘We are not going here,’ he says, pointing at the menu price. One day, he tells me, when he is rich, he’ll bring me. I note the use of the future tense.
He notices that I’m turning blue so he says, ‘Come with me,’ and we march soldier-like over to the Marais and step into the first place we see. Perhaps it’s somewhere he knows but I don’t think so – I can’t imagine him frequenting a loud and touristy Spanish bar like this. He goes to the bathroom and I order the first thing that comes into my head: a litre of sangria. It’s definitely the wrong choice for a winter tête-à-tête but I don’t care: I need to smash the barriers between us, culture, language, sex. He raises his eyebrows when he returns to the table, then pours us both tall glasses and we clink them.
Sure enough, the lower the level of sangria in the jug, the lower the barrier between us.
We start saying things in mixed language.
He says I have beautiful eyes.
I tell him he has beautiful hands.
I go to reach out for one but a bartender approaches our table – he needs to open the trapdoor under my seat so he can go downstairs for ice. I stand up and pull my chair around to Adrien’s side. The bar is now crowded. He stands. We are close, but at an awkward angle. I can smell his musky perfume and see dark hairs sprouting from under his top button.
Bam – the man shuts the trapdoor and stands smiling at us, swinging the ice bucket onto his head. ‘Ah, l’amour.’
Adrien’s phone rings and he takes it outside. His jaw clenches and his entire expression changes as he talks to the person on the other end. When he comes back in his entire face is flushed.
‘I have to go,’ he says, sitting back down. ‘My mother she call me – ma grand-mère, she is here from the … campagne. She is old. I am sorry. I must return.’
‘Ça va,’ I reply, masking my disappointment. ‘We can see each other next week.’
‘I walk you to the métro.’
Outside, the cold is like being stabbed in the stomach. I grab his arm without thinking – it’s life or death – and he grabs mine back. Finally, we’re touching. We walk, huddled together, past the Hôtel de Ville, where an ice-skating rink has been set up, the ghoulish silhouettes of skaters dancing against its looming façade.
He holds me a fraction tighter as we cross the street to the Place du Châtelet. The two ancient theatres cast their shadows across the lamplit square, and the angel atop the fountain sculpture reaches her wreaths high into the night sky. Then, just as I stop to admire the beauty of it all, he turns and kisses me, like a character in an old black-and-white photograph, as snow, on cue, feathers down upon our heads.