We’re going to need more Scotch over here.

It’s 3 am on a school night and I’m leaving an underground jazz club, four gypsies, a band, and a 100€ bottle of Scotch. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. I walk to the eight to twelve foot gate—for some reason the height fluctuates at a Scotch 3am—that separates me from the front door of my host family’s apartment building. I push the code--*0. I push the code--*0. I push the code another three times, all the while pretending to look for a key, to tie my lace-less shoes, to stretch my back, before I realize that the phrase, “Ça c’est le code pour le jour” that Madame had uttered the week before really means that there is a night code to this gate that I do not know.

There’s some good news. I believe the words, “oh shit” come to mind. It’s 3:30 am on a school night and I’m standing twenty feet and a gate from the Promised Land. I do the only thing an intelligent woman with a phone and a good excuse can do—I begin scaling the wall in the rain, in my stilettos. Half-way up I hear the words every intelligent woman who is scaling a wall at 3:30 in the morning wants to hear, “Police, Police!”

It's 3:50 am on a school night and I’m standing twenty feet and a gate from the Promised Land, explaining in French to the police why I am scaling a gate in the rain, in stilettos, on a school night, with Scotch on my breath, and gypsies cat-calling from an underground jazz club down the street.