I wondered if Ivan was asleep. It was terrible to think that he was in this city, possibly very nearby, but I couldn’t see him or talk to him because he didn’t love me. I couldn’t be with him for one minute, not even for the weird leftover hours that nobody else wanted, like from one to three a.m. on a Wednesday. There it sat on the desk, a few feet over my head, reflecting a streetlamp: the Parisian telephone, one of millions, on which Ivan would not call me.
