The guilt I felt when I said good-bye to my sweet boy in front of his dad’s building was especially potent. I had left him before, for more than a few days, but never for such an odd, decadent reason. I had told Julius the truth, kind of. I told him I had landed a coveted interview with Pierre Castille and had secured a promise from New Orleans Magazine for a cover story. The magazine was thrilled and even offered to cover expenses.
“Pierre Castille? You mean that rich dude who owns my building?”
“He does?” I said, forgetting momentarily that the Castilles owned half of the Warehouse District.
“I have a question for him,” Julius said. “Ask him when he’s going to upgrade our elevator system.”
“I’ll be sure to put that on my list.”
Watching Julius with Gus on the sidewalk, the both of them waving good-bye through my driver’s side window, I felt that pang again, that awful mother’s guilt that struck me like a low-grade fever.
Later that night, while packing, I burst into tears before finally pulling myself together. It’s just for a week! You deserve this little break! This is an adventure. You’ve snagged the mother of all interviews. Be … brave. It’s Paris! In the springtime!
And indeed, when I arrived, big, fat buds were bursting pink and white from the tiny trees outside the window of my unbearably plush suite at the Hotel George V. I glanced around the room in disbelief. With its dense red carpet, upholstered walls covered in gold damask and four-poster king-size bed, it might have been the nicest hotel I’d ever seen, let alone stayed in.
The first thing I did after checking in was to call Gus. It was late at night for me, but dusk for my boy. Julius answered from the eighth hole at the Audubon golf course.
“Hey there, just a sec,” he whispered. I could hear a whoosh in the background and some gleeful high-fiving. “Oh man, you should have seen that swing. The boy’s a natural!”
“You think we have a Tiger Woods on our hands?” I said, choking up. I missed them. I missed them both just then.
“Let’s hope. Then we can both retire in style, right, Gus? You got in okay?”
“Yeah, I did. It’s really beautiful here,” I said, playing with the curly phone cord, staving off the guilt.
“I bet. I’ve been picturing you there,” he said. “Walking the streets. The light on your skin …”
Things got quiet for a second, oddly so.
“Put Gus on for me?” I asked. Gus’s ebullience helped break the potent little spell that hung over his dad and me for a second.
“Mom! I sunk the ball in four shots! Dad says that’s amazing for my first time. Can I take golf lessons? It’s so cool you’re in Paris! I want to go next time. Maybe I should learn French. I know, I know, Spanish is important, but it’s not so different and besides …”
Gus always seemed charged with a special kind of energy when he got to spend long stretches with his dad. Boy energy. I loved it. After a good talk, we hung up, my heart a little less heavy.
Everything came to a quiet halt for a second as I sat on the edge of the downy bed. Be here, I told myself. Don’t be in New Orleans, be here. Gus is fine. He’s with his dad. Let it go. It’s only temporary.
I was wrapped in a towel waiting for the bath to fill. I would soon be eating mussels in wine with a nice Chablis, my feet encased in slippers. Matilda had told me whatever I needed was on the other end of a phone, answered by someone who would say, “Bonsoir, Madame Faraday!” (I didn’t have the heart to correct them; it was Mademoiselle.) What if I knew exactly what I needed but just couldn’t articulate it yet?
I padded to the marble bathroom and shut off the taps, stripping down to my skin. I turned to take in my body in the full-length mirror behind the door. There I was, my whole story staring at me through the mirror—my barely perceptible yet strangely symmetrical stretch marks just below my rib cage, my smooth, firm thighs from my jock days. My arms were good arms, my breasts were beautiful breasts. My hair was shiny; it was a good cut. In a few months I would be forty-two, and I had never felt more alluring. S.E.C.R.E.T. had given me that. It had quieted that internal critic, giving me this newfound sense of my womanhood, even adding dimensions to it. I was grateful and too tired to soak in a bath for long, so I got out, wrapping my damp body in one of the comfiest bathrobes I had ever completely passed out in.
A knock on the door woke me from what I thought was a brief nap. It was the bellhop bringing me pastries and coffee, for breakfast! Turned out I had slept the night. A thick card was perched on the tray between the butter and the sugar. I opened it like it was a Christmas gift to see the word Curiosity carved in elaborate scroll on one side and underneath, a handwritten query: Curious about what it would be like to go back in time?
My do-over step! I shivered, excited, nervous. I tried to take my time, to enjoy my breakfast in front of the Juliet balcony: café au lait, fresh fruit, bread and jam, but I was too excited to see Paris to linger long over food.
Just after the sun came up, I threw on a sweater and comfortable walking shoes and stepped out onto the Rue George V, where I passed a flock of nuns in traditional black garb funneling into the American Cathedral next door.
The air was balmy and sweet, and it clung to my skin like a hug. Armed with a good street map, I decided to trek towards the Louvre, through the Tuileries, backtracking over to the Centre Georges Pompidou, a building I had once read wore its “messy skeleton of pipes and ventilation” on the outside, on purpose, “to leave room inside for all the art.” I remember grabbing that as a metaphor for the kind of life I wanted to live, back when I thought I was going to be a glamorous lounge singer, before the practical concerns of life kicked in. I’d see the sights later; today was just for getting the lay of the land.
Strange to see for the first time a place that’s familiar to you only from books and movies. I don’t remember even wondering how Parisians actually lived, or about the price of real estate, or what their suburbs looked like or what kind of commutes these people would have or what the public school system was like. But that’s what I was thinking about that day, marveling over the riverside balconies, imagining life in some grand six-room apartment overlooking the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, throwing open the windows while wearing a white silk robe and sipping my coffee before waking up Gus for his bus. But would he take a bus in Paris? Or would I walk him to some ancient gorgeous building with old piping and stained-glass windows? Or would he be safe on his own? Would he make friends easily here? With other Americans? Or would I insist he make French friends?
Stop it, Solange. Be here now.
Sigh. Paris might be the only place in the world where you could fall in love with a room, a view, a street, or a neighborhood the way you would with a real person. That’s what was happening to me. My skin was flushed, my heart racing. I made a vow that we needed to bring Gus to Paris, and soon. Well maybe not we. I needed to bring him before he got too old to want to travel alone with his boring, old mother.
I was never much of a shopper, but I could see how Paris could ruin a woman. I started to covet things I had never looked twice at before—dramatic hats, expensive purses, even a stunning cream-colored wedding dress with lace sleeves and a satin sash that was the same price my dad paid for our house on State Street, back when he bought it in the ’60s. It was all too much, too beautiful and too heady.
I grabbed lunch at a café under a vivid yellow-and-white awning. Next to me was a table of shopgirls on break, smoking and gossiping in French. How was it possible that Parisian women could make such a filthy addiction look so damn chic? All day it was hard to find a woman in Paris who didn’t have it going on, whether it was a perfectly placed scarf, or good bangs or just the right shoes. Women here seemed to enjoy and know how to be women. Even the older ones I saw laughed loud and long, their wide-open mouths displaying a crooked tooth here and there. Gray hair abounded, lipstick was smeared, shoes were scuffed, and yet they all seemed so feminine and so beautiful. Could I do that? Could I have the courage to age beautifully and honestly without Marsha’s frets about being a woman working in television and struggling to remain young-looking forever? I hoped so. Again, I thought about the women in S.E.C.R.E.T., marveling at Matilda’s striking agelessness and that of the other women I remembered from my induction, none of whom seemed the type to lose much sleep over wrinkles or gray hair.
On my way back to the hotel, this time taking the crowded Champs-Élysées, I wondered what Gus and his dad were doing and if Gus would go to bed without a fuss. I missed them, and yet slipping naked between the cool sheet and the heavy duvet, I couldn’t have felt more serene.
The serenity didn’t last. After that decadent nap and a long bath, the kind I hadn’t enjoyed since before Gus, there was a knock on my door. This time it wasn’t the bellhop but a tiny, very pretty black woman with a short red afro. She looked vaguely familiar, standing there holding heavy garment bags slung over one arm, and in the crook of the other, a big doctor’s bag of sorts. If she let go of either, she’d tip over.
She screamed by way of saying hello. “Ahh! You probably don’t remember me,” she said in English, stepping around me into the room.
I did recognize her. She was followed by a bellhop rolling in a tray of cheese, bread, fruit and champagne on ice.
“Oh, you have a suite!” she squealed. “Not that I’m complaining about my room.”
She hoisted the bags onto the bed, then turned and noticed my mouth was still agape.
