Paris Was the Place by Susan Conley

recover from their / most circumspect / slowness / become heavy.
    I walk around the circle of wooden chairs. “Why does Albiach use the word ‘forms’?” I love seeing the students grapple and get lost in the words. Poetry allows us to do this in the light of day—to go deeper into what feels familiar and what feels terrifying.
    Deals were struck on the first day of this class. I could tell even then how much each student was going to give me by whether or not they made eye contact that day. It will be a long semester—six months talking about poetry, which means talking about our search for love and if we’re afraid of dying.
    Good poetry is like a map of the heart, tracing questions about the afterlife and the death of God and love. Always love. Which draws me to certain poems over and over. For some of the students, this delving feels like a very good thing, and for others it’s too scary or beside the point.
    “Could this be a poem about attention?” I ask. “About ‘recovery from the most circumspect slowness’?”
    “I think it’s about memory,” a girl named Lara with a pixie haircut says. Her French isn’t as good as Virginie’s, and she blushes and pulls at her bangs until they almost cover her eyes. I don’t want her to get hung up on pronunciation. It’s the ideas that matter.
    “Nice.” I sit down. “You’re closing in on intention. You’re homing in on the story inside the story.”
    Then Luelle, the Belgian school secretary with the peroxide-dye bob, knocks on the door and swings into the classroom on the doorknob; she’s wearing high black knee socks and Doc Martens, and reaches her free arm toward me with a note. “What’s this?” I say in French, unfolding it. It’s been transcribed in capitals:
    PLEASE COME NOW YOU MUST. ST. LOUIS HOSPITAL. LUCAS IN TROUBLE. GAIRD .
    I read it again, and when I stand up, it feels for a few seconds like Gaird and I are incredibly close, both of us getting ourselves to an unknown French hospital in the northeast section of Paris as fast as we can on Monday morning—because we’re connected to the same person. We both love the very same man.
    Gaird’s dramatic and grandiose, but he’s also busy. He has no time to write exaggerated notes to his lover’s sister while she’s trying to teach a poetry class in French. I’m not hysterical. I say
“Au revoir”
to my students and give them an assignment to memorize three more Albiach poems for Wednesday morning at ten, when we’ll meet again.
    There’s been some kind of accident, and I’m sure it’s minor. I walk down the red carpet and out to Rue St. Sulpice, take a right and continue to Rue de Condé. There are no taxis. Rue de Condé is too tiny for many cabs. It runs into Boulevard St. Germain at Rue de l’Odèon, and that’s where I jump in with a chain-smoking driver who crosses the river at Pont St. Michel. I’ve never been in this part of the city, and I madly study the little blue-and-white street signs. Where are we going?
    The cab races up Boulevard de Sébastopol until we reach a maze of one-block alleyways and find St. Louis Hospital, which looks like ahuge black medieval convent. Haunted and tired. It isn’t the hospital nearest to Avenue Victor Hugo, or the best, but it’s the hospital where Sara is a resident. Luke must have planned it this way. Room numbers are etched in black on metal signs glued outside each door in the dark hallway. Groaning comes from inside one. I take a peek inside the open door, hoping for my brother. The old man on the bed has an unkempt beard and looks surprised, like he’s been washed up on a foreign shore, pinned to his sheets, and would someone please help get him out of here?
    Luke’s room is in the new section, off the back. I get there by crossing a small, glass-enclosed causeway. It’s a concrete addition that reminds me of the YMCA I swam at during middle school and smells like the chlorine used in that old pool. I make it to his bed