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What are the chances? If I'd fled to Korea, would we bump into each other in some bright Seoul supermarket and kibitz over the price of kimchi? You'd gained some weight from last I saw you. All wet from the rain, dark matted hair, ragged stubble. Even so, you looked good.

I mean, there I was - alone, in Paris - soaking in the blue, blue, blue of the Miró triptych at Beaubourg. I felt like one of the tiny dots of red. All I wanted was to be in a sea of cool, to bring down the inflammation, stop my skin from bursting. I wanted to be a cold wet slab of marble in the sculpture garden overlooking the city. But there I was, animate, alone, and flared up in Paris, feeling sorry for myself, when who should step off the escalator but you.

You walked right past me and the triptych. I felt as if I'd melted into the wall. No one looks at each other in Paris, it's easy to disappear when you're alone. To feel invisible. You had a lot of things in your arms: a slicker, a bag, books. Naturally you lost control of an item, but you kept walking. Your slicker fell with the faintest shush. I picked it up.

"Hey -" I said. You turned.

"Hey!" Your voice crackling slightly. We hugged, the slicker between us making anything remotely dry damp again. You were here for a conference, you told me. I told you I was here being useless.

You scoffed, and hugged me again, and we wandered the museum together without taking in much art. I asked if your bag was heavy.

"Kind of," you said. You didn't seem quite ready to admit defeat. We sat by a window in a café and watched people passing in the rain. I hadn't spoken English for two straight weeks, so I chattered your ear off. You were so kind to tolerate it. I don't remember what I said. Every stupid thing I couldn't express in French.

"But how've you been?" I finally asked, shifting in the wicker chair.

You sighed.

"Well, I've resolved not to feel sick anymore."

"Oh," I said. A pause. "I didn't realize you still felt ill."

"It's been over a year. I don't want to feel sick anymore. Easier said than done."

I took your large hand over the tiny table. It was warm and dry and made me feel small.

"Don't feel sick anymore."

The rain stopped and we went back out to wander, squinting under the cloud cover. The chatter was light. I thought about our brief time together there, in Montreal. Our winter relationship: an awkward start (spilt coffee, slight stutters); kissing knee-deep in snow by the rapids; mango juice and roses. I looked again at that heavy bag on your shoulder and your tired eyes.

"Let's drop off your bags," I said.

I escorted you to your hotel by the Seine, far out of the center of the city, amongst modernist apartment buildings and glass industrial complexes. After sitting on your bed for a moment, after a nervous scoff and a giggle, we affirmed life in the only way that made sense. Would we have done such a thing if we'd met on the grand concourse of the Vladivostok opera house?

The weather was warming up outside. We lay in bed, sweaty, your head on my chest. I stroked your too soft curls. Looked at the inch-thick scar that traveled from your belly button to the end of your torso, thought about death, sterility, nausea, pain, all these things that must be nattering away at you daily. And there'd I'd been, becoming more and more melodramatic about my chronic discomfort? I looked at my red fingers, my purple toes, and sighed. You won my secret contest of laments.

And then you opened up your scar, as if it had a zipper. You reached into your belly, and took out a gelatinous, burbling green mass of tissue, about the size of a baseball. It sat in your large palm, quivering. I almost expected it to belch. You zipped yourself up again.

"Here," you said.

"What?"

"I don't want this anymore," you said. "Do you?"

I took this blob between my hands and held it for a moment. This warm and putrid thing, vaguely sticky and emitting a faint hum.

"Get up," I told you. "Follow me." We walked to the window. Faint drops of rain leaked from the night sky to the river. "Open it." You opened the window, and the damp air wafted in. "Give me your hand." I put the mass back in your dry palm. "Now, throw."

You felt the weight of it again, and took a step back, rolling your shoulder, warming up for the pitch. You wound up your arm and heaved the sickness down into the river where it fell into the water. I imagined the faint plop. Foam appeared briefly, and then the drizzle sent it away. We took a hot bath and fell asleep in the water, a second womb.

In the morning, though, we'd aged eighty years. We got on the metro, you with a battered fedora protecting your fragile scalp. You missed your conference, of course. We didn't speak much. We were all dried up. You were mad, I think. I tried to look into your thoughts. Paris was crumbling.

I felt a tooth loosen in my mouth. I plucked it out.

As we approached my stop, I kissed you, pressing my tooth in your palm. As if it could grow roots there.

"Let me know if you'll be in New York," I told you.

"Ok," you said. It didn't look like you would. Perhaps we had no need for each other any longer. Perhaps you had no need for me.

"Take care," I said.

"You too."

I got off the metro and watched you in the window until the train zoomed off, your eyes askance, your hat askew.