He had been playing the character of Arlecchino in a three-week-long international theater festival in Vicenza, a picturesque little town outside Venice. Despite the bit-of-space news, he was full of energy, pushing his belly out, sticking his thumbs into his waistband and leaping from one perfected Arlecchino stance to another. And singing or acting his way out of yet another imperfect corner.

He had arrived by train only an hour before my plane landed, which was lucky, because if anyone was going to get us by with broken high school French, it was me.

Our first stop was for a big coffee in a café on Boulevard St. Germain, near where we'd be staying.

"Deux café au lait," I said to the waiter, who was impatient and cavalier, if only to live up to the stereotype.

Unbeknownst to me, café au lait is only called such by tourists.

The waiter stared. "Café crème?" He might as well have said these words with his eyebrows.

"Pardon?"

"Coffee with milk," he almost shouted.

"Yes, two, s'il vous plait."

Jack just sat there with his actor grin: eyes shining, teeth white and straight, nose classic and repulsively perfect. "Well done." He patted my hand.

I was drowning in the blood of my blush, first from Monsieur le Waiter's impatience but more from the humiliation of having the man I thought was my lover pat my hand as if I were a grandmother, delicate and useless as lace.

I thought settling in together at the hotel would help. You know: Look, sweetie, a bed. But Hotel Médicis was not quite what I'd had in mind. Sure, it was in a prime location, plunk in the middle of Le Quartier Latin, near the boulevards St. Germain and St. Michel and the Sorbonne, where the fashionable streets are freckled with great cafes and bars. But, well, it was dirty. So dirty it couldn't have been more Parisian.

The lobby and corridors were small and winding, the carpets smelly, tamped with years of stale smoke and forgotten promises. The concierge greeted us. Once again, I choked my way through the conversation, a jalopy desperate to unclog its lines. He smiled patiently, then showed us to our room.

I managed to get the concierge to lower the nightly rate after I found out he was a painter by hobby.

"I'm a writer," I told him enthusiastically. "And he," I continued, my French belching out a little quicker, "is an actor."

"Oui? Un acteur ... ah, comme Monsieur Reagan?" He laughed and shut the door behind him.

"What did he say?" Jack asked as he flung the windows open, ushering in the sounds of street life below.

"I told him you wore a hairpiece like our esteemed ex-leader."

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