Le Tour D'amour

Momentarily stunned, I stood in the middle of the carriage like a rabbit caught in the headlights of Le Metro, unable to move, transfixed by the beauty of the French belle.

The sound of a siren alerting passengers of the imminent closure of carriage doors awoke me from my love-struck stupor. Caught on the hop, I struggled to haul my baggage from the train in time. The doors closed, trapping one arm inside attached to a suitcase. In the seconds that it took to untangle my language, get help from bemused Parisians and pull myself back together, mon dieu, she was gone. Striding out like Carla Bruni at Art et Metiers station, she was lost in a sea of frogs exiting the underground.

Desperate to catch sight of her again, I climbed stair-by-stair, escalator-by-escalator, dragging my wheely bag along the tiled labyrinth of tunnels. “Allez allez” I exclaimed in faultless French until finally reaching the street above, breathless and bereaved.

Accepting my loss, and with the key turned to enter the door of my studio apartment on Rue de Volta in Chinatown, I caught a fleeting glimpse of her feline form leaving the patisserie across the road. She slipped onto her velo and rolled out of site once again.

Dropping my bag inside the door of the apartment, I grabbed a bike from an unsuspecting Chinaman in the street and shot off in her direction.

Beating back the baquettes, dodging dog turds and meandering through millions of mopeds, I sped down Rue de Bretagne and rode the rivet across Rue de Rivoli in hot pursuit. Travelling faster than an escargot, my bike bounced over cobblestones as she swished and swerved in front of me, traversing the narrow streets with the effortlessness of a girl in complete control of her machine and her surroundings. My Tour d’amour raced down through the Tuilleries, negotiated the mayhem that is Place de la Concorde and headed to Le Champs Elysees for a final lap of love.

Upon reaching the Arc de Triomphe, and with barely a spoke length between us, she stopped, dismounted and with a smile, rolled her bike towards me. As if prepared to sacrifice herself rather than fall into the arms of a foreign chump on the Champs, she bid me “adieu” and ran into the tidal wave of traffic circling the arc.

Gendarmes ran towards me from all directions, grabbed me and my bicycles but not my heart: it was safely stowed inside the sleek black Mercedes which whisked-up my quarry and took her away.