Jessica Hecht

Finally, when there was nothing at the store left to box, sell, or give away, Maggie and I decided to throw a goodbye party.

I wore a long, white, lacy dress I'd found during the sold.

I put my daughter in a sky-blue tutu.

Maggie rocked a short skirt and a plunging neckline and stilts for heels.

Her 20-some years abroad had taught her well.

She looked startlingly good for someone who felt...

So awful, and she wisely began drinking at 11 in the morning.

Soon she was dancing on that downstairs desk in those pretty red-soled Louboutins she'd purchased at Barn Marché when she gave up on paying rent.

We brought the desk and the rest of the furniture out into the courtyard.

François, Maggie's ex, even wandered over in the afternoon and ended up playing the piano until 2 a.m.,

The baby and I talked and sang and drank, and if I kissed a famously sexy British writer with the initials J.D.,

Who was to know or to care?

At around three in the morning, Francois wisely took it upon himself to walk Maggie home.

She was trashed and crying.

For Maggie, there was no tomorrow.

The store was gone.

She and the youngest of the four kids were flying out the next day to spend the rest of the summer in the States at her family's home in Michigan.

I'd been invited, but I declined.

The good people at Shakespeare and Company had offered me a job as events coordinator, but I wasn't sure if there was enough for me in Paris to stay on without my best friend.

I had one week left on my sublet, so the clock was ticking, but isn't it always ticking, ticking, ticking until it stops?