Thankfully, there was alcohol. There was even a bartender making cocktails to order.

“Could you make me a caipirinha?”

“With pleasure.”

“Make that two!” I heard a voice from behind me and, turning, saw that it was Maxime’s partner, Olivier Mons, who ran the multimedia library in Antibes. I congratulated him on their two beautiful little daughters and we swapped stories about the “good old days” that had never really been that good. While I remembered him as a bit of a poser, he was actually charming and very funny. We chatted for a couple of minutes, and then he confided that he had been a little worried about Maxime over the past few days. He was convinced there was something Maxime was not telling him and equally convinced that I knew something about it.

I opted for a half-truth and told him that, with the upcoming elections, some of Maxime’s rivals were trying to find skeletons in his closet to stop him from running. I was ambiguous, saying vaguely that this was the price of being involved in politics. I promised to do whatever I could to help Maxime and said that the whole thing would quickly blow over anyway.

And Olivier believed me. It was one of the weirdest things about my life. Though a worrier by nature, I had the strange ability to reassure other people that everything was going to be okay.

The bartender brought our cocktails and we clinked glasses and stood laughing at the hideous outfits of the other guests. Like me, Olivier was fairly conservative in his style. The same could not be said about our former classmates. Some of the women seemed nostalgic for the days of crop tops and exposed belly buttons. Others were wearing denim shorts, black camisoles over white T-shirts, choker necklaces, or bandannas tied around the handles of their handbags. Thankfully, no one had dared to wear Buffalo platform wedges. What was it all for? Were they just having fun, or were they trying to recapture their lost youth?

We ordered two more cocktails.

“And this time, don’t be so stingy with the cachaça!” I said.

The barman took me at my word and made stiff caipirinhas. I took my leave of Olivier and, cocktail in hand, went out onto the terrace where the smokers were gathered.

3.

The night was still young, but already some guy in a dark corner was openly dealing coke and dope. Everything I had always loathed. Dressed in a battered leather jacket and a Depeche Mode T-shirt, Stéphane Pianelli was leaning on the fence, vaping and sipping alcohol-free beer.

“So you didn’t go to the concert in the end?”

He nodded to a five-year-old playing under the tables. “My parents were supposed to be babysitting Ernesto, but something came up at the last minute,” he said, exhaling a plume of vapor that smelled like gingerbread.

“Ernesto? After Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara?”