Paris: The Novel

promise you this is true.”
    She stared at him.
    “I work on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower,” he continued proudly. “He knows me.”
    She continued to stare at him.
    “Do you always piss on people’s heads?” she asked.
    “Never. I swear.”
    She shook her head.
    “I think you must be crazy.”
    “There is a bar over there.” He pointed up the street. “I was going to eat something. I’ll give you supper. It’s a respectable place. You’ll be quite safe. When you want to leave, I won’t follow you.”
    She paused.
    “You really looked for me all over Paris, for a year?”
    “I swear to you.”

    In the bar, he could see she was giving him a thorough inspection, but he pretended not to notice. They sat at a small wooden table.
    He supposed she was two or three years younger than he was. There were even more freckles on her face than he remembered. Her eyes were hazel, but up close he could see different lights in them. A hint of blue or green, he couldn’t decide which. Perhaps both. But it was her mouth that he especially noticed. He’d remembered that it was wide, but there was something potentially sensuous about her lips that excited him. And she had white, even teeth. He hadn’t been able to see that before.
    She was sitting across from him, leaning back slightly, as though to keep him at a distance. He could hardly blame her for that.
    “My name is Thomas Gascon,” he said.
    “I am Édith.”
    “You come from this quarter?” he asked.
    “We’ve always been here.” She shrugged. “Since it was a village.”
    “I’m from the Maquis. On Montmartre.”
    “I’ve never been there.”
    “It’s all right. People come up there for the dancing, and the views. But our family name is Gascon, so Monsieur Eiffel says we come from Gascony.”
    “Monsieur Eiffel seems to be important to you.”
    “I worked for him on the Statue of Liberty. Then I got sick, but he let me work on the tower as a favor. He was talking to me this afternoon.”
    “He must think well of you, then.”
    “I’m skilled. That’s why he hires me. It’s important for a man to have a skill. If he can.”
    “My mother and I clean. And I work for my aunt Adeline too. She has a very good situation.” She paused. “Maybe I shall inherit her position one day.”
    “Would you like to do that?”
    “Certainly. She works for Monsieur Ney, the attorney.”
    “Oh.” This meant nothing to him, but in her mind, evidently, he was as significant as Monsieur Eiffel.
    She took a little wine, but she refused to eat, explaining that she was on her way to her aunt, who would be expecting to feed her.
    She asked him some questions about his work and his family, then said that she must leave.
    “I hope I shall see you again,” he said.
    She shrugged.
    “You know where I work in the evenings.”
    “I don’t get off work until late in the summer months,” he said.
    “I don’t get off work until late anytime.”
    “Can I see you safely to your aunt’s?”
    “No.” She seemed about to get up, then paused. “Tell me one thing,” she said. “Why did you waste your time looking for me all over Paris?”
    He considered.
    “I will tell you,” he answered. “But another time.”
    She laughed.
    “Then perhaps I shall never know.”

    But he did see her, a week later, and this time she consented to eat something, but only a crepe. And toward the end of their little meal, she said: “You still have not answered my question.”
    “About why I looked for you?” He considered for a moment. “Because, when I first saw you, I said to myself: ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry.’ It was therefore necessary to find you.”
    She stared at him in silence for a moment.
    “You tie yourself to a railing and hang there offering to piss on people’s heads, and then you catch sight of a person you’ve never seen before in your life, and you decide to marry her?”
    “That’s it, exactly.”
    “You’re insane. I’m eating with a lunatic.” She shook her head. “No chance, monsieur.”
    “You can’t refuse.”
    “I certainly can.”
    “Impossible. I haven’t asked you yet.”
    “Ah. What an asshole.”

    The next week, however, when she found him waiting for her one evening, she told him that, if he liked, they could meet on the following Sunday afternoon. “Meet me in front of the Trocadéro at two,” she said.
    Sunday was a warm September day. She was wearing a pale striped dress and sash.
    On the slope below