Chapter 13: The Unexpected Proximity
The phone was a live wire in her hand. The single word Please seemed to pulse through the screen, through her skin, into her bones.
Vy’s fingers shook as she swiped to the keypad. She stared at the string of numbers, a foreign country code at the beginning. Her thumb found the call button. She pressed it before the rational part of her brain could intervene.
It rang once. Twice. The silence in her dorm was a vacuum, broken only by the dry click of the heater kicking on.
On the third ring, the line connected.
There was no greeting. Just a soft, shallow breath, and then the faint, resonant sound of traffic—a distant, wet hiss of tires on pavement somewhere far away. It wasn't China. The sound was different. Slower. The background hum felt European.
“Vy.” Yining’s voice was exactly as she remembered, yet utterly transformed. It wasn't the polished, musical tone of her livestreams. This was lower, rougher around the edges, stripped of its performer’s sheen. It was just a voice. Tired. Real.
All the air left Vy’s lungs. She couldn’t speak. She stood in the center of her room, surrounded by the evidence of her new life—the half-packed suitcase, Lin’s orchid, the graph on her laptop screen—and felt it all recede into a meaningless tableau.
“You’re quiet,” Yining said after a moment. The sound of a lighter flicking, a long exhale. She was smoking. Vy had never seen her smoke. “That’s okay. I’ll talk.” Another pause, the traffic a quiet hiss. “I saw your story. The economic models. Your handwriting in the corner. It’s messy. I liked seeing it.”
Vy’s mouth was parchment dry. “How did you get this number?”
A low, humorless laugh. “You gave it to me. In Hangzhou. The night before you left, you wrote it on a napkin. You said, ‘In case the app fails.’ You were drunk on lychee wine.”
She had no memory of that. None. But the specificity of the lychee wine nailed it shut. It was true.
“Why now?” Vy whispered, her voice cracking on the second word.
The line was quiet for so long Vy thought the connection had dropped. Then Yining spoke, her voice closer now, as if she’d cupped the phone. “I saw you with her. Lin. She looks at the camera like she owns the world. She looks at you like she owns you.” There was no malice in the observation. It was flat, a statement of fact.
“She doesn’t own me.”
“Doesn’t she?” The question hung in the static between continents. “You’re going to New York with her. This weekend.”
A chill, colder than the MIT night, crept up Vy’s spine. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Your friend tags her location. Constantly. And she tagged you at Logan, with a suitcase emoji. Two days ago.” Yining’s tone was analytical, detached. It was the voice of someone used to parsing the narratives of online lives. “It wasn’t hard to piece together.”
Vy sank onto the edge of her bed, the down comforter yielding beneath her. The sense of being observed, of her life being a curated exhibit for an audience of one, was terrifying. And perversely thrilling.
“Why do you care?” The question came out harder than she intended.
This time, the silence was different. Charged. Vy could hear Yining breathing, could almost see her somewhere in a dim room, the glow of a cigarette tip painting orange arcs in the dark.
“Because I was a coward.” The admission was blunt, unadorned. “At the airport. I let you walk away because it was the right thing to do. The noble thing. You were eighteen, and your life was a straight, beautiful road. I was a… complicated detour.”
Vy’s throat tightened. She stared at the fake jade bracelet on her wrist, its green plastic garish under the dorm’s harsh overhead light.
“I’m not eighteen anymore,” she said, and it sounded foolish, childish.
“No. You’re not.” Yining took another drag. “You look older. In your pictures. There’s a shadow in your eyes now.”
“Maybe it’s just the Boston weather.”
A genuine laugh, short and surprised, crackled down the line. “Maybe.” The amusement faded. “I told myself it was just a memory. A beautiful, closed book. I believed it. Until I saw your story tonight. You were so focused, so… present in your work. You weren’t my meimei in that moment. You were just Vy. A woman with a sharp mind, doing something that matters.” She paused. “And I realized I had never really seen you before. Not fully. I’d only seen a reflection of what I wanted to see.”
The words were a key turning in a lock Vy had double-bolted. She closed her eyes, pressing her fingers to her temple.
“You shouldn’t be telling me this,” Vy murmured.
“I know.”
“It’s not fair.”
“I know that, too.”
“Lin is…” Vy started, but the sentence had no end. Lin is safe. Lin is here. Lin is a future I understand.
