Free It's Not Love, It's Just Paris by Patricia Engel

harm in honesty.
    “Most people can’t get enough of the sound of their own voice.”
    We looked at each other. It was strange to see him in daylight. His face, all sharp angles, pale sea-foam eyes flecked with bronze.
    “My mother used to tell me the quiet ones have the most to say.”
    “Was she shy?”
    “No, she said it to make me feel better. I was very shy as a child. I still am.”
    He pointed to the Missions Étrangères building beyond the brick wall at the far end of the park.
    “She worked over there when she was young. Whenever we came to Paris she took me to visit her old friends there and then to play here in this park afterward. I always looked forward to it.”
    “You came to Paris often?”
    “Not very often. Just a few times a year. My mother and I lived on the coast but my father always lived here.”
    “They’re divorced?”
    “No. They just preferred to live apart.”
    He went silent. My palms moistened and I slipped the postcards into my bag before my sweat made the ink run, but he took it as a sign I was leaving and offered to walk me home. I immediately regretted having moved at all.
    I wasn’t planning on leaving but now felt I had to. He held the gate open and we stepped back onto rue du Bac. The house was less than a five-minute walk away but I walked slowly. I wanted to ask him what he’d do for the rest of the afternoon, if we could go back to the bench and sit there even if just to sit quietly and watch the children pump their legs higher and higher on the swings.
    “How much longer will you be in town?” It was all I could manage.
    “Not much longer.”
    We were already at the driveway. I thought I could invite him for a coffee or a cigarette like any of the other girls would do, but I only stood still, looking at my feet, then up at him, and he did the same. I could have asked him about his cousin. Anything to have a reason to stand there a moment longer, but he pulled back—no bise for me even though people around there were promiscuous with their double kisses—and gave a small wave just like the guy on the train platform he said was not him.
    He walked backward in the middle of the tranquil road, facing me.
    “Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
    “Maybe.”
    The sight of him, the distance growing between us, hurt me more than seemed reasonable. This wanting to be near him, the impulse to jump into a void. There’s only one word for it in any language I know—the Spanish corazonada, a premonition, an awakening of the heart. A tightening. A fist closing around it.

5
    It was Séraphine’s idea to have a party on the first full moon of October. She allowed one grand fête per season. Anything more, she said, was just a plea for attention. There was a box of calling cards she kept locked away printed with
Les Filles de rue du Bac
in raised black ink that she pulled out expressly for these occasions, giving us each two dozen to offer our special guests. The idea was that nobody should be admitted to the party without one.
    Loic gathered us around the dining room table and had us draw up tentative guest lists to avoid overlaps. Tarentina reigned as the VIP queen at nightclubs full of the highly moneyed and their hangers-on, while Giada’s network consisted of hippie kids, techno-mongers, and art students from Oberkampf to the Bastille. Dominique ran with the Phoenicians, the Persians, and the petrolbloods. Camila’s leg was the Latin culos de oro, fresas, hijos de papi—children of moguls, politicians—current, couped, overthrown—the exiled and the kidnapped, who mostly circulated in private house parties. Saira’s contingency, beyond Stef, was the Swiss boarding-school alums, African junior royals, and import/export heirs with whom she regularly ditched class for four-hour lunches. Naomi’s original crew consisted of the Americans, Australians, and Britswho held their own pub mixers, which allowed them to live an illusory Parisian life without learning a