for me. I had missed the deadline to apply for the 1986 program, but was keen on applying for the following year. I wanted to know if it would be possible to live in Europe with Stefano. Was he really my destiny? Was Paris? In my mind I had started to conflate the two. Both represented the same thing. They were objects of desire, utopian ideals. When I thought of Stefano, he was no longer the person who incessantly played on his portable tape recorder âVideo Killed the Radio Starâ by British synthpop group The Buggles. I had hated that song. It was what had convinced me that we were never to be. We didnât like the same kind of music. Three years later I had switched mental gears. Or maybe I wasnât thinking at all, not rationally anyway. Ignoring my initial instincts, I willed myself to follow a fiction, an idea of Stefano as the personification of love. I had just been too intellectual the last time, I told myself. I had been too self-conscious. I hadnât opened my heart.
Stefano had said that all he could spare would be a weekend in Paris. I was to meet him on a Friday afternoon, when he would take the train in from Zurich. I figured that would be about the right amount of time to sort out the rest of my life. I bought an air ticket for a five-day stay. I would get there two days early, and until Stefano arrived and I relocated to a hotel, I would stay with a friend who had moved to Paris to work in the fashion industry. I was scheduled to arrive mid-February, around the time the ready-to-wear collections were being staged in Paris at the Louvre. My friend Tova worked at that time for a big-name designer and said sheâd be swamped and wouldnât have much time to socialize. But she offered me the keys to her place, where she said she didnât have a bed, just a futon on the floor. âBut itâs very central,â she emphasized. âAnd youâll have the place pretty much to yourself.â
We had discussed these arrangements over the telephone, a straightforward 20 th-century thing to do. After I hung up, I realized that I had never picked up the phone to dial Stefano. Partly it was because of the language barrier. But after I thought of it, I supposed that I had preferred him at a remove, a long-distance letter that I waited for, an emotional experience crystallized in images and feathery words. On the plane ride over I worried that I might not be able to tolerate the reality of him any more than I had the first time, almost three years earlier. I thought of the me then, and the me who had boarded the plane that evening with a new set of black Mandarina Duck rubberized luggage bought expressly for the trip. I also had a Walkman and a separate carrying case for all my makeup. When Stefano had seen me last, I didnât wear makeup. I didnât even pluck my brows. I had had just two changes of clothes. I had worn flat-soled sandals that made him call me his little Roman gladiator. I was bookish, idealistic, a student with no obligations except to the books. Life had changed since then. I now had credit cards and debt. I had grown used to eating out in expensive restaurants, going to premieres, mingling with stars, driving in white stretch limousines, flying to New York just to catch a show. I no longer wrote poetry. I hadnât read a novel in years. Who had time? I looked out the window at the night sky and saw a starless black hole. I felt a twinge of panic. I hoped against hope that I was doing the right thing.
WHEN I ARRIVED in Paris, I took a taxi from the airport to Tovaâs. It was early morning. The sky was low and gray, the dead of winter. There was no snow on the ground, but the streets of Paris looked pale and petrified, as if frozen in time. There was no human life, save for the shadowy figures of uniformed men hauling brooms and dustpans with which to clean away the frost that clung like spiderwebs to the columns and arches of the still-sleeping city.
Stefano had said that all he could spare would be a weekend in Paris. I was to meet him on a Friday afternoon, when he would take the train in from Zurich. I figured that would be about the right amount of time to sort out the rest of my life. I bought an air ticket for a five-day stay. I would get there two days early, and until Stefano arrived and I relocated to a hotel, I would stay with a friend who had moved to Paris to work in the fashion industry. I was scheduled to arrive mid-February, around the time the ready-to-wear collections were being staged in Paris at the Louvre. My friend Tova worked at that time for a big-name designer and said sheâd be swamped and wouldnât have much time to socialize. But she offered me the keys to her place, where she said she didnât have a bed, just a futon on the floor. âBut itâs very central,â she emphasized. âAnd youâll have the place pretty much to yourself.â
We had discussed these arrangements over the telephone, a straightforward 20 th-century thing to do. After I hung up, I realized that I had never picked up the phone to dial Stefano. Partly it was because of the language barrier. But after I thought of it, I supposed that I had preferred him at a remove, a long-distance letter that I waited for, an emotional experience crystallized in images and feathery words. On the plane ride over I worried that I might not be able to tolerate the reality of him any more than I had the first time, almost three years earlier. I thought of the me then, and the me who had boarded the plane that evening with a new set of black Mandarina Duck rubberized luggage bought expressly for the trip. I also had a Walkman and a separate carrying case for all my makeup. When Stefano had seen me last, I didnât wear makeup. I didnât even pluck my brows. I had had just two changes of clothes. I had worn flat-soled sandals that made him call me his little Roman gladiator. I was bookish, idealistic, a student with no obligations except to the books. Life had changed since then. I now had credit cards and debt. I had grown used to eating out in expensive restaurants, going to premieres, mingling with stars, driving in white stretch limousines, flying to New York just to catch a show. I no longer wrote poetry. I hadnât read a novel in years. Who had time? I looked out the window at the night sky and saw a starless black hole. I felt a twinge of panic. I hoped against hope that I was doing the right thing.
WHEN I ARRIVED in Paris, I took a taxi from the airport to Tovaâs. It was early morning. The sky was low and gray, the dead of winter. There was no snow on the ground, but the streets of Paris looked pale and petrified, as if frozen in time. There was no human life, save for the shadowy figures of uniformed men hauling brooms and dustpans with which to clean away the frost that clung like spiderwebs to the columns and arches of the still-sleeping city.
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