The Thursday Night Men by Tonino Benacquista

didn’t see him at least one more time?
     
    Late at night, unable to fall asleep despite his exhaustion, Denis Benitez decided to give his companions the slip until further notice. The time to take leave of reality had come. He swallowed three sleeping tablets from a box that had been past its sell-by date for several months now. He wouldn’t go to work the next day. With a bit of luck he’d sleep so long that the day would go by and he wouldn’t even notice.
    He must be headed for some unknown place, lost in the middle of nowhere. But where he’d be alone at last. And never mind if the place turned out to be sad and deserted. Denis was already far too weary to turn back.

4
    In the room: a simple bed, a night table, a chair for visitors and overhead, where there used to be a crucifix, a television that was never switched on. The setting wasn’t important—nothing was important, Denis slept most of the time. At worst, he drowsed between two visits from the nurse, suspended in weightlessness by medication that changed from one day to the next. On the rare occasions when someone roused him from his lethargy, a blurry image entered his field of vision, most often that of a meal tray, a white uniform, or a handful of tablets in a cup. When a hurried intern announced his presence with a booming
How are we feeling today?
Denis would wonder what was meant by “today.” When he was conscious enough to correlate two ideas one after the other, he tried to go back over the cottony sequence of events that had led him to this bare, silent room where he was no longer afraid of collapse. The rest was all forgetfulness, the real thing, the kind that snatches you up. His body felt none of the sensations, whether pleasant or not, that call you back to life, with one exception. When he woke up, Denis would turn his pillow over to feel its coolness against his cheek; the only moment of the day when his nerves flushed his skin.
    At the end of that afternoon, a psychiatrist sat by his side for a long time to try and unravel the origins of Denis’s depression. His eyes half-closed, his breathing calm, Denis answered the practitioner, who was no doubt a kindly man, but way off track. How could he share with a stranger a message too shameful for confession: living without love, he had gradually lost his faith in humanity. Then, in himself.
    They agreed on the word overwork, which avoided the need for any others. As soon as he was alone, Denis glanced at the fading daylight and all he had to do was close his eyes to lose himself in the darkness.
     
    It was Mia who got in touch. Philippe would never have dared take the initiative. The gentlemanly tradition whereby it was up to the man to call upon the woman did not apply in this case. If Mia had been the sort of woman you meet in everyday life, he would have taken the first step, and then all the others. But Mia’s image inhabited the streets and dreams of millions of men, her very name sounded like a luxury label, her radiance crossed borders. How on earth could Philippe Saint-Jean, who both questioned and shunned the values of a world sacrificed to appearance, show any interest in a universal object of desire? Just one phone call to the supermodel and he would have been guilty of allegiance. Conversely, it seemed natural to him that the futile, flashy world where Mia lived would be drawn to his own, a world where curiosity in other people remained intact, and answers were far less important than questions.
    She suggested they have dinner at a restaurant that was practically a secret, patronized by a handful of initiates in pursuit of anonymity. As was usual for him, Philippe arrived on time, and was instantly sorry—year in year out, his damned punctuality meant he had to wait for careless people. He was led over to a plush corner where red velvet vied with a trendy silver, and did he want still or sparkling, so he made do with sparkling in lieu of the beer he would really have