The Watchtower

work. I caught a glimpse of him exiting the park through the south gates, but then I got held up by traffic crossing the rue Auguste Comte. By the time I got to the other side, I thought I’d lost him. The avenue de l’Observatoire was divided in the middle by a park punctuated by statues and bordered by rows of chestnut trees. I couldn’t tell what side of the street he’d gone to, and he could be lurking behind any of the trees or statues … then I saw him—or his hat, actually—over a statue of a naked woman halfway down the block. He was walking south.
    I followed, feeling almost as if he wanted me to, as if he were leading me somewhere. But when I got to the end of the avenue de l’Observatoire, the man was gone. I looked all around and circled the Fontaine des Quatre Parties du Monde twice, even looking hard at the fountain to make sure he wasn’t lurking behind a dolphin or rearing horse, and scanned the street. But no one was in sight but a uniformed guard standing at the locked gates of the Observatory.
    I approached the guard smiling, trying to formulate the French to ask after a mysterious man in long coat and hat without seeming like a crazy American. Five minutes later the guard wore the same blank, slightly bored, and disdainful expression as when I’d approached him.
    “Could I be of some assistance?” a man’s voice from behind me asked in British-accented English.
    I turned, relieved to hear my mother tongue, and found myself staring into a pair of deep-chocolate-brown eyes.
    “Oh,” I said. “You’re at my hotel, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, I recognized you from breakfast. Roger Elden.” He held out a hand and I took it. His skin was warm and slightly damp.
    “Garet James,” I replied.
    “Are you attending the colloquium, too?”
    “Colloquium?”
    He pointed to a poster affixed to the gate. Dark Matter: Theory and Observation, it read in English and in French.
    “Oh, no!” I assured him, thinking I’d had plenty of dealings with another sort of dark matter this past year. “I thought I saw someone I knew heading this way and then he disappeared. I was trying to ask the guard if he’d seen him, but I’m afraid my French isn’t very good.”
    Briskly, Roger Elden asked me what my friend looked like (“He always wears a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off his face because he’s … sensitive to the sun,” I improvised), then asked the guard in fluent French whether he had seen a man fitting that description. The guard became pleasant and voluble under Elden’s interrogation, but the end result was that he hadn’t seen any such man and had not let anyone into the Observatory all morning.
    “I am the first one here, you see,” Elden explained to me. “I am using the Observatory’s library for some research. I am, how do you Americans say it, quite the nerd!”
    I grinned. “Hey, I’m a card-carrying nerd myself. I was on my way to the library at the Institut Océanographique.”
    “Really? Are you a marine biologist?”
    Too late I realized I now needed to come up with a lie. It had been fun for a minute to chat with a cute guy and not think about otherworldly assignations. Trying to stick to as much truth as I could, I told Roger Elden that I was researching aquatic shapes for a new line of jewelry. I showed him the watch I’d made. “It’s based on one I saw at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. I put a tower on the back of this one, but I might put an octopus on another.”
    Realizing I was going on a bit and that the British astronomer (even cooler than Italian journalist!) was staring, I shut up.
    “You know,” he said, looking up from the watch, “if you like old gadgets, you’d love to see what they’ve got inside the Observatory. They’ve got fabulous antique equipment. If you like, I could show you one night and show you the night sky over Paris. I have permission to use the Observatory after hours.”
    “Wow, that would be cool … can I get back to you on that? I’m not sure what my plans are.” I might be embarking for the Land of Fairy anytime now, I thought, but luckily didn’t say. I would meet a guy with potential just when I was making some progress on my quest.
    “Sure. I’m in Paris for the rest of the week. Call me if you have a night free.”
    We exchanged cell phone numbers and went our separate ways—he into the Observatory, me back up the avenue de l’Observatoire to the Institut Océanographique. I approached the building