Paris Letters

by Janice MacLeod

  Christophe was waiting for me in Paris. He had asked me return to Paris to stay with him “to see.” Indeed. To see what I had been blind to for so long. Since I had left, he had called six times a day, a staggering amount by North American standards. I didn’t know if he was psycho, paranoid, or in love. He was from Poland, so it was tough to tell. When I asked him about this, he replied that he simply wanted to pick up the charges for the calls so I wouldn’t have to. He appeared to fall so head over heels in love with me that I didn’t quite trust the strength of his affection, never having experienced it before. We were both steeped in the glorious two weeks of honeymooning in Paris. Was that real love or just a nice couple of weeks?

  Since the message he had sent me upon my arrival in Rome, I had told him I was thinking about returning but hadn’t given him a solid yes. My thoughts went back to what Ben had said in London. “What could happen? Happiness? Great. Ruin? You can handle that. Do you think you’ll lose everything and become homeless? You already got rid of everything. You’re already homeless.”

  There and then, I decided I would go back to Paris to be with Christophe. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

  16

  Unpacking in Paris

  I arrived back in Paris on a warm evening at the end of June with considerably less baggage.

  I was waiting at baggage claim at Paris Orly Airport when I spotted Christophe. He looked panicked, scouring the signs, looking for my flight number and me. When he saw me, he took a deep breath and grinned. The panic disappeared. My heart was pumping in my ears so loud that when we came together and kissed, I heard nothing. No blaring airport announcements, no hum of the crowd, no mesh of languages, no clacking high-heel shoes. The world was silent. We pulled out of our kiss and I choked my tears down.

  “Bonjour, my darling.”

  “When did you learn the word darling?”

  He winked and took my suitcase in one hand, my hand in the other, and we walked toward the train to Paris in relative silence.

  We were never about words anyway.

  Christophe’s apartment was tiny, but he had completely transformed it to look startlingly similar to the citizenM hotel in Glasgow (had he remembered the photos I sent?). Everything had been painted, cleaned up, and cleared away to prepare for my arrival. Now here I was, in my own little citizenM room in the heart of Paris. He had even purchased matching robes, explaining that we should feel like we were on vacation all the time. And he had bought and assembled new furniture, including a wardrobe. (The French do not have closets. This mystifies me.)

  He pointed to it, inviting me to unpack my suitcase. And I did. My tiny piles of shirts and pants each had their own wide shelves. I hung my few dresses. And I smiled as I set my small pile of undies, which had been purchased for his viewing pleasure, next to my T-shirts.

  I collapsed next to him on the bed and he slowly peeled off the rest of my wardrobe. We made love by moonlight.

  The next morning, he gave me all I ever really wanted after a night like that: coffee in bed and the login information for high-speed Internet access.

  When you’re on the road, Internet access is often sketchy, slow, nonexistent, or pricey. When I told him I would stay with him, I added that I would need high-speed Internet. He may have been the last man in the Western world to order in-home Internet.

  Each morning of this first month together, he would get up, make coffee, and deliver it to me in bed. “Bonjour, my darling.”

  “Bonjour, mon amour.” We would kiss.

  Over coffee, he would ask me what I would do during the day. I would tell him in simple French words. I would ask him what he would do. He would laugh and say the same, which was that he would go to work at the butcher shop up the street. Once he left, I would go back to bed. Eventually I would rise, make another coffee, and go online. I lived for the stockpile of emails that came in during the night from my friends in Canada and the United States. They wrote funny comments on my blog to keep in touch.

  Christophe would come home at lunch. We would usually make sandwiches of fresh baguette (still warm from the boulangerie ovens), cheese, and meat. Afterward, we would have a sweet lovemaking session and a nap. He would tell me my body was “ideal,” which was lovely to hear despite the awareness that his ideal was a Rodin sculpture while mine was closer to Lady Gaga. Afterward, he would head back to work.

