Paris Is Always a Good Idea Read Free Page A

Morris himself greeted the young man with the broad shoulders and big feet with a friendly wag of the tail when, after four weeks, Rosalie invited him into her apartment for the first time. Well … perhaps apartment wasn’t exactly the right word for that one poky little room over the store with only enough space for a bed, an armchair and wardrobe, and a big drawing table under the window. However, the room was extremely cozy, and Rosalie had only discovered its best feature after she moved in: through a second little window at the back of the building you could get out onto an area of flat roof that Rosalie used as a terrace in the summer. It was sheltered and secluded by old stone tubs with plants and a couple of weather-worn trellises, which were covered with glowing blue clematis in the summer, so that it was almost completely hidden from view.
    This was where Rosalie had set the table in the open air when René visited her for the first time. She was no great shakes as a cook—she was much more skilled with her pencil and brush than she was with a ladle—but on the rickety wooden table with its white cloth there were flickering tea lights in a variety of sizes, and there was red wine, pâté de foie gras, ham, grapes, a little chocolate cake, artichoke hearts drenched in lots of oil, salted butter, Camembert, goat cheese, and—a baguette.
    â€œOh, my God!” René had sighed in comic despair. “Nothing but unhealthy stuff! Total overkill! You’ll come to a bad end. Someday your metabolism will collapse and then you’ll become as fat as my aunt Hortense.”
    Rosalie took a great gulp of red wine from her glass, wiped her mouth, and pointed her finger at him. “Wrong, my dear,” she said. “Nothing but delicious stuff.” Then she stood up and with a quick movement stepped out of her dress. “Am I fat, then?” she asked, dancing half-naked over the roof with graceful steps and flowing hair.
    René couldn’t put his glass down quickly enough.
    â€œHey, wait!” He’d run after her, laughing, and eventually caught her. “No, you’re just right,” he’d murmured, his hands running sensuously over her back, and then they’d stayed on the roof, lying on a woolen blanket until the damp of the morning crept up on them.
    Now, as she stood in the gloomy hall, which always smelt of orange-scented cleaning fluid, and closed the mailbox, Rosalie thought back to that night on the roof with a degree of melancholy.
    In the past three years the differences between her and René had become more and more obvious. And where she had earlier sought and found common factors to unite them, she now saw everything that divided her from her boyfriend with all too much clarity.
    Rosalie loved breakfasting in bed; René had no time at all for “crumbs all over the bed.” She was a night owl; he was an early riser. She enjoyed her moderate walks with her little dog; he had bought himself a racing bike on which he sped like the wind through the streets and parks of Paris. When traveling was in question, nowhere was too far away for him, while Rosalie could not imagine anything more pleasant than to sit in one of the little old squares in the cities and towns of southern Europe and just watch the time go by.
    But what she most regretted was that René never wrote her letters or cards, not even on her birthday. “But I’m here,” he would say when she looked in vain for a card on the breakfast table on her birthday. Or, “But we can always phone,” when he was at one of his seminars.
    At the beginning Rosalie had still written him notes and cards she drew herself—for his birthday, or when he broke his foot and had to spend a week in hospital, or just when she was leaving the house on some errand or other, or when she’d gone to bed late at night and he was already asleep. “Hi, Early Riser: please be