The letters came in a trickle at first. Then, after I once wrote back, mostly from guilt, they arrived in a torrent of love-soaked words. He declared eternal devotion. He called me his angel on earth. He said he was waiting for me. I thought that silly. I had no intention of running back to him. But as my life as hard-nosed journalist began to rapidly unfold, taking me farther away from my dream of becoming an artist, I began to look forward to those passionate missives from abroad, even taking them with me into the newsroom where I would read them quietly, in the midst of all that tumult, and think of the path not taken. My life had become complicated, weighed down by consumer products and pursuits. His world, by contrast, had stayed simple, true to some eternal truth. He signed his letters “love” and, on the back, often sketched some ancient Italian vista—ruins amid the cypress trees. Meanwhile my editor shouted for his copy. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Was this it? The rest of my life? I refolded the letter, delicate as tissue, and put it back into my purse. Love. It wasn’t a word spoken of much at the newspaper. Love. It made me yearn for something more.
I knew I couldn’t tell anyone about Stefano, my phantom lover. My friends would just laugh. Me. The academic turned careerist. Willing to throw it all away, and for a stud. But secrets aren’t secrets if you can’t share them with at least one person. I chose my pair of ears, perhaps not so wisely. I told my mother. Her response wasn’t at all what I expected. She urged me to go after him. She told me I was crazy not to. Those letters are so beautiful, she said. A gift. She was smitten by the Tarzan-like idea of him, the pretty sketches. Said I was lucky, that I ought to cherish what he was offering me, because it was rare in this cut-throat world of ours. “Wish it were me,” she said. At that time, there were no romantics in her corner. She was back to having affairs with married men. “Safer,” she told me. “No strings attached.” She persuaded me to give my long-distance affair a chance, in order to avoid becoming like her. January 1986 marked my first-year anniversary at the paper. It was also the month I turned twenty-six. For my birthday my mother squeezed a little money into my hand for a ticket to see him. “Go,” she urged me. “Find love.”
I sent a telegram, telling Stefano I would be coming to see him. He had moved back to Zurich and, in a telegram back, suggested I meet him there, in his hometown. He had a real job now, working in a home for the mentally challenged, feeding them, dressing them, wheeling them through gardens. A life of charity. But I didn’t want to know any more about that. This was a quest for romance. I didn’t want to go to a city that seemed unsympathetic to that spirit. I wanted to go to Paris, the city that to me most symbolized beauty and desire.
I still imagined I would one day live there. I hadn’t given up on that dream, despite landing a full-time job in Toronto right out of university. The Globe and Mail didn’t have a Paris office. But I imagined that it might. With the economy continuing to improve, the paper was in the midst of opening up a number of new foreign bureaus. I had let my editor know of my interest in Paris. He in turn told me about the Journalistes en Europe fellowship program, enabling foreign journalists to study mass communication at the Sorbonne for a year. This seemed custom-made for me. I had missed the deadline to apply for the 1986 program, but was keen on applying for the following year. I wanted to know if it would be possible to live in Europe with Stefano. Was he really my destiny? Was Paris? In my mind I had started to conflate the two. Both represented the same thing. They were objects of desire, utopian ideals. When I thought of Stefano, he was no longer the person who incessantly played on his portable tape recorder “Video Killed the Radio Star” by British synthpop group The Buggles. I had hated that song. It was what had convinced me that we were never to be. We didn’t like the same kind of music. Three years later I had switched mental gears. Or maybe I wasn’t thinking at all, not rationally anyway. Ignoring my initial instincts, I willed myself to follow a fiction, an idea of Stefano as the personification of love. I had just been too intellectual the last time, I told myself. I had been too self-conscious. I hadn’t opened my heart.
