Jessica Hecht

Very I Love Lucy.

So...

I wasn't exactly in full flower when the rabbi actively did not approach me.

Instead, he stood to the side and surreptitiously sorted through a pile of books.

The venerating holy way in which he bellied up to our merch like he was pilfering God's own private wet bar proved that whether it was cool for a rabbi to immerse himself in secular texts or not, he was indeed a reader, not a civilian.

"'May I help you, monsieur?'

I said.

I supposed it would have been kinder to have let him do his thing alone in a lonely way, but I was bored.'

This was an English-language bookstore, and that was pretty much all my French.

No, merci, madame, he said, with a slight bow, caught off guard and purposefully staring now at the fascinating cobblestones beneath us.

There was something familiar about him.

It occurred to me that I had seen him before.

So I asked, do you live on my street, Rue de Tournelle?

I thought I spied a little light bulb turn on above his head right then, as if he were an old-fashioned cartoon character with a flicker of an idea.

Or maybe I've gifted myself the observation in retrospect, hoping that I'd caused a filament to light.

Whatever.

He continued to glance downward, but he was somehow looking at me through his third eye.

I could sense it.

My shul, he said.

My street, I said.