“If he came back hat in hand, begging your forgiveness, would you be willing to give him a second chance?” he asked with his mouth full of waffle.
“I really don’t know.”
“So he hasn’t called at all since—”
“No,” Mia cut in.
“Okay. What next? There’s a pond over there where kids play with sailboats, but that might be awkward without a kid. We have donkey rides over there . . . any of that sound appealing?”
“Not really, to be honest.”
“You know, I think I’ve seen enough donkeys as it is. Over there, we have some tennis courts, but we’re not playing tennis. And . . . that’s pretty much all we got. Let’s go—enough of this park and all these happy, smooching couples.”
Mia followed Paul out into Rue de Vaugirard. Together they walked down Rue Bonaparte, all the way down to the flea market at Place Saint-Sulpice.
They strolled up and down the aisles before stopping at one of the stalls.
“That’s pretty,” Mia said, looking at an old watch.
“Yeah, but I’m too superstitious to wear anything that once belonged to somebody else. Unless I know that the wearer was a happy person. Don’t laugh, but I actually believe objects have a kind of memory. They can give off good or bad vibrations.”
“You’re going to have to elaborate.”
“A few years ago, I bought a glass paperweight at a market like this. The vendor told me it was nineteenth-century. I didn’t believe him for a minute, but there was a picture of a woman’s face engraved inside, and I thought she was pretty. As soon as I brought that thing home, my life turned to absolute shit.”
“Define ‘absolute shit.’”
“You know something? I kind of like it when you swear.”
“What are you on about now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the accent. But it’s kind of sexy. And now I’ve lost my train of thought.”
“Absolute shit.”
“You did it again! You should swear more often. It really suits you. Anyway, it started with a leak in my apartment. The next day, my computer breaks. The day after that, my car gets impounded. That weekend, I’m bedridden with the flu. Then on Monday, my downstairs neighbor has a heart attack, and then I put a mug on my desk near the paperweight and knock the thing over. A couple of days later, the handle on the mug breaks off and I nearly scald my thighs. That was when I began to suspect it had evil powers. You know. Cursed. Next thing I know: I’mtotallyblocked. Blank white pages, nothing but white in all directions, think Mount Everest, you get the idea. And then I trip on the edge of my rug, fall flat on my face, and break my nose. It’s a sad sight, blood pouring out everywhere while I scream my head off in my apartment. Luckily, one of my writer friends is psychic. Every other week, I eat dinner with a bunch of writers in a bistro, and we tell each other about our lives. Anyway, this guy sees me with my nose all bandaged up, asks what happened. I tell him all the things that went wrong since I bought the paperweight. He closes his eyes . . . and asks me . . . if there wasa face engraved in the glass.”
“Whoa! And you hadn’t even told him?”
“Maybe I did. I can’t remember. Anyway, he tells me to get rid of the cursed thing ASAP, but warns me not to break it at all, or else the evil spirits could escape.”
“So, what—did you throw it in the bin?” Mia asked, biting her lip.
“Better. I wasn’t messing around. I wrapped it in a big scarf, tied it up nice and tight, hopped in my car, drove to the Alma bridge, and . . . adios, paperweight! Straight into the Seine.”
Mia couldn’t contain herself any longer. She burst out laughing.
“You’re too much!” she said, her eyes wet with tears of laughter. “Just adorable.”
Paul stared at her, dumbstruck, and started walking again.
“You really get a kick out of teasing me, don’t you?”
“Not at all, I swear. And so your problems stopped right after you drowned the paperweight?”
“Yep. Pretty incredible, huh? Everything went back to normal.”
Mia laughed even more, and hung on to Paul’s arm as he quickened his pace.
