Jessica Hecht

Look, just as time isn't inside clocks, love isn't inside bodies.

I quoted Yehuda Amichai to myself as I watched Maggie and Francois stumble together down the cobblestones.

Most of the crowd was gone now, the wine bottles and plastic cups out in the garbage bins, the trays of food long devoured.

Both JD and Terry, Maggie's boy with cougar lust in his eyes,

offered to walk the baby and me home.

J.D.

even drunkenly proposed to put us up for a time in London, or was it Capri?

But Paris in the summer, even with all the tightened security, is an all-night party, and I was sober enough and thus sensible enough, for me at any rate, to send them both on their way with kisses on both cheeks.

The baby was sound asleep in the snuggly as we turned on to Rue de Tornel, which was grey and empty and puddled.

Parisian streets were always puddled.

Rainwater, urine, wine.

The entrance to the shoal was locked and blind to the street.

Up ahead, across the street, was the heavy wooden door of my building.

On the other side, my side, was a religious man I knew.

It's so late, I said.

I was worried about you getting home, the rabbi said.

But then I saw you brand new in your white dress, like one of our own brides.

His voice flooded with relief, but it was also somber.

I've come to tell you that my family and I are leaving.

My uncle found us a congregation near him in Miami Beach.