A memory resurfaced in my mind, and it was quickly followed by a second.

The first: Hong Kong, 2007. I’m thirty-three. I’ve just published my third novel. My agent has organized a promotional tour of Asia—the French Institute in Hanoi, a bookstore called Le Pigeonnier in Taipei, the prestigious Ewha University in Seoul, Parenthèses, the famous French bookshop in Hong Kong. I’m sitting with a journalist in the bar on the twenty-fifth floor of the Mandarin Oriental. Outside the window, the Hong Kong skyline rolls away into the distance, and yet for several minutes, I have been oblivious to the view, staring at a man sitting several tables away. It is Francis Biancardini, though I barely recognize him. He is reading the Wall Street Journal, wearing an elegant tailored suit (spalla con rollino shoulders, Parisian bocca di lupo lapels), and he is clearly fluent enough in English to discuss the relative merits of Japanese and Scotch whiskeys with the waiter. At some point, the journalist realizes that I am no longer listening to her and becomes irritated. I quickly recover; I pretend to think hard and then offer a perceptive response to her question. When I look up again, Francis has disappeared.