She had been scared and had felt lost and vulnerable. She asked herself why she was doing this, whether this was what she had really wanted, whether it might have been easier and more pleasant to have just spent the summer hanging around her mother’s home in California.

On the southbound train, Alex fell into a conversation with an older French woman, a woman old enough to remember the world war in which, fifty years earlier, she said, she had lost her husband at Dunkirk. The old woman befriended her, even gave her some fresh fruit from a basket. They both descended from the train at Saint Etienne and said their good-byes. The old woman, whose name was Marie-Claire, gave her a hug, and Alex reciprocated. Marie-Claire felt frail and bony in her grasp and almost unsteady when Alex released her. She reminded Alex-distantly and in spooky kind of way-of her own late grandmother.

Alex had to find her way on foot to a local youth hostel, where she would stay overnight, and then the next morning take another train to the Camargue region where her job awaited her.

She walked down some questionable streets to get to the hostel. She took the wrong route twice and was corrected twice when strangers answered questions. When she arrived at the hostel, early in the evening, it was not the nicest place. Peeling walls, worn linoleum, dim corridors that reeked of age and abuse. Worse, the hostel had been overbooked and there wasn’t a room for her. There wasn’t even an extra bed in the dormitory. The staff wasn’t entirely helpful, and to top it off, the phones weren’t working.

She was near tears. Had the trains been running, she might have turned around, retraced her route to Paris, then to New York, then home to California. Who could blame a frightened teenager for wanting to go home?

She sat in the lobby and tried to evaluate what to do. Several minutes later, a young man came over to her and sat down next to her. He was very slight of build, with a mocha complexion. In French he started a conversation and asked what nationality she was.

“I’m American,” she said in French. “From California.”

“My name is René,” he said. “I’m French, but of Tunisian origin.”

He smiled and tried to speak English with her, but his was limited, so their conversation ensued in French. He was eighteen and had technical training in computer engineering, he said, mostly self-acquired. He had enlisted in the French Air Force, he said, l’armee de l’air, he proclaimed proudly. This was his final evening at liberty. The next day he would take a train in a different direction and travel onward to Nantes in west central France for six weeks of basic training. It was his hope to eventually see the world, to be posted in someplace exotic like Polynesia or Martinique where the French maintained bases. He added that it had always been his dream to visit America, as well.

Alex joined him for dinner. They had soup and bread and cheese in the hostel cafeteria. She waited to see whether the hostel keepers would find a place for her. But while her conversation with René played out in the forefront of her mind, in the back of her mind her worries accelerated.

What would she do? Despite the kindness of the old lady on the train and the gentle amity of René this evening, she had never felt so homesick in her life, so cut off from everything she knew. In her stomach was a knot that wouldn’t untie.

After dinner, there was a change at the concierge’s desk. The new man told Alex that the phones were up and running again and they had called everywhere, including local homes that might take in an overnight border. But it was early summer and there were no beds to be had anywhere within a hundred miles. Nor was there any way for a single girl traveling alone to get to anywhere else. And it was against regulations for anyone to stay in the hostel’s lobby or office area.

There was still some daylight remaining. In midsummer in the south of France daylight remained until almost ten o’clock. Alex walked outside the hostel, stood in the street and tried to decide what to do. She noticed that across the street there was a small Catholic church. It was white stucco with peeling green paint on its front door.

Alex walked to it. She tried the door but it was locked. When she turned around, however, she was surprised to find René standing very close to her.

“I heard what’s happening,” he said. “You can have my room for the night.”

She was shocked. “That’s kind of you,” she said. They spoke in French, and at this time in her life, hers was halting. “But you’re about to go into the military. I couldn’t possibly take your room for the final night.”

“I wish you would,” he said.

“Where would you go?”

“I have a backpack. I can sleep in the park. Among the hobos,” he said with a smile, “among les clochards. It will be an adventure. I’ll be gone before dawn as long as the police don’t catch me.”

“No, no,” she said. “You mustn’t take such a risk for me.”

“Then let me sneak you into my room and we will share it,” he said.

Her expression must have conveyed her confusion, appreciation mingled with anxiety and suspicion. He sought to defuse it. “I warn you, there is only one bed. It is very narrow and there is no space on the floor. But I will be honorable.”

She searched his eyes. Sometimes, she thought, angels take strange forms.

“All right,” she said.

They returned to the hostel. A friend created a distraction for the concierge and Alex darted down the corridor to René’s room. The concierge either didn’t see her or chose not to.

The door to René’s room was unlocked and the room empty. He followed a minute later, closed the door and locked it. The room was tiny, maybe eight by ten, with a nightstand and a bed, just as René had described. Barely enough room for two people to stand up together, much less lie down together.

The shower and bathroom facilities on the corridor were communal. They took turns so that Alex could have privacy to change and so that he could too. Awkwardly, at 11:00 p.m., they turned off the single room light and lay down together, Alex between the wall and René’s body. Around her neck, Alex wore the small gold cross that her dad had given her years earlier, the one she had eventually lost in Kiev. She knew René had noted it, but he said nothing about it.

A moment passed. They both started to laugh at the preposterousness of the situation. Then they started to talk about their homes, their families. They discovered they were both only children raised by a single parent. René had been raised by his very strict father, who worked in a factory. His mother had deserted the family when he had been five. René had been raised as a Muslim but had fallen away from his faith, perhaps as a reaction to the strictness of his father’s Islam.

“What would your father say if he knew you were here, lying in bed, with an American girl?” Alex asked.

“Oooh!” René answered quickly. He laughed and pointed to his lower backside in the dim light. He furiously waved a finger to indicate that he didn’t even want to think about what would happen. He made a moaning sound over the beating he probably would have received. “But my father and I do not agree on many things,” he said. “It is one reason I am going away and joining the armée de l’air. It doesn’t mean I don’t love him or respect him. It only means we disagree.”

After hushed conversation of nearly an hour, fatigue rolled in upon them. Alex taught René some words and phrases in English. Hello. How are you? Good-bye. Good luck.

René reciprocated with some useful words in Arabic.

Marhabbah. Assalaam Alaikim. Maasalaamah.

Hello. Peace be unto you. Good-bye.

“If you greet most Arab people in their language, you break the ice,” he said. “They will trust you more and treat you with a genuine smile,” he said. “Assalamou Alaekom means ‘hello’ or ‘hi’ in Arabic. Another word is Ezzayak, said as a question. It means, ‘How are you?’ Learning a few Arabic words will always make a difference.”