Sightseeing

Author(s): Michael Onofrey

Location(s): Paris

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): Current

Sightseeing, a novella, 25,500 words, is set in Paris, France, time span twenty-four hours. A man, Wayne, and a woman, Diane (or maybe Diane, for her name might not be Diane), meet and pursue an instant relationship in which backstory of any sort is forbidden, so all Diane and Wayne know about each other is what takes place from when they met, but, as with so much in the story, where they first met is in dispute because Diane claims they met in the Orsay Museum (Musée d’Orsay), whereas Wayne thinks they met after the Orsay in a small park, which is where the story opens, the small park. It is through postcards of paintings that hang in the Orsay as well as specific places in Paris that most of the scenes in the story are determined. The story is told through Wayne’s eyes, close third-person point of view, but that point of view is skewed because Diane is an evolving mystery who serves as an unreliable narrator, and even though Wayne doubts Diane’s take on things he followers her dictates to the extent of perhaps believing in them. At the end of the novella Diane and Wayne are in their hotel room, preparing to take a taxi to a train station where they’ll board a train bound for Vienna (Wien), but as they are about to leave their room Diane informs Wayne that they are going to drop a suitcase off in the outdoor seating area of the café across the street, suitcase with discarded items, used condoms included. The unattended suitcase will draw the police, who will apprehend the evil man that frequents the café. Of course that man is evil only because Diane says he is.

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