Paris did what Paris does, which is refuse to care about your problems while simultaneously making them feel smaller.
I walked without a plan and the city gave me one anyway, pulling me down streets and around corners with the particular generosity of places that have been beautiful long enough to know how to share them. I bought things I didn't need and wanted badly. I stood in a perfumery while an old man asked me serious questions about how I wanted to smell and listened to my answers like they mattered.
For my honeymoon, I told him.
He didn't ask where my husband was. He just nodded and reached for something from the top shelf.
Something that stays, he said. Something he will think of when you are not in the room.
I was on my way back, bags in both hands, the city going gold aroun
