Everybody wears sunglasses in the city of Montreux. Only I walk around like a clueless tourist, squinting against the sun that shines once from the sky above and again from the lake below. People on the promenade are dressed in sharp suits and elegant dresses: tall men that look like they know where they are going and slender blondes boasting shapely, thoroughbred legs. I turn into a shaded alley and pull a pair of my own sunglasses out of the bag. I put them on and continue down the street, towards the sun and my fellow fashion minders. But the tinted glass pours dusk over things. It washes out the neat Swiss houses with flowers under each window, the weather-vanes, the cobblestones, and the green alpine slopes that squeeze the city towards the lake. I have traded my view of the world for the world's view of me. Yet the world, too, is wearing shades. This is stupid, I decide. I bare my eyes again.

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