Rémi’s holiday withers away without his putting it to any particular use. A few days pass. He finds it hard to relax. Accustomed to working hard, he sees the mere contemplation of the hours as waste. After the violent thunderstorm that battered the night and even flooded some of the city’s boulevards, the days have returned to more comfortable temperatures. It is still hot, but the humidity is no longer prowling about, coating faces in its stickiness. Even so, the city continues to nod off; lunch hours stretch out, evenings linger, festivals rain down. Rémi stays home. Victor has left for a notaries’ convention in Pennsylvania. They pretended, as always. He wrote to Rui: “The ‘ifs’ and the ‘alwayses’ hurt me.”
Irène’s sister has returned. The two women spend their time at the pool with friends. There is a great deal of laughter and drinking on the other side of the hedge. Émile is often on his rooftop; Rémi has seen him strike up a conversation with Irène. She did try to entice Rémi to her parties, but he declined. His mood has darkened.
He spends many hours travelling on the Internet, luring men to his screen. Bodies, bodies and more bodies, free, shameless and entirely harmless, only a few clicks away. Beautiful eyes, young fools, old rogues, tender smiles, a dream, hundreds of the unloved searching for eternity in just as many clicks, clicks, clicks. Rémi enjoys their company, a brotherhood before its time. He loves it and hates it, since all he can retain from these exchanges are elusive email addresses and faint promises to meet in real life if, by the purest chance, one should ever find oneself in the area.
His eyes often hurt. He downs one glass of water after another, swims a few lengths of the pool, returns to the screen, throws the hours into the wastebasket like bad writing. Waste, he tells himself. He goes far. He explores. They ask him to show his ass, lick his armpits, insert a finger into his anus. He does it. It excites him. The wastefulness of rich children. People are surprised to find such a handsome man here. He merely smiles because he does not want to answer, has no taste for answers. Besides, legions of handsome men come here; there must be a reason. His inability to find happiness prowls nearby; he is aware of its presence. And so he must go farther, exhaust himself, take pride in his journeys and adventures. A dog chasing its tail. Truths and lies fight a duel, and the blood they spill proves to be a powerful love drug. He goes back to swim more lengths. He exhausts himself and falls asleep. When you kill time, does it take revenge?
Rémi also escapes into fashionable bars. Stéphane did not leave him a telephone number. He looks for him in the saunas. He is sick of it all and sits silent on his lounge chair. He is bored. If he breathes, it is for no one; if he loves, it is only for himself; if he comes, it is only so he can sleep more soundly.
He was not like this before, in the before of his youth. He misses Stéphane, would like to see Luc again, wishes for a miracle, teeth against his lips, his lips against eyes.