Pont d'Avignon

I stayed sitting up in Thomas's bed until a quarter past, the phone clutched against my bare chest, staring at the round window as if it were about to speak.

Then I got up. I turned off the lamp first, groping for it, so as not to be a target any more. I went to the window from the side, flat against the wall, and looked out. The Spiegelrei was asleep. The water was oil-black, motionless, the reflections of the street lamps barely trembling. On the other bank, the façades were blind, every one of them, from the ground floor to the gables. Not a light. Not a silhouette. Not the red tip of a cigarette. Nothing but the city, beautiful and closed like a jewellery box.