I was relieved that she did. I did not have a dinner date that night. And I did not feel like going out and dining alone in some restaurant. The French are excessively rude about staring at lone diners. Somehow it seems to menace them, and they aren’t careful about hiding their disapproval. Normally I am quite capable of handling this and am good at staring coldly back, but tonight I was pensive and I didn’t feel up to it. Neither did I feel like slapping something together and wolfing it down at home alone. I was feeling low and depressed. It was one of those lag periods, one of those spells that come, when a bachelor’s life doesn’t seem all that good after all and you are inclined to start asking yourself what the hell it all means, and what the hell is it really worth? That was no kind of mood to have living alongside the dark, flowing river Seine twinkling oily under the tall quai streetlights. And yet I knew I would be drawn helplessly to my windows, to stare at it, and its dark, masked, massive indifference to my death.