“Lin is waiting for you to pack,” Yining finished for her, her voice softening. “And you should go. You should have the weekend in New York. You should drink terrible wine at a pretentious gallery and let her buy you something expensive you don’t need.”
“Why?” Vy asked again, desperate now for an answer that made sense.
“Because,” Yining said, and her voice dropped to a register that was pure, aching intimacy, a whisper meant for the shell of an ear, “if you still want to talk to me after that… after you’ve lived in that world for a weekend… then we’ll know.”
“Know what?”
“If this is just nostalgia. Or if it’s something else.”
Vy heard the sound of a door closing in the background on Yining’s end, then the traffic noise vanished, replaced by a profound quiet. She was inside now, wherever she was.
“Where are you?” Vy asked, the question escaping like a breath.
“Paris,” Yining said. “A photoshoot. My hotel room has a terrible view of an airshaft. It’s four in the morning here.”
The mundanity of it—the airshaft, the sleepless hour—made her real in a way the livestreams never could.
“You should sleep.”
“I can’t.” A rustle of fabric, as if she was settling deeper into a chair. “Talk to me. Not about us. Just… talk. Tell me about your graph. The rural co-ops.”
And so, in the midnight quiet of her MIT dorm, with a suitcase open for a different future on the floor, Vy began to talk. She explained the socioeconomic models, the sustainable agriculture grants, the challenges of depopulation. She talked about Professor Carson’s sharp feedback, about the smell of the old books in the library, about the relentless Cambridge wind.
Yining listened. She asked questions—intelligent, probing questions that showed she was actually following, that she cared about the answers. They talked for an hour. The conversation meandered. They did not mention the rooftop pool, or the airport, or Lin. They did not mention the word miss. It was just two voices in the dark, tethered by a thread of numbers and desire.
Eventually, Vy’s words slowed. The adrenaline that had sustained her was ebbing, leaving a deep, aching fatigue.
“You’re tired,” Yining said, her voice gentle. “You should go.”
“Yeah.”
“Vy?”
“Yes?”
Another beat of silence, filled with all the things unsaid. “Have fun in New York.”
The line went dead.
Vy sat there for a long time, the phone warm against her ear, the dial tone a dull buzz. The room had grown cold. She looked at her open suitcase, at the careful folds of the black dress.
She got up mechanically. She finished packing. She zipped the suitcase shut. She watered Lin’s orchid.
She did not look at her phone again. She changed into her pajamas, brushed her teeth, turned off the lights. In the dark, she lay on her back and watched the headlights from Massachusetts Avenue paint shifting shapes on her ceiling.
The phantom scent of cigarette smoke and Parisian night air seemed to linger in the room. The echo of a voice, stripped bare of its performance, played on a loop in her mind.
If you still want to talk to me after that… then we’ll know.
When her alarm buzzed at six for her flight, she felt like she hadn’t slept at all. She showered in a daze, dressed in the clothes she’d laid out. She wheeled her suitcase out into the hallway, the wheels a loud rumble on the linoleum.
Her phone vibrated in her coat pocket. A text from Lin: Car’s out front. Hurry up, slowpoke.
Vy took a deep breath of the sterile, morning air. She walked down the stairs, pushed through the heavy dorm door into the crisp autumn morning. A black town car idled at the curb. Lin stood beside it, effortlessly chic in a tailored coat and dark sunglasses, a to-go cup in each hand.
She handed Vy a cup as she approached. “You look terrible. Here. Triple shot.”
Vy took the coffee. It was scalding hot. “Thanks.”
Lin studied her face for a long moment, her expression unreadable behind the glasses. Then she popped the trunk. “Get in. Traffic to Logan is a nightmare.”
Vy threw her suitcase in and slid into the plush, leather-scented interior. Lin followed, shutting the door with a solid thud. The driver pulled away from the curb.
As they merged onto the freeway, the city skyline receding in the rear window, Lin finally spoke, her voice quiet.
“Did she call?”
Vy looked out the window at the industrial sprawl flashing by. She took a sip of the bitter, strong coffee. The memory of a different voice, husky with sleeplessness, whispered in her ear.
“Yes,” she said.
Lin didn’t ask anything else. She just nodded, once, and turned her attention to her own phone, scrolling through emails.
