The Summer of Him

by Stacy Travis

  I could already see that being in Paris would be good for me. I badly I needed to get away. I needed to reboot my life in the next two weeks, and even if I spent most of my time sitting in cafés like this one, I’d come away better for having been here.

  I didn’t need a travel companion, and I definitely didn’t need a bad boyfriend. I did feel, however, that I might enjoy myself more if I had an activity other than people watching. I didn’t want to feel like a lurker. Maybe if kept a journal in my bag I’d have something to do in café society.

  There wasn’t a lot of personal space at French cafés. The tables were tiny metal circles, and woven bistro chairs faced the street. That was perfect for having a conversation with the person the next chair over but less great if someone sat down at a nearby table and started smoking, which had just happened. Three guys in white T-shirts and jeans had just taken a table behind me, and the wind had shifted to send the smoke right into my face. I blinked it away and tried to tell myself that breathing smoke was a hallmark of Parisian life. I tried to see it as exotic and cultured even though I felt like I was eating an ashtray.

  I looked around for another table, but a moment later, the wind shifted again, and I could breathe. I was trying in vain to shove my luggage inconspicuously under the table when a waiter in black pants and shirt with a white apron appeared in front of me. He put a clean ashtray on the table along with a paper coaster and a tiny bowl of peanuts.

  “Bonjour,” he said matter-of-factly. It was more like a statement than a greeting. I braced myself for rudeness, expecting exasperation because I didn’t speak perfect French. Or he might just ignore me once he figured out I was a tourist. He had salt-and-pepper hair, which I figured put him in his forties at least.

  He didn’t wait for me to open my mouth. Apparently, I had “tourist” written all over me, because he grabbed a menu off a table behind him and handed it to me. It was all translated into English.

  “Um, bonjour…” I went blank. The stupid lessons from Duolingo were useless, and my jet-lagged brain wasn’t helping.

  “You would like…?” he said, saving me from the Google search I was about to do on my phone for the French word for coffee.

  “Um, coffee. Please. S’il vous plaît.” Maybe he’d give me credit for trying or at least wouldn’t spit in my coffee.

  “Un café.” He turned to go.

  Right. “Cafe” meant coffee. I’d heard that on the plane, and I couldn’t even keep that in my brain. It was quickly dawning on me that I was in over my head to come here on barely any sleep without even knowing what I planned to do for two weeks. What if all the restaurants required reservations and the hotels were already booked? It was summer, after all. I hadn’t even thought to check.

  It was unlike me to travel this way. I was a planner. I was responsible. I could turn a party boy who should have been a one-night stand into a year-long relationship. That was how pragmatic I was.

  And because I was all those things, I’d had a firm talk with myself before the trip and told myself not to plan, maybe as one last token nod to the shift I wanted to experience when I’d started dating Johnny. I yearned to be more spontaneous, and at first, I’d hoped his lust for life and desire to live in the moment would rub off a tiny bit, at least to the extent that it could for someone like me.

  Maybe that was a ridiculous idea. What if I ended up assaulted or lost or just… alone?

  The waiter arrived with my coffee, a tiny espresso cup without an offer of milk or cream, which I normally required. It didn’t matter. That valuable caffeine would have to fuel my next decision. It would have to help me come up with some kind of itinerary right there and then because the freedom I saw in front of me felt terrifying.

  Fortunately, it was seven thirty in the morning back in California, and I could FaceTime Annie. She’d be at her job already because her firm had a New York office and she had to keep East Coast hours.

  “Help! I mean, hello,” I said when she picked up.

  “Are you in France?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, wouldn’t that be bonjour?”

  I could see the view of the San Francisco Bay through the window behind her. We’d always argued about it. I said she should turn her desk to face that view. She said she’d never get anything done if she could look at that view. She’d been calm and amused by the idea that I’d taken this trip alone, but she hadn’t judged me. She never would.

  “Oui!” I said.

