La fille au sac rouge

I woke from a restless sleep with a headache. Sirens whirled outside my window on the streets below. The circulation in the room was scant, so the air was stale and the light felt stale too. With no outlets near the bed I had no phone and thus no time, so I stumbled into the living room(my head just grazed the ceiling and I realized for the first time just how small the place was) .

I'd already made the place mine, as my landlady had instructed me to do in the email though I'm sure this wasn't how she thought I'd go about claiming my territory. My vitamins and pill bottles lay strewn on the kitchen table; my books and postcards lay untouched on the counter; boarding passes and dollar bills lay crumpled on the coffee table; my shoes sat forlorn, each shoe on the rug separated from their respective partner by carryons and wall adaptors. I reached for my phone.

(Why does time fall in on itself when the soul is preoccupied with frivolities and darkness? It's as if demons perch on both shoulders, the one on the right telling me just one more swipe, the left dragging the clock's big hand aroundaroundaround. I wasted more time on my phone than peasants in the Middle Ages had time for working.)

I breakfasted at a cafe just past Canal Saint-Martin then meandered south, toward Notre Dame. Without consulting a map I turned down roads and passages, up the block, down the block, stopping in parks to read, sipping espresso at a cafe at the corner of Rue Saint-Jacques (past the tourist cafes and scarves sold by Iranian women calling to me in French and dour looking fellows standing near shops where dozens of mannequins dressed in cheap suits had been jammed into the window) and Boulevard Saint-Germain, that famed Parisian street. Julian Green kept me company and told me where to look.

Who is bold enough to venture into spaces where holiness seeps from the stones themselves? Sainte Chapelle raised her head above the city and I like a barbarian entered her gates with a violent fury. The story of God glowed about me but I had fallen into myself and God seemed a distant memory. If only a memory. More a distant dream. (I fled as one might in a nightmare.)

It was at Mass in Notre Dame when I saw her, the girl with the red bag. I couldn't tell her age though her tan overcoat and high heels implied a young professional. Her faith revealed itself by her devotion. She knew the prayers. She responded. She knelt. She genuflected before the Host (we consumed the Host side by side, though at the moment I did not notice her). When I returned to pray I told myself to

speak with her afterwards, but only if she stayed for the blessing. She did and my heart scrambled up my throat.

Incense filled the church. The world again felt charged. La messe est dite. I stood and walked behind her, my fear like ropes wrapping around my feet and wrists. I took the middle aisle, she the side. There was no indication that she saw me at all. I paused and stared at the facade of the church. She stopped to chat with two elderly women. As she walked by, I felt reality shift around me, a dolly zoom from the movies, and my mind raced for the words. ("Excusez-moi. Je"--a finger toward my eye to mean 'I saw'--"en cathédral. Etes, um, tu--vous catholique? Je ne parle pas très bien français. Desole--je suis desole.)

I took Rue d'Arcole, she disappeared westward on Rue du Cloître Notre Dame. As is with fear it fell away completely when I lost sight of her and resolve returned. I dashed back to kilometre zero but no longer saw her. I searched the Île de la Cité and the neighborhoods south of the river for two hours (riverboat barges, the banks of the river, cafes, bakeries, supermarkets, clothiers, restaurants, alleyways) and found no sight of the girl with the red bag.

She is lost forever, I told myself like some lugubrious poet. I promised to skip dinner if I did not find her here, tonight, so I continued my walk through the city. It became clear that she was gone but I felt something inside, a lightness from being in the city. Loneliness had seeped into my brain too quickly and paralyzed me. Day by day, overcome. Moment by moment, say yes.

As I walked home (once again without a map), I stumbled across couples dancing to swing music, teenaged boys dancing to hip hop, an impromptu street party outside of Supra on Rue du Temple, a man pissing into the bushes near Republique. The city unfurled before me, eliciting a Hail Mary muttered beneath my breath. Three days and I'd already lost my way, but the girl with the red bag ( one should name a guardian angel) had pulled me back in.

I ate a baguette on my way home because it is not dinner in Paris if you eat it with a heavy heart.