Nearing fifty, author Kyle Thomas Smith looks back on the days when he was a struggling young writer and hapless office temp. At the end of yet another workday when all he wanted was to go back to his little apartment, turn into a cockroach, and expire in a puddle of Raid, Kyle instead went out on the town and met a highly accomplished, globetrotting filmmaker named Francois. A romance ensued, but Francois flew out the next morning, leaving Kyle with nothing but a napkin on which he'd written his address in Paris.

Kyle wondered if this napkin could hold the key to his future, and what would his life be worth if he were to lose the napkin?

In this slice-of-life memoir, Kyle Thomas Smith meditates on how tightly we cling to our prospects when the real gold is buried deep inside the life we already have.