“The events of your life are a text. Coetzee’s book is another text. There is an intertextual relationship between them, that’s all. And Coetzee’s life is yet another text that is intertextually related to the previous two. There is no point in viewing it any other way. You’ll only upset yourself.”

“That’s my prerogative.”

He smiles. He is extraordinarily gifted, this man—physically speaking. His eyes are dark and wide-set. His nose is a blade that bisects his face into symmetrical halves. His mouth is full but firm. I caught only a glimpse of his body before he sat down, but it seems tall and lean, with just the right amount of bulk across the shoulders. By all the tropes of romantic fiction, he is the hero of this story.

His benign influence will tip me out of suffering and into healing. He will awaken and satisfy my sexual appetite. He will guide me towards closure in my overwrought feelings towards John Coetzee. That’s L. Bascombe’s word—closure. I’m doing quite well without it.

“The white whale is the ultimate antagonist,” I say, finishing my coffee. The caffeine is taking over my sympathetic nervous system. It is making my heart race and my hands tremble.

Eugene shakes his head. “The white whale is the victim. It exists as the antagonist only in Ahab’s mind. The white whale is oblivious to Ahab except when Ahab forces himself upon its notice with harpoons and a running battle.”

“That’s not entirely true. The whale attacks the ship Pequod from time to time. Terrible, unprovoked attacks.”

“The narrator is too unreliable for us to know that for sure.”

“When an unreliable narrator is your only window into a story, you have to take some of what he says on trust.”

Eugene smiles a peaceful smile and looks around the café. It seems the decor is to his liking. He runs a finger over a black rivet in the table. It has been worn smooth by time and weather. No rough edge remains, just this glassine, near-frictionless protrusion.

“The unreliable narrator is a tired old trope,” he says. “It is probably the most hackneyed device in literary fiction today, wouldn’t you agree? It’s got to the point where I can’t read those books any more. Even older books that date from before the unreliable narrator craze irritate me now.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you didn’t enjoy Gone Girl?”

He shakes his head. “Utter crap.”

I am fascinated by the way his coal-black hair falls softly, Byronically, over his forehead. He is probably the most beautiful individual I have ever seen close up.

I don’t agree that Gone Girl was utter crap, but I cannot argue with beauty.