When recent college graduate Mark decides to visit to Europe to see the culture, a friend gives him a letter of introduction to an elderly man in Paris who “might be worth visiting.”<br><br>During their visit, the Parisian reads Mark a letter from a friend about a heart-breaking romantic gay encounter in a tiny Balkan town. Years have passed and the letter writer can’t find the town or person again, and has been haunted by this loss ever since.<br><br>The letter remains with Mark even after he returns home. It opens his eyes to sights and people he wouldn’t normally pay attention to. Can the new life lessons he’s learned help him in his own search for lasting love?

In the Cool of the Evening

Beyond these there were the graciously proportioned streets, les grands boulevards. Yet I discovered that, somehow, it was actually the small streets, the quaint cul-de-sacsand small courtyards, all with burgeoning verdure, which made the deepest impression.


It came to me at some point, as I wandered these leafy places, that something inside me, something that had been asleep, had woken up. It was like I had fallen in love with life again—without ever having realized I had fallen out of love in the first place. The Parisians were somewhat aloof. I had been warned about this, and didn’t mind—since my French was pretty limited. In fact, it was easy to strike up conversations—usually with other tourists sitting at adjacent tables in the cafés. Even before they spoke it was easy to identify them: maps, cameras, and a sort of eager-eyed appreciation of their surroundings.


Chapter 2