“Jeez. You don’t remember me.” She handed the bellhop a fist of euros, and waited for him to disappear before continuing in a dramatic whisper. “I’m Bernice. We met when you—I’m from S.E.C.R.E.T., hon. I’m here to prep you. For tonight!”
“Right!”
I could have kissed her. It was so nice to have someone from “home” here, and I was enveloped by an overwhelming sense of calm. She hung up the garment bags, then threw open the valise.
“Makeup and hair now, dress later. I brought a few for you to choose from.”
“What’s the scenario?”
She made a sad face. “Oh, Solange. We’ve had to warn you about so many of your fantasies ahead of time, because of your job and being a mom and everything. Let’s have some surprises, shall we?” she said, lowering me to the seat in front of the dressing table mirror.
I’d had hair and makeup people hovering around my head for most of my professional life, but it had never felt like this, so loving and caring. I was Bernice’s personal work of art, and my hair and makeup wasn’t just a job or a task; it was her artistic mission to make me beautiful.
Normally I wore my hair in a conservative kind of bob—“newslady hair,” Julius affectionately called it. It wasn’t the sexiest choice, but it was good for work and easy to maintain. But Bernice asked me how I used to wear my hair back in my college days.
“Big,” I said, making a motion to indicate out to here.
“Yes!” she said, wetting and spraying and teasing and cultivating and curling my hair into a masterful homage to Miss Ross herself. My hair was so big and wild when she finished I swear she added weight as well as height to my dense curls. I hadn’t worn my hair like this in decades, and it seemed to shave years off my face.
“Now, let’s pick the dress. Then lipstick. Yeah?”
There were a half-dozen couture dresses and they all fit perfectly. The low-cut navy number was made with this shimmery Lycra material that felt incredible on my skin, but I was all nipples and ass in it. You could even see the outline of my belly button.
“Nope.”
The gold lamé minidress made me gasp it was so unbearably sexy. But then I bent to check how much it covered while sitting.
“That’s gorgeous, Solange.”
I gave her my best are you fucking kidding me face and strutted back to the bathroom to change. The silver dress was too Dynasty in the shoulders, though I loved how it scooped down the back. Both the little black dress and the puffy pink one did nothing for me. Last was a deep red satin gown that didn’t just fit, it encased me. It held me. It made my body appear taller and stronger than it really was, my arms longer, my legs endless.
“Stunning,” Bernice said, adjusting the spaghetti straps, zipping the dress up the back.
The finishing touch was red lipstick so glossy my mouth looked like it’d been dipped in a pot of slick candy-apple glaze.
The front desk called to tell me my limo was waiting. I turned to Bernice.
“Here we go.”
“Knock ’em dead, Solange,” she said with a wink, hugging me good-bye loosely, not wanting to crush any aspect of the glittery masterpiece she’d created.
Clacking my thousand-dollar heels across the magnificent marble foyer towards the ancient revolving doors, I caught a glimpse of what it would be like to be famous—not local-weekend-news-anchor famous, but notorious-famous, globally famous, whispered-about famous, gawked-at famous, Beyoncé famous; I was turning heads faster than I was passing them and it felt amazing. The driver lowered me (and my hair) into the back seat, and off we sped.
Paris at night was a lurid parade, and my eyes danced wildly around, gathering all the details: the young couples walking hand-in-hand, the lit-up shops, the monuments and marble, the artists hawking their work, people selling prints and books from stalls lining the crowded sidewalks. We passed a cluster of cafés dotting four corners of a crossroads, the street we turned down so narrow that the buildings on either side became a white marble tunnel with no roof. We pulled up to a fancy place called the Chez Papas jazz club, where my driver lifted me out of the back seat to my uneasy feet.
“Welcome,” said a doorman, his accent odd and undetectable. “Your table is waiting.”
Inside, a tiny woman holding a tinier clipboard whisked me past the crowd encircling the stage, past the shiny wineglasses and the fur stoles, to a small table off to the side where I was seated with some fanfare. A maître d’ appeared to my right, arm slung with a white cloth, pouring me water and taking my drink order.
“Campari and soda, s’il vous plaît.”
