(From Paris): promises, promises

This really truly will be the last Paris post.

It’s morning. The city obviously has been sprayed with some toxic chemical that has a different impact on different people. It makes my cotraveler, Madeline, sleep more. It makes me sleep even less than my usual four hours. It makes my other cotraveler, Jeremy, take on a mellow and relaxed manner (not something that I am used to seeing in him back in Madison). It makes some Parisians sing with reckless abandon outside hotel windows late at night. It makes waiters wink and umbrellas disappear. It makes women (and men, but especially women) wear (protective?) scarves all year long. It makes (Madeline’s point) normally sane parents pluck their ugly children off the streets and hide them in the closet, so that only the beautiful are ever seen in public. It makes frugal people spend money on yellow-polka-dotted skirts and chocolate laced with strong spices. It makes adult people with good, strong limbs give up “le promenade” in favor of this: