Traveling Back - Maria Robinson

You want to go back to Paris. Or more precisely, you want to relive the week you spent with Angelo, an aging academic in a rented loft overlooking the Pont Neuf. He was a worse for wear 65 and you were 40 for those six delicious days on the Ile de la Cite.

The huge 19th century door at 75 Quai des Orfevres had been preserved by the disputing heirs who owned the property. The animus was so deep that the building had been literally cut in half with thin staircases on each side of a thin dividing wall. But the cut through floor and a half flat was luminous, in the day as the unobstructed sun piled in over the the bridge and at night at the "bateaux mouches", the floating tourist boats, blasted their cinematic lights.

You walked all the way with A. to the Marche Bio in the Raspail, actually reliving your San Francisco life at the Ferry Plaza Market. That night you cooked fava beans, made a mesclun salad and grilled the last briny Brittany shrimp that you literally had to snatch off the fishmonger's ice.

You made love on the sofa overlooking the Seine and later walked to St. Eustace on the Right Bank to watch the rollerblading kids and have a nightcap of champagne.

Truth is, you're afraid to go back. You have to create a new story and have a new love even though you'll walk across the "9th bridge" and look up at a certain window on a certain floor.