Madison, I know nothing about dances) and a kind of tango with some men strapped to oxygen tanks. A woman called out, Odile, your hair looks like you used a rake on it, you need to get yourself a permanent! I thought, this is real life, tables on trestles, fraternity, dust, Odile Toscano dancing in a village hall. I thought, that’s what you should have done in life, Rémi, you should have been mayor of Wandermines in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, with its church, its factory, its cemetery. The servers brought out coq au vin in big cooking pots. My new pal told me that the number of recent graves in the cemetery was higher than the population of the village. We’re fighting, he said. I thought about the force of that word. He said, when my brother died, I had “Le Temps des cerises” sung at his funeral. My head was about to explode. When the end of the day finally came, I got behind the wheel to drive to Douai, but I was as loaded as Odile. Once we were in the hotel room, she collapsed on the bed. She said, I’m sloshed, Rémi, I can’t very well call the children in this state, do you have some aspirin? — I have something better. I took a bottle of cognac from the minibar. I was sloshed too, and the bewilderment I felt persisted. The way she was lying there, the way she pulled a pillow under her head, the way she knocked back the shot of cognac. Her laugh, her weary face. I thought, she’s mine, my little Counselor Toscano. I lay on top of her, kissed her, undressed her. We made love with incipient hangovers, which added just the right dose of pain. Around ten in the evening, we got hungry. The hotel clerk told us about a restaurant that would still be open. Before we found it, we wandered around Douai. We walked along a river called the Scarpe, Odile told me, I don’t know why I remember that name. She told me other things about some of the buildings and showed me the law courts. It was pretty windy and drizzly, but I liked the opaque temperament of the place, the silence, the amusing streetlights, I was ready to stay and live there. Odile trod along bravely, her nose swollen by the cold. I had an urge to wrap my arms around her, to hold her close against me, but I restrained myself. There had never been any question of that sort of foolishness between us before. In the restaurant we ordered vegetable soup and ham on the bone. Odile wanted tea, I wanted a beer. She said, you shouldn’t drink any more alcohol. I said, it’s nice of you to look after me. She smiled. Those people impressed me, I said. I live a stupid fucking life. All the people I know are stupid, stupid and insipid. She said, not everybody’s lucky enough to be born in coal-mining country. — You too, you impress me too. Ah, at last! Odile said, making a gesture that meant I should develop this line of thought. — You’re involved, engaged, strong. You’re beautiful. — Rémi? Hello? Are you all right? — Don’t, I’m serious. You fight with them, for them. — That’s my job. — You could do it differently. You could be more aloof. The workers love you. Odile laughed (I’ve already mentioned that I adore her laugh). — The workers love me! The common people love me, you see, I really should go into politics. And you, my poor darling, you’re going to sleep well tonight. — You’re wrong to laugh. I’m serious. The way you danced and cleared away the plates, the comforting words you said, you made the day enchanting. — You didn’t think those pants made me look fat? — No. —You think my hair looks like I used a rake on it? — Yes, but I like it better than the helmet look you had this morning. And suddenly I thought, tomorrow we’ll be in Paris. Tomorrow evening, Odile will be at home in her cozy cell, with husband and children. And me, I’ll be the devil knows where. Ordinarily none of that mattered, but since things had taken an abnormal turn, I thought, take your precautions, old boy. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, said excuse me to Odile, and looked for Loula Moreno’s number. She’s beautiful, she’s funny, she’s desperate. Exactly what I need. I sent her a text message: “Free tomorrow evening?” Odile was blowing on her soup. I felt myself invaded by a kind of panic. A dread of abandonment. When I was a child, my parents would leave me with other people. I’d find a dark spot and remain there immobile, getting smaller and smaller. The screen on my cell phone lit up and I read, “Free tomorrow evening, my angel, but you’ll have to come to Klosterneuburg.” I remembered that Loula was making a movie in Austria. Let’s see, who else … Everything OK? Odile asked. Everything’s fine, I said. — You look frustrated. — A client postponing