I am beginning to rethink my stance on air conditioning.  I am beginning to miss New York summers that are so hot and humid that you curse under your breath each time you enter a shop or a theater, because your skin instantly prickles up in goose bumps and in haste you unwrap the sweater tied around your waste – ridiculous, carrying a sweater in 90-degree heat – and pull it over your head.  Yes, I know, you'll tell me it is not the summers I miss at all – after all, Paris has all the heat and humidity, the concrete and the sweaty masses you could desire.  Still, I miss the frigid movie theaters, and arguing with my brother in the back seat of the family car because he is always warm and I don't take to cold air well. 

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It must be poor circulation.  I miss monstrous skyscrapers so tall they create endless night in winter and shady valleys in summer.  Here we have majestic Hausmannian architectural masterpieces – five regal stories topped with romantic maids' rooms now inhabited by students – that transform this city into an open plain, forcing humans to hug the walls, like cats, as they walk, in an attempt to avoid the sun's unrelenting rays.

This is Paris in the summer (and they tell me it's only the beginning) – a modern city steeped in tradition, where air conditioning is so uncommon that tourist shops post signs in their windows announcing that they are climatisés.  The metro and RER are saunas on wheels, and every morning when I ride the commuter rail to Paris with its four small windows in the entire car, I fall asleep from the heat.  I am amazed at my relief when I step out at Les Halles, and find that the stuffy station is at least 15 degrees cooler than inside the train.  I have become accustomed to the nauseated dizzy feeling that creeps up as I watch the stations fly past over the shoulders of women in tank tops and men in suit jackets – suit jackets, in this weather! – and have accepted all this as part of July in Paris.

The heat settled in the Saturday my friends left for Greece, and the following Monday I awoke with the excitement of projects to execute and worlds to conquer.  After two weeks serving as the English language consultant to help Nathalie and Bob write the French adaptation of The Animal,  I was happy to have the apartment to myself – one week to look for journalism work, my first week as a writer in Paris.  My first stop was the library at the Centre Goerges Pompidou, to find an article about Ma‹k Darah in the Nouvel Observateur.  I had met the sassy actress – the voice of Whoopi Goldberg, Madonna, and Courtney Cox in all French versions of American film and television – during one of our synch verifications at the dubbing studio.  After gathering my courage and puffing myself with the line, "I am a journalist,"  I had asked if she would sit for an interview with me.  To my delight, she agreed, calling me three days later with information about previous articles.  I had refused Ma‹k's offer to make photocopies for me, not wanting her to go out of her way until I first found an editor to accept the proposal.  Besides, I would have to learn about the city's resources sooner or later, and my week alone seemed the perfect time for discovery.

I was happily swallowed up in the bibliothŠque at the Pompidou, losing myself in its three grand air-conditioned floors, its walls lined with books.  I found the article I was looking for in a bin in the periodical section, mixed in with all the other torn and dog-eared Nouvel Obs from the past year.  For such an official building, the process seemed somewhat haphazard, but I photocopied the article and went to ask for Séries Mania from November-December 2000.  The librarian typed something into her computer, and then looked at me – somewhat apologetically, it seemed.  "The only place that issue exists is at the BibliothŠque Nationale de France," she told me.  I nodded and, clutching the photocopy of the first article, set off for the number 14 metro, on a mission indeed.

Stepping out of the terminus of the Météore line, Paris' newest, you must first climb a staircase and then walk past a construction area towards the library, before entering a forbidding space-age asphalt square the size of multiple football fields, with not a tree in sight.  I feel like a trespasser in this ultra-modern zone under the two o'clock sun, my sandals slapping the pavement, and my eyes squinting to distinguish the four behemoth towers delineating the square.  I imagine being a student here, and the stomach-turning feeling of having to come to this place to write a thesis; the dizzifying effect of the skyscrapers filled from basement to roof with books; the trepidation of entering an unforgiving, barren complex that just might swallow you up and never release you.  At the library's nearest entrance, in the shade at last, I ride a people-mover down one flight, and follow the signs for the cashier.  I hand the woman 30 francs for a day pass to the library, but she shakes her head and points me to the orientation desk.

