Judy Greer

Abiento.

Monica will remember this.

I wouldn't mind just heading back to the hotel for a nap, Martin says, watching his mother as she crosses the street.

You don't have to come with me, he says.

You can do whatever.

Monica waits for him to finish his sentence.

Whatever you want, whatever you feel like, but he does not.

To find the right words would fatigue him, as many such efforts have since his father died, since long before that, as many efforts always have.

She looks for their waiter but cannot find him.

She imagines him pouring wine and uncapping bottles of Stella Artois somewhere in the dark interior of the cafe.

Martin kisses her cheek and moves off in the direction of their hotel, his head down.

She stands on the corner, out of the way of the waves of people moving past and tries to decide what to do.

The sun is dipping behind rooftops and she finds herself in sudden shadow, though the light ahead of her is still gold and long.

She will walk to the river, stroll back to their hotel along the quay.

She wants to be sure these two weeks of seeing the Seine at every time of day in every available light.

She'd known before she came that Paris was beautiful, but she had not been prepared for how merciless the beauty was, how overwhelming.

She'd been struck by the lack of what she understood as charm.

It was not a charming city because it did not need to be.

She chooses a street she has not walked before and starts toward the river and falls into a peaceful, near absence of thought, a calm she associates with childhood.

She does not know when exactly she became unable to love her husband.