Baldwin's wife, Rachel, decided she wanted to join a gym and found one near them that looked promising. There were two kinds of membership, and she opted for the basic one. "'Excellent,' [the manager] replied," Baldwin wrote. "Now all he needed was for Rachel to fill out an application and supply two photographs; a photocopy of her passport; a photocopy of a recent bill; a photocopy of our apartment's lease; a photocopy of our residency application; a notarized document translated into French that proved Rachel had internationally covered health insurance, since our residency papers still hadn't come through; et cetera. Bureaucracy being France's first sport."