After taking two different numbers and sitting for two interrogations with different librarians – who ask me why I need the magazine I am looking for, and study my driver's license before punching my information in a computer þ I am handed a library card with my photo, and a paper with the call number for Séries Mania.  I am told by the second librarian that I will have to request a seat in room A or B, and she circles the green area on a library map.  I nod, only half following, in good faith that I will, somehow, be shepherded along the process from one step to the next.  Finally, I return to the cashier and I pay the entrance fee.  I reach the main doorway, where security stand guard, and insert my library card – which has a computer-coded microchip on one end – into a turnstile, before pushing open a huge space-metal door.  After a maze of hallways and enormous, heavy doors – that stir fleeting panic, lest I get stuck in one of the foyers and can't find my way out – I reach the entrance to the reading rooms.  I instinctively insert my card into the turnstile, but the guard holds up his hand, and tells me that I must first request a seat at the computer.  Baffled and helpless, I let the guard assist me, and I am designated to seat N 62.  Finally, I am permitted through the turnstile.  I push open another set of doors, half expecting to find myself in a majestic, scholarly room filled with hidden treasures so carefully protected.  Instead, I enter a silent space with wooden bookshelves and readers scattered at different desks.

At the first information desk I come across, I ask a librarian what happens next.  She is bored and friendly, so she walks me to a computer, and punches in the call number on my paper.  "Is this your first time?" she asks kindly.  Then she tells me that I must now go to the seat assigned to me.  "When the little light on the desk turns green, it means your materials are ready, and you may come up to the desk to get them.  It should take about a half hour þ fortunately, it is not crowded today – so you may want to go get a coffee and come back.  And do come to the desk, too, if nothing happens and the light never turns green."  I nod, wondering if people really just sit there for hours, wondering why the light still has not turned green, and follow the woman to seat N62.  Currently, a red light on the desk before my chair is lit.

I take out the Marie Claire I bought in the RER this morning, and read an article about Catherine Zeta-Jones.  Then I skim a survey about French women's attitudes towards sex, all the while thinking about how I am getting a real taste of French culture, the authentic thing – bureaucracy and all.  Since it is only Monday, and I have the whole week ahead of me, I revel in it.  When I glance up from my magazine some thirty minutes later, I see that the green light has come on, so I gather up my belongings and go to the pick-up desk.

"We don't have the issue you requested," the clerk tells me, looking at his computer.  "It seems to be missing."  The only other issue, I am informed, is at the Richelieu branch of the BibliothŠque Nationale, in central Paris.  It should be there, but there is no way to call before to make sure.  The helpful librarian apologizes, but I just laugh.  "That's okay, I'm discovering the city."  I'm determined to see this as an interesting cultural experience, although after wasting an hour and a half and paying thirty francs only to find that the magazine isn't here, the novelty has begun to wear off.  I'm not sure how much this article will even help me, but at this point, finding it has become a mission.

I hop on the Météore again, transferring twice.  The Paris metro seems to have been designed so that you can never get anywhere on less than two different lines.  By now, I am exhausted, and moist from head to toe.  The strap of my book bag has left a damp sash across my stomach.  Whereas French women seem to retain the grace of a flower petal in 90-degree humidity, my frizzy hair and prickly, flushed skin betray my frazzled state.

The metro exit at Bourse lets me out into a treeless square, and I head towards the Richelieu branch, walking as quickly as I can to spend the least amount of time in the sun, without initiating further sweating.  The girl at the reception desk looks at my paper, and tells me that the magazine is not in this branch, but rather at the Sully branch.  "But look," I say, pointing to the paper.  "It says Richelieu branch right here."  The skin around my eyes is stinging, and I wipe my neck with the back of my hand.  "Yes," the girl says, "The Sully branch is part of the Richelieu branch, and holds some of the materials, although it is not physically incorporated into this building."  I look at her through narrowed eyes.  "You are sure the magazine will be there? Because this is the third library I have been to."  "Yes," she says, "Unless it's at the Maison Jean Vilar."  "Where?" I ask, my eyes popping.  I thought we had exhausted all the possible branches of the BibliothŠque Nationale.  The Maison Jean Vilar, in Avignon," she repeats.  "Well, are you sure it will be at Sully," I whine, not even finding it extraordinary that she has just named a city in the south, "because..."  The girl cuts me off, and smiles.  "I was just trying to scare you," she says.  Oh, right.  Last time I checked, I don't remember French people having a sense of humor.  I'm glad they decide to unleash it in the middle of a heat wave, and deep in the entanglements of bureaucracy.

I have no choice but to trek off to the metro again, to Sully- Morland. My head is swimming, and my throat is scorched.  I don't really want to go, but I can't throw in the towel now.  My American idealism pushes me on, with the instinct that my hard work must be rewarded, if I see the project through.  My French persona, which has been taking up more brain space lately, doesn't believe that at all.  Still, the writer in me breaks the tie, refusing to give up until I know how this story will end.

