Paris Journal: Small Dogs and Big Apartments

There’s another kind of desire in the air here, and it has nothing to do with lingerie in display windows. It’s house lust.

I thought I’d happily left all that behind when I moved from New York City. In Charlottesville, land is plentiful enough that housing is affordable. But in Paris, as in Manhattan and Brooklyn, space is scarce (which explains the phenemonon of microscopic dogs). I find myself peeking into real estate office windows, despite myself.

It’s not that I don’t love our cozy Paris apartment, with an amour almost fou. I adore the bustling, residential neighborhood, far enough from the tourist throngs to be authentic, yet close enough to be convenient. The rooms are small but adequate, and the decor is bohemian/scholarly/chic. In other words, perfect. It is a privilege bordering on miraculous that I get to live here. It’s just that, now that I’ve seen other people’s apartments, I hesitate to invite them to my own.

I’ve been in only two apartments so far, one for playdates, one for conversation group meetings. Both are grand spaces, full of huge windows and living rooms like museum halls.  Both are in the sixteenth arondissement, which my guidebook tells me is one of the toniest quartiers in the city, near the Bois de Boulogne, the Parisian equivalent of Central Park. But I’ve talked to enough parents to imagine that such spaces are typical for families at my daughter’s school. Even though it is inexpensive by New York (or even Charlottesville) standards, since it is subsidized by the government, it’s still private.

We’ve hosted out-of-town guests but have not yet entertained any Parisians. Tomorrow will be the first time. “Our apartment is small,” I cautioned the mother of Ella’s friend, feeling ridiculous for doing so. In her smile I imagined her saying that size doesn’t matter. Except, of course, for dogs.