a transestra

TRUE STORY

The Last Time

I Saw Paris

by Karen Rogers

The ship had dwindled now, its huge hull a tiny plumed shape at the horizon. I turned and left the dock. My wife would have watched from the ship, lovingly, until she could not see me any more, but now I should go, back to the car, into Le Harve and to the hotel room to pack my things. Then to Paris, to complete the appointments schedule I had made at the trade fair, while she sailed home with the heavy equipment that had been in our exhibit. In a week I would fly home to New York, and everything would be as it was before. My wife would meet me at the airport, we would drive home to Exurbia, while she told me about her boat trip and I told her that I had had some interesting followups on the leads developed at the fair. And so it would seem, unless I happened to mention that the week just past was one I had carefully planned to be the high point of my secret life so far.

What would you do if you had a week in Paris, with several hundred dollars carefully saved, to do exactly what you wanted, for 24 hours a day? And Paris is the most cosmopolitan of cities where anyone can find anything, and where "liberte" is a word taken literally no one cares what you do as long as you don't hurt someone else.

So as soon as I got to the car, I opened the hidden compartment of my wallet, took out several of the $100 bills that were waiting there, and the list, so carefully compiled, of the things to buy to make my week in Paris the realization of a dream. The dream had waited long enough. It could begin now. I drove to the center of town, to the bleakly modern shopping district that replaced the war-destroyed area a few blocks west of the station. First to the bank to exchange my small, powerful portraits of wise old Ben