Le Gaudron is closed. Well, it’s opened again, but it’s not the same. It’s better, which is worse. I don’t care. It’s nothing to me. I live 3,638 miles away from it. I didn’t even like it there. Flies circled lazily, the bread wasn’t very good, and one of the women who worked there, an enormous lady with a piggy face and blue eye shadow, hated me. But the case was filled with strange and beautiful pastries, miracles of sugar, and the banquette faced the case. I had a plan to eat one of each of the pastries before we left Brussels—I knew, always, my time was limited—as an experiment or task, but instead I just ate the éclairs. I think, in retrospect, that was wise of me.

One night I was the only person in the café, close to closing, and I heard one of the women working there say to the fat woman, So why don’t you close up? The fat woman inclined her bouffant head towards me and said, venomously, Elle est là. One of the first times, by the way, I understood someone else’s conversation in French. After that night the sign on the door advertising the hours was amended to note that table service ended a half an hour before the café closed. They meant me.

One day soon after we moved to Brussels, I couldn’t leave the apartment. I couldn’t work and I lay in the bed with the covers pulled up. David couldn’t get out of work yet, wouldn’t for a while. Eventually, I went to the Gaudron.

One evening everyone who came into the Gaudron had crutches, a cane, or a wheelchair, except me.

There were a lot of dogs at the Gaudron. I don’t know why, but once, watching the little white dog belonging to the table next to me scrounge around at the base of the table for pastry scraps, I was inspired. I thought, All you have to do is be that dog. Nothing came from this except for something I can't explain to anyone else, but that I find occasionally useful.

You would not believe how much a juice cost. Sometimes, but not from the fat lady, I would get a free cookie with my coffee. The ham sandwiches were passable. The chocolate, from a mix. Everyone smoked. I should find my notes from then, I should find what I wrote. I may have written that I was homesick, but that was a lie.