The Woman in the Fifth

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I arrived in the city a few days after Christmas. It was a wet, gray morning — the sky the color of dirty chalk; the rain a pervasive mist. My flight landed just after sunrise. I hadn’t slept during all those hours above the Atlantic — another insomniac jag to add to all the other broken nights I’d been suffering recently. As I left the plane, my equilibrium went sideways — a moment of complete manic disorientation — and I stumbled badly when the cop in the passport booth asked me how long I’d be staying in France.

‘Not sure exactly,’ I said, my mouth reacting before my brain.

This made him look at me with care — as I had also spoken in French.

‘Not sure?’ he asked.

‘Two weeks,’ I said quickly.

‘You have a ticket back to America?’

I nodded.

‘Show it to me, please,’ he said.

I handed over the ticket. He studied it, noting the return date was January 10.

‘How can you be “not sure”,’ he asked, ‘when you have proof?’

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