  On occasion, I would imagine myself packing my things right after he left. I imagined I would walk myself to the Métro, head to the airport, and leave all this behind. It would be so easy to go when one has so little to pack. Plus, after a year of dreaming of leaving and a long time of coming and going, it was hard to remember how to stay. But after time, these thoughts of a quick getaway faded. I wasn’t going anywhere without Christophe.

  Unless it was in Paris, of course. I walked a lot while he was at work. I walked to iron out the thoughts in my head. I walked to burn calories from all my culinary explorations.

  At the end of the day, Christophe brought home meat from the butcher shop that I cooked for dinner. My vegan days were definitely over. So were my cardboard box days. We ate on plates.

  I still wasn’t fluent in French though. I studied French through podcasts, audio CDs, and an online language class. I was determined to be bilingual but couldn’t quite bring myself to sign up for a physical class, still reeling from office desk trauma. The online class had badges I could earn and green check marks to encourage me along the way. I collected these like a good Girl Guide, hoping the collection would magically transform me into a more advanced version of myself. The Janice 2.0 that could speak French. But then I would turn on the TV to marvel once again at just how befuddled I was with the language. I hoped that one day I would know exactly what they were saying. But for a long time, it was all a picture show with some mysterious language thrown in to confuse me.

  It all got very tiring, and I slept a lot during that first summer in Paris. In this life where I could be as active or as lazy as I wanted to be, it was easy to sit on the couch and tell myself I was just “coming down” from my fourteen years as a copywriter in advertising. While that may have been true in the months after I quit my job, it had been a long time since then.

  The only job I had in Paris was blogging, and it didn’t exactly qualify as a job. Except for the occasional donation I received, I wasn’t making any money from it. I painted letters for my donators and mailed them off with a thank-you message.

  I sat in Jardin du Luxembourg a lot too. One hot day, I brought along the watercolors. I sat in front of a fountain and fished out some water in a plastic cup I had brought for the occasion. I opened my journal and I began painting. And that’s when Percy Kelly showed up.

  Percy Kelly died in the 1990s, but as I painted, I could feel his voice in my head. It was my voice but with an edge, and it was instructing me as I painted.

  “See this line here?” he whispered. “This is a good place to start. And here? Leave that white. That will be the splashing water later.” He continued. “And don’t worry about dripping paint. It’s a fountain, ferchrissake.” This guy definitely had a different tone than Mr. Miyagi. I listened and painted under the shade of a willow tree, then took out my pen and wrote.

  Dear Áine,

  Paris does something to a person. It unleashes the pent-up romantic. Even if you’re not the touchy-feely type, you find yourself begging to hold hands and grope the nearest person as you walk over a bridge just so you can say later that you did it and wasn’t that marvelous. What was his name? Does it matter?

  You gasp at statues, staring at their curves, forming crushes. Even all the Jesuses in all the churches get you flustered. Remember Rome? Those abs. The hero. I shake my head at the inappropriate thoughts, but still keep staring.

  In my wanderings, I came across this fountain in Jardin du Luxembourg. When I first came upon this couple, I c
ame undone. I hadn’t yet started dating Christophe. Despite my best efforts to embrace being alone, what I really wanted was to be the girl on the rock in the arms of an adoring man. A quiet voice from deep within eeked out, “Yes, please.”

  A few days later, Christophe kissed me and we began our little Paris love affair. Sometimes we sit next to this fountain together and listen to the trickle of water that makes all the noise of the city fade away. Afterward, if we don’t know what to say or how to say it, we meander over to the Seine and walk over one of the bridges hand-in-hand so I can say later, “Wasn’t that marvelous?!”

  Janice

  17

  The Paris Letter Project

  A few days later, after I had stopped by the butcher shop and puckered up for a petit bisou with Christophe, I zigzagged my way to Les Deux Magots on boulevard Saint-Germain. This is the famous café where Simone de Beauvoir sipped legal addictive stimulants while concocting big ideas that would later win her worldwide acclaim. This café serves American-style coffee and fresh-baked croissants, and boasts a fantastic view of the street. A perfect place to be alone among others. De Beauvoir knew what she was doing.

