The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

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Ahmet bought some dried apricots, dates and figs before we left and made our way to the enormous stone complex that housed the thousands of shops of the Grand Bazaar.

The Spice Bazaar had dazzled my senses, stupefying me with its exotic aromas. I had been moving about utterly absorbed by my surroundings, not thinking at all about myself or my life. But here, in the Grand Bazaar, my mind kept jumping to the people I missed. As I walked through the huge, endless arched corridors, I saw so many things that Annisha might like—mosaic lamps, delicate silk scarves, intricately patterned ceramics—and everywhere a riot of color. That was one thing that had struck me when I first met Annisha. No matter what she wore, there was always a splash of vibrant color somewhere on her—bright green earrings, a purple scarf in winter, a brilliant orange beret. Her apartment was like that, too—an eclectic assortment of things, a jumble of pattern and hues, chaotic yet surprisingly harmonious. Of course I would be traveling for the next few weeks, so I couldn’t buy anything bulky. And I was overwhelmed by the choices. Eventually I picked out a nazar necklace for her—the glass “evil eye” bead is believed by many to ward off harm—and for Adam I bought a little embroidered vest that I thought he’d get a kick out of.

The carpet sellers most distracted me. They called out each time I passed, and each time I found myself slowly looking over the beautiful carpets.

Ahmet noticed my attention. “Ah, yes,” he said. “You must come back someday when you have more time, when you can really shop and bargain. Choosing a good carpet is not easy—you must learn about the art, the weaving and knotting, the fiber, the dyes. But you must also learn how to value them—and how to bargain for them. I would love to instruct you in this.”

Ahmet’s eagerness to teach me reminded me of my parents. They were a dynamic duo who encouraged lifelong learning. Mom was a voracious reader, and when my sister and I were in elementary school, she took a job at a small bookstore. She came home with so many books that I’m sure the store kept her employed so they wouldn’t lose their best customer. She bought fiction for herself, nonfiction for my dad, and picture books and early readers for Kira and me.

Dad was delighted with this development, and he devoured the reading material with glee. But Dad’s enthusiasm didn’t stop there. Nothing gave Nick Landry more pleasure than sharing his knowledge. He was, in fact, an elementary school teacher, but teaching was more than his job—it was his passion. Between the two of them, my parents created a classroom atmosphere wherever we went—much to the consternation of their children.

Every year, we took one family trip during the summer holidays. It was never anywhere exotic, but Mom and Dad always did their research before we got there. Hiking through the woods, Mom would pull a field guide from her knapsack and tell us how Jack pines actually needed the intense heat of forest fire to open their cones so they could seed themselves. Then Dad would explain how a beaver constructed its dam, or how the hills we climbed were once the shores of ancient lakes. At any historical site, Mom and Dad knew more about the place than the guides. Even a theme park could be a lesson in centrifugal force or pop culture references.

Mom and Dad seemed almost addicted to information and ideas, and our travels were always punctuated with exclamations. “Isn’t that something!” Mom would say anytime we made a discovery. And Dad loved it when my sister and I showed curiosity. “Great question!” he would blurt out with joy and pride when we asked anything at all. You would have thought we had just discovered a cure for cancer.

These days I remember that enthusiasm with fondness, but as a child I often wearied of it. And when I hit my teens, our little excursions, the constant instruction, the endless trivia were like nails on a blackboard. Slumped in the backseat of a hot car on a summer afternoon, while Dad gave us a heartfelt account of the Erie Canal, Kira and I would roll our eyes, raise our index fingers to our temples and fire imaginary guns.

This place, this city, I thought sadly, would have fascinated my parents. This was the kind of trip they always dreamed about, the kind of place they hoped to visit. That was their big plan for their retirement: travel. In fact, when Dad left work, his colleagues presented him with a set of luggage. In the months following their retirement, travel books sprouted up around the house like mushrooms on a wet lawn. Stacks piled up beside his favorite living room chair, volumes spilling out from under his bedside table, brochures and maps peeking out of the magazine rack in the bathroom—Ireland, Tuscany, Thailand, New Zealand. Dad printed off itineraries and posted them above his computer desk. He and Mom were planning to be on the road for almost half a year.

Then one day, several months before their planned departure, Mom heard a crash from the garage. Dad was putting away the patio furniture for the winter when an aortic embolism struck. He was dead before he even touched the floor.

