Chapter 29 An American In Paris 1

• I KEEP TELLING MYSELF that I am very calm, lying on the hotel bed, waiting for the phone to ring. But I am not calm. I am remembering things. Some of them from three and a half years ago. Some from today, wandering about through the piles of leaves that have not even bothered to turn yellow before they drop from the tree. Probably this happens in other places too, but I always think of it as distinctly and outrageously Parisian.
• It is late fall, everyone is back in Paris. Today I went over to the cafe where I first met her and they refused to let me have a seat by myself near the window I had spent the morning in the Turkish bath, my first morning in Paris, lying about for hours in the steam rooms before retiring to the outer chamber. If I close my eyes now I can see it all very clearly: fountain at the center of the room, the stained-glass windows; coats, scarves, clothes hanging beneath them; on the covered mattresses, legs curled up, leaning together, lying down, naked, wrapped in towels, drinking mint tea, eating pastries and fruit, the women talk together in a sprawl of purses and colored plastic bags, massage one another, sit with their eyes closed, keep an eye on each other.
• Years ago I heard about this place from her, she mentioned it casually but it stayed in my mind. From the first moment she spoke of it, I thought: “Someday I'm going to come back here, it's going to happen and she will go there with me.”