The car sped east, towards the rising sun and a weekend of terrible wine and beautiful art. Vy clutched the warm cup between her hands, the phantom feeling of a phone pressed to her ear still lingering, a ghost of a connection stretching impossibly over the cold, grey Atlantic. The momentum of her choice pulled her forward, towards the skyline of New York, but her entire being felt tilted, off-axis, listening for an echo from a hotel room with a view of an airshaft, thousands of miles away.
The momentum of her choice pulled her forward, towards the skyline of New York, but her entire being felt tilted, off-axis, listening for an echo from a hotel room with a view of an airshaft, thousands of miles away.
Lin’s town car smelled of leather and her perfume, something expensive and unplaceable. Vy watched the tunnels blur past, the fluorescent lights strobing against the window.
“You didn’t sleep,” Lin stated, not looking up from her phone.
“I finished the Carson edits.”
“Liar.” Lin’s tone was flat, not unkind. She slipped her phone into her bag and took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were sharp, assessing. “You look like you fought a ghost and lost.”
Vy smiled weakly, a fluttering, failed thing. “Do I get points for trying?”
“No.” Lin faced forward, her profile a clean line against the speeding gray walls. “We don’t have to talk about it. But we’re not pretending, either. That’s exhausting.”
The car emerged into the weak morning light. The airport signs loomed.
“I’m not pretending,” Vy said, and it was mostly true. She was simply existing in two parallel realities: the plush interior of this car, and the memory of a staticky, predawn voice.
Logan was a chaos of humanity and rolling suitcases. Lin moved through it with a predator’s ease, all sharp angles and purposeful strides. Vy followed in her wake, a satellite tethered by gratitude and a lingering sense of obligation.
They passed a newsstand, a rack of glossy magazines blooming with familiar faces. Vy’s step hitched. There, on the cover of Vogue Paris, was Sun Yining. She was draped in crimson silk, looking directly at the camera, her expression a masterpiece of cool melancholy.
“God, she’s everywhere,” Lin muttered, not breaking stride. She didn’t even glance at the cover.
Vy’s heart did a hard, painful squeeze. She forced her eyes forward, focusing on the back of Lin’s coat.
On the plane, wedged into a first-class window seat, the spatial compression felt surreal. Lin worked on a tablet, her stylus tapping silently. Vy stared out at the wing, at the clouds breaking apart beneath them.
The phantom sensation returned—the press of a phone against her ear, the intimate rasp of a voice meant only for her. She closed her eyes, trying to conjure the sterile quiet of her dorm room instead of the rumble of engines.
“Here.” Lin’s voice cut through the noise. She was holding out a glass of sparkling water, condensation beading on the sides.
Vy took it. “Thanks.”
Lin held her own glass aloft. “To… new horizons.” There was a wry twist to her mouth.
They touched glasses. The crystal ting was swallowed by the cabin’s roar.
The gallery was in a converted meatpacking district warehouse, all exposed brick and industrial piping. It was, as Lin predicted, pretentious and overcrowded. Terrible, atonal music thumped from hidden speakers. People clustered in black-clad knots, holding plastic cups of cheap sauvignon blanc.
Vy accepted a cup. It was warm and acidic.
“See?” Lin whispered, her lips close to Vy’s ear. “I’m always right.” Her breath smelled of the same terrible wine.
They waded through the throng. The art was violent slashes of color on massive canvases, titled things like “Post-Digital Anomie #7.” Vy tried to focus, to let the shapes and colors overwhelm the noise in her head.
Lin knew people. She introduced Vy to a gallery owner, a fashion editor, a sculptor whose hands were stained blue. Vy smiled, nodded, said “Fascinating” when appropriate. Her mind was a private tab, open to a different window entirely.
She checked her phone once, hidden in her palm. No new messages. The string of numbers was just a string of numbers again.
“You’re phantoming,” Lin said, materializing at her side with two fresh cups of wine. She replaced Vy’s empty one. “Stop it. Be here.”
“I am here.”
“Bullshit.” Lin sighed, her shoulders dropping a fraction. “Look, it’s fine. Just… don’t lie to me about it, okay? Drink your bad wine and look at the ugly art. We can leave in twenty.”
Her directness was a relief. Vy took a larger gulp. “It’s not all ugly. That one has an interesting texture.”
“Now you’re lying about art. That’s a new low.” A genuine smile, finally, touched Lin’s eyes. It was brittle, but it was there.
