He's strangely formal when he opens the apartment's patio door for me, like he's letting the dog out to pee every night. It's late, the evening edge of the long summer twilight, and the Paris I enter seems entirely different from the one I left half an hour ago, though once again, I know it's not the rain or all the lights that have come. in. Something change. Or maybe changed again. Or maybe it never changed in the first place and I was just kidding myself.
Still, seeing this new Paris, my eyes fill with tears that turn all the lights into a big red scar. I wipe my face on my damp jacket, my returned watch still clutched in my hand. Somehow I can't bear to put it back on. It feels like it hurts, much more than the cut on my neck. I try to walk in front of Willem, to put space between us.
