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structure, the frequentation of whom one will have to get used to; a worrying prospect. Of course experience has quickly taught me that I'm only called on to meet people who, if not exactly alike, are at least quite similar in their manners, their opinions, their tastes, their general way of approaching life. Theoretically, then, there is nothing to fear inasmuch as the professional nature of the meeting guarantees, in principle, its innocuousness. Despite that I've also had occasion to remark that human beings are often bent on making themselves conspicuous by subtle and disagreeable variations, defects, character traits and the like - doubtless with the goal of obliging their interlocutors to treat them as total individuals. Thus one person will like tennis, another will be mad on horse riding, a third will profess to playing golf. Certain higher management types are crazy about filleted herrings; others detest them. So many varied destinies, so many potential ways of doing things. Though the general framework of a `first customer contact' is clearly circumscribed there nevertheless remains, alas, a margin of uncertainty.

    As it happened Catherine Lechardoy wasn't there when ... I was told, `held up by a check at the central site'. I was invited to take a seat and wait for her, which I did. The conversation revolved around a bombing that had occurred the evening before on the Champs-Élysées. A bomb had been planted under a seat in a café. Two people were dead. A third had had her legs and half her face blown off, she'd be maimed and blind for life. I learned that this wasn't the first such outrage; a few days earlier a bomb had exploded in a post office near the Hôtel de Ville, blasting a fifty-year-old woman to bits. I also learned these bombs were planted by Arab terrorists who were demanding the release of other Arab terrorists, held in France for various killings.

    Around five I had to leave for the police station to make a statement about the theft of my car. Catherine Lechardoy hadn't returned, and I'd barely taken part in the conversation. The making contact would take place some other day, I assumed.

    The inspector who typed out my statement was around my age. Obviously of Provençal origin, he was the marrying kind. I wondered if his wife, his hypothetical kids, he himself, were happy in Paris. Wife a post office employee, kids going to nursery school? Impossible to say.

    He was somewhat bitter and twisted, as you might expect. `Thefts . . . happen every minute of the day . . . no chance . . . in any case they dump 'em straightaway . . .' I nodded sympathetically as he proceeded to utter these simple truths, drawn from his everyday experience; but I could do nothing to lighten his burden.

    By the end, however, his rancour took on a slightly more positive ring, or so it seemed to me: Right then, be seeing you! Maybe your car'll turn up. It does happen!' He was hoping, I think, to say more on the matter; but there was nothing more to say.

    6

    A Second Chance

    The following morning I'm told I've committed a faux pas. I should have insisted on seeing Catherine Lechardoy ; my unexplained departure has been taken amiss by the Ministry of Agriculture.

    I also learn - and this is a complete surprise - that since my last contract my work has not given complete satisfaction. They'd said nothing up to now, but I had been found wanting. With this Ministry of Agriculture contract I am, to some extent, being offered a second chance. My head of department assumes a tense air, pure soap opera, when telling me, `We're at the service of the client, you know. In our line of business, alas, it's rare to get a second chance.

    I regret making this man unhappy. He is very handsome . A face at once sensual and manly, with close-cropped grey hair. White shirt of an impeccable fine weave, allowing some powerful and bronzed pees to show through. Club tie. Natural and decisive movements , indicative of a perfect physical