“Notre-Dame.”
Hunchbackwas still living in my head. Hugo had made the cathedral one of the characters—by far the most real and relatable one. “I want to see where Quasimodo swung on the bell ropes and yelled, ‘Sanctuary!’ I want to see gargoyles.”
He smiled at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Your wish is my command.”
The next morning, I headed for freedom as soon asMadame Dupuy had turned the corner. I rode a wave of exhilaration down the street, smiling so big that hardened Parisians, incapable of showing any public emotion but bored aggression, couldn’t help curving their lips slightly in reply. It felt like I was in a movie, one of those golden Paris rom-coms where everyone is gorgeous and there’s a retro-cute accordion soundtrack for the kissing scenes. As I crossed the bridge, I saw my friends already waiting by the golden sculpted flame where people left bouquets and tributes to the princess. Nick dashed across the busy street when he spotted me, earning a chorus of impatient honking. He caught me up in his arms and swung me around. I laughed and kissed him. This time the honks sounded approving.
—
When wereached the cathedral, he went into tour-guide mode. It had taken roughly a hundred years to build and rebuild into its current form, not including, of course, all the reconstruction work that had been done after the fire in 2019, he informed me as we waited in the long line to get into the tower. I wondered how a city stayed focused on anything for an entire century. Once built, it had lasted for almost eight hundred years, through wars, famines, and a revolution. Although a fire had ravaged it a few years ago, it had been rebuilt, and it looked strong enough to go another eight hundred.
“After the French Revolution, when religion was not popular, it became a wine warehouse,” Youssef added, the suggestion of a smile dimpling one of his cheeks. “Perhapsthe most beautiful wine warehouse in the world, and certainly the most useful church.” Nick laughed.
I held my phone up and started filming Youssef like I was making a documentary. “Aside from its wine-storage capacity, Monsieur Rachedi, what’s the best architecture thing about Notre-Dame?” I asked.
He didn’t hesitate. “The flying buttresses.” He pointed out the stone supports embracing the cathedral, flanking it along its back perimeter. They looked like a series of half bridges attached at right angles to the exterior wall. Some of them were double-deckers. “I love them because buildings that soar up to the sky would not exist without them.” He explained that walls carried a lot of weight that needed to be distributed so they didn’t fall over or break as they got taller and weighed more, putting more pressure on their foundations. He talked about the ways builders and architects had solved this fundamental problem over the centuries. “Now,” he said, his eyes dancing with excitement, “we know how to make walls that rise to incredible heights without external bracing. So in one sense, this building is a failure because its walls cannot rise up without external supports. But it is a beautiful failure. It led to better methods.”
“Is it a failure, though?” I said. “I mean, I don’t think it’s a failure to need support. It’s like having friends: You hold each other up.”
He nodded his head sideways, considering. “Saying the buttresses are like friends makes a nice way to think about it.” I smiled. Youssef was the one I was having the hardest time getting to know. He was guarded unless you got him talkingabout architecture. Then you could start to see who he really was. That was one of the reasons I’d made so many prints from his photos. That, and the fact that he had a great eye. I was about to ask him another question, but his phone warbled, and he pulled it out of his pocket to see what it wanted.
The line moved forward two steps. Martine lit a cigarette, snapped her old-school lighter shut, and exhaled a plume of smoke that floated lazily around us in the hot, still air. I loved her chunky silver Zippo. I loved the scratch of the flint sparking. I loved the satisfying metallicsnickit made when she closed the lid. I loved the way the end of her cigarette glowed red and then faded back to gray when she took a drag. I loved the way I felt calm and centered and completely myself when she smoked near me. I knew smoking was bad, but still. I’d spent so much time lately feeling odd and irritable, and standing next to Martine as she smoked made me feel peaceful.
Nick, on the other hand, was no fan of secondhand smoke. He waved it away, his motions exaggerated to make his point. She smiled ruefully. “One day, Nick, I promise I will quit.” He gave herI’ve heard that songbeforeside-eye, and she shrugged.
“Check it, Nick.” Youssef held out his phone so Nick could see, and I caught a glimpse of guys on bicycles. Nick and Youssef huddled over the screen.
I looked a question at Noor and Martine. “The Tour de France,” Noor explained.
“Oh,” I said, glancing back at the boys. “We’ve lost them, haven’t we?” They nodded, laughing.
“It is almost a patriotic duty to watch the Tour,” Noor said.
“And yet you aren’t glued to your phone,” I observed.
“I will see it tonight at home. My family is very patriotic.” She smiled.
Martine stubbed her cigarette out and tossed it into a nearby trash receptacle. “I hope my smoking does not bother you both too much.”
Noor shrugged. “My brother smokes.”
“I mean, insert health disclaimer here,” I said, “but I’m not judging. I kind of enjoy the smell. It’s weird, but it seems to make me feel calmer.”
She nodded. “That is why I do it.”
“Would you mind if I tried one?”
She handed me the pack and her lighter. I lit up, inhaled, and coughed. It felt like swallowing a campfire, but the persistent background pulse of anxiety I’d had since I got home from the hospital flatlined in seconds. I blew out a ragged plume of smoke, coughed again, and said, “Oh my God, this is magic.”
“Yes, it is. The magic has a price, as Nick continues to remind me, but sometimes it is worth paying.” I nodded, took a few more puffs, then stubbed the cigarette out. I was starting to get lightheaded. I tried to give the pack back to Martine, but she shook her head. “Keep it.”
As I slipped the cigarettes into my backpack, she looked from me to Noor. “You know, if either of you ever want to talk about anything, I also am not judging.” We thanked her, avoiding each other’s eyes. Some things you couldn’t help but judge.
When we stepped into the cool stone room at the base of the tower stair, I felt presences, as though everyone who’d worn the stone steps down over the centuries, including allof us today, had left a bit of themselves behind. I liked Paris’s feeling of being joined to history, of the past touching the present. Portland has history, too—of course—but it was so recent. It felt like a teenager compared with grown-up Paris. We wound our way slowly up the spiral of stairs to an open-air gallery filled with monstrous stone beasts sitting and leaning on the balustrades.
“Gargoyles!” I squealed. In front of me a winged, horned imp studying a grimoire crouched on a ledge. Near Martine, the offspring of Gollum and a goat stared viciously at the city as though trying to work out which neighborhood to swoop down and eat first. A monkey-bat with body-image issues moped at its elbow. Beside it, Noor eyed a flock of birdlike creatures whose bad temper ranged from “peck you on the hand” to “peck your eyes out while you’re still using them” and took out her sketchbook.
“Chimeras,” Nick corrected me.
