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anne: wrap it up and i'll take two.
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-It's one of those nights that feel dangerous in the good kind of way. I am weaving through the streets in the Saint-Michel district, beyond overstimulated. Undersized shops line the cobblestoned street, exploding with obscenely bright colors. Cafés overflow with people six, seven, thirteen to a table, conversing in rapid-fire French. They round out their vowels with their lips, trip over their expletives, and pause only to suck on cigarettes. Muted music pounds from pubs, and unabashed waiters step easily into my path, take my arm, and start spouting the menu for that night. They offer us free wine, swear that there is no better food anywhere, and wave cheerfully when we beg off.
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Shopkeepers stand in the doorways of their stores, smoking and chatting animatedly with friends or confused passerby. One woman makes a sweeping gesture with her cigarette and knocks over a necklace stand outside her neighbor's store. They both begin to laugh simultaneously, and I'm taken by the sound, lovely and full. The sound of shattering ceramic echoes down the street to a chorus of shouts, and when I turn I see a waiter standing outside a Greek restaurant breaking plates. I wonder if they have free wine, too.
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We duck into a shop that smells like cinnamon and finger the piles of bright scarves, but even here there is always something distracting in the corner of my eye- shimmering jewelry nailed to the walls, boxes of headscarves stacked on the table, striped bags strung up on the staircase railing. A crowd of women follow us in, and their conversation swells around me. I fall head over heels in love with a pair of impossibly bright blue earrings and stab them through my lobes as I sort through my change on the counter. Bonsoirée!, I reply to the smiling owner, and we step back through the doorway into the evening light. The street is so brightly lit that the world seems to vanish completely into the night outside of this crush of people. This makes me feel sad and safe at the same time.
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The night air is fragrant with millions of delicious things. This weakens our resolve so much that we give in to the next waiter who steps into our path, and he leads us into a narrow and candlelit café. Paintings and photographs are hung seemingly at random on the bright yellow walls. A wizened and smiling old man bows us past the other diners to a table and takes our drink orders. The room is so narrow that he brushes our table as he disappears into the room in the back.
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I tear off another piece of the crusty baguette at our table and lean in to better hear what Anne is laughingly telling me. I lazily take note of the hum of conversation in the restaurant and on the street, and absently wonder why we're listening to Tejano music. It makes me homesick in the best kind of way. We successfully order our food in French- I get onion soup and roasted chicken, Anne decides on a cheese crêpe with steak in red wine- and move on to salivating over the dessert menu. After we pay for our meal, we step back onto a street that never sleeps, that resounds with shouts of affection, thousands of years and languages, smells like slightly burnt bread, feels like the start of something new under my feet.
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I have a huge, huge crush on Paris.
