Paris Ever After: A Novel

by K. S. R. Burns

  William is speaking to the waiter—in English, I’m sure. Unlike me, he isn’t burdened by years of French lessons and therefore feels no compunction to try to speak it. He addresses everyone in English and assumes he’ll be understood. And, apparently, he is, because a minute later the waiter appears with a basket of croissants just as delicious-looking as the croissants I order in French.

  It’s torture. Normally at this time, I’m sitting across the cherry wood dining table from Margaret, sipping a second cup of English Breakfast tea and nibbling on a brioche. Or a tartine. Or a pain au chocolat. Or a croissant. I dig around in my tote bag, locate a packet of trail mix (now that I’m pregnant I always carry food with me, for emergencies), and toss back a handful of cashews.

  Two minutes later, however, I chortle out loud. The waiter has returned to William’s table bearing a teeny tiny cup of coffee. I know exactly what happened. William ordered a café, using one of the only French words he knows, and received not a good old cuppa joe but a thimble-sized shot of inky black espresso. And William hates espresso. Despises it. He doesn’t even much care for lattes. In this respect he’s like his granddad, patriotically insisting on drinking only thin watery American-style plain black coffee. Perhaps he learned this in the army. But it’s surprising, because otherwise he’s such a foodie. He’s the one who made me a foodie. “Cooking is an art at which I predict you can excel,” he said, back in the early, fun days. He opened up the world of fine cuisine to me. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.

  If I were sitting at that café table with William, I could make sure he receives his cup of American-style coffee—it’s called a café allongé. I could even try talking him into ordering a café crème, which is the proper beverage to accompany your breakfast croissant. If I were at William’s side, as many people might say I ought to be, I could explain all this and more. I could help him discover a Paris most tourists never see. He might be impressed, even grateful.

  Or not. William usually prefers to be the one possessing the superior facts and data. It’s his thing. He needs it, craves it, which is why I’ve always been happy to grant it to him.

  Anyway, right now he’s getting along just fine without my help. When he points to the espresso and shakes his head, the waiter instantly removes it and returns less than a minute later with a large steaming café allongé. Done and done. William has no need to speak French. Perhaps he has no need of me.

  I take out my phone to check the time. Nine-thirty. Margaret must be awake by now, wondering where I am. In addition to forgetting to eat breakfast, I forgot to leave her a note. I also still haven’t done the dishes from last night. My best move right now may simply be to text William—briefly, pleasantly, maturely—and suggest we meet later today. Like for lunch. That would give me time to go home, check on Margaret, have breakfast, shower, do up those dishes, and put on more of a power outfit than yoga pants and a sweater.

  It’s a plan.

  I’m about to start tapping my message into my phone when William takes out the same folded sheet of paper he showed the deskman at the hotel, unfurls it, and uses it to flag down the waiter, who steps forward, frowning, to look.

  This waiter is the same dark-haired lugubrious guy who last April served me my first wonderful breakfast in Paris. (It was an omelet with French fries. Yes, French fries for breakfast. I felt so naughty.) He’s almost always the waiter who serves Margaret and me when we come here. Every time we enter, he and she kiss each other on the cheek like old pals, though I don’t think they even know each other’s names.

  The waiter now has the mysterious paper in his hands. He holds it out at arm’s length, squinting at it, while William sips his coffee and lounges back in his chair, his posture relaxed, expansive, as if he wants the waiter to be absolutely sure who is the alpha male here. Not for the first time I wonder if I know everything there is to know about this man whom I married so hastily and so thoughtlessly. “Your mystery man,” Kat used to call him. Once she even suggested he might be an axe murderer. It was a dumb joke. William isn’t an axe murderer, or a Russian sleeper agent, or a CIA operative in deep cover, or a participant in the Witness Protection Program, or anything else special or out of the ordinary.

