Flashback

TWENTY-FOUR

We slept through the day and left early the next evening, heading toward Seville in an old Seat Brian had managed to talk the hotel owner into selling us. We’d paid almost twice what the car was worth, but it hadn’t fazed Brian. When the old man had named a price, Brian had produced a roll of euros from his pack without flinching. There’s money here, I remembered him saying on the boat. Lots of it. Evidently, he’d taken his share.

It took us a night of hard driving to cross Spain, with nothing but the vast Iberian landscape and the occasional looming silhouette of one of the massive Osborne bulls for company. We took turns at the wheel, pushing north through Cordova and Madrid, then up across the Cordillera Central to Burgos and San Sebastián. Some twelve hours after we’d left Bolonia and the coast, we crossed France’s southern border.

Road-addled and red-eyed, we pulled into a truck stop outside Biarritz for breakfast and coffee, then headed out again, straight into Bordeaux’s morning rush hour and on toward Paris. I was grateful to be taking the western route across the country, thankful not to have to see Burgundy again. But in the hazy winter daylight the bare vineyards of Bordeaux and the Loire Valley seemed too much like home.

It was midafternoon when we reached the southern suburbs of Paris. Brian was asleep in the passenger seat, and I shook him awake.

“Can you get us to the American church?” I asked.

He nodded reluctantly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I think so.”

“Good.”

I followed his directions into the heart of the city, then followed the skeletal beacon of the Eiffel Tower toward the Seine.

I’d made one trip to Paris during my year at the convent, a brief visit during which I’d spent most of my time filling out paperwork at the U.S. Consulate. I’d only stayed two nights in the city, in one of the abbey’s sister convents, in a hard-up neighborhood near the Bois de Vincennes, but in my spare few hours I’d crossed the Pont de l’Alma from the consulate and walked through the Champ de Mars.

It had been only a month or so after the sisters had taken me in, I remembered now as we headed along the Quai Branly, the Trocadero gardens on our left, the Eiffel Tower on our right. I had been slightly afraid as I wandered among the tourists on the park’s elegant pea-graveled pathways, fearful that one of the doughy Americans in their running shoes and sun visors would recognize me. Afraid, and yet half hoping someone would.

We squeezed the Seat into a parking spot a few blocks off the Quai d’Orsay, then walked back toward the American church. It was a beautiful day, sunshine slanting through the bare trees, a nearly empty bateau-mouche gliding along the Seine. An old woman, a solitary birdlike silhouette led by a tiny black dog, shuffled along the quai, her feathered hat ruffling in the wind, her pumps picking their way across the graveled path. It was full-on winter here, colder even than when I’d left Burgundy, the mournful, diesel chill of a European city. I shivered in the canvas jacket the old Spaniard had thrown in with the car.

The church sat not far from the Pont de l’Alma, an immaculate gray stone structure tucked in among its high-rent neighbors, across from the hazy sprawl of the Triangle d’Or. A small, scattered crowd lingered on the sidewalk and steps out front, American backpackers fresh off the train, middle-aged Asian women in the neat attire of the would-be domestic worker, exchange students in loafers and pea coats.

“Excuse me,” I said, approaching two American girls on the steps. “Can you tell us where the bulletin board is?”

“Which one?” one of them asked.

“The one outside,” I told her, remembering what Helen had said.

“There.” She pointed with authority to the church’s covered entryway.

“I’d like to post something. Do you know if there’s a fee?”

She took a drag off her cigarette, looking far too young to be smoking. “You have to go inside to the office. It’s a couple of euros, I think.”

“Thanks.”

We passed by the glass-fronted bulletin board on the way inside, and I stopped to take a look. It was neatly maintained, the notices written on index cards, arranged by category, a sort of clearinghouse for the expatriate community in Paris. You could, it seemed, find anything here, child care, domestic services, tutors, apartments, experienced dog walkers.

On the far side of the board was a space for miscellaneous messages. The communications were between travelers mostly, people looking to meet up with friends they’d lost along the way.

Julia on the train from Madrid to Seville. We talked about Capri. You said you’d be spending December in Paris. Am here until New Year’s. Please leave a message saying where I can reach you. Michael.

Phillip from New Haven. Remember tacos at Jo’s Bar in Prague? Do you still think Kafka is overrated? Please call. Jennifer.

“Do you think he’ll call?” Brian asked as we headed inside.

“I hope not,” I said. “He sounds like a jerk to me.”

The office was on the first floor, at the end of a bright hallway plastered with church notices, invitations to the Bloom Where You’re Planted women’s coffee group, a schedule of yoga and aerobics classes offered in the church basement, a list of twelve-step meetings in English. It would be possible, I realized, reading the multicolored notices, to live for years in Paris without ever really leaving the United States.

“I bet someone here can tell you where to find cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving,” Brian remarked, as we neared the reception desk.

I smiled, conjuring up a scene from some movie, a well-dressed family, the sound of a football game in the background, and a long table groaning with food, turkey and mashed potatoes and some quivering red mass in a bowl.

A cheerful woman in a tastefully dull beige sweater set took my message, carefully transcribing it onto an index card, nodding approvingly at the mention of the Hotel George V.

“It’ll go up today?” I asked.

She nodded, adding the card to a small pile of similar messages. “I post the new cards by five.”

“What now?” Brian asked as we walked back to the SEAT.

“I guess we should find somewhere to stay,” I said. “I don’t meet Uncle Bill until tomorrow at four.”

“I know a place in Montparnasse,” Brian offered. “It’s not the George Cinq, but I don’t think anyone will look for us there.”

Brian was right: the sex shop-lined rue de la Gaîté was no Champs-Elysées, the fraying Hotel de l’Espérance about as far from the gilded Hotel George V as one could get. But there was no doubt this would be the last place in Paris anyone would think to find us. Thirty-five euros got us a room with a double bed and a private bath. The dead cockroach in the sink was complimentary.

We both showered, then went out for an early dinner at the grease-scented brasserie on the corner. By nine we were in bed, bathed in risqué red neon, dreaming the road behind us.