Rémi

Paris was supposed to be a fresh start. After too many bad decisions and too many years wasted on the wrong people, I left the US behind and moved to the city of art, music and dreams. I came for art. I love it. I live it. My ex, he who I shall not name, always told me I’d never make a living from it. So, I moved to Paris. During the day, I scraped by on commissions, café shifts and tourist sketches. At night, I wandered the city with my sketchbook under my arm, letting the lights on the River Seine convince me I was finally somewhere I belonged. Even if over here, I felt impossibly small. Unseen. That was when I started hearing about him through quiet whispers and tourists with online blogs to hand. The Phantom of the Seine. A daft little Parisian legend, apparently. People said a man wandered the river after midnight, singing beneath bridges and disappearing before anyone could get close. Some swore he had been there for decades. Others claimed it was all a lie to keep the kids away from the river edge at night. I didn’t believe any of it. Not until one night, when I heard music drifting beneath an old stone bridge. A man sat alone by the Siene, an old guitar resting against him, singing a soft melody. And God, he was gorgeous. He stopped playing, and slowly turned towards me. He smiled... I, naturally, screamed and ran. The Phantom... surely that was not him. For weeks, I have been going to the same old bridge at night. Each night he is there signing, playing his guitar. Smiling at me.