Read Chapter 6: The Ex in the Window

Daniel appeared on Clara's phone on a Wednesday morning between an invoice from a distributor and a photograph of a dog wearing spectacles.

DANIEL HART: In Paris next week for the fair. Could we have coffee?

Clara read it while standing on the ladder in Biography.

Her body reacted before her mind did. Heat under the ribs. A tightening in the throat. The ridiculous instinct to check her hair.

She locked the phone and returned a copy of Patti Smith's Just Kids to the shelf.

Five minutes later she took it down again because she had put it under S instead of P.

"Problem?" Luc asked from below.

He had come down to deliver posters for Friday's drawing night. They showed the shop frontage under a constellation of ink stars. He had included a tiny figure in an upstairs window throwing a shoe at the people below.

"No."

"You shelved Smith twice."

"You monitor me now?"

"Only for signs of commercial collapse."

Clara climbed down.

"Daniel is coming to Paris."

Luc's expression became carefully blank.

"Ah. Expensive shoes."

"Apparently."

"And?"

"He wants coffee."

"Do you want coffee?"

"I have coffee."

"A strong answer."

She busied herself with the posters.

"I don't know why he wants to meet."

"Then ask him."

"That would imply I care."

"You do care."

Clara glared at him.

Luc lifted both hands. "Not about him. About why. Different disease."

She hated that he was right.

For months after the breakup, Clara had imagined conversations with Daniel in which she was composed, devastating, and wearing clothes that required dry cleaning. In none of them had she asked him to stay. This mattered to her. She had retained, if nothing else, an internal mythology of dignity.

Yet now, faced with an actual message, she wanted information with an almost physical hunger.

Was he happy? Was the publicist still there? Had he regretted leaving? Had the list of baby names become real?

"Don't answer today," Luc said.

"Why?"

"Because you look like you are editing the reply for effect."

"I am an editor."

"Exactly."

He taped a poster to the window.

Outside, spring had begun insinuating itself into Paris. Café tables multiplied along the pavements. Plane trees showed a fine green haze. Tourists appeared in larger groups, studying maps at intersections as though Paris had deliberately moved the streets.

Clara watched Luc smooth the poster.

"What did you do when Anaïs contacted you after the divorce?"

"Usually answered. Sometimes badly."

"Helpful."

"You want a rule?"

"Maybe."

He turned.

"Do not meet someone to prove you no longer care. That is still organising your life around them."

The sentence landed with uncomfortable precision.

"Did Marianne say that too?"

"No. I paid a therapist."

Clara laughed.

She did not answer Daniel that day.

On Friday evening, the shop filled for the first Drawing After Dark session. Luc had invited three illustrators: Camille Zhang, whose delicate watercolours had a large online following; Nassim Belkacem, a political cartoonist; and Jo Fischer, a German animator living in Belleville. Customers bought five-euro sketch cards and moved between stations while the artists drew characters from improvised prompts.

Clara ran the till, poured wine, and discovered that people purchased books more readily after watching someone make marks on paper.

At nine, Luc sat at the front table taking requests.

"Draw the worst first date in Paris," a woman called.

"Too many possibilities," Luc said.

"Draw a British woman invading France," Clara suggested.

"Already done."

He glanced at her.

The room laughed.

Luc drew a woman sitting alone at a café table while a man across from her photographed his food. The woman quietly stole his wallet and left.

"That's criminal," Clara said.

"That is romance."

His gaze stayed on hers a fraction too long.

Clara looked away first.

At ten fifteen, when the last customers were leaving, her phone vibrated.

DANIEL: I know I don't have the right to ask. I just thought we should talk properly. I'm sorry for how things ended.

Clara stared at the message.

Luc was across the shop, stacking stools with Nassim. He did not look at her, but she had begun to recognise the peculiar awareness he carried around her, as though some part of him kept track of where she was even while he was doing something else.

She typed:

I can do Thursday at 4. Café de Flore. Thirty minutes.

Then she deleted it.

She typed again:

What do you want to say that you didn't say when we lived together?

She deleted that too.

Finally:

No, Daniel. I don't think coffee would help me. I hope the fair goes well.

She sent it before she could revise.

The relief was not dramatic. No choir sang. Paris did not rearrange itself.

But when Clara put the phone away, she noticed she could breathe all the way down.

Luc appeared beside her carrying two glasses.

"Wine?"

"Yes."

He handed her one.

"Did you answer?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"No coffee."

Luc nodded.

He did not praise her. She was grateful.

They stood together in the doorway after closing while the pavement shone under streetlamps. Somewhere near the river, a siren rose and faded.

"You know," Clara said, "for someone who hates community, you invited half the arrondissement tonight."

"Artists are not community. They are a labour problem."

"Of course."

"Also, you sold twenty-seven books."

"Thirty-one."

He looked impressed.

"British empire."

"French illustration."

Their glasses touched.

The shop window reflected them side by side, not quite touching.

For reasons Clara did not examine, she looked at the reflection longer than necessary.