Then my dream shifts to Paris 1925 —the smoky basement of Le Boeuf sur le Toit, the way the jazz curled through the air like something alive, the paint permanently embedded under his fingernails despite his elegant clothes. He had been thinner then, gaunt in a way that should have warned me, but I had been too caught up in the miracle of finding him again to see what was right in front of my eyes.

  I had spotted him across the crowded bar, just as I always did. He was holding a glass of cognac he barely touched; his gaze fixed on me. He didn't know me, couldn't know me, but something in him was already reaching across the void.

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  He had planned to approach me that night. I had even stood up from my table, my heart pounding with the familiar, desperate hope that perhaps this time would be different. But then a friend had grabbed his arm, whispering something urgent, and he had been pulled away into the Paris night before I could cross the room.

  I told myself there would be other nights. There were always other nights.

  But the universe, in its cruelty, had other plans.

  I never made it to him. A week later, a sudden, violent outbreak of Spanish flu swept through the city—the last gasp of the flu that had already devastated the world. The authorities quarantined entire neighbourhoods. Travel was restricted. By the time the bans were lifted and I finally reached the smoky basement of Le Boeuf sur le Toit, he was already gone.