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Page 26.
Chapter 5
 “I nearly went deaf,” Emma said, “but I loved it.”
After leaving the restaurant, they strolled back across the Seine to the Latin Quarter. Fog rolled over the water and rose up over the bridges. Street lights looked like lanterns in fog.
“It’s so nice to walk with you,” he said.
She sighed and rested her cheek on his shoulder. It was like a movie. He expected her to begin singing any moment. She said: “I never thought I would meet anyone like you. That was so nice—all those young people, all that music, the noise, the smoke.”
“You don’t get out much,” he ventured.
She nodded grimly with her chin. “I have been living in a dream. A bad one. And now you woke me up.”
“I feel the same way. Nothing looks the same anymore. Are you sure we aren’t dreaming?”
“Pinch me.”
“What?”
She stopped and put her arms over his shoulders. She was tall, but half a head shorter than he. “Pinch me.”
“Where?”
“Anyplace.”
He pinched her gently in a few spots that would get him arrested, anywhere else under normal circumstances.
She closed her eyes and said “Hmmmm” in a dreamy way. “This is a much better dream. A really nice one.”
She gave his gluteus a squeeze, and they continued walking. They were on the smaller island, Île Saint-Louis, having crossed from the Marais on the Pont Marie and now to the Left Bank via the Pont de la Tournelle (named for a medieval turret there). As they emerged on the quai, she said: “Come spend the night with me.”
“Of course,” he said. He wanted to ask: but what about…?
She explained, sensing his questions. “Jérôme and I live in a faculty apartment near the Pantheon, actually a very small place. My family owns a building closer to the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and I have an apartment there. Actually, my cousins and I share it whenever someone is in town. It’s what you call a real pied-a-terre.”
Marc understood the concept: A foot on the ground for someone living outside of a city, but working there and needing a crash pad during the week. He joked lightly: “Any cousins there now?”
She shook her head. “All out of town. All over the world, actually. Nobody home.”
“So you have the place all to yourself. How nice.”
“I only go there when I have done some shopping and want to drop off boxes and things. You know, hats, dresses, maybe a bit of furniture.” She looked at him, saw he had no clue, and continued: “There isn’t room at our apartment. The faculty one.”
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