For months after the funeral, Mom moved as if under water. Slowly the itineraries disappeared from the bulletin board, the travel books were moved to a shelf in the basement, and Mom went back to her part-time job at the bookstore. Kira thought Mom might return to thoughts of travel someday, but right now, she still couldn’t bear to think about it without Dad.

One last shout from a carpet seller interrupted my thoughts about my parents. Ahmet began heading out of the bazaar into the late afternoon sunshine.

“Time for dinner,” Ahmet said as ushered me around the side of the building. We turned down one alley, then another, winding our way through the narrow streets of the old city. Eventually Ahmet stopped in front of a bright red awning that stretched out from a low stone building.

“Here we are,” he said. I followed him into the shade. The café was dim and cool, but brimming with color. Red and gold rugs hung from the stone wall, and underneath them were low benches lined with huge blue and orange pillows. Small, squat tables, covered in bright red-striped cloth, sat in front of the benches. A little brass lamp adorned each table.

Over a dinner of peppers stuffed with rice and pine nuts, lamb with pureed eggplant, and sesame-seed bread, Ahmet and I talked about our work and our lives. More than once, however, friendly silences fell over the table. The quiet might be punctuated by “Try this,” from Ahmet, or “That was good,” from me, but there were long stretches when we let the distant sound of voices from the street take over. I felt far away from everything I had ever known.

The sun was just beginning to lower in the sky when we arrived at the dock. The tang of salt water spiced the air. The harbor was crammed with boats large and small, huge commercial ferries dominating the space. Ahmet, I learned, was not just a ferry captain. He had actually owned one of these big ferry companies, but sold it a number of years ago. He was now semiretired. He had kept only one boat from the fleet—a vessel that originally was a fishing boat and had served as the first ferry in the early days of his business. “I could not bear to part with it,” he told me. “I take it out now and then for private trips up the Bosphorus. I had already booked one for today when Julian called. So my son took it out for me.”

We walked past the docks where the large public ferries waited, and past the large tourist boats. Alongside one of the docks was a long, shallow craft with ornate bow and stern decorations, an elaborate canopy and gunwales shining with gold gilt. “A replica of an imperial caïque,” said Ahmet. “For tourists.”

Eventually we arrived at an area where the slips held smaller vessels. Ahmet walked up to a modest white boat with blue trim. “Here it is,” he said, laughing. “My pride and joy.” It was a sturdy-looking tug-like boat. Near the prow was a small open-topped wheel house, and behind a small wood-and-glass partition were the control panel and wheel. A worn leather stool was placed behind the wheel. Wooden benches lined the stern, and a few seats ran behind the wheel house. The white and blue paint of the sides and floor was cracked, but clean. Old, but well cared for.

“It seems we have missed Yusuf. Oh well. Perhaps on your next visit I will be able to introduce you to my family,” said Ahmet as he untied the boat from the dock.

It did not take long for us to get out of the harbor into the open strait. We were moving slowly, but at this time of night it seemed as if everything was operating at such a leisurely speed. A large ferry with its lights twinkling churned toward the Asian shore, and smaller boats were off in the distance. The water felt unnaturally quiet. In the twilight I could see Istanbul stretching out from both shores—an elaborate quilt of mosques, palaces and other elegant buildings, interspersed with red-tiled roofs, apartment houses, palm trees, shops and cafés. We slipped under the Bosphorus Bridge and headed north. I could make out elaborate wooden houses, what Ahmet told me were yalis—summer homes of the rich—hanging over the water’s edge as if they were floating instead of anchored onshore. With every passing minute, the sky became a deeper blue, until the full moon looked like a giant pearl hanging before an inky pool. Its light bounced against the water, and Ahmet slowed the engine even further. I could feel the boat bob against the gentle rhythm of the current.

“It is special here, no?” said Ahmet. I nodded.

“It doesn’t seem quite real,” I said.

“But it’s so hard to say what is real, isn’t it?” Ahmet went on.

“I suppose.” This wasn’t the kind of thing I usually spent much time thinking about.

I walked to the stern of the boat and looked back at the disappearing city.

“Did you know,” continued Ahmet, “that a strait is not like a river? Water does not flow in one direction only.”

I turned around to look at Ahmet and shook my head.

“No,” said Ahmet. “Not like a river at all. Water is pulled in and out by ocean tides. Just as Europe is meeting Asia here, at this spot, the waters of two seas, the Marmara and the Black Sea, are coming together, mingling. And yet, even this is not exactly what it seems.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There were marine scientists from England, Canada and Turkey studying this strait a few years ago,” Ahmet explained. “And you know what they discovered?” Ahmet had been facing ahead as he steered, but now he looked over his shoulder at me. I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head.