Stefano had said that all he could spare would be a weekend in Paris. I was to meet him on a Friday afternoon, when he would take the train in from Zurich. I figured that would be about the right amount of time to sort out the rest of my life. I bought an air ticket for a five-day stay. I would get there two days early, and until Stefano arrived and I relocated to a hotel, I would stay with a friend who had moved to Paris to work in the fashion industry. I was scheduled to arrive mid-February, around the time the ready-to-wear collections were being staged in Paris at the Louvre. My friend Tova worked at that time for a big-name designer and said she’d be swamped and wouldn’t have much time to socialize. But she offered me the keys to her place, where she said she didn’t have a bed, just a futon on the floor. “But it’s very central,” she emphasized. “And you’ll have the place pretty much to yourself.”
We had discussed these arrangements over the telephone, a straightforward 20th-century thing to do. After I hung up, I realized that I had never picked up the phone to dial Stefano. Partly it was because of the language barrier. But after I thought of it, I supposed that I had preferred him at a remove, a long-distance letter that I waited for, an emotional experience crystallized in images and feathery words. On the plane ride over I worried that I might not be able to tolerate the reality of him any more than I had the first time, almost three years earlier. I thought of the me then, and the me who had boarded the plane that evening with a new set of black Mandarina Duck rubberized luggage bought expressly for the trip. I also had a Walkman and a separate carrying case for all my makeup. When Stefano had seen me last, I didn’t wear makeup. I didn’t even pluck my brows. I had had just two changes of clothes. I had worn flat-soled sandals that made him call me his little Roman gladiator. I was bookish, idealistic, a student with no obligations except to the books. Life had changed since then. I now had credit cards and debt. I had grown used to eating out in expensive restaurants, going to premieres, mingling with stars, driving in white stretch limousines, flying to New York just to catch a show. I no longer wrote poetry. I hadn’t read a novel in years. Who had time? I looked out the window at the night sky and saw a starless black hole. I felt a twinge of panic. I hoped against hope that I was doing the right thing.
WHEN I ARRIVED in Paris, I took a taxi from the airport to Tova’s. It was early morning. The sky was low and gray, the dead of winter. There was no snow on the ground, but the streets of Paris looked pale and petrified, as if frozen in time. There was no human life, save for the shadowy figures of uniformed men hauling brooms and dustpans with which to clean away the frost that clung like spiderwebs to the columns and arches of the still-sleeping city. Devoid of people, Paris was a solid mass of stone and glass and shuttered windows. It slipped by me silently behind the glass of my cab window. The driver expertly maneuvered the twisting corridors around the Arc de Triomphe, still as an ice sculpture. I took in the chiselled detail on its massive walls—winged angels blowing trumpets, naked boy soldiers clutching their swords. We continued down the Champs-Élysées, sleek and elegant, a street paved with money. We passed the Jardin des Tuileries, where the trees and chairs that surrounded the ice-covered fountains sat dormant, waiting for the sun to come back out. We turned onto a bridge spanning the turbulent Seine. Our destination was the Marais, where Tova lived on the tiny Rue du Bourg Tibourg, near the Hôtel de Ville. It was a residential area, intimate, familiar, with boulangeries already drawing people into their brightly lit interiors to buy freshly baked baguettes and croissants still warm from the oven. My taxi pulled up at the corner, in front of a café where the windows were thick with steam rising from the tidy lineup of bodies inside.
I was hoping that Tova would have coffee ready for me when I buzzed her apartment from a downstairs intercom. The entrance door clicked, and I entered her pristine white building, hauling my bags up two flights of immaculate stairs. I could feel my fatigue. I hadn’t slept a wink on the plane
ride over, too consumed by nerves. My stomach was still in knots when I knocked on her door. I felt weak and winded. My head whirled like a top. Tova pushed open the door and, flashing me a big toothy smile, pulled me quickly into a friendly hug. In that instant I felt better, just knowing I was with someone I knew. She rushed me in, marvelling at the amount of luggage. “There’s not really room for the three of us,” she said with a laugh that made her head of light brown curls slither and shake around her narrow shoulders. I looked around the apartment. It was small and spare, the only furniture a navy-blue divan pushed up against a wall. A rolled-up futon was in a corner of the room, heaped with blankets. I assumed this was my bed, for a couple of nights, anyway. The air felt clammy and cool. There was no coffee. No warmth apart from Tova’s fleeting embrace.
