uld eat. Nor on any other menu in the world, in my opinion, and I said, I’m not hungry, I’d like just a glass of cognac. Luc said, I’m going to have the breaded veal escalope with fries. I was stricken by melancholy in this crummy, supposedly intimate booth. The waiter wiped the varnished table but stopped before it was really clean. I wonder if men suffer from this sort of attack without ever admitting it. I thought about the baby girl who was living through the first hours of her life, swaddled in her waxen room. A story occurred to me and I immediately told it to Luc by way of filling the silence. One evening at dinner, a psychiatrist — who’s also a psychoanalyst — recalled the words of a patient of his, a man who suffered from solitude. This patient said to the psychoanalyst, when I’m home, I’m afraid someone will pay me a visit and see how alone I am. The analyst had added, sniggering a little, the guy’s a broken record. I told Luc that part too. Luc was ordering a glass of white wine, and he sniggered exactly the way the psychoanalyst, Igor Lorrain, had sniggered — stupidly, and tediously, and appallingly. I should have walked out, I should have left him there in that absurd booth, but instead I said, I’d like to see where you live. Luc feigned astonishment and acted like a man who’s not sure he understands. I repeated, I’d like to go home with you and see how you live. Luc looked at me as though I was getting interesting again and crooned, aha, home with me, my little hussy? I nodded in a vaguely mischievous way and immediately scolded myself for simpering like that, for being unable to stay my own course in Luc’s presence. Nevertheless, I backed up a little (the waiter had just brought my glass of cognac) and said, you didn’t like the story about the patient? You didn’t understand it as a perfect allegory of absence? Luc said, absence from what? — From the other. — Oh, yes, yes, of course, Luc said, squeezing the mustard container. Are you sure you don’t want to eat anything? At least take some fries. I took a fry. I’m not used to cognac or any strong liquor. My head starts to spin at the first swallow. It didn’t even occur to Luc to take me to a hotel. He was so used to coming to my apartment that he couldn’t conceive an alternate idea. Men are totally immobile creatures. We women are the ones who create movement. We wear ourselves out invigorating love. I’ve been going to a great deal of trouble ever since I met Luc Condamine. Some noisy young people, full of energy, occupied the booth behind ours. Luc asked me if I’d seen the Toscanos recently. We’d met at the Toscanos’ apartment. Luc is Robert’s best friend. They work at the same newspaper, but Luc’s a senior correspondent. I said I’d been working late and hardly seeing anybody. Luc told me he’d found Robert depressed and so he’d introduced him to a girl. That surprised me, because I’d always thought that Robert was a different kind of man from Luc. I said, I didn’t know Robert had affairs. — He doesn’t, that’s precisely why I’m arranging things for him. I reminded Luc that I was Odile’s friend and he was giving me too much information. Luc laughed and wiped his mouth. He pinched my cheek with a semipitying look on his face. He’d already gobbled up his bowl of fried potatoes and was bearing down on the remains of his escalope. I asked, who is she? — Oh, no, Paola! You’re Odile’s friend, you don’t want to know that! — Who is she? Do I know her? — No, you’re right, it would be bad if you knew. — Yes, it would be very bad. So who is she? — Virginie. Medical secretary. — Where do you know her from? Luc made a sweeping gesture, indicating the vast world of his acquaintance. I felt cheerful all of a sudden. I’d drunk an entire glass of cognac in an unusually short time. But I was cheerful because Luc himself had brightened up at last. He ordered an apricot tart and two spoons. The tart was acidic and too creamy, but we fought over the last piece of fruit. The young people behind us were laughing, and I felt young like them. I said, will you take me home with you, Luc? Let’s go, he said. I couldn’t tell whether this was a good idea anymore. In fact, my ideas were uniformly unclear. Things remained light for a little while. We ran through the rain. In the car, the mood was still light, at first. Then I dropped one of the CDs Luc kept in the center storage console. The disc slipped out of its case and rolled under my seat. When I came back up with the CD, Luc was already holding the case. Still driving, he took the CD out of my hands and put it back in its container himself. Then he stored it in its former place, tapping it a little to get the alignment right. All this was done without sound. Without words. I felt clumsy and maybe even guilty of an indiscretion. I could have considered the obsessiveness of his actions and deduced that Luc Condamine was a maniac, but instead I felt a stupid urge to cry like a child caught doing wrong. I no longer thought it was a good idea to go to his apartment. Once we were in the lobby of his building, Luc used his keys to open a glass door. On the other side there was a staircase with a baby carriage and a folded stroller hanging from the banister. Luc had me go ahead of him, and we climbed up to the fourth floor on stairs that wound around a shaft occupied by an invisible elevator. Luc turned on the lights in the entrance hallway of his apartment. I could make out some shelves with books and some coathooks where anoraks and overcoats were hanging. I took mine off, along with my gloves and my scarf. Luc showed me into the living room. He adjusted a halogen floor lamp and left me alone for a moment. As in every living room, in his there was a sofa, a low table, and a few mismatched chairs. A rather worn leather armchair. A bookcase with some books and framed photographs, among them one of Luc in the Oval Office, hypnotized by Bill Clinton. An assembly of haphazard elements. I sat in the leather chair, on the edge of the seat. The curtains were printed in a pattern I’d seen somewhere before. Luc came back. He’d taken off his suit jacket. He said, do you want something to drink? Cognac, I said, as if in the course of a single evening I’d become a woman who drank cognac at every given opportunity. Luc got a bottle of cognac and two glasses. He sat on the sofa and poured our drinks. He dimmed the floor lamp, turned on a smaller one with a pleated fabric shade, and sprawled backward on the sofa pillows, gazing at me. I was sitting on an inch or two of armchair, my back straight, my legs crossed, trying to give myself a Lauren Bacall air. Luc spread his legs and sank into the sofa. There was a sort of pedestal table between him and me, and on it stood a framed photograph of his wife, laughing with their two daughters, apparently at a miniature golf course. Luc said, Andernos-les-Bains. They have a family home in Andernos-les-Bains, near Bordeaux, which is where his wife’s from. My head began to spin a little. Moving very slowly — I found him almost melodramatic — Luc started unbuttoning his shirt with one hand. Then he pulled the shirt open. I understood that the idea was for me to do the same thing, to strip off my clothes in the same slow rhythm a few feet away from him. Luc Condamine has a great hold over me in this regard. I was wearing a dress under a cardigan. I bared a shoulder. Then, to get ahead of him, I pulled off one cardigan sleeve. Luc took off one shirt sleeve. I took off the cardigan and threw it on the floor. He did the same with his shirt. Luc’s upper body was naked. He was smiling at me. I pulled my dress over my head and rolled down one stocking. Luc removed his shoes. I took off my other stocking, knotted it into a ball and threw it at him. Luc unbuttoned his pants. I waited a little. He freed his sex, and all at once I realized that the sofa was turquoise. A turquoise that shimmered in the soft lamplight. Considering the rest of the room, I thought, it was rather surprising they’d chosen a sofa of that particular color. I wondered which member of this couple was responsible for interior decoration. Luc stretched out in a lascivious position I found both alluring and embarrassing. I looked around the room, at the pictures hanging in their false half-light, at the photographs, at the Moroccan paper lanterns. I wondered whose books these were, and whose guitar, and who claimed the horrible elephant’s foot. You’ll never leave all this, I told him. Luc Condamine raised his head and gazed at me as if I’d just said something immeasurably weird.