  “I’m envious. Working stiff here.”

  “Wish you were here,” I said.

  “Yeah, me too. I’d love to be lounging on the French Riviera instead of stuck in my office.”

  “You know that’s not where I am, right?”

  “Maybe you should be. You’re a lot closer to it than I am.”

  “True, but it’s still far,” I said.

  “So? That’s the beauty of the European rail system. You can be anywhere by lunchtime.”

  “You sound like an ad.”

  “People magazine says all the French celebrities go to the beaches in the South in August. Saint-Tropez, Cannes. You should join them.”

  I’d read that too, thanks to Debra and her stack of magazines. But Annie hadn’t gotten it completely right. The article I’d read had been about how some actor bought a house in a small town on the southern coast of France after he’d finished shooting a movie on location there. I couldn’t remember his name. He’d been in the latest action movie, which meant by definition that I’d never seen him on the screen. Apparently, he’d been so taken with the charm of the town that bought a sprawling estate. “The people here are lovely,” he’d said, as though he’d propped a lawn chair in their park, not purchased a bazillion dollar property.

  Must be nice.

  “Okay, well, if I suddenly find myself rubbing elbows with French celebrities, I’ll send a selfie.”

  “Atta girl.”

  “I’m drinking coffee in a Paris café. Will keep you posted,” I told Annie.

  “Switch to wine. Jealous. Love you.”

  Since the waiter had been willing to speak to me in English, I took advantage of his fluency to ask a few questions. His initial frosty exterior dropped away once I gave up all pretense of trying to pass as anything other than a tourist.

  “You’re from America?” he asked.

  “Yes. I live in California.”

  “Ah, Californie. I have always wanted to travel there.”

  “You should.”

  “Maybe next year. You can give me a tour?” He smiled and moved a little closer to let someone pass behind him. His teeth were a little crooked, but he had the confidence of a man who knew that didn’t matter. The corners of his brown eyes crinkled, and he had a dimple on each cheek that dug in when he smiled. I understood suddenly what people meant when they said the French were openly affectionate. “And maybe I could give you a tour of Paris. Later?”

  He asked my name told me his was Guillaume. “That is like William in America,” he said. I had to admit, the French version sounded much prettier. “Your hotel is near here?”

  “I don’t have one yet,” I told Guillaume. “Guess I’d better get that worked out.” I looked up and down the street, trying to see if any of the buildings were obviously hotels. I really had no idea what part of town I’d landed in or whether it was a good place to find a hotel. I felt oddly calm about my zero prospects.

  He looked at the sky, tapping his fingers on the table in front of me. “Ah. Oui. You will go to the Quartier Latin—the Latin Quarter. It is not far from here. Many students live near the Sorbonne. There are two hotels on Rue des Écoles that would be excellent for you. They have single rooms, not too big, but…” He looked under the table at my bags. “Maybe not big enough for you and your luggage, but you will try.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was giving me a hard time. His smile provided the answer.

  “Sounds perfect. Really.” I took out my wallet. It was time to haul my bags down
to his hotel picks on the Rue des Écoles. “Can I have… how do you say, ‘the check?’”

  “L’addition.”

  “L’addition,” I repeated as he took a small piece of paper from his pocket and placed it on a tiny metal tray, like he’d done on the other table.

  “You will pick up the language just by listening. If you’re alone, it’s easy because you can focus,” he said. “If you came to Paris with friends, you’d all be speaking English to each other and you might not hear.” I wasn’t sure why he assumed I was in Paris by myself.

  “You speak English very well.”

  “My mother was born Ireland. And I studied in school. But really, I learned the most quickly from listening to American music and watching TV.”

  That explained a lot. His English sounded very good, but I hadn’t been able to place his accent. He spoke with a French accent on certain words and in a tone that almost sounded midwestern, a combination that left him with an intriguing but hard-to-place accent.

