Twilight

They left just before the sun came up behind the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, his friends. The girl in her little black velvet dress, hair tousled, maroon lipstick smudged across a thousand empty glasses. Her man by her heavenly side, stoic and close like birds on a telephone wire.

I stayed up until the last darkness had gone, then closed the blinds in the morning and pretended I was dead. Henry went to school early in a gray felt jacket and Fedora hat, he thinks it makes him look like a young Hemingway (at least while he's still drunk). I let him believe it because it makes him happy.

Everywhere in Paris are relics from the Belle Epoque, the both of us were born a century too late. At Café de Flore later in the evening: me in emerald silk from Dior, he's changed jackets and shoes and leads me through the crowds of tourists, his steady arm soft around my waist. Everyone is looking, outside is rain and traffic and sudden flashes of neon light.