Everywhere but here

Brunch at Tour on the corner of 15th. A woman from Argentina spies our small dog in the mesh sided bag we keep her in when we enter restaurant. She tells us her astonishment at bags and leashes; in Argentina, the dogs walk freely with their owners, go almost anywhere. Kevin tells her about his recent encounter with a street cop while walking our dog momentarily off leash. He speaks too loudly, compensating for her broken English or the noise of the street fair behind us or both. I try not to wince at the volume; the conversation with a stranger reminds me of Paris, a place forever wedded in my mind with kind strangers.


After brunch, he goes off to find a map of Brooklyn, where we are thinking of moving. Moving dominates our conversations of late. Moving to Brooklyn. Moving to Chicago. Moving to Los Angeles. Buying condos, houses, something else. It makes it hard to concentrate on what’s here in front of me, which is, at this moment, a street fair on Eighth Avenue. As I walk down the middle of the street, lost in my thoughts, a man hands me a card and points to a woman sitting under a canopy near the curb offering psychic readings. She is old, but wears stylish aviator sunglasses and beckons me to come to her. I keep walking, but wonder if I looked the type who would go for a reading.

On the corner where I live, there is a vendor selling crepes. I check the menu and see that they offer them stuffed with Nutella, which is my favorite. I order one and think of Paris again as I wait. So much fantastic street food. Drinking wine in the afternoon along the Seine. Walking through the Marais, casually flirting with French men and boys whose language I can no longer speak. Lately I have been encountering many French speakers in New York and have a vague notion that I will brush up on my French and eavesdrop on loud conversations in front of the Stock Exchange, in the subway, at brunch. The Asian woman who has made my crepe sprinkles it with powdered sugar, then hands it to me, and I hurry home. I bite into it, and though the luxurious taste of Nutella is there, it is not the same as those in my memory. It is too thick, too doughy. Not the thin, delicate crepes I remember from times in France. I eat a few bites, then I throw it out. Sitting down to write, I feel a small tug of regret for living so often somewhere other than where I am. For sleepwalking down Eighth Avenue during a street fair on a warm Saturday in April.