Free Lost in Hotels by M. Martin

to sleep on the flight, taut with anxiety about my decision to do this and leave my husband and son yet again.
    “Can I get you to lift your shade, ma’am?” asks a flight attendant hovering above with a mom-like French accent. I lift the flap in an instant.
    “How long till landing?” I ask the slender and distinguished flight attendant, whose hair was pulled tightly back behind her face.
    “Captain says it’s about forty-five minutes,” she says in her fabulous French accent.
    “So I have time to do a quick change once the bathroom frees up?”
    “Yes, we’ll announce the final call for landing, but you can have a few minutes after that if you want. I won’t tell.” Her authoritative but considerate manner makes me feel more relaxed as I get up with my makeup bag and line up for the restroom. Through the window, Paris comes into view through the small window in the bulky exit door with its plastic covering.
    In February, thick clouds always blanket Europe, the weather rarely letting itself known until that one dip that takes you just below the cloud cover to reveal the sprawling city of Haussmann rooflines and urban perfection where even the outlying suburbs offer some sort of romantic charm. The city seduces my thoughts as much as the possibility of seeing David as I mentally plan my outfits under either a heavy cashmere coat or a Rick Owens trench that justified my checked bag surcharge.
    Charles de Gaulle Airport never disappoints with its customs line of exquisitely dressed travelers and epic hallways that feel like a catwalk for my new Giambattista Valli boots. The automatic doors that open to the outside world reveal a platoon of drivers with more signs than I could have ever imagined. Virtually every hotel is represented with a clearly written all-cap nameplate. I spot my name almost immediately. I approach my Parisian driver who has a super-cute pencil mustache and a slender silhouette that makes him look forty and not his youthful twenty-something that almost feels of another time.
    “Are you Ms. Catherine Klein?” the driver stutters through a mere sentence of English with secondary syllables that linger an extra beat on his boyish pink lips.
    “Yes, indeed. Thank you for being so prompt.” I smile as he grabs my bags without attempting another word and quickly walking a few feet ahead.
    His suit shows the sign of a long day, or perhaps a few wearings since last pressed—wrinkled in the rear of the pants, at the knees, and just below where his butt should be on his slight torso.
    As we get into the car, the scent of cigarette smoke fills the air despite a well-positioned No Smoking sign. The boyish driver enters the car and makes eye contact with me sitting patiently in the backseat, and then again. His thick black hair seems almost stitched to his head like a doll without a bit of flesh or scalp exposed. His pitch-black eyes are deep set with black circles that look like bronze coins but still sexy and mysterious.
    He navigates the immaculately paved freeway with the zeal of a boy captivated with driving a car he can’t afford, passing and changing lanes with full blinker and right-yielding European vibrato before exiting into the thick sprawl of Paris. And there is that perfect urban landscape that seems planned by Aphrodite herself, from quixotic buildings clad in balconies built for two to cinematic cafés where couples linger over shared lunches and coffee always served with a proper cup and saucer. Bridges are capped in a frosting of gold paint flanked by iron art nouveau lampposts that herald a time when kings paraded with cavalry and princesses traveled by gilded horse-drawn carriages.
    It’s difficult not to stray into deep fantasy when lost in the shade of the meandering rues and the interconnecting arrondissements of central Paris. I wasn’t quite sure where to stay, either, as it was high season and rooms would be tight virtually any place you’d want to stay and even in some you