Just then the room went black, and a curtain rose to a quartet of young men, one holding a double bass, one a horn, one on drums and the fourth a guitarist who kept his back to the crowd while he adjusted his strings. When the guitar player turned around, I gasped. It wasn’t Julius, but if you had frozen Julius in time twenty years ago, this is what he would have looked like: that sweet, sexy, wide-open face, slight gap between his teeth, brown skin burnished with that masculine vigor, all offset by the trademark goatee. This was Julius’s smile, his face with no worries, no sleepless nights, a face not etched with endless disappointments, divorce, failure, stress. It was as though S.E.C.R.E.T. had cloned my ex, bringing him back to a time when he was young, happy, confident, mine. Back when we were perfect.
It all came crashing back to me, those late nights, the low pay (the big hair!), Julius watching me adoringly from behind his turntables. It was fun while it lasted. But then late-night rehearsals cut into my study time. My grades suffered and I had to make a choice. I know I made the right one—I gave up dreams for goals, a hobby for a career. I had to, and I never regretted it. I never looked back. And yet, I had left something vital behind, a part of me I hadn’t thought I needed anymore or missed, until right now.
My posture corrected as the singer’s hands circled the stand, bringing it more comfortably between his legs. He adjusted his guitar, strumming a few bars, his band following his lead. He brought his beautiful mouth to the microphone, his top lip snarling a little like Elvis’s, before delivering an aching rendition of “My Funny Valentine.”
I felt the room turning towards him the way flowers lean heavy towards the sun. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, maybe thirty, this young man, but he sounded as though he’d been singing for decades, even through a war or two. His jazzy take on “I Can’t Make You Love Me” had me snapping and bobbing. Then he started up some banter with the crowd. He wasn’t French after all. He was American, Southern like me, which was at once incongruous and a bit of a relief.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to need some help with the next song,” he said, strumming his guitar. “It’s one of my favorites.”
A hush came over the crowd.
“Where is Solange Thompson?” he asked, using his hand to shade his eyes from the glare from the lights. “I think she’s here.”
Solange Thompson? I didn’t register at first that he was talking to me, about me, at me, because he was using my maiden name. Then I felt someone’s hand on my upper arm, lifting me to my feet: the tiny woman with the clipboard.
“You weel be so kind as to join Alain for a song?” she said, pressing me towards the stage.
“Oh, no, there must be some mis—”
“There she is,” Alain said, the spotlight finding me.
“I’m flattered, b-but—” I stammered, trying to resist the woman’s prodding, but unable to resist Alain’s urging. “I haven’t done this in so long—”
My protestations were to no avail. I was ushered closer and closer to a grinning Alain and his inviting quartet, one of whom was now plunking a stool right in front of the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Alain said, extending his hand to help me up the steps of the stage. “Please welcome Solange Thompson.”
Over applause, I began apologizing ahead of time for what would no doubt be a disaster. When the applause ebbed, a microphone was slapped into my hand. What happened next occurred because there was just no time to course-correct, no time to stop the band from striking up “Summertime,” one of my favorites, no time to dig in my heels or flee in shock. Something took over for me, something ancient and beautiful, something embedded in my DNA. My body rose from the stool, and began to move to the opening chords, my eyes closed, my hand slapping out a gentle beat against my sequined thigh. Then I opened my mouth and sang. I sang words to a song long stored in the vault of my brain, and I sang it well. Alain leaned forward. We shared the mike for a few moving bars, our mouths inches apart and in complete harmony, like we’d been doing this for a long time too. Tears were stinging my eyes. But I wasn’t crying. This wasn’t sadness. This was old joy. And when the crowd applauded, a few in the front row springing to their feet, I could have kissed them on every one of their French mouths.
Song after song I gave them, from “I Get a Kick Out of You” to “Everybody’s Talkin’,” each perfectly suited to my vocals and Alain’s harmony. I was singing. My shoulders were moving, I was smiling, performing for an audience in a strange city. I stood there and let them take me in. I was Solange Thompson again, the girl with all that hair, in the red satin dress and shiny lipstick, before the husband and the baby and the demanding career, before the awards and the disappointments, the tantrums and tears, the death of parents and the end of love—before everything that happened, it was just me, singing happily, in the dark.
Alain receded when the band struck up the open bars to “My Man,” that lush song becoming my only solo. The lighting darkened my peripheral vision and the band gentled its tempo. The spotlight was on me and the only thing missing was a gardenia behind my ear. I sang and I sang, but this time with a heart heavy, not from missing “my” man, but from missing this part of my life, the part that had been mine and mine alone. I missed myself. And after I finished that song, the crowd’s applause nearly levitated me off the stage and over to the table where Alain, my young Julius, sat waiting for me, the sexiest grin on the sexiest of mouths.
