He had known when he boarded the bus that he really had no good reason for leaving, but he’d left anyway, telling himself that the sea, the iodine, the seafood, the seagulls, anything at all, in fact, would be good for him, that distance would give him the perspective he needed to see and ­properly understand what was happening to him, though he didn’t want to see or understand anything whatever. At customs, he’d been tempted to get off the bus, ask for his overnight bag and wait for the next bus, or hitchhike back to Montreal, his heart swollen, but shameless, feeling like a jerk, but proud, deep down, to return on a whim, just like that, when he hadn’t had the courage to stay. But his pride, his fear of being ridiculous, and the apathy that struck him every time he had a difficult choice to make had glued him to his seat, beaten him to a pulp emotionally, convinced that it was a mistake to stay, but totally unable to act. He’d called himself every name in the book but he let the bus carry him along, after meekly showing his passport and stating like a nerd and in an accent that would make your hair stand on end—his English was extremely rough—that he was taking a few days’ holiday to recharge his batteries. A very good-looking guy had eyed him during the whole trip, and that too had got on his nerves.

The closer they got to Provincetown the more helpless he’d felt: the evidence of the futility of this journey had become so acute that he’d got panicky and jittery, thinking, to console himself, it’s just five days, it’ll go fast, it’ll be fine, I’ll fill my lungs with fresh air and sunshine . . . and I’ll be that much happier when I go home . . . But what he wanted to do was wrench the window out of the bus, throw up, howl with rage. The last hour of the trip had been hideous. He felt pathetic and childish, but he couldn’t control his feelings: he made ridiculous plans (imagining himself boarding a plane the minute he arrived in Provincetown or even getting back on the same bus, which would return him to Montreal the next morning), he invented sudden, violent illnesses, imagining Jean-Marc running for an ambulance or waiting for him at Dorval with flowers . . . A child ­unjustly punished who wants to die in order to punish others, so he’ll be missed. But the child was twenty-four years old and he’d inflicted his own punishment which was, as it ­happens, a punishment only because he’d decided that it was.