The Proust Haunting, part 3 - On Locked Drawers and Getting Lost

wherein Proust disappears altogether from the story

Dear reader, when we last left off, my family was back home in California, I was searching for the key to a locked drawer, and I felt Paris slipping away. A milestone birthday was approaching. I still needed to write “the Paris book,” so I had begun reading books about Paris to get in the proper frame of mind. Among these books were How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton, A Life Without End by Frederic Beigbeder, and the memoir Paris Without Her by Gregory Curtis.

As for the key to that locked drawer, your guess is as good as mine. It is probably still in Paris, along with one half of nine different pairs of earrings. We are home and that drawer is locked. We had our lock-picking friend take a look at it, and he could not make it budge. I do not know what is in that drawer and probably never will. Hopefully, it isn’t important. My husband’s wedding ring is missing but it has been for many years. He says he does not need a ring to remember he is married.

I say, “It’s so other people will know you’re married.”

He says, “How will they not know? You call me seventeen times a day to ask for directions.”

“Not since Apple maps,” I say.

“Okay,” he concedes, “Nine times a day.”

“Sometimes Apple maps can’t find me,” I say, “and I don’t know where I am.”