Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
When the gods wished to punish study abroad workers, they gave students cell phones. If only this student had forgotten to recharge his battery, he might have had to look at a map or talk to a passerby. “Well, where are you?”
“I’m exactly where you told me to go,” he said indignantly.
I have previously found that if people are exactly where I told them to go, they don’t call in for further directions. “Perhaps we could be more specific. What street are you on?”
“Exactly the one you told me to get on!” He was getting annoyed now.
“And which one would that be?”
“I don’t know.”
I rested my chin on my hand and contemplated my culture’s youth bemusedly. “Are you on a cell phone right now or not?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“Then why don’t you try walking until you see a street sign, and I will look at my map of Paris and tell you where to go from there, okay?” He should have been able to look at a map himself, of course, but I wasn’t going to go into that difficult concept at this juncture. With a little less patience this time, I got him to figure out what street he was on and guided him from there, and he managed to complete his day without once having to speak to a non-American.
I reread the e-mail from my friend, digested its implications, and went to find Valérie. I needed a reasonably priced restaurant, and Valérie was the source.
“Valérie,” I said. Her curly red head was immersed in student applications, her round face set in a baffled glower, and she didn’t immediately look up. The offices of my university’s study abroad program in Paris’ fifth arrondissement were in a building several centuries older than my country. Across from Valérie’s window, currently lined with the potted sprouts our director dreamed of turning into lime trees, half a dozen construction workers stripped, pounded, and plastered an equally old apartment building, a restoration job that had started long before I arrived. Valérie had chosen her office for the regular morale boost: the workers never failed to flirt with any woman who leaned out the window.