These cupid-bow lips, fascinating as it was to see them on a man, mumbled an apology which I had to lean in to catch, then conveyed in a more audible authoritative tone: This isn't a holiday! Leave right away and stick to my schedule! After which, the lips relaxed and grinned, almost like a Cheshire cat in that it reached the eyes and two neat rows of white teeth showed, though I think the grin was more from embarrassment than laughing at one, that one, of course, being me: a lone traveller whom had lately come out of the rigid closet, not as gay, though what better place to do so than in Paris, but as someone finally ready to embrace the world and expand the circle in which they usually dwelt.
So, yes, I felt cheated from my own liberation, as well as justly reprimanded like a puppy who chews the furniture when their owner's out, for this wasn't my holiday, it had been his before misfortune struck, and was still. I had agreed, unwillingly, to be his envoy, but somewhere in Paris, as I hit my stride, I'd unthinkingly misplaced his shadow, probably left it behind at a tourist spot or in a metro station, so excited had I been that my confidence was beginning to assert itself in foreign lands. And so, I was guilty as charged.
I quickly scribbled on the back of a postcard of the Notre Dame: Going to Milan! with my benefactor's address and asked the same receptionist as before to post it off tout de suite. I scrambled up the stairs rather than wait for the elevator, and once in my room hastily ransacked drawers until everything was back, not as neatly packed, in my holdall, which owing to my travels unattractively bulged. I'd given away my umbrella earlier that day to a busking musician, who had no protection from the rain and I had no change so it seemed like a fair transaction, though I realised as I continued my promenade, that one, it was foolish, and two, my subconscious had recreated a Robert D picture, and proved, yet again, art lives on though the artist is gone, and so, in turn, the artist lives on through his art.
I'm fond of circles, those I draw around myself and those that are evident in life situations. Anyway, the umbrella was gone, which left my trusty walking aid as the only external baggage, and which when used I held with a bird-like claw, not only to steady myself but also to welt any would-be assailants. I had heard the probability of that was high if I went to Barcelona, not that it featured on the itinerary, yet naturally after learning that I'd attributed this opportunist act to other European cities, albeit on a lesser scale. Cities are judged like people: pockets of crime, where to avoid, where to go, which was another fact I'd hadn't known before I was made to step out of my comfort zone.
And yes, I realise I've wandered farther from the point, the point of my departure, which in reading this seems to have been onerously delayed. Well, that's a lie - it wasn't, I did go, with less haste than when I scrambled, which was rather untruthful of me as I couldn't really scramble with a cane, up the stairs, though it is true going down is worse on the knees. The elevator, just so you know, was in use, stopping everywhere but the fourth floor, and so, stairs it was, followed by shallow breathing having reached the lobby and refusing help as if I were swatting flies, before issuing a final and cheery bye-bye.
I exited to unseasonable weather and made for the nearest metro station. The 87 bus would have been more direct, but the metro, though more inconvenient, seemed quicker, if I was to make the high speed train departing from Paris-Gare de Lyon, Diderot, and the architecture of this station, I'd been told, was sublime. Unfortunately, my plans, once again, got scuppered as there was an umbrella on track, which I hoped, in some bizarre way, wasn't mine.
Picture credit: Musician in the Rain, Robert Doisneau
