April in Paris by John J. Healey

Author:John J. Healey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781951627751
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2021-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

– 24 –

I had booked a room I liked at the modest and discreet Eliot Hotel in Boston. Though too close to Newbury Street’s boutiques with its crowds of shoppers, it conserved authentic Back Bay elegance and it was just across the river from MIT. I hadn’t told Carmen exactly when I’d be arriving. When I got there I checked in and took Corru for a walk in the narrow bit of park that runs along the Charles River.

The Parisian streets, with their trim, beautifully dressed men and women perched on traditional English bicycles, were replaced by earnest, mostly thick-set joggers with a Kmart fashion sense and cyclers arrayed in bright spandex, pedaling fender-free bikes designed to punish calves and thighs. But the river shimmered in late spring light and little sailboats dappled the water and there was the MIT campus on the other side, where the woman I was pursuing lived and plied her trade. Many people who saw Corru stopped and asked about him with a disarming American friendliness that put my faux Euro snobbery to shame. I found a bench near the water and sent Carmen a text. The thought of calling her made me too nervous.

Man & dog gaze longingly at MIT.

She answered a few minutes later.

Just finished class. WHERE are you?

Back Bay near the Harvard Bridge.

Are we still on for dinner?

Harvest. 7 P.M.

Great.

The “great” was much appreciated. Back in my room I fell into a deep sleep thanks to which I arrived fifteen minutes late at the restaurant. She was halfway through a vodka martini chatting with the barman.

“There you are,” she said, kissing me on both cheeks. She smelled like real roses mixed with lemon rind. We had oysters and salad and lamb chops with a white wine that she preferred, and we laughed a lot. We mostly talked about movies, celebrities, literature, and other Boston restaurants we liked. We barely touched on biology, art history, or MacBride.

“Come back with me and meet the puppy,” I said, as casually as I could.

“I’d love to,” she answered, seemingly sincere, “but I have a class at nine in the morning.”

“When do they set you free for summer?” I asked, quickly moving on.

“Eleven days from now,” she said. “I can’t wait.”

“Have your plans firmed up at all?”

“Nothing written in stone,” she said. “I’m supposed to give two talks in London in July, but I may cancel, I love canceling, and I should see my mother a bit more. Other than that, I’m not sure yet. You?”

We were lingering over the end of the meal, me with a glass of red wine I ordered instead of dessert, she with a cup of mint tea.

“Normally I visit Caro in Southampton for a couple of weeks and then I go back to Europe. The west of Ireland, London, back to Paris, I keep saying I’m going to rent a little place on the Cote d’Azur, the sort of place I doubt even exists anymore, but I’ve yet to do it.”

“No plans to visit Highbridge, I see.

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