We first met in the Luxembourg Garden where I was sitting by the small Statue of Liberty after my morning class at the Alliance Française of Paris. It was the fall after graduating from Ohio State and I was now ready to make something of myself though I didn’t yet know what. My parents were pleased that I was continuing my education. I was studying French at the Alliance and pastry-making at Ferrandi Paris.
I’d bought myself an exquisite chocolate éclair on the way to the park. After creating an Instagram post of a selfie in which I’m holding up the éclair like the statue her torch (Statue of Delicious #paris #thelife #frenchpastry), I sat down nearby to enjoy the pastry with the intent of then studying the passé composé of irregular verbs.
“Bonjour Mademoiselle,” he said. I looked up. He had lovely little brown eyes and smoothed-down brown hair, greying at the temples.
“Bonjour Monsieur,” I answered.
He lifted his palm toward the chair beside me and asked if it was occupied. Understanding his request more from his gesture than from his words, I removed my notebook and purse from the seat so that he could take the chair. Instead of moving it further away, he sat down beside me. He excused himself for remarking but said that he detected un petit accent.
“Je suis américaine,” I said.
“Amay-we-can,” he echoed with a scrunched smile without parting his thin pink lips, then, immediately switching to English, he added, “your accent is very char-ming. Do you know why we have a Statue of Liberty here?” he asked.
I did not.
He said, “But you should because you are Amay-we-can, so I will explain to you.” And so he did, as he would teach me much else, with intense, informative, endearing condescension, before concluding, “You have so much to learn.”
On our first date, the following evening, he took me to a wonderful little bistro, where a surly waiter served us a nice house red. When he told me again that I was charming, I felt myself blush. He called me his Mona Lisa because my name is Liz. I called him Bruno because that is his so adorably French name. When I told him that I would like to try the French onion soup, he said that was for tourists and he recommended instead the bone marrow, telling me that there was a sincerity to the presentation and sensuality to the texture. I marveled at the way used adjectives to describe food and accepted his suggestion. He ordered the pâté for himself, which he ate with thick chunks of sourdough bread. Then chicken supreme for me and andouillette for himself. We shared profiteroles for dessert. He wiped the chocolate from my lips with his napkin.
Afterwards, we walked along the Seine, where he lit a cigarette, and when it was finished, he flicked the butt into the river then turned and kissed me as the Eiffel Tower sparkled as though on cue. His breath tasted of a mix of cigarettes, coffee, wine, intestinal sausage, and a breath mint. It was a beautiful spring evening in Paris. I remembered the old song. He took my hand and we walked on, eventually reaching my chambre de bonne in the Latin Quarter.
I had only had sex with boys my age before, so this was different. He was 20 years older than me and knew not only what he wanted, as did the boys, but how to please. I was glad that I’d shaved that morning. After making passionate love, he opened the French window to smoke as I lay naked and mostly satisfied beneath the sheet. Leaning against the wrought iron railing, he blew rings out toward the zinc rooftop across the courtyard.
If you crane your neck to the right, I said, you can see the top of Sacré Coeur.
“Socray Core,” he repeated, mocking the way I pronounced it, then he stepped toward me and brushed his hand against my cheek and said that his Mona Lisa had a charming accent. He said that he would help me with my French, when it improved, but for now it was best to continue in English. He told me that since I was new in Paris it was natural to admire “Socray Core” from the window but that a real Parisian looks discreetly into the windows across the courtyard to watch people undress, and he pointed to a woman across the courtyard and one floor below who was removing her blouse.
He then told me that his wife and children were returning from vacation the following day, but he would be available on Wednesday afternoon.
“You’re married?” I ask, redundantly.
He waved away both the smoke and my question. He said that he and his wife were now old friends and stayed together only for the three children, so I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head about it. I ignored my mother’s voice in my head and thought, When in Paris…
Every Wednesday afternoon at about 5 o’clock (known here as 17 hour), he came up the stairs to my 7th-floor garret bearing gifts, either a pastry to die for or chocolates from what he said was the best chocolatier in Paris or a bottle of wine that he knew all about. Occasionally he would show up late, saying that he was stuck in court, and tell me that though he’d had a long, tiring day he couldn’t let a week go by without seeing his Mona Lisa. His Dior cologne arrived even more exhausted than he did, so several weeks into our relationship I asked him to shower on arrival. He said that despite man’s intelligence and ability to build great cities such as Paris, we are animals and should not fear our natural odors. I handed him a towel and reminded him that I was not born in the same den as he. He laughed and said that he would do anything to please this pretty lady.
He taught me many things. He taught me how to wear my hair and how to tilt my beret just so. He told me which exhibitions to see and how to appreciate movies without happy endings. He always left by 7:30—I should say 19:30. He called that a “reasonable hour for a lawyer.”
We rarely went out to dinner after that first time. He said that we had all we needed right here. The pastries and chocolates weren’t good for my diet but they were great for my Instagram.
We had plans to go to Deauville one weekend while his wife and children were visiting his mother-in-law in La Baule, but he texted me to say that his daughter was sick so we would do it another weekend. When I texted back to tell him that I was already waiting for him at the Gare Saint Lazare, adding an angry emoji, he texted back a reminder that he’d told me about his family responsibilities from the day we met and that he was the one with sick child, so I shouldn’t be a selfish about it.
The following Wednesday he brought me a gift as an apology. In a box bearing the name of a fancy shop on the rue Bonaparte in the Saint Germain Quarter there was a beautiful lavender scarf with a Galeries Lafayette label. He showed me different ways of wearing it, before lightly tying my wrists together with it while we made passionate love. He continued to teach me things, such as how to read the label of a bottle of wine and where I must go one day in Provence and when cherries are in season and why the Americans did not like the General de Gaulle.
In July, he told me that his wife and daughters had gone to Bormes les Mimosas for the summer and that he wouldn’t be joining them there until the end of the month, so we would have more time together over the next few weeks. “More time” ended up being two Mondays as well as the usual Wednesday. I suggested a weekend in Deauville but he said that there were too many lawyers in Deauville in summer. Instead, he said, it would be his pleasure to take me someplace nice for dinner on Wednesday. I’d been living in Paris for nine months by then so I knew right away that the bistro he’d selected in the Latin Quarter was unexceptional; it had only a 4.3 rating on Tripadvisor. But I was intent on enjoying myself. I’d checked out the menu online and asked AI what wine would go best with foie gras and pike quenelles, which I intended to order, and with whatever offal he might, and was told Pouilly Fuissé. So I proudly suggested that as we ordered. Instead, he asked the cute and efficient waiter for a bottle of a Sancerre red, telling me that I would understand the subtleties better with time. The young waiter nodded as he said, “Oui monsieur.” It took little time to discover that the Sancerre fell flat with my order. When I asked if he wanted to split an order of profiteroles for dessert, he said that I should profit from them (that was his profiterole joke) myself while he went outside for a smoke and to call his children. In his absence I chatted with the cute, young, efficient waiter, whose chestnut brown hair that fell adorably over his espresso eyes. He complimented me on my French and agreed that Pouilly Fuissé would have been the better choice. When he delivered the profiteroles, I asked him to take my picture with them. He sensed that Bruno and I were not married. He said that a man should not leave a charming young lady like me alone at the table. I agreed, and when he efficiently asked for my Instagram, I agreed to that and asked for his as well. His name is Pascal.
Pascal tells me that he adores me, and I feel the same. We’ve been together for three months now. He’s got me listening to rock from Brittany and using French slang, like kiffe for like and ouf for great, though we mostly speak in English. I’ve got him listening to Taylor Swift and wearing deodorant. We’re looking for a two-room flat to move into together. He supports my ambition of giving pastry tours to tourists while writing a book about how a girl from Ohio became a true Parisienne, illustrated with some of my Instagram photos, which he never fails to kiffe. When I tell him my dream of opening a donut, cupcake, cruffin and cake coffee shop that I would call Morning Liza, he says that would be ouf. I haven’t told him that my father runs the largest car dealership in Ohio, nor that I’ve been seeing my old lover on Wednesdays.
But I don’t have to think about the latter anymore because I told Bruno yesterday, after we made unimaginative love and while he was smoking by the window, that I wouldn’t be able to see him anymore because I was moving in with someone.
“A boy?” he asked, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth.
“A man,” I said.
He stubbed his cigarette in the flower box. He said that this—the two of us—hadn’t been working out for a while anyway because I was too much of a child and that I shouldn’t call him anymore, and anyway, he’d met someone more beautiful and mature, a real Parisienne. He then turned to look out the window, first to the right for brief glimpse at the top of Sacré Coeur then to the windows down below. It crossed my mind that I could push him over the railing then tell the police in perfect French, using the passé composé, that he jumped out when I told him it was over. But he’s taught me so much over the past year that I’m actually grateful to him. Anyway, I’d rather have the pleasure of watching him leave my apartment angry and forlorn, the way he likes movies to end. For myself, I still prefer a happy ending.
© 2026 by Lainey Harper
