In Paris, meanwhile, I discovered that having a visa that entitled me to work didn’t yet mean I had the right to do so. I had more lines to stand in, more offices to visit, more paperwork to wait for, and as the final obstacle, a mob of fellow visa-starved foreigners to fight my way through. The office in which the work permits were handed out was about the size of our Paris apartment, and the quantity of people desperate to get this final stamp easily topped a hundred. No one outside the room could hear her name when called, mangled beyond recognition; and if you missed it, the women behind the desk would not come back to you later. The crush was incredible. A massive stranger tucked me behind him protectively and along with the other big men developed a system: whenever someone’s name was called, everyone immediately yelled it to those outside the room, and the men passed the person hand to hand up to the desk. I kept waiting to see someone walking on people’s shoulders, in a Crocodile Dundee moment.

I survived that experience with only a few bruises, thanks to the giant stranger, and started my new job teaching English May 2. It wasn’t a good job, it wasn’t an interesting job, but it was a job. May 31 I got my first paycheck and discovered my employers were skimming 16 percent off my salary by pretending it was a government deduction. A French pay stub is a complicated thing, and they didn’t know I was living with a Frenchman who could interpret mine for me. I had been incapable of admitting in a professional interview that I was giving up my Ph.D. at a stellar university to come live with a Frenchman I had picked up on a whim in a restaurant and that that was why I was looking for a two-bit job teaching English. I had actually pretended to a passionate interest in ESL. I swear.

While I was trying to work the salary deduction problem out, I focused on keeping the romance alive. I was engaged now, which I found frightening. What if living together and making an actual commitment to each other killed the sense of romance?

Sébastien sighed when he heard this new line of relationship paranoia. “Are all Americans this insane, or did I just get lucky?”

“It’s just me,” I said. “Quit making cultural stereotypes based on the actions of one person.”

“You do that to me all the time!”

“I’m an American,” I said, annoyed. “I’m culturally entitled to judge the rest of the world out of complete ignorance anytime I like. So when you say you got lucky, do you really mean you don’t feel lucky anymore, to be dating me?”

Sébastien clutched his head.

“I’m annoying you, aren’t I?” I said. “Does that mean you don’t love me anymore?”