Afterward I was cheerful, like when I sometimes take the evening off and have a bit to drink, and me and Ginette’s brother go to the booths behind the place Blanche and I try my luck in the shooting galleries. Christ, was I hungry! And for half an hour we tried to figure out what we wanted to eat and where, and he said he didn’t know any of the bistros I knew and he had to get to know them. But then he said, “We’re so close to Prunier, why don’t we go there?” And I said to him, “I don’t want to make trouble for you. They all know me here in the neighborhood and they won’t let us in.” And he said, “But, darling, they’ll have to get used to seeing you in my bad company.” And so we fooled around until we finally telephoned down to Gaston to send something up. I said, “Now we’ll see how you’re going to spoil me. I want champagne and caviar and oysters and lobster and a filet mignon. You’re lucky the shops are closed now, else I’d have taken you shopping.” And he said, “A couple of diamonds at Cartier, and Yves Saint Laurent’s spring collection, is that it? I’m going to give you a good spanking and stick you in the kitchen and make you cook for both of us and spend no more than ten francs a day. You can go to the movies once a week and that’s all.”

And here a kiss and there a pinch and there a thump, so that we nearly started screwing all over again. But luckily, room service came up with the food, and boy was that ever a bullshit deal! I let the waiter know as much too. “Lemme see the bill!” I said. “They’re ripping you off, these pigs,” I said, and that was a stupid thing, which would cost me dearly. If I hadn’t felt like I did, almost like I was drunk, I would have understood on the spot by the way the waiter looked at me.

But it was like I was crazy, I really didn’t know why. We ate, and he fed me like a little girl and didn’t want to have anything himself. He just watched me, and while he watched he became very melancholy. I think he’d been drinking all day and now he was having some more, and the sadness was breaking out. To get him to eat, I put pieces of food in my teeth and held out my mouth so that he’d kiss me and at least take a piece of bread. And to keep him from drinking too much, I drank the wine out of his mouth. And when he wanted to send for another bottle, I said, “You’ve had enough now and you’re going beddy-bye. I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open.”

Once again, we lay side by side like a married couple, him on his back and me half-across him with my head on his shoulder. But neither of us could sleep, and finally I asked him, “Why aren’t you sleeping?” “Why aren’t you?” he asked. “I keep thinking,” I said. “What about?” he asked. “About me and about you. About both of us.” “Me too,” he said. Then I thought he had really gone to sleep and I wanted to give him a goodnight kiss, and he gently pressed me to him. He wasn’t asleep.