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It happens when I stumble into the arrivals hall of Charles de Gaulle airport. All around me, other passengers are being greeted by hugging relatives or drivers with signs. I’m not being met by anyone. No one is expecting me. No one is watching out for me. I know I have people out there in the world who love me, but right now, I’ve never felt so alone. I feel that flashing sign click on over my head, the one that used to read TOURIST. Only now it also reads WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
I pull my backpack straps tighter around my chest, like they could hug me. I take a deep breath. I pick up one leg and put it in front the other. A step. I take another. And another. I pull out the to-do list I made on the plane. Number one: exchange money.
I go to one of the many foreign exchange bureaus and in halting French ask if I can exchange my dollars. “Of course. This is a bank,” the man behind the counter answers in French. I hand over a hundred dollars and am too relieved to bother to count the euros I get in return.
Next on the list: find youth hostel. I’ve mapped the route, a train to the city, then a Metro to the Jaurès stop. I follow the signs for the RER, the train to central Paris, but it turns out I have to take an airport train to get to the RER station, and I go the wrong way and wind up at a different terminal and have to double back around, so it takes me almost an hour just to get to the airport train station.
When I get up to the automated ticket machines, it’s like facing off against an enemy. Even with choosing English as the language, the instructions are bewildering. Do I need a Metro ticket? A train ticket? Two tickets? I feel that neon sign over my flash brighter. Now it says WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?
I open the guidebook again to the section about getting into Paris. Okay, one ticket will get me into Paris and transfer to the Metro. I look at the map of the Paris Metro. The different lines knot together like snakes. Finally, I locate my stop, Jaurès. I trace the RER line to the airport to the transfer point and realize with a start that it’s at Gare du Nord. Someplace familiar, someplace to tie me to that day.
“Okay, Allyson, no way through it but through it,” I tell myself. And then I face the ticket machine, shoulders back, like we are competitors in a duel. I punch the touch screen, feed it a ten-euro note and then it spits me back some change and a tiny ticket. A small victory against an impassive opponent, but I am flush with satisfaction.
I follow the throngs to the gates, which work like the Tube gates, though it turns out, it’s much easier to get through them when you’re not lugging a giant suitcase. Ha! Another enemy foiled.
In the Metro/RER interchange beneath Gare du Nord, I get lost again trying to find the right Metro line, and then I misplace my little ticket, which you need not only to get out of RER but into the Metro. Then I almost get on the Metro going the wrong direction but figure it out right before the doors close and jump off. When I finally arrive at my stop, I’m completely exhausted and totally disoriented. It takes about fifteen minutes poring over the map just to figure where I am. I take a half dozen more wrong turns until I hit the canals, which is the first sign that I’m in the right area.
But I still have no idea where the hostel is, and I’m exhausted, frustrated, and near tears. I can’t even find the hostel. And I have an address. And a map. What in the world makes me think I can find him?
But then just when I’m about to lose it, I stop, look out at the canals, and I just breathe. And my panic subsides. Because this place, it feels familiar. It is familiar, because I’ve been here before.
I fold up my map and put it away. I breathe some more. I look around. There are the same gray bicycles. There are the same stylish women, teetering across the cobblestones on heels. The cafés, crowded, as though no one ever has to work. I take another deep breath, and a sort of sense memory takes over. And somehow I just know where I am. To the left is the park with the lake where we met Jacques and the Danes. To my right, a few blocks back, is the cafe where we had crêpes. I take the map out again. I find myself. Five minutes later, I’m at the youth hostel.
My room is on the sixth floor, and the elevator is out of order, so I walk up a winding stairway. A guy with a tattoo of some sort of Greek god on his arm points out the breakfast room, the communal bathrooms (coed), and then my room, with seven beds. He gives me a lock and shows me where I can store my stuff when I go out. Then he leaves me with a bonne chance, which means good luck, and I wonder if he says that to everyone or if he senses that I’ll need it.
I sit down on the bed and unhook the sleeping bag from the top of my backpack, and as I slump into the springy mattress, I wonder if Willem has stayed here. Has slept in this very bed. It’s not likely, but it’s not impossible either. This is the neighborhood he introduced me to. And everything seems possible right now, this feeling of rightness, throbbing right alongside my heartbeat, soothing me to sleep.
I wake up a few hours later with drool on my pillow and static in my head. I take a lukewarm shower, shampooing the jet lag out of my hair. Then I towel it try and put in the gel like Tanya showed me—wash and wear, she said. It’s very different, all chunks and layers, and I like it.
Downstairs, the clock on the lobby wall behind the giant spray-painted peace sign reads seven o’clock; I haven’t eaten anything since the hard roll and yogurt they gave me on the plane over from London, and I’m woozy with hunger. The little café in the lobby only serves drinks. I know that part of traveling alone means eating alone and ordering in French, and I practiced that a lot with Madame Lambert. And it’s not like I haven’t eaten alone plenty of times in the dining hall this past year. But I decide I’ve conquered enough things for one day. Tonight, I can get a sandwich and eat in my room.
In front of the hostel, a bunch of people are hanging out in the drizzle. They’re speaking English in what I think are Australian accents. I take a breath and walk over and ask them if they know of a place to get a good sandwich nearby.
One muscular girl with streaky brown hair and a ruddy face turns to me and smiles brightly. “Oh, there’s a place over the canal that makes gorgeous smoked salmon sandwiches,” she says. She points out the way and then she resumes talking to her friend about a bistro that supposedly sells a prix fixe for twelve euro, fifteen with a glass of wine.
My mouth waters at the mere thought of it, the food, the company. It seems incredibly presumptuous to invite myself, the kind of thing I would never do.
But then again, I’m alone in Paris, so this is all virgin territory. I tap the Australian girl on her sunburnt shoulder and ask if I can tag along with them for dinner. “It’s my first day traveling, and I’m not sure where to go,” I explain.
“Good on you,” she replies. “We’ve all been at it for ages. We’re on our OAs.”
“OAs?”
“Overseas Adventures. It’s so bloody expensive to get out of Australia that once you go, you stay gone. I’m Kelly, by the way. This is Mick, that’s Nick, that’s Nico, short for Nicola, and that’s Shazzer. She’s from England, but we love her anyway.”
Shazzer sticks her tongue out at Kelly, smiles at me.
“I’m Allyson.”
“That’s my mum’s name!” Kelly says. “And I was just saying I was missing my mum! Wasn’t I? It’s karma!”
“Kismet,” Nico corrects.
“That too.”
Kelly looks at me, and for half a second, I stand there, because she hasn’t said yes and I’m going to feel like an idiot if she says no. Still, maybe it’s all that prep in French class, but I’m kind of okay with feeling like an idiot. The group starts to walk off, and I start to turn toward the sandwich place. Then Kelly turns around.
