Urban Suburban

"I'm ready when you are," I told Nicola on my way for a glass of water.
"Well," he replied slowly, searching his vocabulary. "We should wait for Charles to return because we don't have the key for the apartment."
Charles was out buying beer. When he returned, Nicola and I put on our jackets to head for any place providing internet. Wrapped in scarves and jackets zipped up, I remembered to check for my wallet so I could buy myself a coffee. My hand slid deep into my inside pocket, but felt nothing. My brow furrowed.
"Hm?" I questioned and reached for my other pockets. It was such a habit to leave my wallet in that inside pocket that I immediately had no idea where it could be. I panicked, but tried not to show. But I couldn't search without telling Nicola I wasn't ready yet. "I have to find my wallet."
Anais woke from her deep slumber and came out of the bedroom to find me in search and then helped . Pat, Agate, and others slowly stumbled out and looked with glassy eyes. They asked where I last saw it and where I had been, so we tried to reconstruct the previous evening using our collective mush-brains that sloshed in our heads. We searched the flat for ten minutes and I told Nicola to go ahead.
"No, I'm not going. I will help you find your wallet."
"What? You don't have to. I don't want to hold you up."
"You're not," he replied. "I don't have anything I need to do."
We agreed to go to the last place where I made a purchase the night before.
On the street I asked, "How do you say wallet?"
Nicola told me, but then said he would talk for me.
We went in and asked. The lady working the shop tried to help, then asked a coworker who, without looking up from LOTO tickets, shook her head and mumbled something in the negative. The first lady apologized and, after she gave us directions to the police station, Nicola and I left.
We found the door and went in, but there is only one Lost & Found in Paris. I didn't believe it.
You mean we have to trust not only that someone will find our wallet and return it to the police, I thought, but that they will take it to a specific police station close to the outskirts of town?
I didn't even consider going and the police told Nicola that they don't accept phone calls for lost items.
"I want to walk back to the car park where we went last night. You want to go to McDonalds and I'll meet you there?"
"No. I'm with you," Nicola replied straight.
"No, you don't have to."
"Is it far?"
"I don't think it's that far, but I have to remember how to get there." The night before was foggy and bubbly and a lot of talking without paying attention. There had been a large bottle of Leffe in my inside pocket, where my wallet had been, and I removed this bottle to share on the walk. Did it drag my wallet out with it? Surely not!
Nicola followed me along the way to the parking garage, stopping once for a sandwich, which he shared with me.
"I like walking around Paris," he told me. "Don't you?"
"I love it."
We made our way where I needed to check and went down the out ramp of the garage. Nicola asked the attendant if anyone had returned a wallet. They discussed possibilities and asked me if there was cash inside.
"Yeah, a little, I think."
The attendant explained that people who find wallets tend to take out the cash and put the wallet in the post, which is then carried by mail to the owner. This possibility didn't offer much relief as we walked out of the office and down to the third underground level to where the car had been.
I searched the corner of the lot, curbs, gutters, inside parked cars, but nothing.
Nicola stood at the door.
"Well, nothing else to do here," I conceded. There was a pause. "Well, you wanna go get a coffee and use some internet?"
"Okay." Nicola opened the door and I led us out.
I kept my head down along the same streets on our way back. Even looking deep through the morning's garbage bins, I kept a keen eye out for the bright orange of my billfold against the cold, gray, patchwork of Parisian bricks.
"Are you hungry?" he asked.
"Yeah, I think I'll get a mix at the sandwich shop." We crossed the street to the sidewalk window and I ordered.
"Vous as de la internet?" Nicola asked.
The lady responded in French.
As Nicola and I went inside to retrieve the coffee we ordered outside, he explained that, although the coffee cost the same, the sandwich is cheaper when purchased outside.

Nicola left for a job interview.
My time using internet ran out. My battery died on my computer. I left, hoping to meet Anais. Puffing down the winter-blown sidewalk, ignoring most everyone I saw, including the deaf mute who thrust a clipboard and pen into my pocketed hands, I eventually found a cabine to call her.
"Vous as" the recording told me, "un minu."
God, I'm running out of everything, I thought in my naivety.
I called Anais. Said, "I can't talk, only have one minute, can you call me?"
"Do you have Skype?"
"No, I'm not at a cafe."
"This is a skype number, no?"
"No. Un cabine."
"Oh. Yeah, I'll call you."
But the phone didn't work and I never got a call. Instead, I went to meet my friend Thalie at the cafe.
We sat down at a table and ordered two coffees. I complained to Thalie about many things that rolled through my mind that day regarding my wallet and otherwise. She listened patiently and asked questions that I answered after long, unnecessary rants that eventually led to a response. I had become uncharacteristically talkative in recent days.
"I just can't believe I could lose my wallet. I simply don't lose things." I explained how, no matter how briefly I stop anywhere - on a bench, in a cabine, at a restaurant - I always look behind me as I walk away, making sure nothing of mine is still there. "I want to go back to the flat and check again. I know I couldn't have lost my wallet. I mean, I looked everywhere, but I think it's there. Maybe under the mattress where my friend slept." I felt defeated. "Probably not." Then I got tired of my negativity. "But, yeah. Why shouldn't it be there? I haven't looked yet. Why not?"
We stayed in the cafe, out of the cold, for about an hour, then went back to the flat where I'd left in the morning. "I just want to have one more glance around," but I knew exactly where I wanted to glance.
I walked into the bedroom where I slept the night before, where I had used my coat as a blanket and rolled around on hard wood finding a comfortable and heated spot. Another friend, Agate, came into the room to help.
"I just want to look under the mattress," I explained. I stopped the search. "Last night, when you came in, I remember, it was so funny. Un, deux, trois!" I mimed Agate's actions from the night before. "Then the whole bed moved." Agate laughed her boisterous laugh. At 7:30 that morning she came in to sleep and, after I had received an invitation to get in the bed, she pulled out a mattress from underneath, but not without any great effort. Laughing now, "I opened my eyes, looked up, heard 'Trois!' and then the wood beams on the ceiling just went," and I gestured with my hands how they moved from right to left above me.
Laughing about it, Agate reached for the bed frame. "Here, let me do this," and she lifted so that I could slide the mattress out. I knew I would find my wallet. I felt it. As Agate held the bed in place, I lifted the mattress onto its side and checked the floor below.