Climbing the marble steps to the Sully branch, I draw in a sigh of relief – I have made it one hour before the library closes at 6.  There is no air conditioning here, and I look longingly at a water fountain as I make a beeline towards the second floor.  A young assistant is stationed at a fold-up card table just past an old-fashioned workroom.  I hand him the crumpled call paper, which I have been clutching for over three hours now, and tell him I was sent here.  The assistant looks at it and then points to where it says þRichelieu Branch.' He tells me I have to go there for the magazine.  "Oh no", I say.  I just CAME from there, and they sent me here.  "But this call number doesn't seem like one of ours," he says.  "No, I'm sure it is here," I say through clenched teeth.  In reality, I am not sure of anything now, except that the situation would be ridiculously comical – if I were not the protagonist, but I stand my ground.  "The lady told me some of the books from there are kept here,"  I cross my arms smugly over my chest, glad to know something about the library unknown even to an employee.  The assistant takes out a red binder of call numbers before confirming that the magazine is, indeed, back at Richelieu.  "I don't know why they sent you here," he says, pondering the mystery as if it were a riddle.

"I've spent the day crossing the city and it's 90 degrees, and everyone sends me somewhere else, and the only thing anyone seems to know is that nobody knows anything at all," I say, too tired and hot to really sound angry.  An older librarian, seated behind a glass wall, says, as if reminding us that the sky is blue, that the magazine is at the Richelieu branch, but there is no reading room there.  And there is a reading room here, but no magazine.  A perfect paradox to answer the riddle.  The assistant seems satisfied with the logic of this explanation.  The only solution the librarian can offer is to have the magazine delivered here, to be ready for reading in two days, after 2 pm on Wednesday.  I nod absently, and fill out the request form, wondering if there is any law that punishes filling out a delivery form for the National Library and then never returning to retrieve the material.

Of course, the question is moot, because that stupidly optimistic American instinct leads me back on Wednesday, around three o'clock.  I obediently fill out a form and sit at the desk I am assigned, and I wait for someone to bring me the magazine.

I am certain that you can guess how the story ends, but I will tell it anyway.  The librarian is empty-handed.  The material has been delayed and won't be ready until tomorrow.  I look at him through eyes swollen from the humidity, and he considers my face before offering to go downstairs, just to double check.  When he returns, he kneels down beside me.  He explains, in a library whisper, that the magazine does not exist, after all.  The Richelieu branch only has issues through 1997, and the article I am looking for is from 1999.  He is sorry for the inconvenience, he tells me, in the same airy tone as if he had just blessed me for sneezing.  I stuff my belongings into my bag and return the green request card to the seating assignment woman, and ask for my library card back.  As I exit the room, a raspy voice orders me to open my bag.  "We ask everyone," he tells me when I glare up at him, and his face softens, as if he knows the story of my two days in the library.  I open my bag as wide as it goes and shove it under his nose, in the brash contempt of authority I have already picked up in just three weeks in France.  "In any case, you don't have anything for me to steal," I hiss, resenting his concern, which at this belated moment is useless.  "The magazine I am looking for does not exist."

Disgusted, I head home on the RER, choosing a seat beside one of the car's four windows and pulling it down as far as it can go.  I pick up some groceries at the Carrefour hypermarket – which I have learned to love – and eat my dinner in the shade of the balcony at home.  By the end of the week I will have sent out two query letters, and formulated my idea for my next Paris Journal.

One week later, I sit down to type my third installment – French Books and Bureaucracy – for the Journal.  Because it is Tuesday, the air-conditioned library at the Pompidou is closed.  I find, therefore, relief from the sun … la parisienne – sitting on the shaded terrasse of a cafe, a bottle of limonade and a glass of water on the round table before me.  Across the way, on the quai de Grenelle, tourists stop to browse the stands of the bouquinistes selling old postcards, books, and paintings.  Past them, behind a brick wall, flows the Seine.  Through the leaves of the trees I can just make out the spires of the Notre Dame.  It is a perfect Paris postcard, and you can't even see the heat.  But rather than a burning cigarette balancing in the ridges of a half-filled ashtray, it is the Palm Pilot and keyboard – decidedly unparisian, on which I write, that share the table with the now-empty bottle and water glass.  My New York roots are revealed.  Still, when I am through writing, I will take out my mobile phone – just like all the other Parisians around me, and call my friend to see if he wants to meet me for a drink in the Bastille later this evening.  Anywhere is fine with me, as long as it is cool, there is wine, and we can avoid the merciless rays of the sun.

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