I was pleasantly surprised by my powers of recollection—I could put a name to most of the faces from my generation of students. It was amusing, even fascinating, in some cases, to watch them, since for many, the reunion seemed to be an opportunity to get revenge for the past. Take Manon Agostini, for example, a plain, painfully shy girl who had grown up to be a beautiful, self-confident woman. Christophe Mirkovic had undergone a similar transformation. He was no longer the nerd—not that we used the word back then—the pimply, bespectacled punching bag I remembered, and I was happy for him. Like an American, he now brazenly flaunted his success; he bragged about the merits of his Tesla and spoke English to his girlfriend, twenty years his junior, who was turning heads.

Éric Lafitte, however, had clearly had a rough time of it. I remembered him as a demigod, a kind of raven-haired angel, like Alain Delon in Purple Noon. Now, Éric the King had become a pathetic, potbellied guy with a pockmarked face who looked more like Homer Simpson than the star of Rocco and His Brothers.

Kathy and Hervé Lesage arrived holding hands. They had started dating in junior year and married as soon as they had finished their studies. Kathy had been Katherine Laneau. I remembered her because she used to have magnificent legs—she probably still did, though she had swapped her plaid miniskirt for a pantsuit—and a perfect command of English. I used to wonder how a girl like her could fall in love with a guy like Hervé Lesage. We used to call him Nigel, Christopher Guest’s character in This Is Spinal Tap. He was pasty-faced, pea-brained; he made off-color jokes and asked teachers questions that were entirely beside the point. But most of all, he seemed blissfully unaware that his girlfriend was completely out of his league. Twenty-five years later, with his suede jacket and his smug grin, he looked every bit as dumb as he had back then.

But when it came to clothes, Fabrice Fauconnier took the cake. Fabrice “the Falcon” was sporting his Air France pilot’s uniform. I watched him strut among the women with their blond hairdos, high heels, and boob jobs. He had remained handsome; his build was still athletic and his graying mane, forceful gaze, and evident vanity already designated him as a silver fox. A few years earlier, I’d come across him on a short-haul flight. He’d wanted to show off and thought it would please me to be invited into the cockpit for the landing, treating me like an excitable five-year-old.

5.

“Bloody hell, Falcon’s looking rough, isn’t he?”