I sit down and focus on getting my stuffed carry-on bag stuffed under the seat in front of me, then I look up and there he is. Please don’t sit next to me. Please sit next to me. He’s clean-shaven yet still scruffy-looking, probably because of his shaggy hair, and he looks me in the eyes. “Hello darlin’.” No accent that I can recognize, and there’s something smooth about his voice.

“This you?” I fear my voice has squeaked childishly but he doesn’t react.

“26A.” I get up and let him through. He looks pained. I catch the scent of something familiar yet unrecognizable. I sit back down.

He has a book in his hand. I have a book in my hand. His is Cyrano de Bergerac. I’m glad mine is Eggers, something I’m proud to be seen reading. I know he will ask about it. He does. He’s read it too, and loved it. He asks me about other books I’ve read. It feels like a test. Luckily I’ve read the first third of Dante, but unfortunately no Umberto Eco. I have an image in my mind to go with the name, probably from a book cover I saw years ago, but no titles come to mind. I suggest Wally Lamb to him, mostly because I suggest Wally Lamb to everyone, but also because he reminds me a bit of a Wally Lamb character, and I feel that I am a one page interaction in the novel of his life.

He writes down the name in the back of his weather paperback. He suggests C.S. Lewis science fiction to me, making it clear that he doesn’t “dance with snakes” or give much credit to religious ideas, and I want to agree with him out loud so he knows that I agree with him, because for some reason I want to look good to this guy, want to look smart and adult and attractive and feeling more and more like a child the more we speak.

I’ve identified the smell. It’s Café du Monde: coffee and beignets. It’s Café du Monde exactly intoxicatingly sweet, headache-inducing and irresistible. How does he do it?

We talk about travelling. He asks where I’m going and why. Italy, to study. To study what? Anthropology. He has spent six months living in Shakespeare and Co., seven teaching English in North Africa. I mention Tanzania, and he says “Black Africa?” with a question in his voice but no question implied. I don’t know what it is supposed to mean. I don’t ask. I’m busy pretending to be adult and sophisticated, and I might be fooling him. No space for mistakes.