And, I'm sorry to say, we have already booked your room for another guest. A Japanese. I'm so, so sorry.”

Austin had stood amid his suitcases, breathing in the air of defeat and frustration and anger he felt certain it would be useless to express. He stared out the lobby window at the street. The sky was cloudy and the wind slightly chilled. He heard Barbara say behind him, as much to herself as to him, “Oh well. We'll do something. We'll find another place. It's too bad. Maybe it'll be an adventure.”

Austin looked at the clerk, a little beige man with neat black hair and a white cotton jacket, standing behind his marble desk. The clerk was smiling. This was all the same to him, Austin realized: that they had no place to go; that they were tired of Paris; that they had brought too much luggage and bought too much to take home; that they had slept badly every night; that the weather was inexplicably changing to colder; that they were out of money and sick of the arrogant French. None of this mattered to this man—in some ways, Austin sensed, it may even have pleased him, pleased him enough to make him smile.

“What's so goddamned funny?” Austin had said to the smug little subcontinental. “Why's my bad luck a source of such goddamned amusement to you?” This man would be the focus of his anger. He couldn't help himself. Anger couldn't make anything worse. “Doesn't it matter that we're guests of this hotel and we're in a bit of a bad situation here?” He heard what he knew was a pleading voice.

“April fool!” the clerk said and broke out in a squeaking little laughter. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. It is only a joke, monsieur,” the man said, so pleased with himself, even more than when he'd told Austin the lie. “The airport is perfectly fine. It is open. You can leave. There is no trouble. It's fine. It was only a joke. Bon voyage, Mr. Austin. Bon voyage.”

3

For the two days after she had left him standing in the street at midnight, after he had kissed her the first time and felt that he had done something exactly right, Austin saw a great deal of Joséphine Belliard. He'd had plans to take the TGV to Brussels and then go on to Amsterdam, and from there fly to Chicago and home. But the next morning he sent messages to his customers and to the office, complaining of “medical problems” which had inexplicably “recurred,” although he felt it was “probably nothing serious.” He would conclude his business by fax when he was home the next week.