  I downed the last of the coffee in my tiny cup and unwrapped a chocolate square that I’d found sitting in the saucer. It tasted especially delicious, chasing down the bitterness of the coffee. The coffee didn’t need to be in an oversized Starbucks cup to be satisfying.

  “Guillaume, merci,” I said, standing up and wrestling my bags from under the table. He turned from where he was talking with two women and shook my hand.

  “Merci, Nikki.” He pronounced it “Neek-y.” He took a pencil from behind his ear and scribbled something on the check he’d put on the metal saucer. “Here’s my number. If you have any problems at the hotels, maybe I can help.”

  I spun in a circle and took in the crisscross of streets near the Opéra Garnier, cars and mopeds zooming through the intersection then down the other way to another, equally busy corner. Guillaume was watching with an amused look on his face as though entertained by the dumb tourist who’d come to Paris without a map or a plan.

  “The hotels you mentioned—are they within walking distance?” I asked.

  He looked at me, then at my luggage, and shook his head. “If you didn’t have those bags, maybe. But you’ll get tired of walking after ten minutes, and you’ll still be on this side of the Seine.”

  He pointed me to the nearest Metro station, Opéra, which was only one large city block away. Even then, he seemed skeptical about whether I could lug my stuff there, but I assured him I’d be fine. I left him five euros and, with the blue bag on one shoulder and my roller bag dragging behind me, waddled my way down the street.

  Chapter Five

  Quartier Latin

  When I resurfaced from the Metro station, the first thing I saw was Notre-Dame, and it absolutely lived up to its legend of grandeur. Its twin towers, rising above the ornate circle of stained glass, stood heroically like a grandmother who’d withstood wars, weather, and a fire and still managed to remind her grandkids that she knew more than they’d ever discover in a lifetime.

  The second thing I saw was the Seine. It was narrower than I’d imagined and more grey-green than blue. But it was beautiful.

  I took a deep breath, leaned on a stone rail facing the river and Notre-Dame, and took in the magical setting. This was Paris. My heart flooded with emotion at the view of the river and the fact that I was looking at it for the first time. I knew I had to push through and stay awake as long as possible so I’d have the best chance of acclimating to the new time zone.

  I’d read about fighting jet lag, and one key strategy was spending time outside. From where I stood, my phone GPS showed that I was less than a five-minute walk from both hotels recommended by Guillaume. Even though I didn’t want to tear myself away from the view, I desperately wanted to ditch my luggage, so I made the short walk and found success at the Hotel des Écoles. The rooms were affordable, and there was a vacancy.

  “You are lucky to be single,” the young woman behind the desk told me. If she said I was also brave, I was going to be concerned about international conspiracy.

  It turned out she was talking about the hotel room for one. “It’s the only room we have left.” She looked to be about my age and had the effortless flair for dressing that I’d only heard about when people described French women. She wore a printed scarf tied around her neck and a long linen dress with a leather belt and sandals. Hair in a high ponytail and only a sweep of lip gloss on her lips. There was no way I could pull off that level of insouciance.

  “Come with me,” she said, telling me her name was Sylvie.

  I was impressed that everyone I’d encountered so far spoke English so well, and I kicked myself for not at least studying Spanish for a couple more years in high school.

  Sylvie took an antique-looking key attached to a rectangle of wood the length of a shoebox from a hook and had me follow her up four winding flights of narrow steps to a door marked with the number nine. She turned the key twice in the lock and pushed open the door. She wasn’t kidding about being single. A twin bed was wedged into the space next to a tiny painted bedside table. There was room for exactly one person in the room, and because it was on the top floor, the ceiling slanted under the pitched roof. Unless I stood right next to the wall in the doorway, I’d have to bend down to avoid hitting my head.

  She pointed to the opposite side of the bed, where there was a narrow slit of space and a door. “La toilette. You will stay for how many nights?”

  “Oh, probably a week?” I wasn’t sure. Maybe I’d take a side trip. “Can I let you know tomorrow, once I get settled?”