  He’s a regular guy. An engineer from Minnesota. Nice. Normal. Loves math, science, baseball, and babies. Changes the oil in my car for me. Taught me how to make pasta from scratch. Those are just a few of his many fine qualities. I tried to explain all this to Kat, but for a long time she wouldn’t hear it. She was jealous of William, resentful of our love, never thought he and I were a good fit, and even once tried to break us up. Which makes it all the more touching that at the end she came around to him. Some of the last words she said to me were, “Take a closer look at Will. I don’t want you to be alone.”

  Kat loved me more than she loved herself. Nothing is more rare.

  Meanwhile, I’m itching to see what the heck is on that sheet of paper. A bus has halted traffic between my lookout post and the café, so I dart across the street and sidle up to the window. Again, I’m barely six feet away from William. Again, he’s oblivious.

  I’m shifting to a better vantage point when the waiter flips the paper over to check the opposite side, and I at last get a look at what he’s been studying for so long.

  It’s a photograph.

  Of me. Pre-pregnancy, pre-Paris me.

  Now that’s bizarre.

  William comes to France looking, I assume, for me. He gives no advance warning. When he arrives he doesn’t call me directly. He texts instead. But he also comes equipped with a photo of me, as if foreseeing the need to do a little amateur detective work. Perhaps he’s feeling guilty for ignoring my many attempts to get in touch and is worried I’ll refuse to see him. My failure to immediately answer his texts would confirm that—he has no idea the messages didn’t arrive until hours later.

  I’m not sure whether to feel flattered, creeped out, or amused.

  The waiter is refolding the sheet of paper when, somewhere nearby, a car alarm starts to shriek. He looks around, sees me standing out on the sidewalk, and his eyebrows shoot up.

  Only last week this same waiter served Margaret and me warm goat cheese salads and apricot tart. Now I’m the subject of some American guy’s sleuthing. What must he think?

  We stare at each other for approximately an eternity and a half. Finally, the waiter returns his gaze to William, the faintest flicker of a smile floating across his face.

  Then he shrugs.

  Even William must have figured out what a French shrug means by now.

  The spell broken, I turn and scurry back across the street, clutching my belly with one hand and my tote bag with the other. This time traffic is being held in place by a taxi, so Catherine and I again make it across without being run over. I head straight into the bookstore and stop only when I reach the back wall, where I feign interest in a display of rainbow-colored notepads while trying to steady the pounding of my heart.

  It’s a while before I’m calm enough to steal up to the front of the bookstore and peek through the open doorway. The car alarm has stopped. The taxi is gone. Traffic is flowing freely again. William is still sitting in the café, his back still to the window, munching on a croissant.

  The waiter is nowhere to be seen. Wait, there he is. He’s standing outside on the sidewalk, puffing on a cigarette, and looking straight at me. I lift a hand and wave. He inclines his head.

  “Merci,” I mouth.

  He winks, tosses the cigarette into the gutter, and reenters the café.

  “You can count on the French to be discreet,” Margaret once told me when I asked her why none of her neighbors seemed to care, or notice, that a pregnant American woman had taken up residence in their building. “The concept of privacy is important here,” she explained. “You are left to live your life as you please. All people ask is that you do the same for them.”

  What a nice custom.

  I’m still standing inside the bookstore a
nd considering my next move when William takes another croissant from his basket. It’s his third. I assume he’ll inhale it as rapidly as he did the first two, but instead he puts it down and gets out a selfie stick.

  This is the last thing in a million years I would expect him to do. William has never owned a selfie stick. He disapproves of them. He thinks they’re stupid.

  He fumbles a bit attaching the phone to the clamp, an indication that this is William’s first-ever selfie. But only he and I are aware of this. Only he and I hold our breaths as he frames a photo of himself with the croissant. He doesn’t pretend to take a big bite out of it or act goofy in any way. He just gazes gravely into the phone, cradling the croissant next to his cheek, almost close enough to touch his new hipster facial hair.

  Wrinkled shirt, private eye sleuthing, a selfie stick. None of this jibes with what I know of my controlled, conservative husband.

  The one thing I do know is that if William were in my place, he wouldn’t act in haste. He would take the time he needs to gather facts and data, form a working hypothesis, and determine a reasonable, prudent course of action. “People do things backward,” he used to complain to me. “They make up a theory and then look for ways to support it.”

