In the mid-1990s, when I was still a bookish teenager, my parents took me to Paris. It was the end of December; we would, before the trip was done, spend New Year’s Eve on the Champs Élysées—I was not yet old enough or self-snobbified enough to think it tacky, to think it anything other than magical. One evening, we went to Le Boeuf sur le Toit for dinner. There was a jazz pianist. A swept-back shock of dark hair, going very thin on top, beginning to gray. A salt-and-pepper, full-face beard and moustache. A sharp nose. Round glasses. My father elbowed me, leaned in, gestured subtly toward the stage. “Check it out. Is that Salman Rushdie?”
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