Paris for One

Are you still with this man? On no, She sniffed. I realized pretty quickly I couldn't marry a man without a bookshelf. No bookshelf? In his house. Not even a little one in his loo for the Reader's Digest. Many people in this country don't read books. He didn't have one book. Not even a true crime. Or a Jeffrey Archer. I mean, what does that tell you about someone's character?

You don't ever do something just because it makes you feel good?" The assistant shrugs. "Mademoiselle, you need to spend more time in Paris.

She is in Paris, in Parisian clothes, getting ready to go out with a Frenchman she picked up in an art gallery! She pulls her hair back into a loose knot, puts on her lipstick, sits down on the bed and laughs.

Nell walks what feels like the length of Paris. She walks through the numbered arrondissements, meandering through a food market, gazing at the glossy produce, both familiar and not at the same time, accepting a plum at a stallholder's urging and then buying a small bag in lieu of breakfast and lunch. She sits on a bench by the Seine, watching the tourist boats go by, and eats three of the plums, thinking of how it felt to hold the tiller, to gaze onto the moonlit waters. She tucks the bag under her arm as if she does this all the time and takes the Metro to a brocante recommended in one of her guidebooks, allowing herself an hour to float among the stalls, picking up little objects that someone once loved, mentally calculating the English prices, and putting them down again. And as she walks, in a city of strangers, her nostrils filled with the scent of street food, her ears filled with an unfamiliar language, she feels something unexpected wash through her. She feels connected, alive.

You just destroy the thing you love. By weighing it down.

Because she knew already that this would be the thing that would end them. And that in the deepest part of her, she had known it from the beginning, like someone stubbornly ignoring a weed growing until it blocked out the light.

Nell looks at the label and comes to. "Oh, I'd never wear it. I like to buy things on a cost-per-wear basis. This dress would probably work out at like...thirty pounds a wear. No. I couldn't." "You don't ever do something just because it makes you feel good?" The assistant shrugs. "Mademoiselle, you need to spend more time in Paris.

Perché questo vuol dire crescere in una piccola città: tutti pensano di sapere chi sei. Nell era la ragazza giudiziosa. La ragazza tranquilla. Quella che pianificava attentamente ogni dettaglio e a cui potevi dare l'incarico di innaffiare le piante o badare ai tuoi figli con la sicurezza che non sarebbe scappata con tuo marito né con quello di nessun'altra.

Si sente vivo e spregiudicato. Vuole vedere Nell ridere. Vuole andare in un club e ballare con lei fino alle ore piccole, con una mano sulla sua schiena sudata, tenendo gli occhi incatenati ai suoi. Vuole rimanere sveglio fino all'alba per un buon motivo, eccitato dall'alcol, dal divertimento e dalla magia di Parigi. Vuole assaporare la sensazione di speranza che nasce dall'incontro con una persona sconosciuta, qualcuna che vede solo il meglio di te, non il peggio.

But now, inside the gallery, something happens to him. He finds his emotions gripped by the paintings, the huge, colorful canvases by Diego Rivera, the tiny, agonized self-portraits by Frida Kahlo, the woman Rivera loved. Fabien barely notices the crowds that cluster in front of the pictures. He stops before a perfect little painting in which she has pictured her spine as a cracked column. There is something about the grief in her eyes that won't let him look away. That is suffering, he thinks. He thinks about how long he's been moping about Sandrine, and it makes him feel embarrassed, self-indulgent. Theirs, he suspects, was not an epic love story like Diego and Frida's. He finds himself coming back again and again to stand in front of the same pictures, reading about the couple's life, the passion they shared for their art, for workers' rights, for each other. He feels an appetite growing within him for something bigger, better, more meaningful. He wants to live like these people. He has to make his writing better, to keep going. He has to. He is filled with an urge to go home and write something that is fresh and new and has in it the honesty of these pictures. Most of all he just wants to write. But what?