Back at The Standard, the suite was a study in minimalist luxury. The view of the Hudson was a sprawl of glittering lights. Lin shrugged off her coat and went straight to the minibar, pulling out a bottle of Japanese whiskey and two heavy crystal tumblers.
“An upgrade from gallery swill,” she declared, pouring two generous fingers. She handed one to Vy. “Don’t sip it. It’s not that kind of night.”
Vy took the glass. The whiskey smelled of peat and smoke. Lin clinked her glass against Vy’s with a firm clink.
“To clarity,” Lin said, her gaze steady and unblinking.
“To clarity,” Vy echoed. The whiskey burned, a clean, harsh line down her throat, settling like a small furnace in her chest. Lin knocked hers back in one practiced go.
Vy took a smaller sip, then another. The warmth spread, loosening the tight coil in her shoulders. They stood in silence for a moment, looking out at the majestic, indifferent river.
“She’s in Paris,” Vy said quietly. The words slipped out, buoyed by the alcohol.
Lin didn’t turn. She swirled the amber liquid in her glass. “I know. The Vogue cover was a clue.”
“She called me.”
“I figured.” Lin finally looked at her. “And?”
“And nothing. We talked. About economic models.” It sounded absurd even as she said it.
A short, sharp laugh escaped Lin. “Of course you did.” She refilled her own glass. “You’re a bizarre person, Vy Le.”
“I feel bizarre.”
Lin walked over to the vast sofa and sank into it, kicking off her heels. She patted the space beside her. “Sit. Stop hovering by the window like a romance novel heroine.”
Vy sat, clutching her drink. The whiskey was doing its work, blurring the sharp edges of the day.
“Do you want her?” Lin asked, her voice stripped of all its usual layered irony.
The question, so blunt, hung in the air between them. Vy looked into the depths of her glass. She thought of the rooftop, the chlorine, the secret password. She thought of the silence after Yining had said I miss your voice.
“I don’t know what I want,” Vy answered, which was the truest thing she’d said all day.
Lin nodded slowly. She leaned forward, topped off Vy’s glass from the bottle on the table. Their fingers brushed briefly. “That’s a start,” Lin said. She leaned back, turning her gaze back to the city. “You should figure it out. Before you break something that’s not yours to break.”
They sat in the quiet, the ice melting slowly in their glasses. The city’s light painted soft patterns on the ceiling. They didn’t speak again for a long time, just shared the space and the quiet and the slow, warming descent of the whiskey. Lin reached for the bottle once more, her movements fluid and sure, and poured another measure into Vy’s glass, the liquid catching the light like captured amber.
Their glasses sat side-by-side on the low table, a pair of silent witnesses.
Their glasses sat side-by-side on the low table, a pair of silent witnesses. Lin finally broke the heavy quiet, her voice softened by the whiskey. “My father’s foundation is funding a symposium. In Paris.” She traced the rim of her glass with a finger. “Comparative economic models for sustainable urban development. It’s next Thursday.”
Vy felt the room tilt slightly. “Paris.”
“Professor Carson needs a research assistant to go. Document the panels, network, write a summary report.” Lin looked at her, her dark eyes reflective in the low light. “I may have suggested your name.”
The humming city beyond the window seemed to fall away. All Vy heard was the word, hanging there between them. Paris. Where a hotel room with a view of an airshaft currently held a sleepless woman.
“Lin,” Vy began, her throat tight.
“Stop.” Lin held up a hand. “It’s a professional opportunity. A good one. Your name is on the submitted travel grant as we speak.” She finished her drink in one smooth motion. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it because you’re damn good at what you do.” She stood, a little unsteady, and walked toward the bedroom. “The flight is Wednesday. Think about it.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Vy remained on the sofa, paralyzed. The whiskey warmth had turned to a cold, clarifying dread. This wasn’t chance. It was a gauntlet thrown, elegantly and deliberately. Lin was giving her a choice, but she was also defining its terms. Go to Paris as a professional, or don’t. See Yining in that city, or hide from the possibility. The decision was a boulder in her gut.
She pulled out her phone. Her thumbs moved before her mind could catch up, pulling up the flight confirmation Lin had already forwarded to her inbox. Wednesday. Terminal B. Seat 24A. The reality of it, the concrete logistics, made her breath shorten.
A text notification blinked. It was from the string of numbers.
