It's four in the afternoon. I'm at work.
The light is coming in through the window and reflecting off all kinds of bright and lovely things- knitted scarves, an orange stove, old panes of stained glass. No one else is here just now. There's a kitchen-type clattering coming from the direction of the restaurant and the muted sound of cars passing outside. I hear the cook from a distance exclaim in Spanish, but this is one foreign language that's as comfortable to me as a pair of nubby socks. The front door is thrown open, and the breeze drifting in is hot from sunlight and smells faintly of the grill out back. I love being here again.
I could be finding something to do, but it's nice to just exist right now. The phone rings and I answer it, J. Wilde's, yes, we close at six, thank you, and hang up. I walk around from behind the counter to maximize my breeze exposure, lean a hip against it, and stick my fingers into the back pocket of my jeans. It's then that I feel it crumple under my hand. I know what it is before I get it out but I unfold it anyway.
Three women clatter in, swinging enormous purses and exclaiming oh, my, Gawd! Get a load of this place! I smile at them and look back down at the metro ticket. I have a weird relationship with the smeared print on it. It was strange, then familliar, and now just distant. It doesn't seem possible that a month ago I used these all the time.
The volume of the conversations around me increases. I understand everything now, all of it, every sign and absentminded remark and muttered epithet. I love it and don't want it at the same time. There I needed signs so desperately. Everything here I already know how to do. I'm not sure which is more likely to wear me out in the long run.
Honey, what do you wear this with? a woman drawls, hefting something above the clothing racks for me to see. I catch a glimpse of fringe and leopard print and feel a sudden surge of affection for the Parisien women, thin and dark and somber. The glitter here would send them straight into cathartic arrest. I'm not sure, I say back. I haven't tried that on yet.
And all of a sudden I'm sad, standing in the middle of a place I love surrounded by people I understand. I'm filled with this weird, unexpected rush of longing. I can't even tell you what exactly it's for.
I think about the crush of silent people, the overwhelming smells, the silvery quality of the streets, the soaring townhouses lining them. I think back to the estrangement and the euphoria, the terror of not belonging and the curiously glorious freedom that came with it.
I guess it's just after eleven there. I wonder what the people I know are doing. It'll be dark now, the air so cold and still, the stars shrouded, the Eiffel Tower sparkling and spearing the sky. I can see the paved streets, the buildings rising against the skyline. When I think about it I can feel the unexpected hush in the heart of the city. All the oldness there, all the weight in every paved brick, glowing cathedral, damp metro tunnel.
Joyce is back now, talking a blue streak, handing me things that aren't finished, telling me what I need to do. How glorious to perfectly understand her.
But I miss it. I do. Already it seems to be slipping away. It's hard to believe on warm afternoons like this that it happened at all.
I could have just tossed it, but on my way back to the fabric room I fold the metro pass with two fingers and slide it back into my pocket. Three weeks ago I couldn't throw these away fast enough but now it feels like something almost sacred, my last ticket to a different world.
I walk back behind the counter, smile at the woman who just wandered in. My fingers pick up a pen, toy with it, put it down again. I can hear Missey come in through the back but my head is somewhere else, seeing the fog rise in the ivory streets and hearing the roar of Vespas and detecting that odd burned-bread smell. I wonder if I'll ever be there again. I wonder how it will feel to leave home for good. Can we ever fully belong somewhere? How does this work? Should we just orbit one area, keep from scattering little pieces of ourselves in places where we can't easily retrieve them? Is it the longer we live and the more places we go, the less we feel at home in just one place?
And when was the last time I washed these jeans?
