Bonne and I had a joyful reunion on the corner of a neighborhood street, outside the apartment we would be occupying for the next three days. Bonne's ex-host family had put us up in their maternal grandmother's upscale digs; Nana was away for the summer. 
Squealing with delight at our good fortune, we pulled our luggage inside, squealed some more, explored the rooms, then headed for the garden courtyard so we could dish about our summers and dream about the days ahead. Any tiredness I had felt was replaced by sheer excitement, and I announced that I was game for a jaunt around the neighborhood.
The jaunt turned into coffee and cigarettes in the heart of St. Germain des Pres, and then a steak dinner washed down with a bottle of wine. We politely declined the propositions of the restaurant's exuberant Greek waitstaff, and headed out to find more titillating nightlife.
We inadvertently crashed a "safari party" at a local bar, and ended up talking to the only two men who were not clad from head to toe in khaki; once the bar closed, we accompanied them to a more underground venue.
It was all very well and good until the guy I had been talking to all night offered to escort Bonne to the bathroom. I may have been drunk and jet-lagged, but I wasn't stupid, and I followed after just in time to see them disappear into the stall.
"WELL!" I thought. "What a fine way to kick off our year together! Not to mention end a long, exhausting, day of traveling!" And with belligerence rising and tears pricking at my eyes, I stomped up the stairs to hail a cab.
The bouncer looked up in surprise as I slammed out the door and stalked by him. He followed me to the curb as I lifted my hand to the empty street.
"What about your friend?" He asked.
"She's NOT my friend!" I barked. I looked in the other direction, but there were no cabs to be found. I sighed and turned my head back to where he was regarding me with dark, sympathetic eyes.
"You're angry," he said. "And you don't want to do anything you will regret. I'll tell you what you can do."
He reached in his pocket.
"Here are the keys to my car," he said. "It's parked right over across the street. I'm going to let you sit in the car, and you can cry, and yell, and do whatever you want, and when you're ready you can go talk to your friend. How does that sound?"
I looked at him in disbelief. It sounded absurd, was how it sounded. And that's how I ended up sitting in a bouncer's car by myself at 3 in the morning on my first night back in Europe, looking out at the Seine, thinking existential thoughts about life and friendship. After a half hour or so, I took a long, hiccuping sigh and breathed calmly. I felt ready to go back in.
The bouncer nodded proudly and gave me a clap on the back before I started back down the stairs. I marched straight to the bathroom, where there was an increasingly long and disgruntled line waiting for the occupied stall. I excused myself firmly and shuffled past until I reached the wooden doorway, upon which I gave a curt rap.
"BONNE?" I said.
There was a lot of scuffle inside and muted voices. Then Bonne cried out apologetically, "I'm coming, Bonne!"
I rolled my eyes, partly for the benefit of the people watching.
"I know," I said, "and I'm leaving!"
There was more scuffling and I heard Bonne give an insistent, "let me OUT!"
She appeared, disheveled, at the doorway and I turned on my heels and began pushing my way through the crowd again. I heard her scrambling to catch up with me and it only made me walk faster; we proceeded like that through the bar, and it wasn't until halfway up the stairs that she caught up and the yelling could begin.
"I'm so, so sorry Bonne!" she started, "but in my defense..."
"I don't want to hear it!" I screamed over my shoulder. "Don't even talk to me!"
We walked in silence past the bouncer; he looked relieved. But we hadn't made it three blocks in the cab before Bonne started whimpering from the back seat.
"I know you're upset," she said, "and I can see why, but you have no IDEA how traumatizing that was for me!"
"WHICH PART?!" I countered, "The part where you were HOOKING UP with the cute Parisian for an hour?"
"He wouldn't let me OUT!" She yelled. "I didn't WANT to hook up with him! Well, I did a little bit. But then I tried to leave and he wouldn't let me!"
"Oh, BOO-HOO!" I flung back. "How DIFFICULT it must be to have such strong feminine wiles!"
It went on like that across the rest of Paris, with the cab driver making a timid interjection every so often to clarify directions. We arrived at the grandmother's apartment, had a good bout of shouting at the kitchen table, and by the time dawn's light was beginning to seep in, were both mollified and tearfully swearing our deep appreciation for each other.
Bonne had succeeded in convincing me that it was in fact a terrifying experience, and I had confessed to her my myriad insecurities in the realm of love. We decided that the whole thing had been designed by the Universe to bring us closer together, and then we retired to our rooms, Bonne to green and I to blue. With the early morning traffic starting up outside, I sunk my head onto the pillow and gratefully accepted sleep.
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