  I sat inside, away from the hustle-bustle of the terrasse. Come summer, the cafés of Paris fold back their outer walls so that wherever you sit, inside or out, you can soak in the warm summer breeze. I pulled out my journal. By now, I had been writing in my journal for a year and a half, and it became my home base. The one constant foreground when all my backgrounds shifted. The place where I could figure out the next steps.

  Now the next step wouldn’t be figuring out which city to visit, but what I could do with myself from one place. The time had come when I had to revisit my reserve. The bank account had taken a plunge with all my travels, and so did a few of my stocks. It was time to figure out how to replenish the buffer so it would always be ahead of me and I would never be forced back into a draining job of time sheets and vacation accrual.

  But what could I do to make cash?

  I would consult my journal, just as I had done from the beginning. I would write my way to the answer, at times with help from Mr. Miyagi. I opened my journal, and my letter to Áine slipped out. As I looked it over, I thought that I’d rather create another painted letter than sit writing through ideas to make money to boost my account.

  And of course, that was the answer.

  It was always the letter. Painted letters from Paris to delight Áine, who was busy carving out her career, this time in Toronto. Painted letters to my friends in Rome to thank them for a lovely holiday and supporting my little artistic dreams from that night sitting outside the Colosseum. Painted letters for anyone who donated on my blog. A grateful thank-you from the road for their support. Would other people want painted letters from Paris too?

  But these letters would take time. I couldn’t create a new letter for every person who wanted one. I’d end up back where I started: too much work, too little time.

  Akemi’s voice came into my head. You’re a copywriter. That’s who you are.

  Copy. Writer. Copy writing.

  Copy the letter. Personalize each copy.

  Of course. When I wrote junk mail letters, I would start them all with “Dear FName.” The FName stood for First Name and was the code that told the computer to replace each FName with the first name of the recipient of the letter. I would do the same with my painted letters, but instead of using a computer, I would write in the name with a pen. It wouldn’t be an original letter for each person, but if I did it this way, the whole process would be more time-effective for me and more affordable for a subscriber. I thought back to my original equation of $100 a day. Would I rather make $100 from creating one painted letter for one person? Or would I rather get $5 from twenty people for a copied letter? What would I pay for a painted letter? I would pay $5 for a copy rather than $100 for the original, especially if I were engaged in some escape artistry and would need those other $95 to meet my financial goals.

  So that’s what I would do. I would create a painted letter, copy it, personalize each copy, and mail them off to people who love fun mail.

  I consult the Percy Kelly in my mind.

  “Go for it. What could happen? I’ll help when you get stuck.”

  I tossed a few coins on the table and nearly ran home.

  My first official painted letter was copied, personalized, and mailed to a dozen friends with notes saying I would send them a letter like this each month for a year. I committed to a year of letters so I wouldn’t chicken out. I had to be accountable to someone, just as I was with my blog in 2010 when I had vowed to write in my journal every day for a year. With people reading, I was more likely to stick to the plan.

  I listed the product on Etsy as a subscription service. For twelve months, people would receive a painted letter from me. I advertised my new service on the usual social media streams and waited for orders.

  A few days later, I woke to Christophe delivering a coffee to bed. We sat in bed and sipped. I explained the concept to him. He nodded. “It’s for joy.” He got it.

  “Oui. Mail for joy.”

  Halfway through the cup, he started to get ready for his workday, which couldn’t happen soon enough because I was already reaching for my phone to check to see if I had any orders.

  Which I did!!!! Blessings ahoy!

  I had about a dozen orders. They were all from friends, but still, actual orders.

  When he left for work, he said, “Go back to sleep. It’s early.” I nodded. But when the front door closed, I leapt out of bed, slipped into my yoga pants, and began fulfilling orders. Envelopes! Printouts! Ink! Stamps! Heaven!

