He went home by way of rue Desjardins, so he could buy milk, butter and bread. Just as he was opening the door to his fifth-floor apartment, he heard the sound of dishes. He knocked before entering. La Grande Sauterelle was back.

“Bonjour! I bought a few things at the grocery store,” he said as lightly as possible.

“So did I,” said the girl.

“Oh, yes? What did you buy?”

“Milk, butter and bread,” she said.

“Me too!” he laughed.

He went to the kitchen to put away his purchases. Then he got down on his knees and petted the cat, who was drinking some milk.

“Thanks for washing the dishes,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” said the girl.

“And I’m glad you’re back.”

“Did you think I’d gone for good?”

“I didn’t know what had happened. I looked to see if you’d left a note, but you hadn’t.”

“I couldn’t,” she said, “because . . .”

She unfastened the long braid that fell to the middle of her back, then she asked if he had a hairbrush. He went to get the brush from the medicine chest.

“. . . I never know ahead of time what I’m going to do,” she said.

He sat on the edge of the bed. The girl had her back to him. Standing at the window, legs slightly parted, she was brushing her hair. She untangled it with delicate strokes, starting at the bottom, then she bent her head to the left and brushed with long, regular strokes, over and under, then finally she shook her head until her long black hair enfolded her shoulders like a fur cape.

When she turned around she saw that the man was watching her, wide-eyed and openmouthed.

“Anything wrong?” she asked.

“No, no, everything’s fine,” he said.

He struggled to regain his self-control.

“Was there a phone call for me?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Are you expecting one?”

He nodded.

This girl was strange. Though he didn’t know her very well, he felt very close to her and he felt that she was very close to him. He couldn’t lie to her. He told her that he was expecting a call from Sam Peckinpah.

For action films, Sam Peckinpah was his favourite filmmaker. He had liked Straw Dogs very much. He had been captivated from the first images; the action had got faster and faster and he had been carried away by the rhythm of the film up to the moment when the word end appeared in big letters on the screen. He had left the cinema breathless and as tired as if he’d run a four-minute mile. Since that day, he had maintained the insane hope that old Peckinpah would call to tell him that he’d read his latest novel and wanted to make a film of it. Someday the phone would ring, he’d pick it up and, at the other end, he’d hear Peckinpah’s gruff, nasal voice. It was ridiculous and illogical for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that he didn’t write action novels and besides, he wasn’t even a well-known author . . . But every time the telephone rang in his small fifth-floor apartment on the rue Terrasse-Dufferin, he told himself in spite of everything that maybe this, at last, was the phone call from Sam Peckinpah.