“That day,” she said, “I didn’t expect to be going to San Francisco.”

“Neither did I,” said the man.

“I’ll take care of the Volks, I promise.”

She was very glad that Jack had decided to leave her the Volkswagen. She was going to check out of the hotel and live in the minibus because she didn’t have much money. She wanted to spend a while in San Francisco: she thought that city, where the races seemed to live in harmony, was a good place to try to come to terms with her own twofold heritage, to become reconciled with herself.

“Anyway, weren’t you born in a mobile home or something like that?” asked Jack.

“A trailer,” she said.

The man looked at his watch, but it was an automatic gesture: he had at least an hour and a half before his plane took off for Montreal.

“And of course you’re a mechanic . . . The Volks is better off with you than with me. It’s so old.”

“One of these days, perhaps I’ll bring it back to you,” she said.

“It’s done more than two hundred thousand kilometres,” said the man.

“Yes, but it’s still tough.”

“You don’t have to bring it back.”

“I know.”

They had talked about it already. They had talked about the Volks and about everything that mattered two days earlier, when they came back from the agency that looked after disabled people. The doctor had told them that Théo’s paralysis was progressive and that no one could do anything. His memory had been affected and he didn’t really know who he was, but with the competent and attentive care being lavished on him, he was not unhappy; in fact, he was as happy as a person could be under the circumstances. Trying to bring back the past might aggravate his condition.

Jack took the black cat in his arms.

“You’re still thinking about Théo?” asked the girl.

“ I . . . the idea that it’s better not to see my brother again . . . I accepted it so quickly that . . . now I wonder if I really loved Théo. Perhaps I only loved the image I’d made up.” He shrugged and said half seriously, “One of these days I’m going to have to learn something about human relations.”

“You could write about it in a book,” she suggested in the same tone.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve said that writing’s a form of exploration, haven’t you?”

“Did I say that?”

“Yes. At the border. Between Windsor and Detroit.”

La Grande Sauterelle suddenly slowed down and turned left off the 101, onto the airport road.