What was he supposed to do? How could he drop into the arms of a bachelor who was pushing forty and used to his own little ways and his peace and quiet, a boisterous, demanding child who felt at home everywhere and wanted nothing from life but to have as much fun as possible, as often as possible? How was he going to link these two poles of his existence, his two reasons for living, without forcing them on one another? Keep Sébastien away from Jean-Marc? But for how much longer?

He’d considered going back to his mother’s, calling it all off, succumbing to the semi-depression he’d fallen into after he left Louise, when he’d chosen to touch bottom all alone while hoping he’d be strong enough to resurface before it was too late—but that was childish and he knew it. He had a tendency to dramatize things, to revel in problems that usually could be solved, but he knew that his depressions were generally short-lived and he’d have to wait for this one to pass before he acted. He wished he had the ­energy to fight, but he had only enough strength to submit. Meanwhile, he was miserable and the audition he was about to try wouldn’t fix anything, he was sure of that.

He’d been given a lumberjack shirt, a rifle and a bottle of beer with a twist-off cap. No less.

Behind the camera, aside from the director and the script assistant, were four gentlemen in three-piece suits, the clients from Toronto, who had frowned when they saw him walk into the studio. He’d felt like saying, yeah, I know, I’m too much of a sissy for you people, but it’s not my fault, they called me . . . But the director had been quite pleasant, instead of just saying you’re wasting my time—explaining that the brewery wanted a more youthful image and was looking for good-looking new young faces, and the script assistant had given him a warm smile, so he’d decided to take the plunge. You never know.

The shirt was too big and the rifle weighed a ton. For the third time Mathieu slammed the bottle of beer on the table as hard as he could—“like a man,” the script assistant had told him on the first take, with a knowing wink—then picked up the rifle and shouted at the top of his lungs: “Bag yourself a real one!!”

One of the clients from Toronto rolled his eyes in dismay, muttering, “My God!”

Mathieu dropped the rifle on the table.

“I don’t want to waste my time either. I know I’ve got a nice young face, but I also know it’s the wrong one for you. Sorry . . .”

The lumberjack shirt joined the beer and the rifle on the table.

“Shoot that, it’s a nice still-life!”

Before he left he snapped at Francine Beaupré, who was fluttering her eyelashes at a new candidate, a wrestler-type with little pig eyes and bulging muscles under a skintight shirt that was too thin for late October.