From the neck up he remained the Paris intellectual techie with a luminous green and purple silk neckerchief, unmistakably from Turnbull & Asser in Piccadilly, and a well-scrubbed face fluorescent with recondite learning. Overjoyed to see Alexandre, Cochenet embraced him as if he were a long-lost cousin. “No one from Paris ever comes to see me anymore,” he said plaintively but cheered immediately. “Let’s go over to the house. I’ll introduce you to the parents, we’ll have a little drop of something, and then we’ll go pay a visit to my little darlings.” “You must have found it quite an adjustment to move back in with your parents,” Capucine said. Cochenet stared at her, attempting to define his new world. “Au contraire, sometimes late at night I do have a yen for slick restaurant dinners and all-night club bashes, but Paris was nothing compared to what I have here. I’m finally doing something genuinely fulfilling. And,” he said, leaning toward Capucine confidentially, “I was déboussolé without my parents—a boat without a compass, sailing in circles.”
