What's Up, Baby Doc?

On a typical day, Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier does not arise from bed until an hour before noon. Then comes the hard part for Haiti's former leader: filling up the hours until another languid day in exile is over.

More often than not, Duvalier drives his Saab 900 or red Ferrari to Cannes, just five miles from the villa he rents from the son of Saudi Billionaire Adnan Khashoggi. Returning home before sundown, he and his wife Michele often step out for dinner at the top-rated Moulin de Mougins, one of the few restaurants in the south of France where the Duvaliers do not risk having their reservation turned away by hostile locals. Then the couple usually retire behind the walls of their villa and watch television. By the former First Lady's own count, every 15th day she gives her husband a manicure.

Duvalier refuses to speak with journalists, so it is impossible to know what he thinks of his new life. Given his legendary love of cars, women and the good life, it is quite possible that he finds the lazy pace agreeable. His svelte wife, however, has made her boredom plain. In an interview last December with Vanity Fair, Michele Duvalier complained that her days were a "bit empty." At 37, she thinks she might like to pursue a modeling career.

Mrs. Duvalier has said that short of returning to Haiti, she would most like to move to Los Angeles. Duvalier, 35, has expressed a strong preference for staying in France, where he has unsuccessfully sought refugee status. For now, the couple remain confined to a 30-mile strip along the Cote d'Azur, virtually prisoners in a home that is not their own, in a country that officially refuses to accept them.