Trocadéro, 25 May · the tower going gold behind the two of them
A private edition
Part One
where it began
Paris · 24 May–29 May 2026
The city first, before the country — and the only chapter that was ever going to open it.
We took the ninth arrondissement as ours for the week — the Massé, Jane’s find, almost new behind its very Parisian lift, with a boulangerie around the corner where the husband and wife had the cabinet full by morning and empty by lunchtime. Paris was mid-heatwave and mid-Roland-Garros, and the whole city seemed to be out in it.
We rode the Métro for the pleasure of being among people, and bicycles through the Bois de Boulogne to the gates of Roland-Garros — sold out, mid-tournament, as close as the fence — then back at the Massé in the late afternoon for the day’s highlights before dinner. French Claude found the rooms the tourists don’t: the Marmottan, where Monet’s only son left everything, and Picasso first here, before the south had its second say.
Jane calls me French Claude. French Claude got the tables.
The best of what was said at the time, tidied only enough to read.
One night we made a point of Trocadéro at nine, when the tower goes to full gold. Somebody nearby had built a proposal into the view — a heart-shaped arch aimed straight at the tower’s belly — and she said yes. Ours ended red-lit at Monsieur Bleu, where nothing moves quickly and nothing needs to.
