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By Root 532 0

that she digs out from her husband’s desk. She slowly licks the flap and seals it with the pad of her thumb, right there on the smooth lacquered surface where Henri writes his company checks. She looks around the room, sits down. She realizes that she is still holding her grocery-list pencil, but she decides that this will not do. She addresses the envelope with her husband’s fountain pen, writing slowly and smoothly, like when she was a girl at school who paid great attention to her penmanship because she was evaluated on it as much as on content.

Monsieur Langlais,

she writes, and then writes his address, the same as her address.

If she truly wants to send him this, it would be very easy: she could drop it directly in his mailbox the next time she leaves the building. A casual sideways gesture, as if to steady herself for a moment—a loosening of the fingers, and the missive will drop soundlessly into the slot, where only the man himself will be able to get it back, with his mail key.

He, or his wife!

It is addressed to him, though, and surely she does not presume to open his correspondence?

She looks for a stamp among her husband’s things and finds a book of them. She tears one off, sticks it on the envelope, and goes to the post office around the corner immediately. Though the post is efficient, the sun is already sliding down and dimming, so the letter will certainly not be delivered until tomorrow. Then the scrawled note will be slipped back into the same building it came out of. Why does Louise bother to cancel a stamp, to make herself wait longer? She is strange that way.

It doesn’t matter. She is almost entirely certain nothing will come of this. When she sends off the envelope, her hand doesn’t hesitate. Her heart doesn’t even skip a beat. Afterward, she buys herself a pain au chocolat at the nearest bakery and goes for a leisurely stroll in the nearest public garden, the one called Palais Royal.

LOUISE IS AT THE center of the garden, at the large round stone fountain. She is sitting on one of the metal chairs left there by the City of Paris, considerate of the comfort of idle afternoon strollers such as herself. The Palais Royal is a little crowded today; there are quite a few people milling around on the packed yellow sand, crunchy with bits of gravel. It is such a lovely day, clear and unusually mild for this time of the year, and the sunshine has pulled people out of their apartments.

The pain au chocolat is so exquisitely buttery that Louise takes all the time possible consuming it: she tears it off shred by moist shred. She sheds a few bits of the pastry’s golden outer skin as she eats, which attracts several sparrows. They spar and chirp for her scraps. She watches them, content.

Unexpectedly, one of the birds flutters up onto her knee and pecks up a fallen speck of crust she hadn’t even noticed and flies away in the same flicker of an instant. Still, this hiccup of time was long enough for Louise to feel the scuttle of its small feet against her.

She thinks: What a brash little creature! What does it know in its lentil-sized brain?

She twists the tiniest piece off the soft yellow middle of her confection and holds it out on her fingertips. She makes herself as still as she can manage. The only movement she feels in her body is her breath, slow and deep.

The sparrow, now leaning forward on the edge of the stone fountain, cocks its head inquisitively at her. It takes a springy hop forward. It gathers all the courage in its pea-sized heart, and flies onto Louise’s hand. She can feel the heat of its tiny toes on her fingers, the prick of its minuscule claws. The animal plucks the crumb from her grasp and flies away. The woman almost laughs with delight.

She looks up and is instantaneously startled by a silhouette that cannot yet be familiar to her, but is. The man Langlais is walking straight for her: she can see him through the fountain’s jet of water. Does he see her?

He sees her; he raises his hand in greeting. He even gives a tight little smile, slightly askew.

“Hello, Sir,” she says jauntily.