The airport in Paris is called Charles de Gaulle. It’s ugly. But the light on the Seine in the afternoon is not.
Vy stared at the words. Yining had texted her four days ago, before New York, this same number. This wasn’t a response to anything. It was just a statement, thrown into the void. A piece of her present, offered. Vy’s fingers trembled as she typed a reply, the first one she’d initiated.
What’s your hotel called?
The three dots appeared instantly, then vanished. Vy waited, her heart pounding against her ribs. Five minutes passed. Ten. The silence was worse than any answer. She stood up, pacing the cool hardwood floor of the suite, the city’s glow her only witness.
Her phone finally chimed.
Why?
Vy chewed her lip. She could lie. She could say she was just making conversation. But the whiskey and the weight of Lin’s gift stripped her of pretence.
I have a symposium. At the Sorbonne. Next week.
The reply came faster this time.
Of course you do.
Then, another message followed.
The Ritz. Place Vendôme. It’s not my taste. But the brand pays.
A pin dropped on a map inside Vy’s mind. A specific, lavish coordinate. The distance between the Sorbonne and the Place Vendôme was walkable. A twenty-minute stroll through the Luxembourg Gardens, across the river. An impossible coincidence felt like fate, and fate felt like a trap.
She didn’t reply. She placed the phone face down on the table, next to the empty whiskey glasses, and went to the large window. New York glittered, a kingdom of hard edges and ambition. She thought of Lin, asleep or pretending to be asleep in the next room, offering her a path with one hand while testing her with the other. She thought of Yining, awake in the dark on the other side of the world, sending signals into the night.
She had until Wednesday to decide.
The flight to Paris was a nine-hour limbo. Vy sat in 24A, her laptop open on the drafted grant proposal, her eyes unseeing. The professional veneer was her armor. She had printed name tags, a schedule, a list of target attendees to network with. Professor Carson had given her a firm handshake and a terse “Make it count.” Lin had driven her to Logan, hugged her stiffly, and said, “Send me the notes from the Berlin panel.”
Nothing else. No mention of the Ritz, or airshaft views, or the texture of a voice at four a.m.
She exited the arrivals gate at Charles de Gaulle, and the wave of sound hit her. Announcements in rapid French, the smell of diesel and strong coffee, a sea of expectant faces behind a barrier. Her senses overloaded, she fumbled for her suitcase.
A driver held a sign with her name. She followed him to a black sedan, the professionalism feeling like a costume. As they pulled into the traffic, she saw it was, indeed, ugly. Grey concrete sprawled under a grey sky.
But then the city opened up. They swept along the Seine, and just as Yining had said, the afternoon light was happening. It was a pale, liquid gold, spilling over the ancient stone bridges, making the grey water gleam. It didn’t look real. It looked like a memory already being polished.
Her hotel was small, an academia’s budget choice on the Rue Cujas. Her room smelled of lemon polish and old books. The window looked onto a courtyard where a lone tree clung to the last of its autumn leaves.
She unpacked her blazers, her notebooks, her sensible shoes. She laid them out on the narrow bed. Then, from the very bottom of her suitcase, she removed a single item she had packed without letting herself think about it. The cheap, fake jade bracelet from Zhejiang. It looked absurd next to the tailored wool. She put it in the small bedside drawer and shut it.
The symposium was a whirlwind of polished conversation and intricate Powerpoints. Vy took meticulous notes, asked sharp questions, exchanged business cards. She was Vy Le from MIT, Carson’s promising protégé. No one saw the tremor in her hand when she checked her phone during a coffee break.
No new messages.
The phantom connection stretched taut, silent. She attended a panel on green infrastructure, her pen flying across the page, while a part of her mind calculated the walk from here to the Place Vendôme. It was twenty-three minutes. She could do it between the afternoon session and the evening keynote. She would not do it.
On the third day, a Thursday, the symposium agenda ended at three. The keynote was at seven. She had four hours. The pull was gravitational, a terrible, sweet weight in her chest. Her professional duty was to review her notes, to prepare questions for the keynote speaker.
Instead, she found herself putting on her coat. The afternoon was crisp, the Parisian air sharp with the scent of baking bread and decaying leaves. She walked without deciding to. She crossed the Seine, the water flowing slow and green beneath her. She entered the Jardin du Luxembourg, her sensible heels clicking on the gravel paths. Children sailed toy boats in the fountain. The world felt peaceful, beautifully distant.
