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a need to help. My list of clients grew and grew. My reputation spread throughout the city. My father insisted that it was time for me to give it all up and go and work in the law practice of a friend of his, but I was just too excited by each new case I won. Then I came across a completely archaic law that has absolutely no relevance today. We needed major changes in how the city was governed.”
    All this is in his official biography, but hearing it from his lips feels quite different.
    “At one point, I decided I wanted to stand as a candidate for deputy. We campaigned with almost no money, because my father was completely opposed. But my clients were allin favor. I was elected by a tiny majority, but I was elected nonetheless.”
    He looks around again, having hidden the cigarette behind his back. But since no one is looking, he takes another long drag. His eyes have a vacant look as he gazes back at the past.
    “When I started out in politics, I used to sleep only about five hours a night, yet I was always full of energy. Now I can easily sleep for eighteen hours at a stretch. The honeymoon is over. All that’s left is my need to please others, especially my wife, who has fought like crazy for me to have a great future. Marianne has made a lot of sacrifices and I can’t let her down.”
    Is this the same man who, only a few minutes ago, suggested that we start going out again? Or is this what he wants: someone to talk to who will understand him because she feels the same way?
    I have a gift for inventing fantasies with extraordinary speed. I’m already imagining myself lying between silk sheets in some chalet in the Alps.
    “So when shall we meet again?” he asks.
    It’s up to you, I say.
    He suggests meeting on another day. I tell him that’s when I have my yoga class. He asks me to skip it. But I’m always skipping it and have promised to be more disciplined.
    Jacob seems resigned. I’m tempted to change my mind, but I mustn’t appear too eager or too available.
    Life is becoming fun again, my previous apathy replaced by fear. How wonderful it is to be afraid of missing an opportunity!
    I tell him it’s impossible, and that we’d better rearrange it for Friday. He accepts, phones his assistant, and asks him to put it in the diary. He finishes smoking his cigarette and says good-bye. I don’t ask him why he’s told me so much about his private life, and he adds nothing very significant to what he said in the restaurant.
    I would like to believe that something has changed during that lunch, just one among hundreds I’ve had where I eat extremely unhealthy food and pretend to drink wine that remains almost untouched when the time comes to order coffee. One can never lower one’s guard, despite all that fuss about tasting the wine.
    The need to please everyone. Saturn in opposition.

JOURNALISM is not as glamorous as people think—it’s not all interviewing famous people, being invited to amazing places, brushing shoulders with power, money, the fascinating world of criminality.
    The fact is that we spend most of the time at our cubicle desks, talking on the phone. Privacy is only for the bosses, sitting in their glass aquariums, with curtains that can be occasionally closed. When they draw them, they still know what’s going on outside, but we can no longer see their fish mouths moving.
    Being a journalist in Geneva, with its 195,000 inhabitants, is the most boring job in the world. I glance through today’s issue even though I already know what it contains—endless reports on foreign dignitary meetings at the United Nations, the usual complaints about the end to banking secrecy, and a few more things that have made it to the front page: “Morbidly Obese Man Banned from Plane,” “Wolf Decimates Sheep on Outskirts of City,” “Pre-Columbian Fossils Found in Saint-Georges,” and, finally, in banner headlines, “Newly Restored Genève Returns to the Lake Looking More Beautiful Than Ever.”
    My