Page 60 of French Kiss

23

A Day in Paris

July12

Paris - Later

A half hour later,I’d showered and downed almost a liter of water. “You realize I’m gonna have to pee every fifteen minutes when we’re on our walk.”

Josh nodded. “This may be news, but Paris has bathrooms. Quite a few, actually. Better to be hydrated.” We’d had two cups of coffee each in the small breakfast room in the lobby of the hotel, where I inexplicably had enough of an appetite for two poached eggs, a big slice of baguette with jam, and a bowl of strawberries. “For three years, I’ve been telling you breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and now you finally listen,” he said.

I didn’t care that I’d have to keep my gym membership going for another thirty years after this trip. It was worth every mouthful. “I’m not done, either. I want to go back to Pierre Hermé, now that it’s open, and try those chocolates.” We’d walked past the storefront at some point during our rambling tour of the Left Bank, and I doubted I could find the shop again without looking it up. But I was determined to go back.

“The pâtés de fruits are good too,” Josh said.

“What are those?”

“They’re these little fruit jellies. Like they’ve taken fruit and sugar and cooked it down to just this sweet, intense fruit flavor and formed it into little squares. You have to try them.”

“I’m not arguing. I’ll try anything here.”

We turned onto the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and Josh stopped at an ATM for some cash. Standing on the corner of Rue du Bac, I looked down the broad boulevard in both directions. Cars and mopeds raced by when the lights turned green, and pedestrians waited for quiet moments to dash across against the signals. The storefronts were alive with bright displays of shoes and handbags and fabulous French clothing and candles and perfumes. I was never much of a shopper, but this was Paris. Maybe it was time to become a shopper. Or a museumgoer. Or I could just eat my way through the city, trying every pastry, cake, and chocolate until I could identify a favorite. My idea of the city had changed from a destination for a fling with a guy who was completely wrong for me to a vacation with the one guy who had been right all along. I couldn’t believe I had to fly thousands of miles to see it.

Josh folded his euros and put his wallet in his back pocket. “Okay, mademoiselle, the day is yours. What would you like to do?”

“I want to find perfect romantic spots like yesterday. I want to walk everywhere and see all the things people come to Paris to see. With you.”

“That’s potentially a long list.”

“Yes, but I’ve never been here, and I haven’t read a guidebook, so I won’t know if I’m missing something. If you don’t mind being my tour guide, I’ll do whatever you think we oughta accomplish today.”

It was his turn to look down the Boulevard Saint-Germain, like he was hoping to see our first destination on that road. “I’m thinking some sort of museum. Or just something we can only do here. What do you think about the catacombs?”

“Is that what it sounds like?” I asked.

“Yup. It’s an underground tour of skulls and skeletons left over from when they moved all the contents of their cemeteries underground. So they used this underground quarry to dump the bones.”

“I think I’m more up for paintings or something.”

“You sure? It’s pretty cool.”

“How far underground are we talking?” I asked.

“I don’t know, maybe a hundred feet or so?”

I’d never been particularly claustrophobic, but the idea of being underground with skeletons didn’t feel like the French adventure I had in mind. “Um, I mean, maybe…”

Josh didn’t push the issue. He knew when I was only going along with him to be nice. “Or we could see the Picasso Museum. And walk around the Marais.”

I’d heard of the Marais. I didn’t know much else besides the vague recollection that there was a Jewish quarter in the area. And probably amazing restaurants. There were amazing restaurants everywhere. “Yes. Picasso. Let’s do it.”

It went without saying that we’d walk. We’d put plenty of miles on our shoes together in San Francisco, so I didn’t even consider asking Josh if he’d rather hop on the Metro. He was a walker. Besides, selfishly, I wanted to take in more of the city by seeing how the various arrondissements were connected and laid out. I couldn’t do that by following a subway line.

The sky was a deep summer blue without a cloud in view. All signs of rain from the night before were gone, blown out with the clouds that could sweep back in before the sun went down. “It’s not even worth looking at the weather report,” Josh had told me earlier. “It’s bound to change, so you might as well just prepare to be surprised. We have nowhere to be, so what’s it matter?”

It did matter to me, but I decided not to launch into a whole new discussion of my unease about anything unexpected. For the moment, the sun was out. The weather looked predictably warm, and I’d dressed for it in lightweight cotton pants and a T-shirt with a mermaid on the front. And true to form, Josh was wearing rust-colored cargo shorts with a white linen button-down shirt. Ambling toward the water, I recognized landmarks from the night before—the Place Saint-Michel, where the a cappella group had been performing, and the street that led to the restaurant where I’d eaten a snail. After a while, we crossed over a bridge behind Notre-Dame and walked down the middle of the Île Saint-Louis, stopping for ice cream at Berthillon just because.

“You know, we could wait until afternoon for ice cream,” I said.

---