In the company of friends

Yesterday we had free time in the evening. I didn't bring any books with me on this trip (atypical, especially for a King's student) and I had long since finished the fluffy paperback I bought in a Hudson News in JFK. So I wanted to find an English bookstore on my way home, grab a murder mystery or something, and spend the evening in my apartment, with the windows open, reading.
I was on the left bank, just a little ways from the bridge to the Île de la Cité, where Notre Dame is. And there, tucked between cafes and behind a little lawn that separated the sidewalk from the street, I found Shakespeare and Co. 
There's a Shakespeare and Co. in New York, maybe even a couple of them, but the Paris one is the most important and famous one. When James Joyce's Ulysses was banned in the US, you could get it at Shakespeare and Co. 
I walked in and was momentarily stunned to hear the clerks and customers speaking English. I've gotten so used to being surrounded by the constant, barely comprehensible sounds of French that hearing English was like suddenly being able to breathe underwater. It was exhilarating at first to look around at all the titles on the shelves and know that I could understand them, but then I felt sort of guilty, because there I was in Paris and it seemed that all I wanted was to speak English and read English books. So as I navigated the crowded interior of the shop, I said "pardonnez-moi" instead of "excuse me" and I felt a little better. 
I went up a narrow staircase. The steps sagged in the middle, showing fifty years' wear. On the walls of the staircase, partially hidden behind book club flyers and snaps of the shop staff, simple black and white line drawings of famous authors looked out. Ernest Hemingway, Anaïs Nin, James Joyce, Allen Ginsburg. 
At the top of the stairs there was a little library room. I chose an Agatha Christie from one of the shelves. 
As I sat and read, I felt guilty again. The window in the little room was open and I could hear the bells of Notre Dame chiming. I felt convicted, like I wasn't being French enough, like by hiding out on the top floor of an English bookstore and breathing easier every time I heard an English phrase, I was being a disappointment.
I looked around the room. A picture of Allen Ginsburg and some of the other Beats hung by the window, and on the door leading to the back stairs out of the library, there was a crisp black and white photo of Papa, wrinkly and rugged. I thought of the authors whose pictures I'd seen on the stairs and realized that so many of them were expatriates. They'd come to Paris to work, or because they had nowhere else to go, or because they'd stumbled upon it in a thoughtless moment and got so comfortable that they stayed--and Paris took them all in.
The wind blew in the open window. The geraniums in the window box swayed. Paris opens her arms to everyone, even me with my bad French and my cheesy tourist grin and my longing for English books. And even though I'm nowhere close to the stature of Hemingway, in Paris we are equals, because Paris accepts the great and the small alike. So I felt better, sitting and reading my mystery novel, knowing that when I went back down the stairs I could try again to order dinner in a convincing accent, and maybe when I walked home I could walk like I belong. I believe that I do belong--Paris has this quality of bestowing belonging freely. And that is a unique blessedness, and a very comforting thing.
--Rosie