We look at the map. When we arrive in France from King’s Cross the fields are striated with barbed wire and it is raining. At the station in Lille we contented ourselves with two mediocre sandwiches from a stand and a visit through the back to Notre-Dame de la Trielle. We had our bags, so took turns, circling around to the great doors of the church and admiring the stained glass and the general feeling of use and mishap. Newspapers left in the stalls, where someone had come in to read or to get out of the rain. Across from the church, a woman leaning out of the window smoking, the smoke curling above a window box filled with fuchsia geraniums. I thought: I will never see her again. Then back to the station, where there was a woman under a peeling beech tree stripped to the waist, feeding her baby. Then back to sit in the waiting room on a row of bolted plastic chairs, noting nothing particularly French: a feeling of ennui and nerves, except for some children playing air hockey near the concession machine, gesticulating. I imagine you in the station, holding a ticket, saying, “I told you I was a terrible traveler.” You do not like France; it is hard to remember what it is you like.