“No, actually it’s slang for penis,” Sébastien corrected me, with a grin. “Children’s slang.”

I paused. “Excuse me, but have I been singing, ‘Weenie! Weenie! Weenie!’ at the top of my lungs for the past fifteen minutes?”

“Well, yes,” Sébastien said blankly. “So?”

True, no one else seemed to mind. Claudine was singing with the best of them, and René, bouncing on his tiptoes, infected everyone with his joy. He had quite a considerable collection of his own dirty songs, I discovered, as Bruno finished up his performance and Jean-Charles and René launched into a new one.

It was funny. I had come still expecting a standoffish reception and gotten something else entirely—enthusiasm, joy, welcome. A real feast of kings.

Twenty

The standoffish reception came from the government. Immigration counters seemed to get higher with each office I was shunted to, until I had to stand on tiptoe to peer over today’s, in a dull, faded room of cheap plastic and linoleum. A habit of dislike added ten years to the pale face of the dark-haired woman behind the counter, who had a job from which God himself couldn’t fire her but which she could never learn to like. She looked meticulously over every page of the file I handed her, flared her nostrils, and handed the whole thing back. “You need four copies of the form establishing your grandmother’s maiden name.”

“That’s interesting,” I said, “because yesterday you said I needed three.”

She had waved a list of requirements at me and refused to let me keep a copy or even touch the copy she held, but I remembered the number three clearly. I wondered if the government was really that stingy in its photocopy allowance or if she had just not wanted me to have written proof of actual requirements.

Her nostrils flared yet wider as she looked at me with pure hate. I tried not to take it personally. She had looked at the other people before me in line with hate, too. “Four,” she repeated.

“Well, is there perhaps a place I could make a fourth copy?” I asked, looking at the photocopier directly behind her.

“Down the street,” she said, staring me straight in the eye.

“And when I come back from the photocopier down the street, will I have to wait another two hours in line?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re closing in half an hour.”

“Yes.”

Well, that answered one question. She could, in fact, say a word other than “Non.” She couldn’t seem to adopt an expression that wasn’t negative, though.

I drew a deep breath and tried to make my Southern smile at her, but even I could tell it looked more like I was baring my fangs. “I guess I’ll be back tomorrow then.”