Ashley goes to the window and begins drawing the curtains closed with the rope. Through the paneled glass he sees the sky lightening faintly at its edges. He wonders if dawn is truly breaking, or if he is only imagining the coming of this light. He wishes he had not seen it. The two curtains meet in the center and cinch shut. Ashley climbs back into bed. He looks at the sleeping girl beside him.
— You’d want me to wake you, he whispers. We ought not to sleep tonight.
He smoothes the dark band of hair on her forehead. She stirs slightly. Ashley lies down beside her and shuts his eyes.
MIREILLE
It’s my last night in Paris and I want to see as much as I can. When I come up the métro stairs at Châtelet the sky above is blue and black, beneath this a chandelier of yellow streetlamps. I cross the Seine on the Pont d’Arcole, the water riding fast below, and I sit on a bench in front of Notre Dame. For half an hour I stare at the cathedral, snapping photos and sipping wine from my water bottle, imagining the laborers and masons and bishops that pulled Notre Dame from the dirt of the Île de la Cité. They knew what they were doing. Even if it took a hundred years, they got it right in the end.
I take the Petit Pont to the Left Bank and pass into the Latin Quarter, skirting the periphery of the Sorbonne, then I climb the hill to the Pantheon, mausoleum of dead French heroes. On a nearby side street I pass a bar that looks interesting. I walk on half a block, then I turn back and go inside. The walls are layered with posters blackened from years of smoke. I sit on a stool and order a pression. The bartender pulls a small glass of lager from the tap and flips a beer mat before me and sets the foaming beer down.
On the way to Paris I’d bought a tin of cigarillos from a duty-free store in the airport. I’d seen them in pictures and always wanted to try them. I take the tin from my shoulder bag and light a cigarillo, smoking it until my throat begins to ache. A girl stands beside me, leaning on the counter as she waits to be served. She asks if I can spare a cigarillo. I pass her one.
— I can give you a cigarette in return, she says in French.
The girl has cropped hair and light gray eyes and there is a white flower pinned to her blouse. I thank her and tell her I don’t need a cigarette. We talk a little and when the girl learns I’m American she switches to English, which she speaks fluently with only a slight accent.
— That’s a beautiful camera. Can I see it?
I look at the girl. She wears a wool skirt and ballet flats, dressed up as though she expected to go somewhere nicer than this grimy bar. She asks the bartender for a whisky and soda. I unsling the camera from my shoulder and hand it to her. She turns it slowly in her hands.
— Where did you get this?
— It was my dad’s.
— He was kind to give it to you. You can’t buy such things these days.
The girl looks through the camera’s viewfinder toward the front door.
— How does it work? It’s different from my camera.
— See the two images in there? You have to line them up. It’s dark in here, you’d better open the aperture all the way. Probably won’t come out anyway. Maybe if you prop your elbows on the bar. And hold your breath—
She points the lens at me and turns the barrel to focus, sucking in a breath.
— Don’t move.
She pushes the shutter button gently. There is a faint click. The girl smiles and hands me back the camera.
— I don’t think I did it right.
— That’s OK. Half of my photos never turn out anyway.
— Are you in Paris to take pictures?
— No, I was doing research in some libraries. I got here on Sunday and I’m going to Amiens tomorrow—
The girl raises her eyebrows.
— Why would you go there?
— More research. Historical stuff about the Great War.
— That’s funny, she says. I grew up near there.
The girl explains she is from Noyelles-en-Chaussée, a commune in the Somme département not far from Amiens. Her name is Mireille and her friend farther down the bar is named Claire. They are both in their first year of art school. When she hears her name Claire smiles at me from down the bar, making a circular wave as though polishing an unseen window. Claire sits beside a studious-looking man in eyeglasses, the man speaking to her with intense concentration.
— A friend of hers? I ask.
Mireille leans in and smiles. — They just met.
— You’re out to make new friends in Paris?
— Claire wants to make new friends, Mireille says. She says I’m staying in my apartment too much, like an old lady. So we got dressed up and went out.
The bartender comes around again and I order another beer.
— You speak French well, Mireille says.
— It should be better. I studied it all through college, but my grammar’s still pretty bad.
— It was your subject?
— No. I studied history.
— American history?
— European.
— Really? Why Europe?
I shrug. — Look at this city. Miles of catacombs under the street. A palace full of stolen treasure from all over the world. Revolution after revolution until nobody can remember which is which. They’d just pull out the same cobblestones to make barricades in the same places. Even the monuments here are crazy. A Roman-style victory arch made for Napoleon that Prussians march under in 1871, the French again in 1919, then Hitler in ’40, de Gaulle in ’44—
Embarrassed, I take a sip of beer. Mireille lights her cigarillo.
— But isn’t everywhere interesting? Where did you grow up?
— California.
— It must be very beautiful.
— It’s perfect. Everything you could ever need.
— Are you joking?
— I don’t know. Maybe I always liked things better that were far away.
Mireille looks toward the entrance. A group of people have come in and they are taking off their coats, glancing around the grotty interior as if surprised to find themselves here. Mireille turns back to me.
— You like things that are far away. But you’re here now, so you won’t like it for long.
— I’m leaving tomorrow, so I should be all right. But you said you’re from the north. What brought you to Paris?
— That’s a long story.
— I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.
— Do you have a good story?
— It’s not bad. But tell me yours first.
Mireille begins to roll a cigarette on the bar. She says that she moved to Paris three months ago from the south, where she had been living with her husband. She is twenty-three years old and she is divorced. Mireille sees that this surprises me and she laughs in embarrassment, looking down into her glass.
— I never tell people this. But you asked.
Three years ago Mireille and her boyfriend were at university in northeastern France. They were bored with college and wanted anything but the life they had. They ran off to the Mediterranean coast and got married. In the south they wrote fiction and lived mostly off welfare. Mireille learned seventeen different ways to cook a sack of potatoes and she hated them all. Their writing was published, but the marriage failed. This past summer Mireille had moved to Paris to begin an art degree.
— What made you get married?
Mireille shakes her head.
— I don’t want to say. I knew it was stupid, I just didn’t care. Maybe I thought that made it romantic. For now I just try to forgive myself for the last three years. And start over, pretending I’m eighteen again.