It seems easy enough to get on a train from here to there, and then a plane from there to here, and I suppose there’s an air of glamourama jetsettering to lunch in Paris and dine in London, to breakfast in London and lunch in Singapore—but, really, it’s a little discombobulating, and sometimes a girl just needs a quiet moment in one place. I guess I’m not totally ready to be on the cover of Prestige magazine quite yet.

A week ago I was in Paris, rocking the airwaves, and having Gab laugh at me because I kept complimenting myself on my own deejaying. “Great song,” I said, when I put on Aretha’s “Think.” “Great song.”

Six hours north from the countryside and its velvet sky, the last days in Paris included a kefta sandwich and the city stretching out from the top of the parc de Belleville, a selection of Tunisian pastries in a pink box, and an introductory course in the musical stylings of Kurtis Blow and Dr. Dre.



This is how to say good-bye to Paris in style: lunch on rue des Cinq Diamants—a mega salad, a love story, a dark espresso. Scootering through the city, bumping about on cobblestones while Notre Dame towers above us. We puttered through the throngs of tourists—“Pardon, pardon, s’il vous plaît, merci”—and zoomed free round the corner. Eyes closed and holding on tight, it felt like flying. The Eurostar not till 16:07 left time for an arm through an arm and Berthillon ice creams by the Seine.

Four hours later, this is how to say hello to London in style. Well—maybe a different kind of style: a chatty chat with the local cabbie, at the end of which I say, “This is a stupid question,” and then ask how much I should tip him. A chatty chat with the Indian grocery store owner, in which I ask, with some surprise, if one can actually put money in the payphones. He looked at me as if I were from another planet, so I explained: “I just got here...from not here.”

But the thing is, soon I will be from there, because the London keys to the London flat worked like sliding a hot knife through cold butter, and inside it was white and clean and new and waiting for me. Inside, there is a shower with a big, round showerhead where the water comes down like rain; inside, there is a skylight for a personal patch of blue; inside, the kitchen windows open to a hodgepodge of balconies and backyards across the way.

And it was all well and good inside, but I didn’t come here to be inside, especially when outside it was just like on the map, the tube stop minutes away, and Henny and John for a welcome dinner, laughing till our stomachs hurt, laughing till we could no longer laugh, laughing till we were only shaking, silently.



By the next morning, the map was in my head, at least for a few blocks, and already I know: the post office is right, and right again;

the RV1 bus goes straight to Henny’s place, and also to Thushala’s;

the strawberries on sale at Marks & Spencer have their farmers’ names printed on the packet;

the neighborhood Hare Krishna fella is from Kuala Lumpur, like me;

the local coffee joint has brioches and chocolate croissants and coconut macaroons, a skinny girl in slouchy boots, and small wooden booths in which you knock knees with your neighbors.



But all this isn’t for a couple of months yet, and in the meantime there’s home in the tropics—humid, sticky afternoons, and then the moon smiling above the coconut trees.