A collection of essays celebrates the foibles of the author's everyday life in France and America, from an attempt to make coffee with water from a flower vase to a drug purchase in a North Carolina mobile home.

It''s Catching -- Keeping Up -- The Understudy -- This Old House -- Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie? -- Road Trips -- What I Learned -- That''s Amore -- The Monster Mash -- In the Waiting Room -- Solutions to Saturday''s Puzzle -- Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool -- Memento Mori -- All the Beauty You Will Ever Need -- Town and Country -- Aerial -- The Man in the Hut -- Of Mice and Men -- April in Paris -- Crybaby -- Old Faithful -- The Smoking Section.