“You were spectacular,” he said, gently bowing his head. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” I said, warily taking the seat next to him. Was he real? He leaned towards me, his hand sliding around the back of the banquette. “And how did you know I could do that?”
“Music stays with you. Maybe it hides for a while, but it’s always there in your bones, waiting to come out again.”
Before I could ask him how he knew my maiden name, let alone that I sang at all, I had to get something out of the way.
“You know, this might sound strange, but you look an awful lot like—”
“Let’s get out of here,” he interrupted, whispering in my ear.
His voice sent shivers down my spine. He sounded just like Julius. “That is … if you’ll accept the Step.”
I turned to face him. Good lord, he even smelled like Julius. The gals at S.E.C.R.E.T. had done their research. No sooner was my hand in his than we found ourselves spilling out of the club and onto the lively street at night.
“I’ll show you my Paris,” he said, throwing his tuxedo jacket around my shoulders. He held my hand, tugging me towards the Saint-Germain-des-Prés station. He never let go of me, not while we were trotting down the street against the stream of crowds going in the opposite direction, not when we were navigating the gummy stairs to the damp subterranean cavern below. We came to the turnstile and he pushed in first, handing me his card to swipe myself through.
I needed to take in how impossibly handsome this young man looked in his white tuxedo shirt, top button undone, the tie hanging loose around his neck like a Rat Packer. For a moment it was enough to freeze this in time, him smiling at me from the other side of the copper turnstile in Paris after midnight, looking like a vision of my best past. There was me dressed in my shimmery column of a dress, looking incongruous against the backdrop of this tired, disheveled crowd of hipsters and tourists and students heading home for the night, or just going out.
“Subway’s coming!” he yelled over the underground din. “Accept this Step, Solange! Just do it!”
Could this be enough? Just the memory? To go forward was also to go backwards, and did I want to do that? To revisit all that pain and sadness?
Then I felt the urge and my whole body said: Go!
I swiped the card and pushed through the stile, joining him on the other side. Alain’s mouth was an inch from mine, his downcast eyes hungrily taking in my ruby lips. And then he kissed me, softly at first, pressing feelings into me, sending warm memories through my body. I lifted my hands to his sides, feeling his firm torso beneath the tuxedo shirt. Someone bumped into him, jarring us out of our moment. We moved to the platform, and when the subway came, he pulled me onto it. Giggling, we collapsed into two empty seats on the uncrowded car. I felt twenty again, when every night out offered endless possibilities.
I had to fight back more tears, not from grief, but from relief, joy. We got off a few stops later and I let him lead the way up the stairs and into the warm, damp air of a different, quieter part of Paris. He told me this was the Montparnasse District, a place I knew only from stories about writers and artists. After navigating an endless maze of narrow streets, we stopped at an iron gate that he unlocked with a key as long as a pencil, which he kept on a string tied to his belt loop.
“Four stories. No elevator,” he warned, quietly shutting the gate behind him.
I felt my reticence melt away at each landing. And though the building was narrow and the stairs worn from centuries of tired Parisians making this same trip, his garret apartment was neat, masculine and surprisingly roomy, made more so by the high ceilings and slanted casement windows, which offered a spectacular view of the buildings around us and the Tour Montparnasse in the distance. He had taste and style. He knew better than to take out the worn tile floors or to remove the fading wallpaper; he had just decorated around these gorgeous relics of a bygone era.
He took the coat from around my shoulders and placed it on the back of a paint-spattered chair. Then he carefully took my purse from my hand and put it on the small butcher’s block next to a beautiful antique porcelain sink. He didn’t have to turn on a light. The bright city illuminated the dim room. It was nothing like my suite at the George V, but a person could be happier here, I thought.
I stood in front of his wide daybed, covered in throws and mismatched silk pillows and surrounded on three sides by elaborate wrought-iron grating. I was as nervous as the girl I once was. (You’re forty-one and he’s … not!) But his hands on my waist stopped my fear from traveling any farther up my body to my head. He had me, and he knew just what to do with me.
