The Paris Apartment

with their small dogs and their excellent breeding.
I look at the text message I sent to Jacques last night. Bonne nui

was all a bit last minute, coming here. Ben didn’t sound that thrilled when I called him earlier and told him I was on my way. True, I didn’t give him much

Or, as we say in French: la voix du sang est la plus forte. The voice of blood is the strongest.

There is a place for me to put my photographs with their echoes of a life once lived, the little relics I have collected and which I hold onto when I feel most alone; the flowers I pick from the courtyard garden every other morning so there is something fresh and alive in here. This place, for all its shortcomings, represents security. Without it I have nothing.

And somehow, even though I hate my name, on his lips it sounded different, almost special. I nodded, because I didn’t feel like I could speak.

This place has swallowed time, like something from a fairytale.

eye make-up has run where she’s been crying.

When I told Jacques I wanted to take care of the courtyard’s small garden he did not understand. “There are people we can pay to do it for us,” he told me. In my husband’s world there are people you can pay for anything.

most of my brother’s clothes seem to come from places called Acne (why would you wear clothes named after a skin condition?)

This place, for all its shortcomings, represents security. Without it I have nothing.