Too much fortune in one day I wonder when the sky will come crashing down to match the thunderstorm playing lunchtime entertainment outside my office window.
I think I've found an appartment.
Tiny, but warm and clean and with a bathroom the size of a bedroom, bathtub built into the wall...
It has a stove but no oven, space for a washer, it has a fold-out bed and armoire and tiny little breakfast table in the tiled kitchen.
Every window has the seat I'd always dreamed of having.
I put down a deposit and if I actually manage to move in by mid-October, I'll have achieved two of my childhood want-to-be princess dreams. I'll have made love in a canopy bed, and I'll have sat up late reading fairy tales by the moonlight in my own window-ledge.
Maybe then I'll be able to let myself be a little girl on the inside again.
I'm nervous and at once thrilled, thrilled by the looming black church on the corner across from town hall, visible from the mosaic-tiled entrance of my building...
It's a handful of moments from Montmartres, nobody tried to pinch my ass on the way over, and the landlord is either a very good actor or he really wants to be my grandfater... He invited me over for dinner before I sign the papers so that I can see "just what kind of people I'm dealing with".
Oh goodness... There's a pear-pie on the way for dessert from the bakery on the corner, dinner last night in the tiny little Indian food restaurant across the street from Anna-Maria's appartment (about as far as Maria was from my place in Montreal... Oh... You could never be replaced but it's so nice to know someone here who reminds me so much of you. I think she's going to hit me if I mention you again, though...) we had rose-flavoured Lassies and perfect kormas and pistachio cakes and aloo-nan (with cheese) and the owner was a little intimidatingly servile (he would get upset whenever we thanked him) and at the end we were all alone there and he offered us almond liqueur...
The appartment I saw last night had me in tears. Beautiful stone archways, stone walkways through it's own interior jardin lined with majestic trees, stone stairs and marble entranceways, but...
...inside the paint was peeling and smelled of grease and the bed had springs poking menacingly out at us, and the other end of the building faced the Moulin Rouge...
And as romantic an idea as it is to live across from the Moulin Rouge, the red light district of Paris is no place for a little blonde girl, even walking there accompanied we drew stares and men reeking of too many things stepped out of their ways to bump into us, pull at our hair, leer at us in ways that would cover a more pristine woman in layers of guilt and insecurities.
How I wished then that I would have shown them Montreal, where a girl can walk into a strip club and be politely led to a seat, where a girl can walk into a sex shop and ask advice about vibrators, and engage in delightful combination with the abashed salesman.
Here... I understand, a little, what it is to fear a neighbourhood. (And yes, I would trade sex shops for men always opening the door for me at work. The former is less false)
I would cry at that were it not for the budding hope that soon I will be less homeless, ready to sign up for yoga classes and maybe even singing lessons (not only to surprise David, of course DON'T YOU DARE TELL HIM, but because I'm tired of being afraid to sing along in cars) and maybe even invite friends over...
Let's make the best of this, shall we?
Hopefully, by mid-october... I'll be ready to properly accept visitors... :)