So the following Thursday, at seven a.m., I checked in. Henri Harcourt and I were taking the plane together. Philibert would join us later. I was shitting bricks. I might have shat other things if it had been possible. Things that better expressed my fear, loathing and disgust at having to work and travel in the company of someone like Harcourt at this hour of the morning. But bricks was all I could manage for now.

Thus I walked bravely into the lounge, disguising my worries with a well-practiced smile of elegance and refinement. But nobody cared. Nobody noticed me. Nothing new there, I thought. I’m as noticeable as a diaper on a rubbish heap. So I looked around wondering if I could spot any superstars. But no. No superstars either. Then I hoped Harcourt would notice me. I figured it might help with the painful and unavoidable business of introductions. But no. Harcourt didn’t notice me either. He didn’t even look up. And indeed, why should he? I thought. It would run contrary to nature. You didn’t see tigers making way for lambs. You didn’t see snakes bowing politely to eggs. No sir. That’s not how the world worked. Slaves bent low for their masters. Prey dropped dead for their predators. That’s how it worked. And indeed there he was. Wearing a linen suit, reading a newspaper and looking intently at it like death looking at a plague victim.

I walked toward him like a mosquito flies toward a lightbulb. I felt awful. I lacked anything resembling confidence and I was wearing utterly hideous clothes. All my fault of course. I wore clothes I hated because I wanted to hide a body I hated. I also locked myself in a personality I hated. And felt imprisoned in a life I hated. Stated briefly, I hated everything about myself. I felt acutely ashamed and embarrassed about myself everywhere I went and in my clothes right now, I felt like a tent where fleas might hope to die. No it was nothing to be proud of. But then I never felt good. No sir. Not a thing about me spelled happiness, pride or joy. My life had gone horribly wrong, I thought. And that was that.

I was wrong of course. My life wasn’t so bad. Sure it was dull burdensome and clogged with debt penury and obligation. But it wasn’t all bad. I mean I had this work after all. And I had Claudie and her sewage conferences. Now I even had Cannes. And yet, like every sad fool who is unable to see beyond his nosehairs, like all the sad fools who are unable to summon the intelligence to see that their life is doing them an enormous favor by not letting them be in control, I felt terrible self-pity. Miles and gallons and tons of it. Boo hoo hoo I went all the time. Boo hoo hoo.

Yes indeed. In my mind, it was all over. I was finished. In my mind, there was nothing so unbearable, so unmitigatedly disastrous as having to work as an interpreter.

Of course it wasn’t true. Being an interpreter was fine. I mean it didn’t suck like loads of other jobs I could be doing and it paid exceedingly well. Sure, it wasn’t the most exciting thing you could think of doing. I mean there was little that was glamorous or sexy about sitting in a booth and droning on about the cement industry. Or translating how a Japanese lab could now turn sewage into steak. But most people didn’t expect to do something glamorous for a living. Most people were happy to take home a paycheck that didn’t involve blowing a stranger on a sidewalk or hosing dogshit off the street. Only I seemed to cling to the adolescent fancy of happiness, stardom and fulfillment. That’s what I wanted. Fulfillment. And sitting in a closed space and smelling someone else’s stale breath while I rattled off pages of sales figures and chemical formulae was not my idea of it.