She is a former bar tender from the Midwest, who when young, left everything and moved to Europe for an adventure. She has very little money, but still tries to have as much fun as possible. I can see that she probably doesn't go to a lot of nice restaurants by the way she orders carpaccio without knowing that the beef is uncooked. Tomorrow she will go with a friend to Paris for a visit.
The friend is a painfully shy man from Okhlahoma who works for an oil company and is posted in this town. He doesn't speak French and is lost in Europe.
The Canadan is gay. He has a boyish face and is friendly. Apparently he is the back-up sperm donor to all the single women. He is very perturbed that, unlike Canada and the US, there are no alliances that support him. He is looking for a boyfriend but is frustrated by all the people in the closet. This city has gay men, but no gay community. It has the Chinese but no chinatown.
She is half Palestinian and half Venezuelan from New Jersey who with a Yale education is taking a break as an au pair. She lives with a couple who are too rich to care but not rich enough not to work.
She doesn't know why she is here and would like to leave. But she doesn't know what to do or where to go. She hates her boss and her job but loves her ex-boyfriend.
He is an Egyptian diplomat who loves life. He attended all the parties until an accident confined him to wheel chair. I wonder what hurts and pains he was concealing by dancing his time away.
We are all transients here. Nobody has a purpose, nobodt seems to know where they belong. I think the only thing that bind us all together is our comfort in this city away from all those places we would otherwise call home.
I like collecting their stories. I like telling them mine. We sometimes spend a few minutes drinking a beer or just chatting. Who knows, someday all these people would go into a novel that I plan to write (but probably never will.)
