Guys Like Me Read online

  When we got there, her neighbor in the ward was reading Elle, she nodded at Marie, that was all. From that floor you could see the wing of the great building added to Beaujon and behind it, toward the Seine, that was where I came from. Ever since I was born, I’d seen that hospital. Along with the Seine, it was part of my first landscape. Marie looked at the empty closet, and when she’d finished her inspection of that emptiness, she said can you leave me please? I said yes, all right. I looked for words I couldn’t find, but a woman like Marie doesn’t need too many words, especially at moments like these.

  She was due to be operated on the day after tomorrow, she’d already seen the anesthesiologist. We said goodbye. She walked me to the door of the ward. I turned around to look at her as I waited for the elevator. She’d gone into the glass office at the end of the corridor, she was talking with the on-duty nurse she’d already asked about the private room. Was she already trying again? I took that for a good sign. I managed to tell myself that it would pass very soon, that she’d sail through it, and then later, outside, after the big admissions desk, there was all that green on the trees, and I told myself that I didn’t know how to pray. I had always been against praying.

  I walked toward the Seine to have a quiet smoke. Turning around, I searched with my eyes for the ward where she was, without being sure. When I got to the riverbank, I ran across the road. They’d just demolished the apartment block where I’d spent the first years of my life, my mother having quickly stuck me with a sitter because she’d found a paying job. But there are some memories you can’t demolish as easily as that. I lit another cigarette from the butt of the previous one and sat down on the grass, taking care to avoid the dog shit and all the garbage that was there. Beer cans, supermarket carts, debris from all over the world, and sometimes, toward the far end of Clichy, near the Île Saint-Denis, syringes that reminded me of Antoine, Marc-André’s son, every time. I was under the poplars on the riverbank. They’d always been there for me, straight and clear, not saying anything, watching and waiting. Opposite, there were barges moored, and behind them, the building where Marco’s parents had lived, when was it they’d died? I talked to Ben too. Did he have any idea of all the time I spent talking to him, almost every day, without telling him?

  I didn’t feel like going back to Marie’s place that evening. She’d have liked me to live in her apartment, she was worried about security and she was also scared of missing important messages. She didn’t want to tell her patients that she’d be unavailable for a few months. She wanted to go back to work as soon as possible, they really needed her, she thought. Who needed me now? I decided to go back to my apartment, even if I went to sleep at her place afterwards. I often hoped that Ben would never love without being loved in return. At other times, I hoped a whole lot of other things for him. The Seine was heavy today. When

  I stood up again, I decided to give him a ring to suggest we have a meal together, if he had time. They were going to move soon. The storage facility at the port of Gennevilliers was another of those old memories I didn’t cherish. Just after the divorce, I lived all over the place, and sometimes, later, Benjamin and I even spent the weekend in a furnished room rented by the month in Bécon-les-Bruyères, because I know the landlord. I filled out his social security statements and the papers for his accountant instead of him, to thank him. He could have been one of those guys walking up and down the boulevard near where Marie lived. Or else a guy like him. I always felt better after a good quarter of an hour near the Seine.

  At home I waited until evening. I called my son but it was Anaïs who picked up, how are you?

  “Yes, we’re exhausted, we’re still packing. Ben’s in the basement, he’ll call you back, OK?”

  He called back ten minutes later, was I still on for the storage facility the following Saturday, was it all right with me? I said yes, preferably in the morning. Then I don’t know how it happened, but we started talking about scooters, and he laughed, I’d been wanting one for so long, it might be better if I gave up the idea, unless maybe I waited until winter? That was what decided me, I think. That and all these other complicated desires to go around the old places I’d known in my life. It wouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to get to Beaujon if I had a scooter. To get to the office, I could always park near the railroad station at Pont Cardinet.

  “How’s Marie?”

  “Not very well.”

  I heard him stiffen at the other end, he must have made a sign to Anaïs— oh, those irritable signs his mother made, I remembered them so well—what’s wrong with her? She has breast cancer, I told Benjamin, she went into Beaujon today for an operation. She should pull through. That was the phrase I’d heard more than once, it came to me like that without thinking. Benjamin was silent at the other end.

