Translated from the French by Howard Buten

They were predicting storms for the end of the day but the sky stayed blue and the wind died down. I went to take a look in the kitchen-make sure things weren’t getting clogged up in the bottom of the pot. Everything was just fine. I went out onto the porch armed with a cold beer and stayed there for a while, my face in the sun. It felt good. It had been a week now that I’d been spending my mornings in the sun, squinting like some happy idiot-a week now since I’d met Betty.

I thanked my lucky stars again and reached for my chaise longue, grinning. I lay down comfortably, like somebody with time on his hands and a beer in his fist. I hadn’t slept more than twenty hours all week and Betty had slept less-maybe not at all, who knows? She was always shaking me, always thinking there was something better we should be doing: Hey, you’re not going to leave me alone here, she’d say. What do you think you’re doing? Wake up! I would open my eyes and smile. Smoke a cigarette. Fuck. Talk. I did my best to keep up with her.

Luckily my job wasn’t too tiring. When everything was going well I’d finish work around noon and have the rest of the day to myself. All I had to do was stay around the complex till seven-be available if somebody needed me. When it was nice out you could just find me in my chaise longue. I stayed glued to it for hours. I thought I’d struck a good balance between life and death-found the only intelligent thing to do, when you stop to think about it. Life doesn’t have much to offer outside of a few things that aren’t for sale. I opened my beer and thought about Betty. “For God’s sake, there you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!”