their parents, teenagers roughhouse and tease. After two blocks she stops before an ancient portal, Latin words carved above its arch. V’s replace the letter U, making the words even more impossible to decipher. By the looks of the nineteenth-century dates, the arch has a history all its own. Like Lena.
Once through the portal, Lena stands before the back entrances of restaurants in a blind alley filled with trucks and garbage cans that could place her anywhere in the world: the scent of discarded vegetables, overripe fruit, bones, and uncooked meat; trucks grind leftovers to unrecognizable garbage; men in white smocks and dirt-smeared aprons yell to one another as they pile the wiggling carcasses of the morning’s catch onto loading docks.
This alley reminds Lena of Randall’s habit of taking her, wherever they traveled, through back streets to smell the real city. He would stop and talk to dockworkers and busboys, using his hands and face more than any foreign words he knew. “This is how you find out where the real people eat.” She almost turns to look for Randall, to ask him to sit with her over a glass of wine. A glass of Beaujolais? She brushed wine on her lips the day he proposed. He said she tasted like violets and berries.
The alley leads to the corner and the wide Cours Saleya. Time to walk where Tina might walk, to smell what Tina might smell. Even though Nice is one city over from Villefranche, it is sophisticated and charming and, Lena speculates, a city that Tina might occasionally visit. The promenade of the famous Vieux Carré is crowded. Slender young men and women hand out sample menus to lure hungry tourists into overpriced and nondescript restaurants; people stroll everywhere—arm in arm, in tight packs, comfortable with brushing elbows. She inhales—there is a hint of mildew in the air—and sticks out her tongue to taste what she smells around her: salt, basil, garlic, lavender, and wine. She will come to know that Nice smells different each hour of the day and night.
A handsome maitre d’ smiles. His badge is printed with his name, Pascal, and the words Bienvenue. Benvenido. Willkommen. Welcome. “Bonjour, Madame,” he says, waving Lena into his dimly lit restaurant. She accepts his kind gesture. Pascal points to a front table so that the ever-present blues of the sky, the crackled faces of the ancient stone buildings, the vendors’ striped tents and handmade crafts, the music, and the passing crowds are set like a stage play in front of her. The streets are covered with cobblestones. Restaurants’ tables line both sides of the Cours for as far as she can see. Cigarette smoke, fidgeting kids, quarreling lovers. Cups clinking against thick porcelain saucers. A roving band strums guitars in unison; a troubadour misquotes the lyrics to “American Pie.”
“You are perhaps waiting for a friend, Madame?” The young man’s accent is melodic. His question is not offensive. He hands Lena an oversized menu written in French and British English, the prices in euros and pounds. “Nope, not waiting for anyone.”
Cheryl and Lena, once inside their hotel room, had reverse reactions to the layovers and the twelve-hour flight. Cheryl was enervated. With barely a comment about the room’s Provençal décor—the bedspreads’ tiny cornflower blue and sunshine yellow flowers, the brass handheld shower head, or the wedge of the Mediterranean visible in a stretch over the ornate balcony rail—Cheryl snatched a black gel mask from her carry-on, put it on top of her eyes, and crawled under the covers without unpacking her suitcase, without taking off her clothes.
“A glass of Beaujolais.” Lena is energized. After months of sleeping to forget, she is eager to remember what life has to offer. She shuffles her feet in a careful, congratulatory dance under the table and points to the wine selection. When Pascal sets her glass in front of her, she raises it in a mock toast to him, to the crowd, to the sky and blinks back gathering tears. Last time. Last time. This is the last time she can feel sad in this wonderful place. She downs the entire glass of wine; unable to drink alone, she leaves six euros on the table and rushes back to the hotel.
f f f
“You promised you weren’t gonna do that.” Cheryl stops in the middle of the street and crosses her arms. “I know you’re thinking about Randall. I can see it in your face.”
Lena scratches her nose and sniffs in that way she’s