Paris in Love Read Online Free

enraged English teacher stamping her foot: “Shut zee mouths! Zit down! Little cretins!” The entire subway car was laughing, though Anna remained totally unaware of her captive and captivated audience.

    Alessandro brought home a very successful makeup present after the non-flowers: a heart-shaped cheese, sort of a Camembert/Brie, as creamy as butter and twice as delicious. We ate it on crusty bread, with a simple salad of orange peppers, and kiwis for dessert.

    I just came across a list Luca created on a scrap of paper. At the top of the sheet he wrote (in cursive) “The End.” The list is entitled “Several Problems”:
    – Can’t write in cursive script

– Can’t write in Italian

– Don’t think I copied the math homework down correctly

– Screwed up on the Italian writing evaluation

– Have French essay for Monday

– Need my books by tomorrow
    I feel terrible. What have we done, bringing him here? I have ulcers just reading the list.

    My sister mentioned before we left for France that a relative on our mother’s side had published a memoir about living in Paris. I’d never heard of Claude C. Washburn, who was one of my grandmother’s brothers and died before I was born. But today the post brought
Pages from the Book of Paris
, published in 1910. From what I can gather, Claude was born in Duluth, Minnesota, and moved to Europe after getting his undergraduate degree, living in France and Italy. At some point after his year or so in Paris, he married a woman with the unusual name of Ivé. I’m not very far into the book, but so far he has characterized marriage as “an ignominious institution” and boasted of his “increasing exultation” at remaining a bachelor, steering clear of “the matrimonial rocks, that beset one’s early progress, toward the open sea of recognized bachelordom.” Ivé must have scuppered his vessel before he could steer clear of her rocks.

    It started to pour while we were out for dinner, so hard that a white fog hovered above the pavement where the rain was bouncing. We ran all the way home, skittering past Parisians with umbrellas and unprepared tourists using newspapers as cocked hats, the water running down our necks, accompanied by an eight-block-long scream from Anna.

    Today I went to my favorite flirtatious butcher and pointed to some sausages. He coiled up seven feet of them and put them on the scale, saying, “The man who is married to you needs to eat lots of sausages.” One problem with my French is that I requiretime to think before replying, so I ended up back out on the street with far too many sausages and spent the next hour unsuccessfully trying to come up with French ripostes that I will be able to use in my next life. The one in which I am fluently multilingual, and never at a loss for words.

    Anna had to stand against the wall twice during one class period yesterday. I asked her why, and she told me that she couldn’t remember, and anyway, she wasn’t as bad as the boys. I can’t wait for parent-teacher conferences. “She’s a bad American” keeps running through my head to the tune of “She’s a very pretty girrrrlll …”

    My favorite of Paris’s many bridges is Pont Alexandre III, and my favorite of its many statues is not one of those covered with gold, but rather a laughing boy holding a trident and riding a fish. Although just a child, he’s bigger than I am, his huge toes flying off the fish as he twists in midair. But he’s a boy still, with a guileless smile—caught in a moment when he is big enough to ride the back of a fish but not yet acquainted with the world’s sorrows and deceits. On the far end of Pont Alexandre III, opposite the mer-boy, sits his twin sister. She seems to have just left the water; she holds fronds of seaweed in one hand, and in the other a large seashell to her ear. Her face is intent as she looks into the distance, listening carefully. I imagine that she is listening for the rushing sound of