Fourteen
Paris was a good dream. Paris was one of the dreams that made it safe for Bettina to go to sleep. Too many of the bad dreams, the real dreams that held horror, and she would never get to sleep. The thought that maybe tonight would be a Paris dream helped, always.
Last night’s Paris was different. A train. A surface train and not the right kind. More like a tram. Space and seeing people she thought she knew who weren’t people she knew at all. White with touches of dull green. Drab and plastic and soft metal and too much glass. She needed somewhere to stay and got out at a stop unexpectedly, hoping to find a cheap hotel. Crossed under a bridge where the landscape was rubble. After the trashed buildings, there was a square. Very Paris. Haussmann. Nineteenth-century. Stone and gilt