  True. That’s how people are. And that’s why I’m sure he would absolutely approve of the fact that—after he’s devoured the third croissant, paid his bill, and exited the café—I again choose to follow him from a distance.

  Facts and data. You can’t have too much of the stuff.

  He wanders down the wide boulevard, taking his time, pausing every few yards to snap a selfie. At the bakery with the red-and-white-striped awning, he positions his face so he shares the frame with a window display of tarts and cakes. At the wine seller’s, he gestures with his thumb toward the open door and winks. Two blocks on, he poses beside a wooden cart filled with oysters and mussels on chipped ice. He walks right past the tiny flower shop that sells only roses. He takes no notice of the store that sells only white dishes.

  I trail him as if tethered by a cord. At any second, I’m poised to dash into a boutique, dart down a side street, or duck behind a lamppost, should he unexpectedly turn and look back. But he never does. William has seemed to forget all about why he has come to Paris. He’s seemed to forget all about me.

  Six blocks later he veers left. By this time, he’s collapsed the selfie stick and stowed it back in his pocket. His stride grows longer, more fluid, and it becomes difficult to keep up with him. After all, I’m sleep-deprived and hungry, and have the still small but precious weight of Catherine to slow me down. If William knew I was a mere dozen yards behind him, carrying his unborn child, he would not be walking so quickly.

  He would freak out.

  William’s parents died in a car crash when he was three. He was raised by his granddad, just the two of them on a hobby farm in Minnesota. One of the first things I learned about him was his strong desire to have a family. It was how our story started, actually. We met in December, nearly five years ago. In late January I got pregnant (that first time was unintentional too). By early March we’d married, bought a house, and started to furnish a nursery.

  The miscarriage came not long after. To William it was an enormous disappointment. To me it was more complicated. I wanted time to process my grief, to process all the changes in my life—it had all happened so fast. Waiting a year didn’t seem unreasonable. Then Kat got sick, and she remained my sole focus for three years.

  I know William wants to be a father almost as much as Catherine needs to have a father. He will be thrilled when I tell him the news. Hell, if he hadn’t been ignoring me all this time, he’d have known for weeks already. I feel sorry for him.

  Moving even faster now, he reaches the quai des Célestins, where he turns right.

  The sole interesting feature of the quai des Célestins is that it runs parallel to the Seine. If you stay on the side farthest from the river, however, it’s a pretty boring walk. I shun it because it’s devoid of food. Not a single bistro, café, restaurant, cheese shop, crêpe stand, falafel joint, sushi vendor, bakery, pâtisserie, épicerie, supermarché, or deli. Not even a mini-market.

  In Phoenix I hoarded junk food. In Paris I focus on the good stuff—croissants made with real butter and sorbet made with real fruit and crêpes made with real buckwheat flour. When I’m out walking, I choose routes that take me past the ready-to-eat food shops called traiteurs, where I can admire platters of creamed spinach and buttery mashed potatoes and béchamel-enrobed endives au jambon. I find excuses to wander by boucheries so I can inhale the mouth-watering aroma of the roasting chickens set out on Ferris-wheel-style rotisseries every morning. I will go blocks out of my way to loiter in the open-air aisles of greengrocers and ogle the bins of feathery escarole and jewel-like raspberries, and—when the vendor is not looking—cup my hands around fuzzy peaches and dream about the downy heads of newborns.

  Not that I can’t just buy some peaches. I can. I have a job, savings, and a place to live. I have friends and a life and maybe even a future here. Just last week, Margaret’s lawyer sent us a pile of forms so I can apply for a French residency card.

  William is now coming abreast of the Hôtel de Ville. We’ve been wandering for more than two hours, and when I catch sight of his face in the reflection of a window, I see he is almost smiling. The caffeine and carbs have kicked in. The exercise has lifted his mood. I apply another layer of apricot lip gloss, finger-comb my hair, and button up my ratty trench coat. Now is beyond time to catch up to him and say, “Hey, Will. I got your texts. Wanna have lunch?”

