“It was better than sex.”

I laughed.

Arnaud smiled.

“I swear. Better than sex. Better than anything I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

A few weeks earlier, I had gone to see him perform.

He was playing Dieter Lange in OVNI by Viripaev.

After the show, we had barely exchanged a few words.

So we promised we’d meet again and take our time.

When I arrived at La Marine, along the Canal Saint-Martin, he was already there.

He raised his hand.

I joined him.

He had ordered a beer.

The moment I sat down, he went straight back to the play.

He talked about the pauses.

The feeling of being alive.

The silence in the room.

How his body carried the words.

The monologue.

“Was I convincing?”

“Could everyone hear me? Some people said I needed more projection.”

I watched him.

He wasn’t describing the performance.

He was living it again.

Then he stopped.

He took a sip of his beer.

“I think I’m quitting next year.”

I looked at him.

“Theatre?”

He nodded.

“It takes too much time. Too much mental space. I think about it when I wake up. I think about it before I fall asleep.”

I said nothing.

“What I really want is to buy and run a company.”

I already knew about that dream.

He had been saving for years.

Meeting business owners.

Preparing for it.

Then he added:

“You can’t do everything.”

Silence.

Something didn’t add up.

Just a few minutes earlier, he had told me he had never felt anything so intensely.

And now he was talking about walking away.

“Why?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Because you have to choose.”

I stayed quiet.

Then I said:

“If you hadn’t been thinking about it for so long…”

He looked at me.

“What would you choose?”

He didn’t answer.

So I kept going.

“The real Arnaud…”

Silence.

“Ten years from now…”

“Where do you see yourself?”

He waited.

“On a stage…

or building that company?”

He stayed silent.

For a long time.

Then he smiled.

“If you want something, you have to ask for it. And if you truly ask, there’s a good chance you’ll get it. You

have to ask.”

He was quoting Dieter.

Without realizing it, he was answering me.

Then we talked about something else.

Work.

Holidays.

Friends.

But I wasn’t really in that conversation anymore.

I kept coming back to that question.

For years, I thought the question was:

What do I want to do?

What job?

What project?

What city?

Then I remembered my travels.

When I think back on them, the landscapes are almost never the first thing that comes to mind.

It’s always the people.

Today, I think I’d start somewhere else.

Who do I want to spend the next twenty years building with?

Who do I want to work with?

Who do I want to wake up next to?

Who do I want to share ordinary days with?

Who do I want to build a life with?

I looked up.

Arnaud was staring at the canal.

And I wondered if he wasn’t choosing far more than a career.

Theatre meant a troupe.

Directors.

Actors.

Running a company meant employees.

Customers.

Suppliers.

They weren’t just two different projects.

They were two different lives.

We asked for the bill.

As we stood up, I didn’t ask him what he was going to choose.

His choice was already there.

All he had left to do…

was walk toward it.

— Kevin