“At the very bottom of this strait, there runs an undersea river. Water, mud and sediment, heavier than the salt water above, flowing from the Marmara Sea into the Black Sea.”

“An underwater river?” I said. “How bizarre.”

“It makes you realize,” said Ahmet, “just how complicated things are. How things are seldom simply what they appear to be.”

I had moved around the boat and now joined Ahmet in a seat next to the wheel. We were both silent for several minutes. Then Ahmet tilted back in his seat.

“We have spent the better part of the day together,” Ahmet said thoughtfully. “But in truth we don’t know much of each other. Of my dear friend Julian’s relative, I know only this: you are an electrical engineer; you are married; you have a six-year-old son. But who are you really?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. Ahmet glanced at my blank expression and smiled.

“And it is no different with me,” he said. “I told you at dinner that I am a sixty-year-old business owner. That I am a widower with four grown sons. But do you really know me?”

“It is a place to start, I suppose,” I answered. “I mean, I could ask you more about your company or your sons.”

“But it would take us a long time to truly get to know one another, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“That’s the way it usually is. But just imagine if we started our conversations with other things. What if I told you that for me life is on the water. Ever since I was a child, all I wanted to do was live and work on or near the water? My mother used to tell me that the only time I was really content as a baby was when she gave me a bath. Water, fishing, swimming. Boats, boats, boats. No doubt about what I wanted to do. When I am not on one of my boats, I always feel a strange sense of restlessness. Sometimes that was hard for my wife, for my sons, to deal with. But our best times were always together, on the seashore or on the boat. It’s as if that was where we could all be ourselves. I have always needed to be on the water—to think, to really understand the world and my life. It was on this same little boat that I decided that Kaniz was the woman I wanted to marry. It was here where I have made all my plans and all my biggest decisions.” Ahmet turned the wheel of the boat slightly. “I feel if told you that, you might really begin to understand me.”

“I guess most of what we understand about people is just the surface stuff,” I offered.

“Yes,” said Ahmet, nodding. “And that is a sad thing.” Ahmet was silent for a moment.

“But that is not the saddest thing,” he continued reflectively. “The saddest thing is that this is often all we understand about ourselves: that so often, we live our neighbor’s life, instead of our own.”

It was hard to tell how long we were actually on the Bosphorus. The phosphorescent water, the shimmering moon, the soothing hum of the engine made the journey seem like a dream, a moment out of time. But then Ahmet was turning the wheel and pointing at distant lights dotting the shore on the Asian side.

“Anadolu Kava

i,” Ahmet said pointing ahead. You cannot see it, but up there, on the hill, are the ruins of the Genoese Castle. From the fourteenth century. My little house is the other way, at the southern end of the village, along the shore.”

It didn’t take us long to dock the boat and then drive the little car that Ahmet had parked at the docks to his home in the village. The small stone house was nothing like the apartment that Ahmet kept in the city. Terra cotta tiles lined the floors, uneven plaster covered the walls, and the dark, rough timbers of the ceiling seemed to hold echoes from a distant past. Open shelves in the kitchen were lined with heavy crockery and brass cookware. Here and there were small bits of mosaic and brightly colored glass, but the woven window coverings and faded spreads on the furniture had the muted shades of time. Ahmet carried my backpack into a tiny room. He pointed to the small bed, no larger than a twin, its hand-carved frame pushed against the wall.

“The bed in which I slept with my two brothers,” Ahmet laughed. He put my knapsack at the foot of the bed, and then led me back to the living room. “Shall we sit outside for just a bit?” he asked.

We put on sweaters and moved out to the little stone patio overlooking the moonlit Bosphorus. Ahmet told me more about his favorite place, the water.

“It is said that the Black Sea used to be a freshwater lake. Thousands and thousands of years ago, there was an enormous flood, the Mediterranean spilled into the Bosphorus Strait here and turned the Black Sea into a saltwater ocean.”

“And the undersea river—do you think it might be a remnant of that?” I asked him.

“That’s what it sounds like, doesn’t it?” said Ahmet. “You know, some people think that the flood was the one that the Bible talks about—Noah’s flood.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“And the Bosphorus figures in Greek mythology as well. Are you familiar with Jason—of the Golden Fleece?”

I shook my head.

