Free Paris Times Eight by Deirdre Kelly

loftlike space whose walls were lined with books, arranged alphabetically. By day it was the bookstore reading room, a sprawling second floor littered with faded chenille pillows and equally worn divans with colorful crocheted blankets thrown insouciantly on top. At night when the store was closed, these were converted into the beds on which Whitman’s acolytes of art would lie in order to be closer to their dreams.
    One was already there, sitting cross-legged on his makeshift bed. Whitman grunted an introduction. This was Paulie, from Tallahassee, Florida, my new roommate. Whitman beamed in his direction and called him a surrealist. With his clipped black hair, knee-length shorts, and dazzling orthodontic smile, he did not look like a radical to me. Whitman softened the gruff voice he had used with me. He practically cooed at Paulie to show me his work. He was either right proud of him or, well, quite fond of him, at least. Paulie reached down to pull out a black leather portfolio from underneath the divan. One by one, he laid out a series of rectangular papers displaying intricate drawings of imaginary worlds inhabited by man, beast, and what looked like intergalactic spacecraft. “I am a postcard artist,” Paulie said, surprising me with the novelty of his métier. When Whitman left the room, muttering something about the baby needing changing, Paulie patiently handed me miniature after miniature, delighted that I went willingly into his condensed world.
    Why small? I wanted to know. Because the world is too big to know it intimately, Paulie responded. All he ever wanted, he said, was intimate knowledge of a thing. “Don’t you want that, too?”
    Yes, I wanted intimate knowledge. I wanted also knowledge of intimacy. I looked at him, quizzically.
    I was to be shacked up with him, it seemed. He on one side of the room, me on the other. There was a softness about him as he bent down to put away his postcards. My mind zigged and zagged like a pinball in an arcade game. Him? Me? I shook my head clear of its annoying clanging. Paulie was talking to me. He was waiting for an answer. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” My face blazed hot with embarrassment.
    â€œI was saying, if you weren’t too tired, would you care to go for a walk with me down the Boulevard Saint-Michel. It’s my first time in the city, but I’ve walked a few times, now. It’s cool. I’d like to share it with you.” I guessed that’s what’s known as southern charm.
    He had a winning smile, despite the braces. “Sure,” I said. “I can sleep any time.”
    And so we strangers, both newly hatched from the cocoon of university life and both around the same age, became instant companions by dint of being in Paris at the same time, and on the same wavelength. We were both drawn to Paris by a quest for immortality through art, an idea that the city, filled with old buildings affixed with plaques commemorating artists who had come there before us, took great pains to highlight. We walked shoulder to shoulder down the tree-lined boulevard, past the Sorbonne and its student bookshops and cafés, aimlessly talking, gamely probing ideas about life and art and existence. Most of this came through a discussion of his work, which I asked him to describe to me. “I use the smallest of brushes,” he explained. “I observe the smallest of details.” He wasn’t alone. He said that there were dozens of artists like him around the world. Paris was just the first stop in a world mini–art tour. Next stop, he told me, was Finland. I was speechless. I had never heard of anything so peculiar. He asked me about myself. I grew self-conscious. If he was an observer of the smallest detail, what would he observe about me? I even became aware of the twists my mouth made when I talked. His sea-green eyes poured right through me, like water.
    â€œAre you an artist,