A Paris All Your Own by Eleanor Brown

Author:Eleanor Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-07-04T04:00:00+00:00

I never made that first move. It would have been so nice to have a romantic adventure in the city of romance. To have a dream come true. But it wasn’t meant to be. I had another Paris boyfriend to add to my list of missed opportunities.

I didn’t get back to Paris for two years, and then was invited to attend a birthday bash for a dear friend who lived in Fontainebleau—just a half hour outside of Paris. I’d been divorced for six months and it seemed like the perfect excursion.

I planned to spend two days before the party and three days after by myself in the city. Once again, I was staying at the Lenox on rue de l’Université. Once again, I was aware of every couple I saw kissing and holding hands, each one reminding me of my recent failed marriage.

For the first time, Paris seemed melancholy. It rained every day and was cold. The birthday bash had been spoiled by my friend’s father-in-law being rushed to the hospital after what turned out to be a heart attack.

Back in the city, I spent Monday afternoon wandering. I wound up on the Île Saint-Louis and passed the stationery store that Jacques R. had showed me. I went inside. I examined all the beautiful papers and bottles of fancifully colored ink, thinking that shops like this only existed in European cities anymore. A store dedicated to handwriting with fountain pens on exquisite paper and fine leather journals. I looked at packets of pencils and rubber stamps and elaborate ribbons.

I walked to the back of the store. The reason I’d gone inside in the first place. To see if the Lovers’ Journal, as I’d come to think of it, was still there. And it was. And it was open to a page empty except for that day’s date on the top. I hesitated. Then picked up a pen, dipped it into a bottle of deep red ink, and wrote.

Love to the point of madness—or else what is the point of love? Jacques, I’m in Paris. At the Lenox. I’ll be at the bar at 6 PM.

It was a silly and overly romantic and impossible gesture. Of course he would never read it. If I really wanted to see him, I could have called him on the phone. But that was taking that first step I’d never known how to take. This was leaving it not just to fate but to magic. To my great-grandmother’s magic. Which I wanted to believe in—but didn’t really. Couldn’t really. There’d never been any proof.

That night, even though I knew better, I went to the bar at six P.M., sat at a table for two, ordered my glass of Champagne, and waited. Of course Jacques didn’t come. I had been foolish to think he would. As foolish as I’d been to think that elevator boy was going to turn around and kiss me.

The next day I went to the d’Orsay and afterward walked in the rain through the Tuileries.

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