His gaze melted me into place. He reached behind me, found my zipper, and slowly pulled it down. He slipped the straps off my shoulders. I closed my eyes as he peeled it down to my waist, reverently. I couldn’t watch him watching me. I felt his hand sliding down my arm, lifting my hand to his mouth and kissing the pulse at my wrist. Then I felt another kiss at the crook of my elbow, then my upper arm, my clavicle, my throat, my lips. Then I felt my dress melt around my ankles, leaving me standing in black stockings and garters. He whispered my name over and over, his face now buried in my breasts. I opened my eyes and looked down. From this angle, in this light, he was Julius, my Julius, in Paris, with me.
What a strange, melancholy, beautiful fantasy.
My breath caught as he suddenly sent me back onto my elbows on the daybed and stood before me as he removed his clothes. He sent the loose tie sailing across the room. The shirt he practically tore off, revealing a smooth, bare chest and rippled stomach.
As I parted my knees, his hand casually circled his own gorgeous cock. I lay back on the pillows, my red-tipped fingers caressing my skin, trailing across my stomach as I watched him watch me. I knew I was wet before I touched myself.
“You’re so beautiful in this light,” he whispered.
He crawled towards me. He was all panther now, this young man and his young skin, his strong shoulders and firm arms. No sooner had I wrapped my fingers around his hard shaft than I was guiding it towards my eager mouth. My tongue explored the tip, the tender opening, the delicate rim, my fingers dancing along his pulsing veins. He grabbed the bedrails behind me as my hand gathered his smooth balls. He fed himself to me, his moans matching the creaky sounds the bed was making as he rocked slightly, helping me take him in all the way. My hands circled his haunches as my mind searched for a word to describe the rest of his body; uncanny. Even the way he tasted …
Just before I felt him ready to give himself over to me, he stopped abruptly, taking himself out of my mouth to bend over and kiss me again and to say my name once, twice. His voice was just like … I opened my eyes and saw it again, that flash of my past, my younger love above me. I wanted all of him inside me, now, and he knew it, spinning around to wrestle a condom free from his wallet. My heart raced as he returned his focus, shifting me down the bed, opening my thighs.
“I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” he said, his head dipping down.
His mouth found me first, and he ate me eagerly, hungrily. My arms flung to the sides, I felt like I was coming apart as he licked and bit, his tongue by turns lapping and fucking me. My hips began to grind against his mouth as the climb started. I squeezed my eyes closed and then I felt it, his shaft entering me, filling me, his hips picking up on my rhythm, never losing the beat. I wrapped my arms around his strong shoulders and my legs around his lean hips as he bore into me. There was barely a warning before my orgasm shot hot through my center and out my limbs, in wave after wave of shuddering pleasure, my head thrashing. He drove into me with renewed ferocity, increasing the intense spasms. My thighs squeezed him harder as yet another plundering wave rolled over me, signaling his mounting pleasure was only beginning. As I was coming down, he cascaded over me, a look of ferocity taking over his sweet face, aging him in the sexist way. In a dark flash I saw my Julius, now, and then he was gone again and Alain was in my arms. After a few moments, he peeled his sweat-misted face off my chest and rested his chin between my breasts.
“Mother of God.”
“Why do people always invoke religion at times like this?” I asked, still panting.
“I think it’s all the church steeples I can see from my bed,” he said, smiling. “You’re so fucking beautiful. Holy shit.”
“They train you to say that?” I asked, looking down at his sweet, sweet face, not even caring that my chins must have tripled at that angle.
“Did I pull it off okay?”
I slapped his ass. Hard.
He scrambled off me and reached beneath the daybed for a small box, which he carefully placed on my still rising and falling chest.
“Ceçi est pour vous, madame,” he said, surprising me with his perfect French accent.
“You mean mademoiselle,” I said.
“Mais oui.”
While he rested on an elbow, I opened the box and lifted out my Curiosity charm. It took on a burnished glow in that dim, cozy garret. This charm would remind me of my wonderment, and what happens when you let your curiosity take you back in time. I had sung again in a red dress for a crowd of strangers in a strange city. I’d rushed giddily into the streets of Paris, kissing a younger version of an old love on the Metro, turning back the clock for just one night.
The next time I opened my eyes, the sun was peeking up over Montparnasse, turning the white buildings pink with new promise. Alain snoozed while I quietly dressed. Holding my shoes, I took one last look at his face. Uncanny, even in repose. Then I descended the ancient stairs to the street below and flagged the first cab I found. In the back seat, I cracked open the window, taking in the smell of a city only just beginning to awaken.