a meeting, nothing important. And then I put on an indifferent air and tossed out, what are you doing tomorrow evening? We’re celebrating my mother’s seventieth birthday, Odile replied. — At your place? — No, at my parents’ house in Boulogne. Having guests is good for my mother. Doing the shopping, cooking for everybody. I have a fear of my parents sitting around being depressed. — Don’t they do anything? — My father was a senior inspector of finances. When Raymond Barre was prime minister, my father was one of his advisers, and later he was director of the Wurmster Bank. Ernest Blot, ever heard of him? — Vaguely. — He had to retire from the bank because of a heart problem. Now he’s chairman of the board of directors, but it’s just an honorary position. He does a little volunteer work, he spins his wheels. My mother does nothing. She feels alone. My father’s hateful to her, they should have separated a long time ago. Odile fished the slice of lemon out of her empty teacup and separated the peel from the pulp. One of the effects of emotional malfunction is that nothing gets passed over anymore. Everything stands for something else, everything’s in code and needs deciphering. I was unhinged enough to imagine that Odile’s last words contained a message, and so I asked her, have you ever thought about separating, you and your husband? I immediately covered her face with my hands and said, I don’t give a damn, forget I said that, I absolutely don’t give a damn. When I removed my hands, Odile said, he must think about it every day, I’m horrible. I’m sure you are, I said. Robert’s horrible too, but he knows how to make it up with me, Odile said, swallowing the lemon slice. I didn’t like that she’d chosen the same meaningless adjective for both of them, and I didn’t like that she’d said the name Robert, that Robert had barged into our conversation. That she could offer such a banal glimpse into their life together, about which I could not have cared less, irritated me. It’s foolish to think that sentiment brings us closer. It does the opposite, it sanctifies the distances between people. In the excitement of the day, in the rain, on the platform with a microphone in her hand, in the car, in the room with the curtains drawn, Odile felt near, her face in reach of my hand, of my kisses. But in that gloomy, virtually empty restaurant where I’d begun, against my will, to scrutinize her smallest gesture and the tone of her every word with feverish attention, she’d ducked away from me, she’d vanished into a world I had no part in. I said, if I had to live here, at the end of two days I’d blow my brains out. Odile laughed (I found her laugh caustic and conventional). — You claimed the opposite ten minutes ago. You were enthusiastic about Douai. — I’ve changed my mind. I’d blow my brains out. She shrugged and dunked a bit of bread in the remains of her soup. I had the feeling she was on the verge of boredom. I was on the verge of boredom myself, permeated with the sullenness of lovers when nothing’s going on outside the bed. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I heard the rain return and start pattering against the window. Odile put on a look of consternation and said, we didn’t take the umbrella. I thought about the asbestos demolition worker who showed his thoroughly stained teeth when he laughed, about the chubby organizer in the pleated skirt that made her look even fatter, and God knows why, about my father, an auto body mechanic whose shop was on the Avenue de la Porte de Pantin, on the edge of Paris, and who used to complain bitterly about whoever had installed the leaky skylight. I was tempted to tell Odile that story, but the temptation lasted half a second. I scrolled through the list of contacts on my cell phone and came upon Yorgos Katos. I thought, there you go, my boy, you can sally forth and lose your shirt at poker. I texted Yorgos: “Need an easy mark at the table tomorrow night?” Odile asked, who are you writing to? — Yorgos Katos. Haven’t I ever spoken to you about Yorgos? — Never. — He’s a friend who makes his living gambling. One day, years ago, he was playing with Omar Sharif in a bridge tournament. He could feel a crowd of girls gathered at his back. He told himself, they know I play much better than he does. It never occurred to him for a second that they wanted to see Omar Sharif’s face. Odile said she was in love with the desert prince in Lawrence of Arabia. As far as she was concerned, Omar Sharif wore a keffiyeh and rode a black charger, he didn’t sit huddled at a bridge table. I realized she was absolutely right. I felt lighthearted again. Everything returned to normal.