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Intro
Sasha spends her days in a simple hotel room in Paris. She’s familiar with small, dim rooms like this one, though it’s been a while since she last lived in Paris. She was previously living in London and trying to drink herself to death, but a friend couldn’t bear to see her in such a depressing state, so she lent her money and urged her to go to Paris, thinking she needed a change.
In Paris, Sasha passes the time going to cafés, drinking, taking sleep medication, and lounging in her room. She often encounters her neighbor in the hall or on the stairs. He’s always in a nightgown and is very eager to talk to her, but she finds him unnerving. Her social interactions are limited; she just wanders through the city and wonders what other people think of her. Sitting in bars with a glass of absinthe, she often breaks into tears at unexpected moments. Because of this tendency to cry, she’s well acquainted with the many bar bathrooms of Paris, where she escapes to weep while staring at herself in the mirror.
One reason Sasha is so prone to bouts of sadness is that she can’t stop rehashing painful memories. Not wanting to relive her past life in Paris, she tries to stay busy, making a point to stick to a strict schedule. But she can’t help delving into the past when she walks by familiar streets and restaurants, which remind her of the many things she used to do in Paris with her lover, Enno.
One night, a knock sounds on Sasha’s door. She opens it to find the man in the nightgown, who smiles and stares at her. When he doesn’t say why he knocked, she pushes him and tells him to go away. She sees him in the hall the next morning, and he seems angry about how she treated him the night before.
Despite her efforts to avoid places she used to visit, Sasha goes to a restaurant that she and Enno used to like. As she sits there, she worries that everyone sees her as a crazy “Englishwoman.” She’s very sensitive to the way the French view British people living in Paris. To make matters worse, she hears somebody refer to her as old. Feeling uncomfortable but not wanting to leave, she thinks back to the last time she returned to London after living in Paris. Her family was upset at her because she had run off with Enno without a word. But a relative who recently died had left her some money, so she took it and got a room of her own—the room where she decided to drink herself to death.
Pulling herself out of her memories, Sasha leaves the bar and walks home. She meets two Russian men on her way and falls into conversation with them. After a philosophical discussion about the cruelty and difficulty of life, she agrees to meet one of them the next day. When the time comes, however, yet another bad experience in a restaurant—in which she hears somebody speaking disparagingly about her—ruins her mood, so she decides not to meet the Russian. Instead, she returns to her hotel and has a flashback to when she was pregnant and living in Paris. A kind caretaker looked after her during this time, trying to soothe her in the aftermath of giving birth, since Sasha couldn’t stop worrying about how she would financially support her new son. She couldn’t sleep or breastfeed, but the caretaker treated her well, wrapping her in bandages so her body would show no signs of having given birth. When the bandages came off several weeks later, Sasha’s body looked exactly the same as it had before she was pregnant. By this point, though, her baby had died.
In the present, Sasha goes to the Luxembourg Gardens the day after she was supposed to meet the Russian. Funnily enough, she runs into the other Russian man, who is clearly fond of her. His name is Delmar, and he’s a very kind, pensive man who believes in simply taking life “as it comes.” He also senses that Sasha is lonely and says that he, too, used to feel isolated and alone—until, that is, he started forcing himself to be social. Thinking companionship will also do Sasha some good, he arranges to introduce her the following day to a painter friend of his named Serge.
Later, Sasha buys a fancy new hat and goes out for the night. At the last bar she visits, a young man follows her out. She suspects that he’s a sex worker who has mistaken her for a rich and gullible woman—someone he could entice into giving him lots of money. But he says he just wants to go somewhere to talk, so she agrees. Over a drink, he explains that he’s in trouble, claiming he was part of the Foreign Legion and was stationed in Morocco. Fed up with his military career, though, he escaped and came to Paris. He has only been in the city for one night and is hoping to get a passport so he can travel to London, where he knows people who could help him. Sasha tries to make it clear that she isn’t wealthy and that she can’t help this young man, whose name is René, but he doesn’t seem to believe her. He escorts her back to her hotel at the end of the night, but when he asks to come inside, she refuses to let him in.
