by Jodi Christie
I bought the ticket before I fell in love with him. I had just finished giving up on everything and going to Paris alone seemed the most romantically appropriate thing to do. And then I met him. And then I was leaving. I remember our last moment together. We were standing on my front porch and I was looking down at my red shoes with white polka dots and he was looking down at me. I felt panicky and my heart quickened but, when I looked up at him, I smiled because I couldn’t help it.
We talked on the phone until the very last second before I entered the gate to Flight 442 and then I woke up nine hours later at Charles De Gaulle airport and realized that, suddenly, everything was very real.
The early morning sunlight couldn’t have been brighter or warmer. It disgusted and disappointed me because it should have been raining. My body felt weak despite the heaviness of my head and I was in that state of delirium that happens after long flights, suddenly realizing that you’re breathing in the air of a new city. It feels new. It’s like you knew you were coming here all along but you didn’t truly know.
I sat on my suitcase outside of Terminal One, smoking a Marlboro and listening to airplanes take off, realizing I was already excited about going home and that the days would each be their own eternities. Slightly nauseated from the combination of cigarette, empty stomach and profound sadness, I was propelled into motion to end this painful sitting and thinking. I felt empty. But, I suppose if there’s anywhere in the world to be in love and heartbroken, Paris is probably the place.
I sat in cafés on cobblestone streets and wrote letters to him that I would never send. I wandered crowded boulevards listening to his iPod and was reminded of how excited I’d be to go directly to his house everyday after work. We’d sit on his bed and listen to those very same songs, complain about things, laugh about things, ask questions about things and then eat sushi in our underpants because the air conditioning was broken.
I cried in the meticulously manicured gardens of Luxembourg, watching the rain bounce upward from ponds and I cried when I saw the Mona Lisa for the very first time. It almost felt like I was choking or about to explode and I had to look down at the floor to regain my composure. And when I stood at the top of Montmarte with the entire city at my feet, I cried because of the immensity and the weight of my sorrow. I ached.
At the top of the Eiffel Tower, exactly 3726 miles away from him, I imagined that I could see that far. I stared at the mini maze hundreds of feet below me and I half expected it to not be real anymore once I got back down to the ground. I watched boats. I looked for record shops so I could bring something home to him. I found this bizarre French hip hop album and I knew exactly what his laughter would sound like when I showed him. I bought it.
There was a thunderstorm one afternoon. It happened all of a sudden. Clouds crept in like thin, grey fingers over the tip of the Sacre Coeur cathedral, slicing its highest points into smaller pieces. So menacing and so immediate and the sky just opened. The rain was cold and I was stuck out in it. Wet feet and shivering. And you know that very best feeling when you come inside from a rain storm in the afternoon and put warm clothes on when your skin is still a little damp and lie down beside someone? I have never wanted anything so badly. But I had no choice but to completely surrender to the rainstorm. And walking to my hotel faster wouldn’t make my clothes any less wet. Just like walking to my hotel faster wouldn’t bring me home any sooner.
Ten days passed. I arrived for my return flight at Charles De Gaule airport five hours early and smoked an entire pack of Marlboros and read the last few pages of Kurt Vonnegut’s “A Man without a Country”.
And, an eternity later, I was home.
He wasn’t waiting for me.
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