“Well, in Greek mythology, the Bosphorus was the home of the Symplegades—floating rock cliffs that would clash together and crush boats that dared make passage here. When Jason sailed down the Bosphorus, he sent a dove to fly between the rocks. The rocks crashed together, but the dove lost only its tail feathers. Then Jason and the Argonauts followed. The stern of their ship was clipped, but the boat did not founder. After Jason’s passage, the rocks stopped moving and the Greeks finally had access to the Black Sea.”

I smiled and nodded. My mom would have loved Ahmet and his stories.

“Oh dear,” said my host. “I had almost forgotten why you were here. Julian’s talisman. Let me get that for you.” Ahmet stood up quickly and entered the house. He returned a few minutes later with a small square of folded paper and a little bundle of red silk. He handed both to me.

“Well, now that you have what you came for,” he said, “we should go to bed. Tomorrow we will get up early. Head back to Istanbul. I can take you to Ayasofya—Hagia Sophia—before we make our way to the airport. But you will have to promise me to return someday so I can show you the rest of my home.”

I agreed happily and reluctantly rose from my chair.

WHEN I GOT BACK into the room, I placed the small bundle on a little round table next to the bed. I sat on the edge of the bed for a minute before I picked up the parcel again. Slowly I unfolded the soft square of silk. There in the middle was a small brass coin. Well, not a coin exactly. It was a disk, about the size of a nickel. On one side was stamped a sun, its rays radiating from a raised circle. On the other side, a crescent moon. I put the coin on the table and picked up the piece of folded parchment. I opened it and placed it on my knees. I read:

The Power of Authenticity

The most important gift we can give ourselves is the commitment to living our authentic life. To be true to ourselves, however, is not an easy task. We must break free of the seductions of society and live life on our own terms, under our own values and aligned with our original dreams. We must tap our hidden selves; explore the deep-seated, unseen hopes, desires, strengths and weaknesses that make us who we are. We have to understand where we have been and know where we are going. Every decision we make, every step we take, must be informed by our commitment to living a life that is true and honest and authentic to ourselves and ourselves alone. And as we proceed, we are certain to experience fortune well beyond our highest imagination.

I went to my backpack, and from the bottom I dug out the journal that Julian had given me. Then I slipped the parchment between its covers and put the journal back inside. I picked up the talisman again and turned it back and forth in my hands. Then I took the little leather pouch from my pocket and slipped the disk inside before turning back the covers on the bed and crawling in.

I WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, realizing that I had not moved a muscle all night. It was the kind of deep sleep I enjoyed only on vacation. When I padded into the kitchen, the wonderful aroma of Turkish coffee, pungent and dark, filled my nostrils. Ahmet served rich yogurt and fruit with the coffee, and then hustled me out the door, back through the cobbled village streets and to the water once more.

After we climbed into the boat, Ahmet started the engine and carefully backed away from the dock. Once the boat was out in the open water, he accelerated. We were moving faster than we had the night before, but that wasn’t the only thing that was utterly changed.

Despite the early hour, the sun was blazing in the sky. The villages, the green hills, the water—everything seemed bright and clear, sharp and vibrant. It was stunning, but the myth and mysteries of the previous night had evaporated. “It all looks so different,” I said to Ahmet. “Beautiful, but different.”

“Yes,” said Ahmet thoughtfully. “I often find that myself. Night hides many things, but reveals others.”

“It happens in cities, too,” I said. “Some often look magical at night but humdrum during the day.”

“And yet both versions are equally real.” Ahmet paused, and then added, “I suppose that is why it is never a good idea to make quick judgments about things. It takes a long time to really get to know places, people, even ourselves.”

The boat was humming through the water as birds circled and swung above us. Up ahead I could see two men throw a net from a small fishing boat. A young boy broke away from a group of people gathered on a dock and waved vigorously at us. I felt for a moment that I had traveled along these shores before but was only noticing them for the first time.

“Yes,” I said to my new friend Ahmet. “Yes, I am beginning to see the truth in that.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THERE HAD BEEN MOMENTS WHEN, moving around Istanbul, I felt as if I were a character in a movie. As if I were seeing the world through a camera, as if every word that came out of my mouth had been written by someone else. It was disorienting, but at the same time refreshing, as if the world was full of possibility. The night I’d floated down the Bosphorus, with the moon above, the water below—I don’t think I’d felt that sense of wonder since I was a child. Julian had said that life was about “becoming.” I was beginning to feel that.

