“Shut up,” I said, and sliced into the boudin. The sooner I got this over with the better. Other than a fire starting in the kitchen above and the cute waiter rushing down to save me before all others, there was no way out of this but through it. When I lived in Tahiti, people always used to serve me raw fish as the local delicacy. I had learned to eat it with an enthusiastic smile on my face, and I drew on those skills now.

Blood sausage is worse than raw fish.

Fortunately, in France, no waiter would dream of being so uncouth as to interrupt someone eating to ask how things were, so I didn’t have to fake a smile too often. He didn’t come back to the table until a few minutes after I was done and had fled to the toilet to vomit. I fled right back out again, stomach settled by the fear of vomiting in a place like that. “That toilet is awful,” I whispered to Tory. “Avoid it, if you can.”

“Was everything all right?” The waiter returned, reaching for our plates. He smiled when he saw how empty mine was, almost reward enough. “It’s good, isn’t it?” he met my eyes with his warm chocolate ones.

“Delicious,” I said, hypnotized.

He nodded and disappeared with the plates and dirtied flatware.

Tory was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “My sister told me you were pretty shy and standoffish with guys.”

“I prefer to think of myself as selective,” I said indignantly. Besides, who didn’t have a pathological fear of dating these days? There was so much to lose: freedom, solitude, independence. There was so little to gain: the occasional burp in one’s ear, extra dishes to wash, and dead deer on the walls. And there were so many good romance books out there whenever an evening felt lonely.

“So are you going to ask him out?”

I stiffened, appalled. “Are you crazy? He is way out of my league. No way I’m humiliating myself like that. Plus, we already talked about this. He’s French. Everyone knows the French are chain-smoking, manic-depressive, faithless, male-chauvinistic snobs. Forget it.”

That was awfully good chocolate mousse, though. It had a flavor—rich, dark, creamy—about like the sound of his voice. I got out of there before I could do anything stupider than leave him way too big of a tip. The tip was embarrassingly obvious when I thought about it, but that was okay. I didn’t realize how embarrasing until after I’d left, and by that time I had made a very intelligent resolution: I wasn’t going to come back.

Three