“What was that like?”

“His mother was a great beauty, who remarried while he was still young, and sent him away to live with his grandparents. When the grandparents die he goes to live with his mother and stepfather, but it does not take. He is an outsider, even when he succeeds. It was the desire for acceptance that fueled his craving for success, so when it does not prove what he thought it would, his psyche presents its cracks and through them, all the rest surfaces.”

“He goes to Switzerland and throws himself to pleasure,” Davidson nodded. “He sleeps with a woman from every country.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

“Of course not. I only rolled my eyes. The pursuit of material pleasure leaves him depleted — creatively, emotionally, psychically — until, in his collapse, he must find a new purpose, an internal sense of where his true home is. This becomes the movie he needs to make in order to bury the past, and move into his next self. It is the question of how to be when there is no longer an external narrative to guide you, and the narrative you gave yourself in youth no longer holds.”

Davidson laughed. “Yes. It was just like that. Everything except the coup de grâce. So you think you figured me out?”

“You? No, but I figured out your movie. That is not life as we said yesterday, except maybe slantwise. In a story something happens and there is a reason for it. And if something should happen to blow up, no one is truly hurt. In life things are not that way.”

“There are signs in life,” he said wistfully, “when we are awake to them.”

“Signs, maybe, but that is not the same as meaning.”

“Which is why we need stories, and why they must be true, and characters must be true unto themselves.”

“Too much,” I said, leaving to meet Genevieve. “I have a date.”

It was mid-evening, and the city was cast in rose gold as I stopped to buy flowers from a street vendor before climbing the cobblestones up the hill. Someone in one of the flats along the street was listening to Edith Piaf on an old record player, and I felt free and light. I was in my own story, and where I belonged and where I was supposed to be.

This feeling of utter peace and belonging rose in me, I knew, not because I adored Paris, but because I was in love, and that is all I ever need to feel truly home.

Genevieve was downcast when I arrived back at the apartment, so I suggested we go to the Cinémathèque to lift her spirits. There was a retrospective of Noir, New Wave, and Neorealism playing, and a Truffaut movie was just starting when we reached the box office. I went to purchase tickets, but she made an elaborate pantomime of standing conspicuously still, like a spy in an old movie, until the usher turned away momentarily and she snuck into the theater. When I found her in the dark she was in a lighter mood, and by the time we walked back into the torpid night air it was as though nothing had ever been wrong.

On the sidewalk out front someone called my name, and I looked up to see Davidson. He was on a date with a blonde named Elsa, who had hypnotic cat eyes. They were both in full eveningwear, dressed for something formal, but had just exited the Fellini film. I asked where they had been.

“We were at a party earlier,” Davidson answered. “It was uptight, so we left.”

Elsa was stunning in her gown and a pair of emerald earrings that matched her eyes and cost a car each. I know what they cost the same way I knew Davidson’s midnight-blue evening suit had been cut for him in London, and that his shoes were hand-stitched for him in Milan, and what they cost, because Davidson told me. He did not buy brands, he had things made no one else had, and took mischievous pleasure in pricing all of it.

They cut a glamorous figure, especially compared to us in our blue jeans, but he suggested we join them for dinner at a place he knew near Montparnasse. We agreed, and the four of us piled into a taxi, through a part of the city. We arrived at what turned out to be a two-star restaurant, where we did not have reservations. But the wool of Davidson’s suit whispered power, and the emeralds shone money. The maître d’hôtel got the point and seated us at a high table in a corner by a big picture window, which opened onto the street and caressing night air.

We ordered oysters from Normandy, and Champagne from deep in the cellar, then white lamb, with a Burgundy from high up the hill. Our spirits were awake with pleasure and the conversation was interesting and lively, making us feel princely, as Davidson pondered the sweet wines. While he pored over the list Genevieve stood, excusing herself, and Elsa left to go with her, leaving us alone.

“She seems good for you, if you are not still too wise for that sort of snare,” I ribbed him.

“We will see. I spent an hour talking with her mother at the party, so maybe she is.”

“I see. Next you’ll be taking her home to meet yours.”

“You jest, but you do not know what you are saying when you bring my mother into this.”

“I did not mean any offense.”

“It’s not that. My mother, my mother is a different sort. Do you know how many women I have introduced to her?”

“No.”

“Two. Do you know how many I have dated?”

“More than two?”

“Now why would that be, you ask. The answer is simple. After I brought home my high school girlfriend, Mother sat me down in the parlor — she still calls it the parlor — with the most aggrieved expression on her face. ‘You are a man now,’ she said, ‘or soon will be. And you may do with your days, and you may do with your nights, as you must, and as pleases you. You do not have to explain yourself. Neither to me nor anyone else, ever again. Beyond that I cannot advise you of much. There are, however, things about life you have not yet learned. As you do, you must take them in stride, without complaint. I only hope you are in all things jealous of yourself, and your time, as I am of mine.’

“I looked at her,” Davidson continued, “not knowing what on earth she meant, until she said, ‘I do not need to meet any more of your young ladies, except the one you intend to marry.’”

“She wanted you to become a serious man,” I said.

“She was insane about time. If we were going to the store and I was five minute late she would leave me.”

“She wanted you to know what time is?”

“I was seven. But that’s what I thought too, until she died and I found a box of letters in her closet, with a bunch of things from her girlhood.” He paused. “Things normal people throw away, old perfume bottles with the evaporated residue of their scent, decades-old boxes of uneaten chocolate, ruined pantyhose, every little luxury she’d ever received was there for me to sort out and make sense of. And then I came upon a box wrapped around with ribbons from old gifts. I started unwinding it slowly, feeling I was opening something I should not. When I finally opened it I remembered two stories. Once, when we were sitting at an outdoor café, up by the museum, some kid runs by and snatches her purse from the table. I took out my phone to call the police, and the waiter rushed over making a fuss, but she was perfectly composed and just said, ‘Don’t call the police. If he stole because he was hungry, let him eat. If he stole because he is bad, God will punish him.’ The other was when she wouldn’t let me go on a school trip to the zoo, no matter how I cried to see the damn pandas. Finally, she slapped me. It was the only time in my life she ever put a hand on me. I was stunned. ‘Nothing in this world belongs in a cage,’ she said, shaking her head in a staccato way that I will never forget. Now can you guess what I found inside that box, in the middle of all that crap?”

I shook my head.

“That she had survived the Holocaust. She was interned at a camp called Eschershausen with her parents when she was a girl.”