But here, sitting in the Atatürk airport, that Istanbul was slipping quickly into the rearview mirror. I had shut off my phone previous afternoon and, until now, had forgotten to turn it on. It hummed awake, producing an inbox stuffed with semi-hysterical subject lines: “Urgent shipping request”; “QC question”; “XD95 failure”; “Monthly account reports due!”; “Where the Hell R U?” I noticed several texts from Nawang, and I read through those first. It sounded as if the first quality control tests were going well. Then I tackled the ones from David. Just requests for reports I’d already given him, information I had already shared. How much of my time did I waste resending stuff, repeating myself, churning out documents and messages no one ever bothered to read (but were nevertheless due—and submitted—on time, each month, each week)? Forty minutes clicked by before I turned to the messages from Annisha and Adam. Annisha wanted to know if I had arrived in Istanbul safely. Damn. I should have let her know as soon as I had arrived. Adam wanted to tell me about his school play. I quickly typed replies and then called the office, hoping I could catch Nawang.

BY THE TIME I was herded into my seat on the plane, I was thoroughly back in my world. I couldn’t keep ignoring my work, my life, every time I landed in a new place. And if my inbox wasn’t full the next time I turned on my phone, what would that mean? It couldn’t be a good thing. I pulled a few items from my carry-on and then wrestled it into the overhead bin. I could hear the fellow behind me huffing and puffing. A baby was already wailing at the back of the plane. I gritted my teeth and sighed. As I struggled into the kindergarten-sized seats that pass as airline accommodation these days, I could feel the muscles in my neck tightening up. The leather pouch that Julian had given me for the talismans was on a long leather cord. I had put it around my neck, figuring I was less likely to lose it this way. But now I could feel the leather string digging into my skin. The pouch felt unnaturally heavy. Too heavy for the tiny amulet it contained. I clicked my seat belt in place, then took the pouch from under my shirt. I pulled out the little coin and turned it back and forth. The sun and the moon. Yin and yang. Heart and head. Heaven and Earth. Hidden and revealed. I put it in the pouch and dropped the leather bag back under my shirt.

Then I pulled the journal from my jacket pocket. Julian’s note about authenticity was inside. I hadn’t really thought about it since I first read it. In Istanbul, I felt as if I wasn’t really living my life. Or maybe it was more like standing outside my life, looking at it as a stranger might. Now I wondered if what I saw was real. What was my “authentic” self? Who was I, really? I remembered my conversation with Ahmet on the boat. I had told him I was an electrical engineer. A husband. A father. All those things were true, but they could apply to thousands of other men. How would I describe myself if I couldn’t rely on those three labels?

I pulled down the tray table and laid the notebook open on top of it. As I’ve said, I have never been the kind of person who spends a great deal of time on self-reflection. Mostly, I just couldn’t see the point.

I took a pen from my pocket and, at the top of the first page, wrote, “Who am I?” I felt foolish.

I stared at the blank page until the flight attendant broke my trance by offering me a beverage. She served me with a bright smile and then continued down the aisle. I took a sip of coffee and was about to snap the notebook shut, but stopped myself. This was ridiculous. I should be able to answer the question I had posed.

But even after I had finished my coffee, I was staring at a blank page. The flight was almost four hours long. I had promised myself I would write something before it was over. Maybe if I couldn’t describe my “authentic” self, I could think about times in my life when I felt I really knew who I was, when I felt aware of my life, when I felt I was living just as I wanted to rather than how everyone around me suggested I live.

The first thing I wrote was “story time.” It seemed like a strange moment to highlight because it wasn’t a single moment or even a single time. And it was so, so long ago. During all the years of my childhood, we had a family ritual. Once dinner and baths were out of the way, my mother would take my sister and me into one of our bedrooms. The three of us would climb into bed, and Mom would begin to read. When I was tiny it was picture books. Later it was short novels, and then, eventually, long tomes, like Kidnapped or Gulliver’s Travels. We kept that up longer than I would ever have admitted to any of my friends. There was something about those times as a child, however, that acted as a touchstone for me. No matter what had happened during the day, what trouble I had got into, what fights Kira and I had had, what disasters had befallen me at school—in that hour on the bed at night, my mother’s soft voice reverberating in the air, the sound of Dad downstairs banging around the kitchen as he cleaned up, my sister’s contented breathing filling in the spaces—everything fell into place. I knew who I was and where I belonged.

