It looked a lot like him, the shaggy-haired and tall figure outside of the glass walls, lighting a cigarette, then putting one hand in his pocket. It was Hervé, at least almost him—ninety percent him. Lucien was certain even though he couldn’t see the face. He could tell by looking at the back pressed on the glass. It had an air of insouciance.
           It’s been twenty years since they bid goodbye in Montpellier—July 21, 1984.
          Lucien remembered that day at the train station. He didn’t think he’d see Hervé. He wanted to jump off the train when he spotted Hervé behind the stationmaster. Yet he sat still, with his fist clenched.
           Hervé had his hands in his pockets and a nonchalant look. He didn’t wave or smile. Never did loss feel so hard to Lucien, not even at his mother’s funeral.
Many years later, every time when Lucien took the train, he’d remember Hervé’s face fading away, like the foam on the ocean. He’d feel pain in his chest, real chest pain, rather than a metaphor.
           They were eighteen when they met. It was a hopeless adolescent romance. Lucien knew when they stayed in their hideout and twisted their bodies while it rained cats and dogs outside. The harder it rained, the more violent the passion.
Never in Lucien’s life had he had such passion for anyone. Later when he thought about it, there was also fear, fear of being found out, and despair, despair of having to end it soon, very soon.
           Yet, never had he had so much lust for life, either. He didn’t know another person’s body and touch could be a spring of life until they met.
           They never saw each other again after the summer of 1984. Lucien heard that Hervé went to Spain to take care of his family’s vineyard.
           Lucien had a drowning accident shortly after. It wasn’t an accident, not really. He just couldn’t live anymore. His secret was dripping despair, black like ink, in his veins until one day his heart could no longer make red blood to dispel it. It made even the air too heavy to bear.
           The tall figure, presumably Hervé, was still outside of the glass wall, ten yards from Lucien’s seat—the longest and the most treacherous ten yards.
He should have gotten up and walked outside, but he was terrified. He was afraid it was merely a mirage created by the heat. It’d disappear as soon as he stepped out into the sun. So he sat still, softly talking to every reader coming his way, with an imminent implosion in his chest.
           The last person on the line was a young woman. She had a white rose in her hand. Lucien noticed her crying earlier when he was reading. She handed the book for Lucien to sign and gave him the rose afterward.
           “Thank you, miss, it’s sweet of you.”
           She nodded and smiled, looking like she wanted to say something but was intimidated.
           “Have you read anything else I wrote? Have you read the new one?”
           “No, Mr. Berri, unfortunately, I have not.”
           “Well, it’s about a father’s pain and love. I think I was the most truthful when I wrote it.”
           “I know,” the woman answered. “Only, the more truthful you were when you wrote pain, the more afraid I was. I do not know…actually, I do know how I will respond to it. That is why I am afraid. Have you ever felt afraid when you wrote, sir?”
           Lucien was taken by surprise. “I have. Yes, I have, many times.”
           “What do you do? Did you ever run away from it?”
           “I imagine. I substitute one kind of pain with another in my imagination. There are many kinds of pain—the pain of being abused, of being in love, of being silenced. Some are like an artefact with a crack. You need to dress it up. While others are breathtakingly unartistic. You need to discard. I imagine pain to be the cracks on an artefact. In Japan, kintsugi is the art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold—built on the idea that by embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create a more beautiful piece of art. That’s what I do with words, kintsugi.”
           “Is there an artifact in your life so broken that your hands shake every time you think of it, look at it?”
           Lucien was stunned by the question and the sadness in the woman’s eyes. Was there something irreversibly broken in his life? He glanced over her shoulder and noticed Hervé moved further to the right, smoking, looking at pedestrians sauntering by in their swimsuits or with their surfing gears. Menton was the best-kept secret on the French Riviera. It emitted an air of carefreeness and elegance.
Was there something Lucien was afraid to tell? His first love, apparently, the one that was standing ten yards from him at this very moment, like a sigh from the deepest bottom of the ocean. When it surfaces, it brings forth the darkest of all the darkness, the most barren of all the barrenness.
           He should have ended the conversation with the young woman and walked out before the love he’s been yearning for so long slipped away again, but he couldn’t move his body. When he thought of the days they hid in the little shed in the woods, searching for the secret passages on their young bodies, his knees became weak. He couldn’t stand.
           “Uh, I…” Lucien couldn’t answer. “I am sorry. Could you say that again? I didn’t quite catch it because of the commotions.” He pointed at a family of four with two toddlers and a whole trolley of luggage.
           The young woman tilted her head and examined Lucien’s face with solicitude. “Well, I asked if you feel an affinity to anyone else other than Marguerite Duras and Marcel Proust.”
           Hervé started to pace back and forth. Lucien was relieved that he didn’t even cast a glance inside of the glass wall. Lucien didn’t know how he’d react to Hervé’s face after twenty years. Would it be sweet solace? Would it rip him open again?
           “Claude Sautet, yes, Claude Sautet. I like his works a lot,” Lucien answered hastily when he realized Hervé was about to finish the cigarette. His heart started to race and his breath was getting shorter. “Will you excuse me for a moment? It’s lovely meeting you.” He stood up, pressed his hand lightly on the woman’s upper arm, and walked toward the sliding door.
           It was early in the afternoon. The hotel was bustling with people arriving for check-ins. Valets with full baggage carts stopped and politely waited to let him pass first. He shook his head and stepped aside. Hervé moved a bit to the left, leaning on a pillar, lighting another cigarette. Was it Marlboro red? It was the cigarette he smoked when he was eighteen. He’d stick his head out of the small window in the shed to smoke and let out a long sigh of contentment when he finished.
           “Do you know what Marlboro stands for, Lucien?”
           “No, what does it stand for?”
           “Men always remember love because of romance only, M-a-r-l-b-o-r-o.” Hervé answered quietly, puffing by the window, into the sticky summer air of Montpellier. It didn’t make a difference if he exhaled inside or outside of the window. The humidity made the smoke linger.
           “Will you remember this?” Lucien asked.
           Hervé looked back with a mischievous smile. “Will you? Will you remember after you go to Paris?” He asked but didn’t wait for an answer. “When is your train?”
“Tomorrow morning at ten.”
           “Your parents will take you?”
           “My mother will.”
           Hervé flicked the cigarette stub out of the window. “Alright. I have to go now. I…”
           Lucien didn’t remember what Hervé said next. He only remembered a soft look in Hervé’s eyes or was it another one of his imaginations?
           Perhaps it was indeed an imagination, an illusion, not so much different from the figure outside of the hotel now.
           Illusions would disappear when someone tried to get close to it, touch it, bring it to the realm of reality. Lucien knew it. He knew he would have his heart broken again the minute he stepped out of the sliding door, into the sun. But he had to, like travelers would fall for mirages.
           A heart of desert could use a mirage for a few fleeting seconds.
           Lucien was about to step into the sliding door when a delivery van stopped at the entrance. A woman with two enormous baskets of white roses got out and was about to enter. He stepped aside again to be courteous.
           The floor manager noticed her and stopped her before she could enter. He asked a valet to show her the service entrance.
           There was nothing in Lucien’s way now—The lobby calmed down. The entrance was cleared. All he needed to do was to push the glass, go outside, and call Hervé’s name, or at least call the person whom he thought was Hervé.
           Lucien only needed to take one step, yet he stood still.
           What could be at his dreaded destination? Light or dark? Illusion or reality? Hope or despair?
           He had half of a cigarette’s time to decide if he wanted to find out.

Gilles de Luca lives and works in New York.