Fall comes and goes, then winter, then spring. The whole time I wait for things to settle, I figure they'll get tired eventually, I try to speak to Laurent, try to see Paul. There's no getting through, it's the Berlin Wall. I haven't seen Paul for six months. A friend of mine, a family lawyer, offers to help me. For free, seeing as I'm broke. When summer comes around, he files for divorce on my behalf with a request for urgent measures to be granted so I can see Paul every other week, just as before. I say to myself, worst-case scenario, I'll have him for half the school vacation and on weekends, just like any dad who walks out on his family.

The hearing is set for the end of July. One year after the episode at the Flore. Two days before the hearing, I receive Laurent's written submissions, signed by his lawyer. He's applying for sole custody with termination of my parental rights. He's accusing me of incest and pedophilia, committed against my eight-year-old son, directly or through involvement of a third party. He's written about my homosexual friends “who may or may not be pedophiles.” He's included a picture of my son sitting outside on a terrace with one of my fag friends the day we went to get a soda together, a photo of a sign that reads “Danger! Hunting,” found in a field and kept on my desk, near Paul's bedroom door. He's quoted passages from books selected from my bookshelves, Bataille, Duvert, Guibert. He's putting everything together, making his case, sowing doubt. My nine-year-old son has written a letter to the court saying that living with me is inhumane, that his dad says I'm insane, and he agrees. He says he doesn't want to see me anymore.

The hearing lasts fifteen minutes, Laurent's lawyer reads passages from Crazy for Vincent, as if I were Hervé Guibert's narrator, as if Paul were the young boy he sleeps with in the book, the judge stares at the tattoo poking out from beneath my sleeve, she asks me why I'm writing a book and what it's about, she wants to know why I speak to my son about my homosexuality, she says that these subjects are not appropriate for children, that it's not a question of legality, it's a question of morals, she's sure I can understand, I am, after all, an intelligent woman.