The only thorn in the happiness we shared was Madeleine’s fixation with the auction of the Baudelaire manuscript the following Monday. She was desperate to acquire it or, rather, for me to acquire it on her behalf. Of course, I wanted to see the Baudelaire manuscript for myself. I wanted to touch it, to hold it, to read it, if possible, in part if not in whole. I was a bibliophile, and as such I had obsessions of my own. Chief among them, coinciding neatly with Madeleine’s, was Charles Baudelaire. A new story by the great poet—the idea made my heart beat faster. I peppered Madeleine for specifics about it, and she indulged me by describing it in loving detail: a story in four parts, told in the first person. She’d even memorized the first sentence. She made me write it down so I could check it at the auction: As I write these words, it occurs to me that I have never known a tale to be so beyond belief as that which I am about to relate to you, dear girl. I would attend the auction, alone, and buy the manuscript on her behalf. Why alone? She wouldn’t say, other than that all would be revealed in time. How would I pay for it? Again, she wouldn’t say—money seemed to be almost an abstraction to her. She seemed to think that, if all else failed, I could simply steal the thing.

It was when Madeleine was making no sense at all that I loved her the most. From the start, she suspected I didn’t take her tales as seriously as she did, and when she sensed her words were bumping up against a wall of incredulity her lips would quiver with hurt and her dark eyes glisten with tears, but she never lost her conviction or her composure. I must simply trust her, she kept saying, and so I did, or at least I pretended to. To disbelieve Madeleine was to risk losing her; to believe her was to risk losing myself. And so I devised a way of loving her without being ashamed of myself: I believed and disbelieved her at one and the same time.