Ema goes to Paris without leaving the sofa

01 — The Countess posts

The Countess had posted from Paris — a bridge, a hat, a coat that was not as good as it thought. Ema sighed the way only Ema can sigh and looked at her own coat, floor-length sable, faux, chocolate. “I am on a sofa,” she told Nova. “She is in Paris. One of these is a mistake.”

02 — Eleven tries

The first attempt put a pigeon through her face. The second put two. By the eleventh the pigeons had learned their place, and on the twelfth Ema walked along the Seine in her own coat, hair exactly right, river behaving, Nova watching from the arm of the sofa with an expression that said she had seen better walks.

03 — Say it

“It needs to say AI,” said Nova, in the voice she uses for the vet. “Everyone will know it’s AI,” said Ema. “Then saying so costs you nothing.” Ema has lost arguments to a cat before and knew the shape of this one. The caption says it, in capitals, before anything else: Paris, by AI. Coat: real. Faux.

04 — The Countess asks

At midnight the Countess wrote. Not “lovely”, not “are you here too”. Three words: which tool, darling. Ema read it twice, took off her sunglasses — it was midnight, after all — and typed one word back: tomorrow. Then she went to bed in Vilnius, extremely satisfied, while Paris carried on without her.