Four old men sitting in motorised wheelchairs around a table make up a game of ten-card scopone.

Only a few people are willing to dance and do so awkwardly.

A Russian man and his wife spin around, sweating as if taking part in a contest. He has her perform the casqué of the tango. She laughs.

Looking incongruous in his sunglasses, Jimmy Tree is in a corner chatting to his friends, among whom is the musician Mark Kozelek.

“What time did you come down for dinner?” Mark asks.

“Very early,” Jimmy replies.

“If you’d called me I’d have come down with you.”

“That’s O.K., I wasn’t only having dinner.”

“What else were you doing?”

“I was working.”

At their table Fred and Mick are lazily observing the dismal evening.

The song ends and the orchestra begins a slow number. More couples get up.

The eternally silent Germans also move onto the dance floor. They dance with conviction, but exchange neither a word nor a glance. The woman stares expressionlessly at Jimmy Tree. He notices and lowers his sunglasses to give her a friendly smile. She does not smile back, nor make any other gesture, but her husband has followed everything, feeling both serious and jealous.

Wistful and alone, the hippy mountaineer watches the swing band while he sips a hot tisane that scorches his lips, so that he gasps with each mouthful.

Mick and Fred allow themselves a rapid exchange on a painful subject.

“Anything today?”

“Nothing at all. You?”

“Nothing either.”

“Well, let’s hope for a piss tomorrow.”

Making a tremendous effort, the South American with the stick gets himself to the middle of the dance floor. He smiles and holds out a hand, inviting his companion to dance. With a radiant look, she runs over to him. They dance for ten seconds, during which time the man struggles against his obesity, his knees crumbling under the weight. He then stops, exhausted. His companion looks concerned. She makes a sign and two diligent waiters carry a chair onto the middle of the dance floor. The man collapses into it and seems to be able to breathe again.

Everyone follows these proceedings with concern.

Fred and Mick are no exception. Fred blows his nose in his usual ritual way.

“That man’s the last true legend on Earth,” Mick says. “Just like in Ancient Greece. Anyone else in his place would have made people laugh with such a performance. But no-one laughed. You know why?”

“No, why?”

“Because a legend makes no provision for the ridiculous.”

17

Fred is walking along a hotel corridor. He is retiring to his room. He is overtaken by an elderly man on a mobility scooter. The man comes to an L-shaped bend that turns into another corridor and he runs into another mobility scooter that pops out from the right. This gives rise to a minor but very real traffic accident and to an altercation between the two men about rights of way and careless driving.