In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

like everyone else, so their voices blended into the hiss of the other
voices and the feet.
Walking up the right apse now, the organ started again with
Olivier Messiaen's Apparition de l'Eglise Eternelle. After this, a soft
improvisation was swallowed up by the escalating ambient noise of the
crowd and they slipped out into the cold night before the priest could
yell at the crowd to pipe it down.
The cobble stones were wet and shiny with refraction from all
the spotlights. Penny looked up at the spires and at the famous
gargoyles grinning down at her from their black perches.
They walked along the water until they got to the Pont Neuf
which bisected the tip of the island. On the other side a small park cut
into the river like the prow of a ship. The buildings of the Louvre were
ablaze up ahead on the right. She imagined where Dick's must be,
beyond the dark bridge on the left, practicing his fog circles. What must
it be like, to wake up everyday with such a view?
"It is nearly ten, earlier New York time, but I woke you so early,
you must be sleepy, no?"
She yawned. "Yeah, now that you mention it."
"Are you hungry?"
"I don't know."
He put his hand on her shoulder.
"Come, I take you back, I think you are very sleepy, and
tomorrow we must, how you do you say, be on our toes."
They walked along the Quai past the bouquiniste's closed boxes
to Dick's, which was not very far. She drifted in a dreamlike state back
to Dick's aerie.
Inez opened the door for them. Alessandro said goodnight and
bowed, as if it was two hundred years ago, when people really did that,
and in this building, too. Passing by the pictures, she suddenly felt like
laughing, everything was so out of wack.
The high pitched trilling of the gray euro-phone woke her. "I
am sorry to wake you so early, but it is almost eight o'clock, Inez has a
lovely breakfast here in the kitchen for us. Dick is still asleep. What do
you prefer, tea or coffee?"
Through the gauze curtains it was barely light.
"Huh? Oh, good morning, um, tea, no coffee."
"Okay, both. Follow the aroma."
She splashed the hand shower over herself in the stone tub, first
warm, them ice cold to wake up. She slipped on the new clothes,
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