He was looking at his shoes, and I didn’t know if he was really looking at them or if he was doing it to hide his embarrassment, a bit like a big child. He was the last thing I needed in my life right now, he was only a side issue. But I smiled at him all the same, and we shook hands. He didn’t need to move, because of the height of the steps, when he looked up I knew what it was that struck me so much about his appearance: he had all his hair, and it was very brown, with hardly a single white hair. I remembered his mother, suddenly. “I’m not disturbing you, am I?” he asked in a flat voice. “I was in the neighborhood.” “Oh, really?” I replied good-humoredly. In his situation, I think I’d have thought up a better excuse. But I can’t really be sure of anything. He stood up, I asked him to excuse me while I looked in my mailbox. In the past few years, looking in my mailbox has stopped making me anxious, I’m not paying alimony to Benjamin’s mother anymore. For a long time, I only had to be a few days late to find the bailiff ’s papers in the mailbox.