The next day, Sasha goes with Delmar to meet Serge, who dances wildly in his apartment full of art. She has a great time but unexpectedly starts crying. She’s embarrassed, but Serge assures her that it’s very human to cry. Despite their pleasant and reassuring conversation, though, it soon becomes clear that Serge is mainly interested in getting Sasha to buy one of his paintings—and yet, when she says she doesn’t have the money on her at the moment, he says she can have a painting for free. But she insists upon paying him, so they plan to meet later that day so she can give him the cash.
Serge never shows up to their appointment. Instead, Delmar comes and apologizes on behalf of his friend. He takes the money and promises to relay it to Serge, but he also makes it clear that he’s jealous because Sasha liked Serge so much. Put off by Delmar’s interest in her, Sasha declares that she’s leaving Paris sooner than expected.
Sasha once again reminisces about her relationship with Enno. They got married on a whim in London, got drunk that night, and traveled to Amsterdam. They each thought the other had a lot of money, but they were both wrong. Amsterdam was enjoyable, but Enno kept talking about how much better life would be for them once they got to Paris. After a few days, they hastily set off for Paris but ended up getting stranded in Brussels because they had almost no money. Thankfully, Sasha remembered a man she once went out with who lived in Brussels, so she borrowed money from him (enduring an uncomfortable kiss from him as a result).
Once in Paris, Sasha and Enno lived in a hotel and struggled to make money. Sasha discovered that she was pregnant around this time, but she put off telling Enno, who was becoming increasingly irritable and mean. He would often storm out and not come back for a long time; once, he even left for multiple days, and though Sasha hated him for this, she immediately took him back when he returned. After Sasha gave birth and her baby died, Enno found a job as an advertising copywriter and left Paris for the position. Although he said he’d write and send money, Sasha knew it was over.
René comes to visit Sasha at her hotel. He came by earlier and waited for her in her room, but she never showed up. Sasha’s angry that he was in her room, since she’s worried what other people in the hotel will think about their relationship. Still, she agrees to go out with him. He claims to have met a wealthy American woman and says that he’ll be leaving Paris soon. Sasha doesn’t believe him, but something about his mood does indicate that he has stumbled into a bit of good fortune. Why, then, does he want to see her again? Because he thinks she’s good luck—after all, he found the rich American woman shortly after spending time with Sasha.
Over drinks, René tells Sasha all about what it’s like to be a sex worker. After many drinks, he becomes more direct about wanting to sleep with her, but she refuses. Still, he senses that she wants to, and she admits that he’s right. But she’s too afraid to go through with it—she has been hurt before. He empathizes with what it feels like to have “wounds,” showing her an actual scar that runs along his neck. He promises that sleeping with him would be a cathartic experience.
When René takes Sasha back to her hotel, she once again refuses to let him come upstairs. When she’s about to open her door in the dark, though, she sees that he has followed her. She throws herself into his arms in the darkness of the hall, ecstatic that he didn’t leave—she can’t believe how good it feels to experience romantic excitement again. Inside the room, though, her excitement dies. She doesn’t want to have sex anymore, but René won’t leave. She says she’ll scream for help, but they both know she won’t because she doesn’t want anyone in her hotel to know she has a man in her room. René wrestles her onto the bed and says he’s going to hurt her, but she keeps her knees pressed firmly together. She also tells him where she keeps her money, hoping he’ll take the cash without raping her—which is exactly what he does. He stands and goes to fetch the money, and as he does so, Sasha closes her eyes and asks him to leave her some spare bills. After a moment, he leaves without another word.
Sasha lies distraught on the bed for several moments before getting up to see if René left her any money. She’s surprised to discover that he didn’t take anything at all. Suddenly, she fiercely wants him to return to her, so she envisions him walking on the street and tries to will him back to the hotel. She cracks the door, gets naked, and lies on the bed with her arm over her eyes. When she hears the door creak open, she knows instantly who it is: the neighbor in the nightgown. She takes her arm away from her eyes and studies him for a brief moment before grabbing him and pulling him down, saying, “Yes—yes—yes…”
