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Page 51.
 Everywhere they went, every moment together, they touched and spoke in the language of lovers. It was intoxicating.
They spent half a day at the Champs de Mars, riding up the Eiffel Tower for a view of the city. “It’s different when I am holding you,” she said as they looked out over the cityscape.
He nuzzled her neck as they clung together like vines. “It’s different when I can inhale you like this. I have fallen in love with your smell.”
“I hope I smell nice.”
“Bedroom smell. Can’t get enough.”
“Your nose on my back tickles.”
“Mmh.” He tried to gnaw on her collarbone.
“People are looking.”
He pulled away. “Sorry. I can’t help myself.”
She growled under her breath: “The reason I don’t do that is because I can’t restrain myself. I’d rip your shirt off right here, in front of all these people, so I have to restrain myself.”
“We’ll store it up for later.”
“I can’t wait.”
A day or so later, she asked him in a restaurant on the Champs Elysees, as they were eating a fine lunch of game hens roasted with endives in a brothy celery root puree washed down with white wine: “Do you ever write about loneliness, I mean the real thing alone, not in singles bars?”
“What makes you ask?” He was just about to cut into the meat.
She had a dreamy look. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be alone. I am so happy and contented with you. I can’t believe I’ve treasured loneliness all these years rather than spend time with Jérôme.”
“Well, yes,” he said, meaning both his poems about solitude and his thoughts about whether her husband was a fool or just resting.
“Can you remember one?”
“I like trains,” he said. “I could stand for hours on an overpass by the Gare de l’Est or the Gare du Nord, anywhere, and just gaze at those long strings of light whizzing out of the station in all directions of the compass.”
“And you wonder who is in them, where they are going, and what persons await them. Lovers, parents, children, employers, friends, the whole network of our lives.”
“Ah yes. I think I made this one up while walking alone across the Pont Alexandre III.” That is one of Paris’s best known bridges, named for one of the last Russian Tsars. It was built in the 1890s as part of the enormous preparations for the 1900 World Exposition or world fair in Paris. The bridge connects the Champs Elysees quarter on the Right Bank (north side of the Seine, best known for the Arc de Triomphe) with the Invalides or Champs de Mars quarter on the Left Bank (south side, best known for the Eiffel Tower).
Marc found the manuscript page (226: Lonely) with its catalog number, and read it to her slowly as befitted such a short poem packed with nuance and emotion.
“Such a nice little vignette,” she said. Being his biggest (and perhaps almost only) fan, she poured all of her love into the good thoughts she had. “Honestly, you have enriched my life so much, sweet poet.”
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