In the late in the morning at the ophthamologist's office where I have been working as a receptionist, came in for new glasses a tall, distinguished, vivacious woman some years my senior (d'un certain age). For which reasons I asked her, in French, if she spoke French; to which she replied, "Mais je suis française!" And I said, "Non! Parbleu!" And so for the next twenty minutes Geneviève and I had a virtual feast of French wit and Gallic soul. "Oh, my god," she said, in French, "what a relief it is to talk French!" She had a lot of naughty French things to say: how stupid Americans are about sex; how lazy-minded and insular; how nasty and inedible their food (One can't call it Cuisine); how incredible it is that out here in middle of the Pacific Ocean there is only one restaurant that serves really fresh fish--and there (Nicholas's over by CostCo), of course, is where all the French expatriates hang out. How we laughed, how we flirted, both of us nearly in tears at unexpected joy of having somebody civilized to talk to. For the French (a simile that occurred to me while Geneviève and I were talking) living in America is like wearing woolen underwear....