That’s what she said, and I remembered how he’d held her glass, in the lobby of the theater, and I realized how fucked-up his life must indeed have been. All the same, I couldn’t help despising him a little. Why didn’t he get away? What people! All they did was try to leave each other, but they were terrified of succeeding.

“Anyway,” she said, smiling to thaw the waiter who was filling her glass, “enough of these sad things. Tell me something amusing, like that time you tried to teach the subjunctive when you were drunk.”

“No,” I said. “It’s best if we get out of here. We could develop some bad habits. How about going for a walk?”

She said that was fine by her, and so we left and started wandering aimlessly, stopping from time to time outside some lighted store window.

“Oh,” she said, seeing a colorful, flowery silk dress that seemed to have come into the world just for her, “why aren’t you rich? I love buying clothes!”

Even if there’d ever been any possibility of my becoming rich, it had receded quite a lot since I’d paid the check at the restaurant. I put an arm around her waist and she went with me meekly until we turned onto a side street, where I stopped and put my open hands on her chest. There was something poignant about her small, hard breasts beneath her light blouse. She leaned her back against the wall and looked at me with great seriousness. “I beg you,” she said, “be kind to me.” Then we kissed slowly, repeatedly, each time moving our faces apart to look at each other. It was so silent, we could hear the river flowing under the bridges.

“Let’s go to my place,” I said.

We were in the shadows once again, and once again her voice emerged from the shadows, low at first, then bright. “Are you crazy?” she said. “I don’t feel like making love, haven’t you got that yet?” She gave me a last, light kiss on the lips. “Come on,” she said, grabbing me by the arm, “a drive will do us both good.”

“Are you angry?” she said as we got in the car. “Don’t say no, it’s obvious you’re very angry.”

She was still smiling, and if she was doing it to annoy me, it worked. Without saying a word, I picked up the Proust book from the backseat. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched.