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what a Trotskyite was, she looked at me for a long moment, turning over in her mind, I could see, whether to fire me or educate me.
    But I think that language counts in a more important way when it comes to choosing, for instance, someone you trust with your dog. I think Ames Everett trusts me with his dog more than he would have someone who thought of Scamp as a mere chien .
    “There are circles within circles here in Paris,” Ames observes over our menthe . “American circles, I am not even speaking of the French. There are the businessmen Americans, they keep to themselves, unless they have French connections. Banks. EuroDisney. The lawyer Americans, having of necessity to have something to do with the French. The Franco-Americans, couples of whom one is one and one the other, usually American wives, French husbands. These women tend to have an annoying veneer of Frenchiness, a kind of inside manner I myself find irritating. The journalists and writers. That’s my set, and the art historians, and the trust-fund socialites, living elegantly. The French love them the best, of course.
    “You must tell me what you are running away from. Every American in Paris is running away from something,” Ames said, at this first rendezvous, with the slight sneer that seems permanent in his voice, a querulous lightness. “Usually I never bother figuring out what in particular. The reasons, when you learn them, are usually too boring. Behind the immediate reasons, though, is another reality.”
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “That’s what you eventually find out. That is the fun of it. You would be surprised, sometimes.” He smiled at me. They all, even Roxy, like to treat me like the naive, the ingenue, the over-confident newcomer for whom big, shattering lessons are in store. I, in any case, am not running away from anything, I hadn’t especially wanted to be here. I said so.
    “What is your reason, then, if not your reality?” I insisted.
    He said, “I came to get away from AIDS. You can’t imagine what New York was like in the early eighties, a death a week among your friends; you couldn’t bear for the phone to ring. I hoped it wouldn’t come here. It has, of course.”
    “Drugs are coming here too,” I said. “You can buy crack at metro Saint Michel.”
    “It isn’t easy being an American,” he said. “That is the final reality. It is hard. It is a moral obligation we come here to escape. We are too sensitive—I speak of us expatriates, though I hate to use that word. When we do go back, we see what we see, and it is hard on us.” He sighed.
    The Flore is right on the Boulevard Saint Germain, amid tourists drinking espresso and regulars reading Libération , a smell of coffee and newsprint. The pavement was still wet from an afternoon rain, the sky was its characteristic Parisian gray, the air hung diesely and damp, slightly redolent of dogshit. I could see the beauty, which might be reason enough to come here. But I wondered what Ames’s reality under his reason was, and why the special rancor he bore America, for he never failed to badmouth it, though he’s famous there, even revered, in his coterie.
    “How is Roxeanne?” Ames asked. “I thought she looked tired. I must introduce you to Stuart Barbee, I think he needs some work done around his place. Do you read French? Have you seen Libération today?”
    Am I running away from something in America, as Ames suggests? I didn’t think so. I supposed I was a prototypical American, not down on it like Ames and Roxy; but I will admit I began to be happy, these months in France, despite my mistrust of the whole society. Soon I had, besides the dog-walking job for Ames, the task of helping Olivia Pace sort her papers; I housesat for some CIA types who were away in Provence, and arranged apartments for friends of Roxeanne (usually American divorcées over here to attend the Cordon Bleu and change their lives). I’ve been writing a little advice column for