the foot of the steps of the Palais de la Découverte—not far from the Petit Palais where we first met—a black messenger bag with a baguette peeking out strapped across his body. He doesn’t look bored; he’s not anxiously tapping his foot. He’s standing there, comfortable with himself. I envy that. He catches my eye and smiles, hops off the step, and walks up to meet me. Two kisses on the cheeks. This time, I make sure to kiss his cheeks back in case I was sending mixed signals the other day at his apartment, when things ended a little weirdly.
“The science museum? Going to try and carbon-date the letters?” I sound chipper and American. It’s an easy go-to for me to ease my lingering anxiety. Fake it till you make it.
“No, but I am curious about this idea of a ‘date,’ as you Americans call it.” He grins.
I smile back. No need to fake it. “So . . .”
He tilts his head in the direction of the Seine, beckoning me to follow. A few short steps, and he cuts left, stepping over a short single-railed wooden fence into a grassy corner.
“You’re stepping on the grass. That’s interdit, you scofflaw,” I joke.
“There are no rules, only suggestions.” He reaches out with his hand. I slip mine into his and join him on the forbidden lawn.
We’re standing in front of an expansive white marble sculpture that I’ve walked right by multiple times, including moments ago, but have somehow never noticed. Alexandre draws me nearer to it. There’s a small pool of water surrounded by small shrubs and flowering plants. Different scenes are carved into the marble, some fading away, like the stone is trying to recapture them.
“It’s called The Poet’s Dream,” Alexandre explains. I told him about being named after a poet, and voilà. Well played, Alexandre.
It’s not exactly beautiful, this massive stone block. The cream-colored marble is grayed with soot and worn. There are probably hundreds of more interesting public sculptures in Paris. But there is one scene, a man kneeling at the feet of a woman who is bending over to embrace him, hidden in plain sight amidst the other figures. It reminds me a little of the Fountain of Time sculpture in my Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago—once finely chiseled faces and bodies weathered by storms and receding back into the stone, fading in time. My heart cracks a little. You’d think dreams etched in stone would be permanent, but an object remains unchanged unless acted upon by an outside force. I don’t know; maybe the laws of physics are more powerful than art. Maybe they’re two forces in conversation and balance.
“This way.” Alexandre tugs on my hand, and we leave the enclosed grassy corner. I’m trying not to notice that he’s still holding my hand. I’m also trying to will myself not to sweat. It’s gross to feel a clammy palm against yours. And I don’t want that to be the indelible image of me in Alexandre’s mind: the girl with sweaty hands who can’t avoid shit.
A few short strides and we come to a set of winding, uneven stone stairs. They are almost completely hidden by trees and shrubs. My heart pounds as we take our first step, then another, hand in hand. Alexandre smiles and inches a little closer to me as we descend through a crooked stone arch that looks like it’s straight out of Middle Earth. Large stones are piled high on top of one another, but the old stone is almost completely covered by ivy, and I’m certain it’s a portal to a fantasy realm.
We walk into a secret garden. A pocket park hidden in the center of Paris. A cement path leads us into a postage stamp–sized garden valley. There’s literally a babbling brook with koi and lily pads. A little farther down the path, and a spectacular colossus of a weeping beech tree shelters a little waterfall that drowns out the traffic noise. I’m not sure how the planners carved this lush dreamscape into such a small space—you could speed through the entire garden in a minute or two—but that is Paris: unexpected, beautiful spaces tucked away from a bustling city. No one else is in the garden.
“This is unreal,” I