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French.”
    â€œAlors,” he said, using the word the French used to mean then or so or a million other things, and nodded appreciatively.
    She glanced around. Their car was empty except for the two of them.
    â€œOù est tout le monde ce soir?” she wondered aloud.
    The train was slowing and the man stood, sweeping one arm toward the door as if to invite her to join him.
    â€œEveryone has left tonight so we can have the world to ourselves, perhaps?” he answered.
    She could hear her mother’s frustrated question, Do you ever, ever think before you act? She stood too, without hesitating, and followed him off the train.

    T hey walked silently through the rain, their legs bumping beneath the small umbrella, until they reached a place called Willi’s Bar. When he opened the door and stepped aside for her to enter first, she found she couldn’t move. Here was a bright, well-lit place, filled with happy people. The room buzzed with life. She felt his hand on her back, urging her inside. She stumbled slightly, and he took hold of her elbow with one hand as he smoothed her wet hair with the other.
    The maître d’ greeted them, grinning and making small talk. It was clear the man was a regular here, and although she tried to listen to their conversation as they walked to a table, she was too overwhelmed by the light and the noise, by Paris , because she had finally, after all these weeks and weeks, landed there.
    He ordered a bottle of wine, garnet red and tasting of leather. Steak tartare arrived, and artichokes with morels, and crab croquettes. She was starving, she realized as she ate, shoveling the food in her mouth, hearing her mother again: You eat like it’s your last meal! Slow down!
    He ordered a second bottle of wine, a cheese plate.
    â€œHow old are you?” he asked her. “Sixteen?”
    â€œTwenty-one,” she lied. She had just turned twenty.
    He nodded. “And you are here why?”
    â€œI’m a writer,” she said.
    At night, with the strange boys in her bed, she told them the same thing. But the boys just said Cool , or nothing at all. This man nodded again, appreciatively.
    â€œParis is for writers,” he said. “What do you write? Poetry?”
    Maggie shook her head. “I’m writing a novel,” she said. Not a lie exactly, she decided. She did want to write a novel. She had ideas for a novel.
    â€œLike Hemigway, oui? ”
    â€œHemingway is my hero!” she said. It was as if this man was looking right into her soul.
    He smiled at her. “This was his city,” he said.
    â€œYes,” she told him. “I’ve been literally walking in his footsteps.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve been to the Hôtel d’Angleterre then? In the fifth?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œBut you must see it!” he insisted. “It is where he and Hadley spent their first night in Paris. December 1921, I believe. Room 14.”
    â€œWow,” Maggie said. Somehow she had randomly met the perfect man for her. A man who knew where Hemingway spent his first night in Paris, right down to the room number. A man who looked like Gérard Depardieu.
    â€œIt was called the Hôtel Jacob back then,” he was saying.
    â€œI’ve walked by his apartments,” she said. Then, to impress him, she added, “Both of them.”
    But he waved his hand dismissively. “Everyone sees those. There are commemorative plaques on the buildings to be sure no tourist misses them. But a writer”—he lowered his voice and placed a hand briefly on her cheek—“a writer needs the whole story, n’est-ce pas? ”
    Maggie reached in her bag and pulled out her notebook.
    â€œWhat was the address?” she said, holding a pen above a blank page. “I’ll go first thing tomorrow.”
    â€œNonsense!” he said, getting to his feet. “We’ll go