Item: 1 small bottle of perfume

This is now the only perfume I have or need, a 3.4-ounce bottle that I got in Paris in a little shop that was so unspoiled I do not even dare to reveal the name of it.  It was so little, in fact, that even though we knew the address, we walked right by the shop more than once, looking for it.  The scent I picked out is gorgeous, and all mine.

I've only been to Paris once.  I remember riding in from Charles de Gaulle airport in a Mercedes taxi, to a hotel on the edge of the city, and feeling rather like I was entering a theme park.  Embarrassingly, one of the first thoughts I had in Paris was "Oh wow, they even got authentic French-speaking actors."  It disturbed me that I would automatically think in terms of fakeness, that I could in my mind liken a classic city to a Disneyland ride or a movie set.  Yes, I'm a child of Southern California, but I was hardly ever at the movies.  But I've had that sensation before, when entering a world that's totally different.  When things don't seem natural, the assumption is that they must have been arranged.

Anyway, it didn't take me long to feel the opposite, like it was me who had been play-acting my entire life, and in Paris I could start living.