At La Cachette, however, my smile wasn’t winning at all, quite the contrary: I felt more like burying my nose in my glass so nobody would know I was there. Another evening down the drain. In a few hours I’d be in the depths of a muggy August night, alone and anxious, perhaps even ­condemned to roam the streets until dawn, until fatigue overcame me. Then I realized that it was too hot for sex ­anyway, which was a relief. I ordered another beer, ­promising myself I’d make it last as long as possible, and then I started to relax. I left my seat at the bar and headed for the dance floor, which was packed, noisy and better lit. People weren’t thrashing around the way I’ve often seen in other places, where the dancing seems like a more ­aggressive form of cruising; no, the dancers were energetic but not excessively so; they moved about with laboured ease (after all, weren’t they the show?), but nonchalantly, as if it wasn’t all that important, while the dance floors in other places seem like the site of military operations.

I concealed myself behind a cluster of motionless ­spectators silently sipping their beer as they eyed the ­spectacle of these moving bodies, all aware and grateful that someone was watching them.

It was as I was watching the movements of a dancer who was very inspired and surprisingly oblivious to what was going on around him that I first noticed the dark eyes ­staring at me from the other side of the floor with near-comical solemnity. A former student? No, he seemed much too young and I was sure I didn’t recognize him. A very good-looking guy actually, his features fine without being feminine, like a local model sure of his effect but not ­ostentatious about it. Of course it happened just when I’d decided to stop cruising.

I didn’t feel like crossing the dance floor or walking around the bystanders to join him, so I decided just to let things develop, then we’d see. I even moved discreetly towards the big window that looked out on Saint-Laurent.