When she had held me close, I had felt the bones protruding through her sweater, which, along with her leggings and ankle boots, was black. A uniform of chic. Her skin seemed almost translucent, and her hands were ice cold to the touch. I figured she was back to her old habit of purging after she ate. She had done that when we lived together in residence at university, and I never understood it. She was beautiful, with sky-blue eyes and dark lashes, a gently sloped nose and a mouth shaped like a rose. She loved beauty, wearable beauty, and ever since I had known her, she had wanted to work in fashion. She had first moved to the city over five years previously to get away from her upper-middle-class parents. It had been her dream to work in fashion, and now she worked for a big-name designer. I had assumed she’d be happy. But her thinness made me wonder. She caught me staring. “I can’t be late,” she said, quickly wrapping her body in a high-collar coat that she buttoned up to the throat. “Just unroll the futon and get some sleep. I won’t be back until very late, anyway. There’s a restaurant across the street in case you get hungry.”
She laid a key down on a counter inside her minuscule kitchen, alongside some Paris guidebooks. “I got them for you,” Tova continued, “to help you find a hotel. When’s he coming again?”
“On Friday,” I said. “In two days. Will I get to spend some time with you before then?” I asked.
She explained that packs of American buyers were arriving over the next few days to see her boss’s new collection at his Left Bank atelier. She had to buy fruit and flowers and champagne, as well as walk the dog. She had so much to do. She looked at the watch that encircled her slender wrist. “Oh, and right now I have to run and get Jean-Claude’s dry cleaning on my way into work.” She snapped her handbag shut. She threw a scarf around her neck. She reached out to air-kiss me on both sides of the face. I felt buffeted by her swirling storm of perfumed chaos. “And don’t wait up for me tonight,” she said as she was about to rush out the door. “If he needs me, I might even have to sleep at the atelier tonight. It’s a very busy time. You know what it’s like.”
And then she was gone. The room was suddenly deathly quiet. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Her studio apartment faced directly onto the street. I peeled back the gauzy white curtains and for a few minutes watched people scurrying by on the cobblestones below. Paris was fully awake. I saw the restaurant that Tova had mentioned. It was right there, on the corner of Rue du Bourg Tibourg and Rue de la Verrerie, which was handy, I thought after opening her miniature refrigerator and finding only a half-full bottle of Evian and a bunch of wilted celery. I had some packets of peanuts saved from the flight and I put a handful into my mouth. I took one of the guidebooks and started to leaf through it. I was in Paris on a mission, but I was also on a holiday. I didn’t have to get busy if I didn’t want to. I could take the morning off. I unzipped my carry-on, and pulled out a nightgown. My eyes felt heavy. I unrolled the futon, laying it under the window as Tova had directed, and then fell asleep clutching my blankets.
It was late afternoon when I awoke. I was starving. I dressed quickly and went outside. I thought to walk a bit, get my bearings. I hadn’t been to Paris in winter before. The air was damp and biting, and the cold pierced through my woolen Canadian coat and into my bones. I was shivering within minutes. To hell with exteriors, I thought; I needed to get myself inside someplace warm, and fast. I quickly backtracked, entering the restaurant across the street from Tova’s apartment building. The interior was instantly comforting. The restaurant had upholstered booths, and a brass railing ran around the mirrored bar, which gleamed in the late-afternoon sun slanting through the front window. I could hear the sound of exploding steam for the making of café au lait. I could smell the hazy aroma of onion soup and decided to order some. I polished one off and, on my waiter’s recommendation, also devoured a tarte Tatin, a warmed upside-down apple cake that was a discovery for me. Over the next couple of days I would return repeatedly for more tarte Tatin, more hot cups of coffee, feeling myself get fat. But I didn’t care. Eating seemed the only way to keep the unexpected iciness of Paris at bay.
