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The First Time I Saw Paris

He was bad news and I knew it. But we’d been dating almost a year—at 25, I still thought that was how real men were supposed to act—so when he said he was going skiing in Europe, I decided it was time I learned the sport. I announced my intention to join the group of young New York singles he was assembling and paid no attention when he warned that I’d be on my own. “I won’t be carrying your bags,” he said.

Our heavily discounted airfare only carried us as far as Luxembourg, where we rented a couple of cars for the drive to Chamonix. In the throes of my first experience with jet lag, I spent this leg of the trip in a dreamlike state, indulging in romantic visions of the boyfriend and me schussing the slopes and snuggling après-ski in front of a giant fireplace. At the chalet, I would be rooming with another woman across the hall from my Romeo, and I pictured myself tiptoeing out for clandestine meetings after everyone else had retired.

As we sorted out rooms and made plans for an early dinner, he said one more person would join us.

The person turned out to be a five-foot-eight blonde in tight pants from Geneva. I knew she was trouble the minute I saw her. He was carrying her bags.

For ten days, I watched as she lived out my romantic vision. On the slopes, her supple grace contrasted sharply with my snowplow efforts on the bunny hill, though I got high marks for my pole plants, as I pictured her face at each target in the snow. By night, she chatted easily in French with the barmaids who served us. And at the end of the day, I watched them close the door to the room across the hall.

Eventually, I reached my pain threshold. I had three days left on this trip, and I’d never been to Paris. Bloody but unbowed, I packed my bags and headed for the overnight train to the City of Light. The ride was interminable; down to my last $30, I couldn’t afford a sleeping car. As I stumbled off into the Gare de Lyon, I had a moment of panic: What was I doing, and what made me think I could do it alone? Hard as it was to go forward, I couldn’t go back.

Though I spoke no French, I figured my eight years of Spanish would give me a kind of sub-cutaneous understanding of the language, if not the words themselves, then at least the general meaning. I didn’t know another person in the city—no one to run to when I tired of the adventure.

At the Paris branch of my New York bank, I threw myself on the mercies of a nice bank officer, who allowed me to draw $100 on my MasterCard account. Sure that I was already over my credit limit, I thanked him profusely and bolted. I’d been told that the cheapest hotels were on the Left Bank, in the “student section” on the Boulevard St. Germain. With $130 to get me through three days and back to Luxembourg, “cheap” would be the operative adjective for every activity.

The hotel I settled on was a French rabbit warren, offering barely enough room to stand up when I wasn’t lying down and a lovely view of a brick wall 20 feet from my window. I reminded myself that I wasn’t in Paris to sleep.

I established a morning routine of petit déjeuner, with coffee that would eat the spoon if given a chance, at a sidewalk café where I could plot my day’s activities and pretend to be part of the Paris bustle. Using the walking tours in my Michelin guide, I plotted routes that would simultaneously indulge my love of Impressionist art and take me past the city’s signature symbols. I later calculated that I walked some 26 miles in those three days.

My last day in Paris was the first day of spring. I spent the morning at the Louvre and afterward wandered through the Tuileries gardens, enjoying the unusually warm weather. As I sat on a stone wall surrounding a fountain, a young Frenchman approached me. Tall and thin, with brown wavy hair, he was handsome in a bohemian student way.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle.” His voice was soft, and he smiled shyly at me.

“Bonjour,” I smiled back. He said something more, but we had already reached the limits of my conversational French. In desperation, I tried, “Je ne parle pas français. Parlez-vous anglais?”

Alas, no. But he sat down beside me, and we spent a few awkward moments while we each tried to think of something to say.

He spoke again. “Le soleil est bien.”

My mind raced, translating French to Spanish to English, and I understood. The sun is nice. “Ah, oui. Le soleil est bien,” I agreed. In truth, it had never felt so bien as it did in that moment.
More silence, then in a moment of inspiration, he offered me his pack of Gauloises. “Cigarette?” he asked.

“Merci,” I responded, taking one and hoping I could smoke it without choking.

He lit my cigarette, then his, and we sat together on the edge of the beautiful fountain in the park until they burned to the end. With no further excuse to extend our time together, we said, “Au revoir.”

I left the next morning for Luxembourg and my flight to New York. I moved on to guys who treated me better, and every year, on the first day of spring, I thank Paris and the memory of the boy at the fountain for showing me the light.

Lee Stokes Hilton is a corporate communications consultant and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times and Family Circle. She lives in Summit, New Jersey, but is moving this year to Austin, Texas.

~Lee Hilton