The desk clerk at the Claremont had underestimated her age as generously as he had mine. I placed her as late twenties. She was slightly taller than average, dressed in the same frock of green-and-black plaid that women seemed to have been wearing in every town Jack Donovan’s band had played for the last two years. As if to counterbalance this ordinariness, she’d created an interesting arrangement of six fake emerald-and-pearl barrettes, three on either side of her head, holding her hair in a tight, complex construction, each plaited lock pinned to overlap the one above it. Her long neck and lack of chin caused her profile to resemble that of an ostrich, but when you looked at her straight on, she was more than attractive. If I were in prison and she’d been my girlfriend, I’d have dreamt about her easy enough. Her figure was trim, perhaps too much so. She wore white socks and penny loafers. It seemed a bit sad that she was trying to look younger than she could get away with.

Since it was she who’d asked me to be here, I thought it behooved her to start the conversation. I stirred my bowl of coffee and waited politely.

“Are you an American?” she asked in the guttural accent I associate with the south of France. I’d of course not “heard” her accent when I’d read her letter. I told her I was indeed a U.S. citizen, somewhat surprised that this would be her first question.

Her eyes went to my left hand and its unadorned fingers. “You’re not married?” she asked—hopefully, it seemed to me.

“Divorced. For quite some time now.”

“You have children?”

“A daughter,” I said.

“Does she live with you?”

“No,” I answered. “I wish she did. Now can we please discuss business?”

She put her hands flat upon the café table and leaned toward me. “You wish to screw me?” she asked.

The café’s management was clearly showing commendable attention to detail in re-creating the Parisian atmosphere, from the big Pernod umbrella above me right down to the little streetwalker beside me. However, there was something so genuinely desperate, rather than seductive, in her manner that I felt only pity mixed with wariness. I told her I had very little money on me, which seemed the most courteous way to reject her offer.