Next I wrote about a more specific memory. “Hiking with Annisha in the Rockies,” I put down. That was just before we got married. Climbing the Grassi Lake trail outside of Canmore, a town in western Canada, we had crossed a small creek. Annisha was following me; I reached out to help her across. When we got to the top of the trail we gazed at the landscape surrounding us, the mountains that encircled us. Then I looked at Annisha. I remember so clearly that I was overcome with the feeling that this improbable place was exactly where I wanted to be, exactly where I should be at this moment.

Of course, back then I couldn’t imagine the feeling that overcame me when Adam was born. That was my third point. I remember thinking, while holding him as Annisha dozed in the hospital bed, that my place in the universe was forever defined by this small baby. I was a father. And I always would be. There was a certainty about it that was sobering and yet comforting.

And finally I wrote, “Fuel-injection design trial run.” It seemed like an oddly technical, professional event to follow Adam’s birth, but there it was. The first independent project I had completed at work. Juan had asked me to take a crack at a new fuel-injection system. “Don’t just tinker with the previous designs,” he said. “You’ve talked to me about doing things differently. So do it. Start from scratch. Rethink the whole thing.”

I worked for months on that design. But it hardly felt like that. I would sit down at my desk in the morning and barely move until it was six p.m. I would get out of my car in the evening, stand in the driveway and wonder how I got there. I was so consumed with ideas, overcome with energy. I got up in the mornings itching to get to the office.

When I eventually presented my drawings and schematics to Juan, he looked thoughtful. “Well,” he told me. “There’s really only one way we can find out if this will work. Let’s build it.”

So we did. Then we ran it. Eventually we put it into a vehicle. And we drove that car. I didn’t sleep at all the night before. Watching the car speed around the test track, I could almost hear my heart ringing, like a chiming clock.

Four things. That was enough for one day. I closed the book and shoved it into my pocket. I leaned my seat back as far as it would go, closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

AS SOON AS I got into the terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport, my pulse started to race. The lineup at customs seemed interminable, the wait for my bag an eternity. When I burst through the glass doors in front of the cab stand, I sped to the first taxi like a kid running for an ice cream truck. I love Paris, and I was eager to start walking its streets.

But the cab ride into the city was slow. It was about six p.m., the expressway thick with traffic. Unlike my time in Istanbul, this felt oddly familiar. I was surrounded by commuters: drivers watching the road with only half-hearted attention, their minds congested with thoughts of their day—what they had accomplished and what they would face tomorrow. That should have been me, only on the other side of the globe. Instead, here I was, a passenger, chugging through a landscape that was familiar yet foreign, the wall of gray suburban high-rises lining the highway reminding me that, in a city of millions, I knew no one.

Julian had told me that I would be staying at a hotel on the Champs Élysées. But I didn’t want to get out of the cab when it pulled in front. I almost told the driver to keep going. Nothing appealed to me more at that moment than the thought of driving through the Paris streets until the sun set—the lights of the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the background everywhere we went. Julian, however, had said that I would be meeting with a man named Antoine Gaucher, but he couldn’t tell me exactly when. Antoine, he said, would leave a letter for me at the desk, telling me where to meet him—and I supposed that Antoine could be waiting for me even now. After all, Julian had said, “Antoine is an interesting individual. It may be an unusual meeting.”

As the cab drove away, down the Champs Élysées, I pushed myself through the doors of the hotel. The lobby was crowded. Dozens of people in business clothes, their name tags around their necks, lined up in front of the reception desk, with more of the group gathered in clusters throughout the lobby. Near the concierge’s desk, a small girl sat on top of a suitcase, sobbing. A haggard-looking woman stood over her, digging in her purse for something. The lobby was reverberating with shouts, laughter, chatter and tears.

I guess the flight, the ride from the airport and the noise had worn me down a bit because by the time I got to the reception desk, I was no longer thinking of the bright lights of Paris but rather of a café chair and a stiff drink. When the clerk handed me the key card and said “Room 1132,” I snapped.

“No, absolutely not,” I said. I wasn’t even trying to speak in French. “Nothing higher than the fourth floor.” The clerk looked at me quizzically. “I can’t …” I said, then stopped. I didn’t want to explain myself.

The authentic me? Well, here’s a bit of authentic me. I’m claustrophobic; petrified of small, cramped spaces. And that makes elevators a challenge. Not too many people know this about me—I’ve made climbing the stairs seem like part of my dedication to a healthy lifestyle. Juan started referring to me as “the Stairmaster” after I’d climbed the stairs to an eighteenth-floor hospitality suite at an automotive convention. But the truth was I’d rather appear sweaty and winded in front of my colleagues than panic-stricken.