René

He has three pale-blue Citroën 2CVs, and each one has a name. He used to be a creative director at an advertising firm in Paris, but at forty he quit and moved here with a secondhand 2CV. Curly dark-brown hair going gray at the temples, a round face with deep laugh lines, a short curly beard along the jaw, round tortoiseshell glasses, and a slightly stocky build.

Personality. Cheerful, chatty, and fond of dry jokes; he laughs at whatever happens. He calls himself a "living map," but his sense of direction is terrible—he only remembers which house on each road has the sweetest apricots. He is more patient with cars than with people, firmly believing that breakdowns are part of the journey. His sentence endings drag on for a long time, and his catchphrase is "Let's go." He does not use terms of endearment.