A Rainy Day In Paris

It was during my third visit to Paris that I knew our marriage was over.

I love Paris. Paris is a grand dame of a city. She’s alluring. She beguiles and seduces. I’ve traversed her varied and fascinating arrondissments, sampled her wares, drank her wines, admired her good looks and reveled in her charms. There is something to delight the eye and soul around every corner, down every street. To know Paris is to love her. When in Paris with a lover, all seems enhanced somehow, magnified and glorified. Paris leaves one breathless.

Ah, as they say, “Springtime in Paris…”

* * *

It was spring when I was there last.

My wife and I had sojourned in the Bordeaux region, an amazing experience in and of itself. We had decided to finish our travels with another stay in Paris. We booked a room in one of Paris’ “Grand Hotels,” the St. Lazare. It’s a beautiful hotel (although I still prefer the hotel Lutétia in the heart of the St. Germain district).

So there we were, in a beautiful hotel in one of the world’s most beautiful, inspiring, sensuous cities.

Two strangers sharing a bed...with a chasm in between.

She decided she wished to go shopping…alone. I was…relieved, in a sense. I, too, wished to be alone. As it was, I had felt alone in her presence for several years. It felt more natural, to me, to walk the Parisian streets as the solitary man I had become. So I walked and I walked and I walked. It was a rainy spring day. It was, in fact, the only day of rain we had experienced during our entire trip. It rained.
It rained and the city glistened. It rained inside me, inside my soul.

I walked.

I walked past my favorite haunts, I walked past sheer magnificence, I walked past subtle beauties, I walked past the Parisians and the tourists, the Seine and the cathedrals. I simply walked and walked and walked. No one could tell I was crying - everyone’s face was wet. One would have had to have true acuity of vision to realize that my face was wetter than those of others.

It was in Paris in the spring that we both knew that we had allowed something precious and beautiful and profound somehow slip through our fingers…never to be reclaimed. We had traveled light,
as always. But, this time, we had both left our hearts behind as well. Somewhere. Mine was left aching among the sunflowers on a windswept prairie. Hers? I don’t know…I’ll never know…lost at the bottom of a bottle of wine, perhaps.

We were both quiet during the long flight home (although it would never again be a home). We had spent a rainy day in Paris.

* * *

Now it seems the rain will never end.

* * *