There is a walk you have been taking for years without noticing you were taking it. It happens between about a quarter past nine and a quarter to ten in the evening. You have paid the bill at a place you like. You have said good night to a friend you will not see again for six weeks. Your phone is on silent in a pocket you have to reach for. The walk is between three and eighteen minutes, and it is, if you allow it, the best twenty minutes your city gives you in an average week.
A woman I know in Rome calls this the ten-minute mayor's walk. She says, correctly, that she governs the city during it. Nothing has authority over her — no boss, no boyfriend, no algorithm, no meeting invite — for the length of the walk. She has notes for six cities. This is a shorter version.
Rome, from Trastevere to the river.
Walk over the Ponte Sisto after ten and there is a small guitar player near the third lamppost most evenings. Do not stop. Slow down for two paces, listen to a bar, keep going. The guitar player is not for you, and this is the pleasure of it — the walk is only made of things that would happen without you.
Copenhagen, home from Vesterbro.
There is a red-brick bar on Istedgade that keeps its door propped open until eleven. Walk past on the opposite pavement. There is a specific noise from the door — voices, a glass on a bar, the top note of a Danish laugh — that will make you glad you didn't go in. This is the correct emotion of the walk. Not FOMO. Its opposite.
Brooklyn, along Bergen Street after ten.
The trees on Bergen between Fifth and Sixth Avenue are the best trees in Brooklyn, and no one has told them. Walk slowly under them. The one house at the corner has a porch light that has been on every night I have walked past for four years. Someone decided, at some point, that the block was worth an extra twelve dollars a month in electricity. Notice her. Do not knock.
Paris, from a dinner in the 6th to a hotel in the 3rd.
Cross the Pont des Arts at exactly ten-fifteen. If it is Thursday, there will be a woman playing a small keyboard with her back to Notre-Dame. Do not tip her. Walk. On the far side, on the second bench of the Quai du Louvre, an older man in a brown overcoat is reading a book with a pencil. He has been on that bench for six years. He is your city's book.
Berlin, from Neukölln to Kreuzberg.
Take Kottbusser Damm south to Hermannplatz, then reverse. It is not the picturesque route; it is the one that lets the city keep its own opinion of itself. There is a bakery that opens at five and closes at ten-thirty. The window at ten-fifteen is full of loaves nobody bought, and it is the most flattering light in Berlin.
Lisbon, downhill from a friend's balcony.
Never take the tram home from a dinner in Alfama. Walk. It is fifteen minutes, and the buildings are half-lit, and there is a woman on the third floor of the yellow house on Rua da Bica who plays fado on a small radio with the window open. If you are lucky, you will pass under her while she is on the second verse.
The rules of the walk.
Do not, at any point, take out your phone. Do not take a photograph of the guitar player. Do not check whether the friend has messaged. Do not curate. The walk is the one thing in your week that does not turn into content.
Cross with the pedestrian light in the direction that is slightly the wrong way for your route. It adds a block. The block is why you're walking.
Do not go into any bar you have to think about going into. If you have already thought about it once, you have thought about it too many times. Walk past. There will be a bar at eleven-fifteen. There will be a bar tomorrow. There will not be another walk exactly like this one, because you will not be exactly this age again.