  “Oui. Bien sûr.” She smiled and headed back down the winding stairs, her strappy sandals clicking on the stone steps. “You are always welcome here. This room is small, so it’s usually available.”

  I closed the door and surveyed my tiny room. I could only imagine how tiny the “toilette” would be, based on the size of the room. Likely the size of the lavatory on the plane, I figured. When I pushed the door open, my jaw dropped in shock. The bathroom was larger than the room itself. It had a full-sized claw-foot tub, a pedestal sink, and a toilet with a chain hanging above it for flushing. And there was a bidet.

  I dragged both my bags into the bathroom so I’d have the most space left over in the actual bedroom. I couldn’t believe how lovely this bathroom was. It even had a window.

  The beginnings of a plan were forming in my mind. I could picture myself a bit later, stretched out in this tub with a glass of wine in my hand and maybe some pastries or a hunk of cheese on a fresh baguette.

  I’d need to roam around my new neighborhood to figure out where to buy those things, but I could make something of this bathroom. No problem.

  I decided to wander. Notre-Dame was crowded with tourists taking photos in front of it from all angles and waiting in line to go inside. I decided to save the site for a later time and walked along a path behind it through a small gated park with benches and across a bridge back into the Latin Quarter.

  I walked up the Boulevard Saint-Michel, which took me past clothing stores, bookstores, a McDonald’s, and a Starbucks. Of course, those places had planted a flag in Paris, even with its reputation as a gastronomic capital. By early evening, the street was jammed with people walking after work to meet up with friends or buy groceries at small shops and pick up fresh bread for dinner at the boulangeries. I wanted to be part of the thrum of activity around me, but I didn’t fit in anywhere yet.

  I kept going until I reached the Luxembourg Gardens, an organized, manicured series of pathways around and across a glorious expanse of flowers and greenery. People jogged on the path, one man wearing T-shirt, shorts, and a sweater tied around his neck. The flowers lining the paths were in full bloom, hot pinks and yellows and whites reaching up into the sunlight.

  In the middle of the garden, a circular fountain was surrounded by green lawn chairs, many of them in a reclining position and every one of them occupied. People sat with their eyes closed, enjoying the late-afternoon sun or chatting with friends. Small kids pushed sailboats
with wooden sticks, watched them sail from one side of the fountain to the other, then ran around to give them another push. I sat in my own green chair, mesmerized by the fact that everyone seemed to be outside, enjoying the late sun of summer. It was past seven in the evening, and the sun was still high over the horizon. Paris was far enough north that it stayed light much later than at home.

  My phone dinged with a text message. It was Annie. You meet a French prince yet? she texted.

  Ha ha. Not likely. You busy right now? Facetime? You can ogle French delicacies with me, I wrote.

  Ugh, sorry. Running into a meeting. Just saying hi. Will check in later.

  It was just as well. I had to get over needing a crutch, and being alone would give me a chance to learn the language. Guillaume had said the only way to really learn French was to sit alone and observe.

  I started walking again, and as I passed restaurants with outdoor tables, I could see that everyone was gathered in groups. Debra’s words came back to me, “You’ll be eating dinner alone. I’ve never done that.”

  Neither had I.

  As comfortable as I was my own company, I didn’t think I was ready to sit alone in a restaurant. I passed a Monoprix grocery store and debated buying some food to eat in my hotel room. Then I felt even more depressed at that thought. Maybe I could eat in a restaurant alone. I’d just bring a book or something to occupy myself while I ate. Or I could text someone and have a conversation that way. I psyched myself up for the adventure of solo dining.

  Pommes frites for one!

  I walked back down Boulevard Saint-Michel and bought a magazine from a kiosk. Fashion was a universal language even if the articles were in French. Then I looked for a place to eat that didn’t seem too fancy or too gross. Men stood outside the restaurants down one small pedestrian-only road, holding out menus and pointing at signs that showed three-course and four-course dinners at different prices.