In the city of lights there lived a blind old man named Didier. In the mornings he cried, in the evenings he drank, and his bones ached always. He had a son, Michel, and a wife, Ana, who both loved him while Ana was alive. Didier enjoyed eating, and he typically visited different bakeries around the city three times a day. The day time is when he would walk. Didier was always walking. He walked to a bakery from his flat and bought a croissant, then he would eat it while he walked to some garden or park or other. He would find a bench and sit for long whiles with his cane in his lap. He listened to the people as they passed him. Sometimes he was joined by pigeons. Once by a cat. When his stomach rumbled, he would get up and walk to another bakery. This is how he spent his final days with Ana. This is how he spent his days now.

            When Didier stood to walk his heart quickened. Years had gone by yet taking the first few steps were still challenging. When he crossed the street, he hoped he would be struck by a car. But it never happened. Crosswalks were the only place he felt seen. It amazed him how a man as ugly as himself was so invisible. He was like the fantôme of Paris.

            The fire had taken his eyes and his Ana. Michel disappeared shortly after. Out there somewhere he was a man now. Not a young man anymore, but a man. Didier had difficulty adapting to his disability with no family to help support him, but he had put plenty of money away for retirement thank God, and eventually he learned braille and how to use the cane. Eventually he stopped being embarrassed by it. Eventually he stopped tripping over the city’s old cobblestones and got to learn the streets and alleys on foot better than he ever knew them before. Eventually he stopped being so angry at his son for leaving. It was hard to be mad at a stranger anyway. Especially one you loved so.

            He did not take his phone with him on his walks. He left it on the table by the bottle of whatever he was drinking the night before, and that is where it stayed. He had learned how to dial numbers, but the internet wasn’t much use to him, nor cameras, nor games, so it always stayed plugged in to the outlet on the nearby wall. Little more than a landline. No one called landlines.

            Didier was always walking. He walked through the Tuileries Gardens one spring day. The flowers were in bloom and if he walked on the edges of the wide paths he could smell them when the wind was right. Footsteps ahead, close to him. Not too close. People gave a wide berth to a man with a cane. “Hello,” said Didier. The passerby didn’t say anything. Didier found a bench he knew to be by a large pond, one of his favorite spots, and sat. He had finished his croissant already. In fact, he was half way through with it by the time he left the bakery. He listened to the sound of the water. “Hello,” he said to a couple crunching gravel nearby. “Hello!” “Good day, sir!” they replied. Didier thought about a time when he was useful to people. It had been a long time, but sometimes when he concentrated on it hard it didn’t seem so very far away. But it was. When the heat of the sun was hitting his jaw more than his brow, he stood up and headed to a bakery just under two kilometers away. Maybe he would buy a baguette. Maybe he would buy two.

            One day while walking down rue Saint-Honoré he passed a man with a nervous gait. The man’s sillage was unique, familiar. Oud, vanilla, and mahogany. The man had a companion. That evening, Didier poured himself a drink and called his son.

“Hello.” said Michel. Not “Hello?” but “Hello.” Waiting. Expectant.

“Why didn’t you stop?” said Didier.

“I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know where to start.”

“You could have started with ‘hello’ like you’ve just done.”

“I was afraid.”

“I was too.” Didier swallowed. “I am always afraid. All day long I am afraid. And all day long I am saying ‘hello.’”

Silence from the other end.                             Then,

“I am sorry, Papa.”

“I know.”

“How do you know if I never talk to you?”

“I know because you are my good boy, and you will always be my good boy.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“Neither did I. I still don’t.”

“I want to meet you. Can I meet you?”

“I don’t know,” said Didier.

“Don’t you want to meet me?”

“Yes.”

“Can we meet tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Can we meet right now?”

“Yes. Yes.”

            They met at a bar on the corner of the rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève and rue de l’École-Polytechnique. Michel explained that it was the only decent bar in the fifth arrondissement. Les Pipos was its name. It smelled like a bar, but a clean bar.

“It’s usually much busier than this,” said Michel. “This place is always full. Maybe we are lucky?”

“Your voice is different,” said Didier, “It still sounds like you, but deeper, more grown up. You sound nothing like me. I wonder if you sound like one of your grandfathers.”

            They sat silently and drank their first beers while people around them spoke about men and women and jobs and sex and politics. They ordered another round. The silence between them was not as awkward as he feared it would be. Didier said, “Your companion today. A woman?”

“Yes.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love her? Does she make you happy?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“I think so.”

“Good,” said Didier, “What is her name?”

“Her name is Louise.”

“That is a good name.”

“It’s perfect for her.”

“Are you?”

“I try to be.”

“Does she love you back?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you found out that she loved you, would you run from her, too?”

“Papa, please.” said Michel.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

They ordered another round. Not beer. Something darker. After a minute, Michel said,

“I left you when you needed me most. When I needed you most.” There were tears in his voice. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s not your fault, Michel. You were hurting. Hurt people, hurt people.” He had read that somewhere once. He thought about it all the time.

“My back hurts now.”

“My back’s been hurting for thirty years.”

They laughed. Didier held up his glass and Michel clinked it. They drank.

“Will it be years before I see you again?” said Didier.

“I hope not. No.” said Michel.

            They talked for a few hours. The space between their topics of conversation grew smaller. Their laughter grew louder. Didier began to feel his cheeks turning red. When they left the bar, they were the last two. They walked down the street in front of the Place l’École-Polytechnique. They made plans to meet again in a week’s time, and Michel said Didier must meet Louise as soon as possible and that he had travelled to Spain for two years and that he was sorry and that he loved birds now, that his love of birds was something Didier should know about him. Michel hailed a cab. The man and his father embraced for the first time in years, tightly, and for a long time. Michel’s body felt so different than the last time Didier had held it. He was taller than Didier now, and his back and shoulders felt broad and solid. He offered to pay for Didier’s ride home. Normally Didier would politely refuse and walk instead, but he took a seat beside his son.

            They spoke more in the cab. Strange, Michel was still the same Michel, the Michel who Didier had raised and loved for years, but he was also this fascinating new person who loved birds and spoke Spanish. “I miss her,” said Michel.

“I miss her, too.” said Didier.

“When I think of her, it makes me sad.”

“Me too, sometimes.”

“I think about her all the time.”

“Me, too.”

“When you get sad, what do you do?”

“I walk.”

“I go for runs.”

“Running is hard,” said Didier.

“It is. I hate it. My doctor says I need to cut back on it or my shin splints will never get better.”
“I meant because I’m blind. I was trying to tell a joke. I don’t know why.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“That wasn’t very funny.”

“I know.”

“It was a little funny. But not very funny.”

“You think so? I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I think it’s okay.”

“I hope so. I’m a little drunk.”
“Me, too.”

“I love you.”
“I love you too, papa.”

            The cab pulled over by the entrance to Didier’s building. The men repeated their apologies for their wrongdoings to each other in the past, real and imagined. They repeated their plans to meet again in a week. Didier stepped out of the cab. He stood and listened to the car as it drove away. He went upstairs. As he shrugged off his coat, he noticed he had picked up a touch of his son’s scent, oud, vanilla, mahogany. So grown up. Michel had worn those fragrances for years, but now he finally fit them. Didier went to sleep. The next morning when he woke up, he smiled. That day, he went for a short walk. He took his phone with him. He ate a large breakfast. He took a cab to a park where there were always buskers. On the way home, his phone rang. He answered.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello,” said Michel.

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