Because by now we were nearing the restaurant. The façade was unchanged—a white clapboard cube with a neon crab in a chef’s toque dancing on the roof—but the space out front had become a jumble of tables and chairs and collapsed umbrellas, all bordered by the trash bins and newspaper boxes lined up as usual along the edge of the curb. “Paris, France,” he said with a wave. “I see,” I said. “Just don’t tell them you’re too fool.”