She exited the gardens and the city shifted. The streets grew wider, more imposing. The architecture announced its own grandeur. And then she saw the column, the opulent symmetry of the Place Vendôme.
The Ritz glowed, honey-colored and massive. Doormen in tailored coats stood sentry. A woman in a fur jacket and tiny dog descended from a Rolls Royce. Vy stood across the square, a student in a practical coat, her hands shoved deep in her pockets. She was an observer. A researcher of a different kind.
She watched the entrance for fifteen minutes, her heartbeat a dull, steady drum in her ears. No one familiar entered or left. It was just a building, a beautiful shell. The absurdity of it washed over her, cold and shocking. What had she expected? That Yining would be leaning from a balcony, waiting?
Shame heated her cheeks. She turned to go, to melt back into the scholarly rhythm of her real purpose here.
A commotion to her left made her pause. A crowd had gathered at the corner of the square, held back by a temporary velvet rope. Photographers clustered, their long lenses like a thicket of metal. A white backdrop was set up, flanked by giant lights on stands. A Vogue logo was emblazoned on a screen.
Her breath caught. It was an outdoor shoot. Models in impossibly chic clothes posed and pivoted under the direction of a stylist yelling in French. Vy moved closer, drawn by the spectacle, her researcher’s mind categorizing the scene: production, branding, performance.
Then she saw her. Not on the set, but standing just off to the side, partially obscured by a lighting rig.
Sun Yining was wearing a simple black turtleneck and tailored trousers, her hair loose. She was watching the shoot, a faint, professional smile on her lips as she spoke to a woman beside her. The woman was stunning—willowy, with a sharp, androgynous haircut and cheekbones that looked carved from marble. Kao Suppassara.
Vy knew her. The Thai actress and model was everywhere, a different kind of idol. Cool, elusive, legendary for her uncompromising art-house films. Yining said something, and Kao laughed, a sharp, bright sound that cut across the square. She placed a casual hand on Yining’s arm. It was a simple touch, professional, friendly. It sent a jolt through Vy’s system like a live wire.
Yining’s smile in return was warm, familiar. Intimate.
Vy froze. She was a statue on the edge of the bustling square. The last of the afternoon sun glinted off the column behind them, framing the two women in a halo of golden light. They looked like they belonged to each other’s world, a world of effortless beauty and powerful connections. A world where a hand on an arm was a currency everyone understood.
Vy’s own hands, clutching her notebook to her chest, felt clumsy and cold. The fake jade bracelet in her hotel drawer seemed like the relic of a different, foolish lifetime. This was the reality. The quiet hotel rooms, the whispered phone calls, they were just interludes. This was Yining’s true habitat.
She took a step backward, then another. She turned, her vision blurring at the edges. She walked quickly, then broke into a run, her heels slipping on the cobblestones. She didn’t stop until she was back across the river, deep in the warren of student streets, her breath coming in ragged, visible puffs in the cold air.
She leaned against a stone wall, the ancient chill seeping through her coat. The image was burned into her mind: Yining’s effortless smile, Kao’s possessive hand, the golden light.
Her phone buzzed in her coat pocket. A new message. She already knew, with a sick, sure certainty, who it was from.
She pulled it out. The string of numbers.
The light was perfect today. I saw someone who looked like you. A ghost by the column. Wishful thinking, probably.
Vy stared at the words. She had been seen. Not as Vy, the person, but as a ghost, a blurry outline in the distance. A figment of wishful thinking.
She looked back toward the Place Vendôme, now obscured by rooftops. The choice was no longer a boulder in her gut. It was a fine, sharp needle, piercing a very specific, fragile part of her heart. She had her answer. The momentum of her life, her research, her path, was supposed to propel her forward. But it felt, in that moment, like it had reversed, dragging her back to a starting line she never wanted to cross again.
Her thumb hovered over the screen. She could type back. She could say she was there. She could ask about Kao.
She locked her phone, the screen going black. The symposium keynote started in two hours. She had notes to review. A path to follow. She pushed off the wall and began the walk back to her hotel, each step measured, deliberate, her shoes clicking a steady, solitary rhythm on the Parisian stone. The ghost by the column vanished into the twilight, leaving only the solid, lonely shape of a student walking home.