what happened back then

This has nothing to do with this picture, which I took on the way to school yesterday. Not my school, thank heavens. I don't have to go any more. (Dear Hannah, I am sorry to tell you this, but your little Virgo daughter is exactly the type to love school and reward-system structure. Sorry. Sincerely, Your Mom)

Any way, about ze French connection.
In 1997 Ed and I were having lunch, as was so often the case, and he brought along an "exchange journalist" from Le Monde, who was working at Time for three months. She had left her kids and husband in Paris and was missing them. Plus she had sublet an apartment in a bad part of New York (back when there was such a thing and everything wasn't yet gentrified). She was joking about it.
  "I order sushi, but when someone comes to the door they are delivering crack!"
   But every time she got into the elevator with a man she felt threatened.
   "You better move in with me," I said. "I have a spare bedroom." (Hannah was living in the living room at the time.)
   "Okay," she said. "When?"
   "Tonight."
   So she did. And we became friends. Slowly. Because the French are not as quickly intimate as the Americans.