I headed back outside armed with a winter-proof plan. I would go and see a few hotels that I could duck into for temporary refuge against the cold while also determining their suitability for an amorous encounter. I had one of Tova’s guidebooks with me and zeroed in on places where the word “romantic” figured large in the descriptive paragraph below the picture. One such hotel was in Saint-Germain and was called Relais Christine, after the street it was located on. I read that it had been home to Alice B. Toklas after Gertrude Stein had died. I thought that a wonderful coincidence considering my last time in Paris. And so I happily set off in search of it. It was just on the other side of the river, not far away, but it wasn’t long before pushing through gale winds felt like a chore.
The wind slapped my face and ravaged my hair. The cold pinched my nose, making it hurt, and stung my eyes, making them swell with false tears that rolled down my cheeks. I felt the cold here, perhaps because the air was so damp. The dampness penetrated through all the layers of my clothing, straight to my bones. And there was no central heating anywhere, so I never felt warm. Compounding the situation for a lily-livered North American like myself was the fact that the city is made of cold-to-the-touch stone. I stood on the Pont Neuf and shivered as I peered into the fog threatening to obscure the massive figure of Notre Dame before me. I wondered if it was the jet lag, because I felt weary standing there, jostled by passersby. I also felt curiously bereft of the wonder that Paris had inspired in me on previous trips. I had wandered past Shakespeare and Company but had felt no need to go in. I had seen a door knocker shaped like a Medusa head on the Rue des Saints-Pères and, where once such a thing might have compelled me to think of Paris as a city whose beauty lay in the details, this time I saw kitsch. The weather certainly wasn’t conducive to dreaming, especially not out on the slippery sidewalks. I gripped the bridge railing and looked down into the churning waters. If I was looking for my reflection, it wasn’t a good omen. The river was muddy. I felt lost to the person I once was. I pulled up the collar of my coat and trudged on.
The hotel, when I found it on Rue Christine, looked instantly inviting. It had large exterior walls with a black wrought-iron gate that you had to push open to enter a secluded courtyard. The front doors were made of glass, and I could see the warmth of the orange-and-red decor inside. It was a four-star hotel and would no doubt provide the kind of elevated service I had lately gotten used to on my expense-account jaunts for the newspaper. But I was shocked when I heard the price, more than $200 a night. This was a level of Paris luxury I could ill afford. I bowed out politely, asking myself what was I thinking? In Toronto I was already living beyond my means, as evidenced by the bills I could barely pay each month. Such was the high life I had recently, wholeheartedly embraced. There was a new 1980s standard of living that I unquestioningly subscribed to. It was a time when the clubs were full, when the fashions clung like plastic wrap, and when the new perfumes were called Obsession and Poison. Everyone seemed to be on the make. Doing blow. Playing the stock market. Sleeping around. I had wanted to be an exception, but as I continued wandering the tiny stree
ts of Saint-Germain, venturing into more select hotels, the Lenox and the Angleterre, each beyond reach, I realized that I had become bewitched by extravagance. I needed to rethink my strategy.
I pulled into a tiny bistro on the Rue du Bac where there were just a few tables and a red-faced proprietress behind the bar, vigorously wiping her counter clean. I ordered a tisane, an herbal tea, wrapping my hands around the ceramic cup to keep warm. I opened up the guidebook, this time concentrating on price point, not ambience. I saw something cheap, very cheap, called the Hôtel Henri IV. It was located on the Place Dauphine, described as a park-like oasis near the Pont Neuf, which I had just wandered away from. I wondered how I had missed it. Or why I had never even heard of it before, despite two previous trips spent combing the hideaways of Paris.
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