I WROTE TO JOSEF; I didn’t call him again. Do you remember? There’s only one star left. I didn’t want to stir his memory of the night he drew it, that is to say my own memory, the memory of his look; I wanted to make a new memory for the two of us, one that belonged to our history instead of his and Alain’s history. He replied immediately. He hadn’t thought of it in forever but he’d never forgotten: he got the exact same tattoo, on the same place but on his left foot, so that we’d be like two parts of the same body. He wrote: so dumb. You don’t remember?

No, I didn’t remember. I didn’t understand how it was possible. It made me want to weep: that what I’d thought was the trace of a betrayal was in fact a sign of our friendship, one we’d carried together for several years.

His tattoo, he wrote, had faded a long time ago. They represented Orion.

I searched the image and saw a body with a bow and arrow. I read: Orion is one of few constellations where many of the stars are actually near each other in space. I found a painting: Orion, blinded, is looking for the sun; I read: Orion, a giant hunter who lost his sight and got it back from Helios, the sun, thanks to the power of love.

Reading this made me happy, the thought of a sun, unrequitedly in love, in ancient Greece. It made me sad, too, to think of the blinded Orion walking around looking for someone who loved him.