Meanwhile, I had fallen in love with my teaching job, which meant that now I was the one who had a wonderful job while Sébastien braved the job search humiliation and afternoons without the Louvre to go to. He wasn’t mad at me because I had a wonderful job while he had lost his for my sake, but . . . it didn’t seem fair. Not one to sit on his tail, Sébastien ordered a high-speed cable connection and started doing freelance graphic illustrations for companies in France. If a foreign national earns money while in the U.S., he is required to pay taxes on that money, so we went down to the local tax office to get his legally required Tax Identification Number. The first trip we picked up forms and talked to someone about what was required. The second trip, Sébastien brought in everything they said they required and came back to tell me they had changed their minds and needed something else. The third trip, I went with him again and, sick of bureaucratic lines, sat in the car grading papers.

After a considerable time, Sébastien came back out. “They won’t let me give them the forms,” he said.

“What? What did they come up with this time?”

“They say they can’t accept applications from foreign nationals who don’t have visas.”

I looked at him blankly. “But you do have a visa. It’s right there in your passport.”

“I showed it to her; but she would only say she needed to see a visa, and if I didn’t have one, I’d have to apply through their center in Philadelphia.”

I double-checked the instructions that came with the forms. Yes, the I-94 visa visitors get when they pass through U.S. Customs and Immigration in the airport was very clearly marked as one of the types of visa that qualified. Maybe it was a language problem. Sébastien speaks English very well but, to his deep frustration, his Southern auditors don’t always understand him. I tried to explain to him that Southerners didn’t understand most Northerners either, but it wasn’t effective consolation.

“Let’s go back in. I’ll talk to her and see what exactly it is they need.”

Sébastien looked annoyed. “I’m telling you what she told me: a visa.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t make sense. There must be some kind of miscommunication.”

We went back into the office and up to the little window behind which a short dumpling of a woman sat in a navy-blue suit. “Hi,” I said in what I thought was a friendly manner. “I just wanted to see what was going on. My fiancé says you can’t take his application here?”

“Yes, ma’am, I already talked to him, and I don’t need to talk to you,” she said flatly.