In a garret in Paris - Guest Post by Ann Aptaker.

Native New Yorker Ann Aptaker’s Cantor Gold novels have won the Lambda Literary and multiple Goldie awards. Her short stories have appeared in the Fedora II and III anthologies, the Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir anthology Volumes 1, 3, and 4, Switchblade Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Our Happy Hours: LGBT Voices from the Gay Bars, the upcoming Private Dicks & Disco Balls anthology, and the online zine Punk Soul Poet. Her novella, A Taco, A T-Bird, A Beretta and One Furious Night, is featured in season two of the Guns & Tacos crime fiction series. 

Her latest novel, A Crime of Secrets, is the start of a new series introducing the crime-fighting duo of Fin Donner and Devorah Longstreet, women ahead of their time, an historical mystery set in the dark streets of New York in 1899.

When not writing crime fiction, Ann likes to kick back with old movies (and not so old movies), enjoyed with a big dish of ice cream.

In today's guest post, Ann tells us about a very special experience in the City of Light.

It’s been my good fortune to enjoy extended stays in Paris every year since 2020.

But oh, Paris in 2020, the first year of the Covid pandemic. I arrived in the city on March 1st, settled into my teeny-tiny AirBnB garret overlooking a courtyard and the famous Paris rooftops, and then—wham!—two weeks later the whole country, indeed the whole world, shut down.

The French government was very strict about the lockdown. Everyone, locals and visitors alike, was required to download, print, and fill out daily forms stating exactly why you were outside. Legitimate reasons were: shopping for necessities (groceries, pharmacy needs, etc.), medical or other required appointments, going to a job considered essential by the government, or a one-hour daily walkabout for fresh air and exercise, masked of course. If a gendarme stopped you and you didn’t have the form filled out for that day, there was a hefty fine among other penalties. As a non-citizen, you could even be deported. 

As in cities around the world, ambulance sirens wailed day and night, the sick and dying driven to overcrowded hospitals staffed by overworked, helpless nurses and doctors. Basic necessities were often scarce. Fear descended on Paris with a choking grip.

And yet…

And yet it was Paris. No plague could take away its beauty, its, well, Paris-ness. The famous Paris springtime lived up to its reputation. The air was clear and sweet. The sky was an incredible shade of blue. The curlicued beauty of the city’s architecture, Art Nouveau Metro signs and entrances, and my romantic view of the rooftops were sensual balms to my soul.

Rooftops

Bird atop Metro entrance
Place de la Nation

Nevertheless, I was locked away in my garret hour after hour, day after day. I was alone with myself, and yet I wasn’t alone. It was as if Paris, or at least my immediate bit of it, announced itself on my small balcony and beckoned me to step outside through my windowed balcony door. My little piece of Paris showed itself to me layer by layer, the classiest stripper in town revealing her fabulous flesh and bones. She showed me that her zinc rooftops were not really just gray but had subtle colors. The geometric confluence of walls and sloping rooflines became odes to Picasso. Commonplace details like water drains curved in Leger-like forms. 

Colors on the rooftop

Angles and chimneys

Curvy drain pipe

And on dark, rainy days, there was mystery in the courtyard in the black sheen of wet rooftops (I half-expected to see Fantomas slink along the skyline), the shuttered windows and balcony doors, the silver light on the ubiquitous chimneys. 

Bird on rooftop during hard rain

Clouds and silvery chimney

I was out on my balcony with my iPhone camera every day, several times a day and into the evening, seeing with a depth I’d never experienced.

As a writer, it wasn’t hard to fill all those other hours confined to my garret. As it happens, I was already contracted to write the fifth book in my Cantor Gold crime series. So there I was, writing eight hours a day or more, immersed in murder and mayhem on the page while outside were the twin realities of death by plague and the glorious insistence of le joie de vivre. There was a dreamlike quality to my days and nights. But of course, who hasn’t dreamt of writing a novel in a little garret in Paris?