Soon, he is spending all day at the restaurant, sleeping on a bench in the backyard, a cat in the sun, while the chefs take their nap, or—even better—seizing the opportunity to talk with Mia, burning up the minutes on his cell phone plan. Mia, who only answers one time in a dozen, and who can never speak to him tenderly, because she, too, is at work. In reality, Mauro doesn’t do more with his break because he’s too exhausted to move—or, rather, too worried about tiring himself out even more before he starts the evening shift—and he tells himself it would be stupid to waste his free time and energy on bike trips. So it’s difficult to do the things he would like to do: to have a drink on a café terrace with a friend—me, for example—or to see a movie in an air-conditioned theater, or swim in a pool, or go for a boat ride.

As the summer wears on, Mauro stays at Les Voltigeurs for a good part of the nights, as the party continues at the bosses’ table, where some of the more shameless customers often gather after the restaurant closes. Mauro hates those two-faced bastards, the way they squirm and say no, no, there’s no need to cook them dinner, when, if they’re coming here, at that time of night, it’s because they know perfectly well that they will never be refused nourishment, the good stuff if possible. And it’s Mauro who has to relight the oven that he’s just spent a quarter of an hour cleaning, who has to take out the saucepan and the frying pan for a special omelet—Make them a nice mushroom puree, okay, Mauro? We can’t let them starve, can we? The drinks, the jokes, the stories, often go on until about two in the morning, the bosses’ laughter growing louder as the night advances.

One Sunday in mid-August, I meet up with Mauro in Vincennes. By the side of the lake, near the quay, we wait for our boat, sitting in the grass in the cool shade of an apple tree. He went to bed at three in the morning and he has dark circles under his eyes, the lean body of a marathon runner. He slowly licks his pistachio ice cream. By the time our brightly colored skiff arrives, my friend has fallen asleep, so I spend the rest of the afternoon reading my book, sitting close to him, waving away the wasps that hover above his T-shirt.