A writer staying in the French countryside nurses a fruitless crush or two and envies and imagines the affair being carried on by another American acquaintance. This displays many of the prejudices of the time (towards women, towards black GIs and jazz singers), and the conceit takes a while to get going (there is a lovely but extremely static first phase where Salter or "Salter" describes his arrangements for his country house and his failed flirtations in Paris), but these are worth enduring for the prose: every paragraph is gorgeous.
