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townhouse, perfectly restored, where he’ll serve perfect food accompanied by perfect wines in perfect glasses. He wants his suit to be perfectly tailored, his shoes perfectly shined. He wants the hotel room to be perfect, the overnight train ride, the local tour guide. And he has made the relentless pursuit of perfection his career.
    But perfection is always over the next horizon. The next job, the next meal, the next trip. Next year, or maybe the year after.
    Chloe now isn’t quite as perfect as the ideal of Chloe had been, before. And they’re broke in a way that often looks permanent, living in a crumbling house in a dodgy neighborhood, waiting for the extra income that’s always more likely next year, money to finish renovating the house, to furnish it for the baby they’re trying to conceive, to start living grown-up life, still in the imprecise future, after some nonspecific milestone, floating up ahead in the indefinite unsatisfying
soon.
    Will knows that he’s very lucky, that he does something uniquely enjoyable for a living. But he is jaded, and he is bored. He increasingly suspects that he chose the wrong career, and possibly the wrong wife too. He is thirty-five years old, halfway to dead, and he has already made the most important decisions of his life. Have they all been wrong?

ST-ÉMILION, FRANCE
    “Thank you to everyone for coming ’ere tonight. From America. From England and Sweden and,
comment dit-on,
Africa South? From Australia, even!” The winemaker holds his hands over his head, and claps, and everyone joins. “This is our two ’undredth anniversary
au château
! We are very ’onored that you are able to join our celebration.
Merci
à tous! À table!”
    The long table is out back of the château, on a broad stretch of flat grass before the terrain slopes down toward the river, rows upon rows of grapevines receding into the night. Gurgling fountains with floating candles occupy either end of the lawn, and the long table between is set with dozens of little votives in glass cubes, the perimeter flanked by torches on posts, the trees strung with lanterns. Flamelight flickers everywhere.
    Will finds his place card, heavily inked calligraphy with an excess of flourishes, silver napkin rings, little vases holding tiny sprays of miniature white calla lilies. He loves this about the French, their unabashed pursuit of beauty. It makes him feel unself-conscious about his own often-mocked perfectionism.
    On Will’s left is a woman wearing the severe frown of someone who’s prepared to be disappointed by everyone and everything, all the time. Will recognizes her name, a veteran wine journalist famous for her idiot-savant palate, troglodyte social skills, and unremitting snobbery.
    And on Will’s right, wow, someone he definitely hasn’t met before
.
“Elle Hardwick,” she says, holding out her hand.
    “Nice to meet you. Rare to find someone who’s willing to go by one letter alone. Like Bono, but even bolder.”
    “Ah, no.” She smiles. “That’s Elle spelled as in the magazine.” She has a pronounced Australian accent. “Or the French pronoun.”
    “Or the supermodel?”
    “If absolutely necessary.
Elle, qui s’appelle Elle, lit
Elle.”
    “I guess that makes more sense.”
    “Glad you agree. And what do people call you?”
    “They call me Mr. Rhodes. Will Rhodes.”
    “Oh, Will Rhodes! I’m a fan. A pleasure to meet you.
Genuine
pleasure.”
    Will reluctantly turns away from Elle, to do his ten minutes’ duty with the belligerent oenophile. Unsurprisingly, she has a distinct distaste for Americans, and more generally for men. There’s no charm of Will’s to which she is not allergic, and he feels himself sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand of her odium.
    This social nightmare on one side is tailor-made pre-penance for the alternative on his other, and Will relishes the discomfort of the woman’s hostility and dismissiveness, the absurd perfection of it, the delay