  We rebooted our relationship that way once. We’d had a disagreement, and after not speaking to me for a couple days, he showed up at my place with a packed picnic basket and a plan to drive up to Sedona for the afternoon. “Don’t go,” Kat counseled when I hastily texted her for advice. But I ignored her and went. And had a good time. Maybe too good, as it resulted in that first, short-lived pregnancy.

  A lot of people would be jealous that I seem to get pregnant so easily.

  An enormous tour coach passes me, swerves to the curb, and proceeds to disgorge tourists—Scandinavians, judging by their height and blondness. I lose sight of William. He is tall but not as tall as your average Norwegian.

  I take the opportunity to phone Margaret, who should be up by now. When she doesn’t answer, I find a stout cement bollard to sit on and eat some more trail mix. Observing William all morning has reminded me of the many things we have in common. We both like croissants. And long walks. And wine, shellfish, and bakery displays. We’re both orphans. In fact, this shared experience of vast loss is what first drew us together. It made me sympathize with him and feel I understood him.

  Now we have something else in common. Something new and wonderful—Catherine. Maybe she’ll be what brings us together for good. Maybe that would be the right thing.

  The Viking throngs disperse, but William is still nowhere to be seen. I finish the trail mix and dial Margaret again. No answer. I wander for a couple blocks and am screwing up my courage to finally text him—because this game of cat and mouse is getting ridiculous—when I round a corner, and there he is. He’s seated at a café across the street, not inside but outside on the sidewalk terrace, facing the street.

  I’m halfway across the street, heading straight for him, when I notice he’s talking on his phone.

  Damn.

  This isn’t how I want things to go. For my big reveal, I want and need to have William’s undivided attention. Catherine deserves no less. Hell, even I deserve it. So I find another bollard and sit down. Not hiding this time. Not behind a car or a sign or a kiosk. Out in plain sight. But he’s immersed in his call and doesn’t notice me. I’m starting to wonder if I’m invisible. Or so changed that I’m unrecognizable.

  Or perhaps it’s just that whoever is on the other end of the line is enthralling.

  But it’s most likely Robert from work. William would naturally want to check in with
the office, and Robert is entertaining—if you enjoy bathroom humor. Also, his job or anything related to his job always completely absorbs William. Work is his passion, maybe his chief passion. So I sit and study the swell of his biceps and the indent of his waist. He hasn’t gained weight, as I initially thought. He’s been going to the gym. He’s ripped.

  William listens with enviable focus, his shoulders shaking with laughter. A blonde woman takes a seat at a table near him, and unlike me, catches William’s eye. He’s always said he prefers brunettes, like me, but the way he looks at this blonde indicates he notices them too. Another surprise, in this day of surprises.

  The phone call drags on. William leans back in his café chair and props his right ankle on his left knee, revealing a pair of shoes I haven’t seen before. Black suede ankle boots, very hip. Not the kind of stylish footwear I would expect William to select or even know about.

  New shoes, a new beard. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’s met someone. But I do know better. William is painfully shy around women. Aside from me, he’s had only one other serious romantic relationship in his life, with a girl in Minnesota who left him to sing in a bluegrass band. No, most likely his new look is related to his recent promotion. The company owner wears a stubble beard and ankle boots. Now William does too.

  I take out my phone and notice it’s past noon. At first this means nothing to me, except to remind me how hungry I am, but as William carries on his endless call I realize that noon in Paris is four a.m. in Phoenix. Way too early for a work-related call.

  William smiles—he has a killer smile—and throws his head back in unrestrained laughter. I have not seen him laugh this long, or this hard, for ages. It gives me hope. It also confuses me.

  six

  I sit on the uncomfortable cement bollard watching William talk and laugh for what seems like thirty years, but which, according to my phone, is only thirty minutes. This morning his behavior started out odd, and it’s becoming odder. For example, he’s unaware, or doesn’t care, that he’s using up a ton of data on a single call. That’s not like William. Unless the company is paying for the roaming charges. That would explain it.