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My father had a gift for spontaneity, too. Like a child, he always seemed ready to do anything that turned up, go anywhere that beckoned. When he returned, there would be presents for my brother and me; wonderful dolls from Brazil dressed in swirling samba skirts and, from India, carved ivory elephants crossing a bridge.

In his spare time my father wrote short stories. About places with exotic names like Bitter Creek and Silver Bow. They were adventure stories, he told me, set in the West. I think he sold a few of them to some magazine or another. Once he let me use his typewriter. I’d never seen one up close before and it was as exciting as anything I’d ever done, pecking out my name on the little round keys with letters in the middle.

I fell asleep that night thinking of my father: the explorer, the man who embraced the world so warmly, the man whose face I could never quite remember but kept searching for anyway.

It was midmorning when Naohiro and I arrived at Sainte-Chapelle. We climbed the winding stone steps from the lower chapel, designed as a place of worship for the royal servants, to the upper chapel, reserved for the kings of France.

Naohiro walked to the center of the chapel. I followed. “Stand next to me,” he said.

And I did, trying to see what it was he saw. There, beneath the chapel’s soaring, vaulted ceiling, surrounded by towering walls of glowing stained glass, it seemed that light and glass had conspired to form a new element: one composed of ice lit from within by fire.

I have no idea how long we stood there, Naohiro and I, in the light of Sainte-Chapelle. Finally I turned to look at him. His head was bowed slightly but his eyes were open.

“Thank you,” I said, “for bringing me here.”

He nodded but did not answer or turn to look at me.

But I continued to look at him. And as I looked a great tenderness sprang up in me; a tenderness for the spirit of the man standing by my side. Finally, he turned to me. In silence we stood together in the light, looking at each other.

I no longer felt self-conscious; I felt only my need to share this moment with him.

“I feel our spirits have met,” I said.

He nodded. “I feel it is so.”

“It is a good feeling.”

“Yes,” he replied. “It is a good feeling.”

I looked at Naohiro’s face to see what was there. He met my eyes with a steady, open gaze, one that evoked in me many different feelings.

In the days ahead, Naohiro and I would come to know a great number of things about each other. Still, of all the moments we shared, none, I think, was more intimate than the day we stood together in the light of Sainte-Chapelle.

4

FELLOW TRAVELERS

Dear Alice,

Do not forget the woman in gold lamé shorts, the Ritz, the sound of the leaves in the Tuileries, the veiled hats that reminded you of Mother, the light pouring out of the shops along the rue du Bac, the lavender skies, the smiling dog, the people you encountered on this day. Do not forget the last time you saw Paris.

Love, Alice

It was after ten and I was on my way to Montmartre for a late breakfast with Susan, an American friend living in Paris, when suddenly it hit me: I didn’t want to see her. This feeling puzzled me. After all, it was I who had called Susan to arrange the visit.

Like me, Susan was a woman who decided to take a detour from the life she’d spent a decade carefully constructing. “A year in Paris and then I’ll be back,” I remember her saying when she took a leave from her job at a Washington design firm. The year had turned into two, then three, and by the time I arrived, Susan—now a successful commercial artist—was entering the fourth year of her “stay” in Paris.

I found it surprising, the way she’d disconnected so easily from her past. True, she was divorced, her only daughter now in her mid-twenties and living in London. But Susan had left behind what seemed an extremely satisfying life: a circle of loyal and familial friends, a successful career, and a deep affection for the