Last night he called but I can’t have him over, Éric and David are here. Tonight was the film screening. His wife not there—“she’s a little under the weather,” his usual phrase, which doesn’t mean anything. Unless she’s pregnant . . . Watched the Russian film, sitting next to him. I only caressed his fingers. I drive home very quickly, playing cassettes with the volume turned up all the way, the song “Éthiopie,” and I understand, I remember my “lust for life” at eighteen, the despair that lay beneath, the same as that which I feel tonight, at forty-eight. All because of a man. And when I see him there, in the hall of the embassy, he seems forgettable—a pretty boy, nothing more. I’m rereading Anna Karenina.