  Later, I walked up the street with these little beauties and stopped at the butcher shop for another smooch with Christophe, grateful that it was a pleasure for him to give me the large amount of kisses I required. He saw my handful of envelopes and smiled. I skipped/ran to the post office and sent these little envelopes of bliss on their merry way.

  One might think, Isn’t this STILL a lot like Direct Mail, the career I left all dramatic-like? I admit, I was actually creating mail that goes directly to a person, which may seem a lot like direct mail. But with this Paris Letter service, I was sending mail to people who actually wanted it. People who paid for it. People who welcomed it.

  I imagined they would come home from a long day at work, grab the mail, see the usual junk mail, and sigh. “Not this crap again.” But inside that little pile of envelopes was a sweet little letter from Paris. “Ah, it’s here.” Eyes narrowing, grins forming.

  Orders trickled in at a constant rate. Enough to keep me busy and with enough cash so I didn’t have to tap into the reserve too often. People I didn’t even know started subscribing. When I would tell Christophe about new orders, he would say, “You know these people?” and I would exclaim joyfully, “NO! They are all strangers. Isn’t that wonderful!”

  As I addressed the envelopes over the next few months, I wondered about the receivers. How was Janet from Peculiar, Missouri, doing? And Ronda who lived on Pughs Store Road. I’d love to ask her if there still is, or ever was, an actual store named after a Pughs. If so, was Pughs the store owner or an important historical figure of the town? How was Susan in Lucknow doing these days? How about Liz on the Lake Road who lived in Driftwood Point. Or Leila in Las Vegas who sold a few things on eBay to pay for her letters. Then there was Miss Love who lives on Flowery Branch Road. I bet she loved writing her address. When I was a kid, I grew up at RR#1, Clear Creek, Ontario, Canada. The RR stands for rural route and wasn’t nearly as interesting as the address for Mrs. Golden, who lived on Sugar Creek Trail. Such lovely addresses from places I’ve never been. I felt like I was traveling to these distant lands without leaving my base in Paris.

  I thought of the names of my subscribers, too, as I would address their letters. How their parents usually did a pretty good job naming them. I would a
dmire how the double Ls in Sally’s first name matched the double Ls in her last name. How Joshua and Jones was a nice pair. There were a lot of Jennifers, Jennys, Jens, and Jenns. And Lindas, Lynnes, and Lynns. The Catherines, Katherines, Kathleens, Cathys, Kathys, and Kates. They all had to be kept straight. And then there were the zip codes and the street names. Dreamy street names introduced themselves with every order: Forest Lake Drive, Pear Tree Lane, Garland Street, Chestnut Street, Mistletoe Way, Mossy Creek Court, Letterman Way, and my favorite, Yellow Brick Drive.

  It was all juicy fun until the lame subscribers arrived, who, on occasion, were expecting the original painting rather than a personalized copy of the original painting. As if I would spend days painting a scene of Paris just to sell them for less than the cost of a pit stop at Starbucks. They were just like old clients who wanted more, more, more for less. I tried to treat these people like I did when faced with dog poop on the sidewalks in Paris. A glance out of the periphery of my vision, a smooth sidestep, and an erasing of the moment from my mind.

  Dear Áine,

  It’s raining in Paris today. Not all day, just when I gear up to go. The clouds seem to know when I put on my coat, and they take it as a cue to downpour. So while I wait for the latest downpour to subside, I’m writing this letter to you and sipping coffee.

  My haste to get outside is based on an exciting call I received after lunch. The book I ordered has arrived at the local English bookstore. There is something poetic about a good old-fashioned bookstore. I used to have Amazon deliver books to my door. I’ve always had a love for mail. And these days, I’ll be the first to brag about the convenience and pleasure of e-books. The instant access to English books in a French-speaking land is a magical delight. But there is magic in traditional bookstores too. It’s a magic you can feel in the air. The smell of aging paper, of ink, and of people. And in Paris, some of those people were Hemingway and Fitzgerald.