In a taxi from Charles de Gaulle, I peer at the window seeking the city’s charms. The scene outside is no scenery at all. It seems instead an endless stretch of drab shrouded in an uncommitted drizzle. The grey reality of what I understand to be the banlieues invades expectations I did not know I held. Tired, I fret over the designs of the abundant graffiti — letters too big letters, too stretched out. I grow tired even of this and let the radio fill the silence between the three wandering minds in the taxi. 

The driver is taking us to Gare de Lyon and then Boulevard Emile Augier. The first stop is my companion’s, the older Parisian woman with whom I had traveled. She is flying between Seattle and Paris to sort out a death in the family. Rainy when we landed, we favor a taxi (sixty euros, to be split in half) in place of a bus. 

The ride begins with a lesson in phonetics. Ah mais oui /oʒje/, he smiles, finally understanding what my untrained diction was attempting. The driver is reserved but not unfriendly. I like his matter-of-factness.

The National Assembly, Paris VII, and the Orsay museum blend in my periphery. This other Paris drips with history and prettiness in its heaviest form. On the radio, a French woman argues for older women’s sexuality, something to the effect of women not being all brain and men not being all organ. We’re in the city at last.