  “Maybe we could meet before Saturday, if you like.”

  “Yes, if you like, how about coming to dinner?”

  He whispered some things to Anaïs and then said no, we’re busy, can you come here? That way you’ll see the mess we have! Marie had switched off her cell phone. The message on it wasn’t one she’d recorded herself, and since it bothered me that I hadn’t been able to speak to her, I made a detour and went past Beaujon, just to wish her good night from the side where the windows on her floor were. I don’t know why I had the impression that would help her without her being aware of it. After all, nobody would know apart from me, but anyway.

  Marco did the same thing sometimes. When his son wasn’t doing well, he’d go to the church at Porte de Champerret and light candles, like an idiot. He’d never set foot in there before he was forty, and he didn’t tell anyone about it, not even Aïcha. Of course it hadn’t cured Antoine of his addiction, he would always be an ex-junkie, with chronic hepatitis and a criminal record, but in his opinion it was thanks to the candles that he’d always had the courage to visit him in the hospital, in rehab, and at Fresnes prison, where his son had done six months, and to look him in the eyes. It was just a matter of finding places where guys like him and me could be alone and quiet for a moment, to do their black or white or blue or pink or whatever magic. I got to their place around nine in the evening. It was really nice to see them again, surrounded by all those boxes. When he came into the kitchen, Benjamin asked me to come and help him, and he told me that his mother had asked about me.

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  He was handsome, my son, with his curly hair tumbling over his forehead and his eyes still like a child’s, despite his job in the labs in Switzerland, and maybe later, in the United States. By the time he finished studying, he’d be over thirty.

  “And what did you tell your mother?”

  “Oh, that you seemed to be OK.”

  “You said the right thing,” I told Benjamin.

  Do you mind if I pull down the curtain? The previous week I’d read in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s biography that he had short legs and was a chronic alcoholic and full of hang-ups, one night when he was drunk he took Ernest Hemingway into the toilet of a bar and asked him to tell him if he was normally endowed, and Hemingway apparently did nothing to reassure him. He even told the story, which just goes to show. I should have taken more interest in books earlier in my life. After my divorce, and even in the last two years of our life together, I’d been incapable of concentrating on anything. We finished eating. Anaïs started piling up books and papers from her classes. The edge of each colored folder had the year written on it. She had no idea what she was going to do in Zurich. She seemed quite down. She had a new tattoo on her lower back, which had hurt a fucking lot, as she put it, do you want to see? Benjamin turned to me with a smile, what do you think? It was worth it, I said. Benjamin laughed and shrugged, it was a blue and black eagle with its wings spread. She had a new one done every year, for her birth-day. This one had been a gift from Ben. I’d already seen some of them at the seaside in previous years. I didn’t really know Anaïs well. They kissed, and suddenly the thought of Marie’
s illness hit me really hard, that shit. I’d go past the hospital again this evening, I’d have to ask her what time she went to sleep, so that I could call her without disturbing her. We carried the heavy things together, we pushed them into the hallway. I was sweating like a pig. They’d have friends to help them at the storage facility in Gennevilliers but I was welcome to come, when was I going to the hospital? Visiting hours are in the afternoon, aren’t they, could you come in the morning? No problem, yes, I’ll come on Saturday morning. I got back in my car at midnight. Anaïs gave me the rest of the apple pie, that was nice of her. I left a message on Marie’s cellphone. I missed her a lot that night. There was no one on my street. I found a parking space straight away. I had so many things to do now. I was scared I wouldn’t manage. I fell asleep trying not to think about it, not to tell myself anything about Marie’s illness, but there was no point trying, with guys like me. I remembered some very old things too, I dreamed about my childhood. That doesn’t happen often these days. It seemed quite beautiful now. Why? Maybe because I didn’t have much time left? And then finally it all calmed down, as if nothing had happened, just like that, because it was the next day.

  The weather was really nice now. It was easier for me to get up in the morning. As I waited in the station for my train, I’d smoke a cigarette and go over what I had to do. My colleagues in the office were vaguely in the know, and I’d started getting there an hour earlier than them in the morning, but I’d leave on the dot to get to Beaujon. The whole time, it seemed to me that I was being followed, or spied on. Like with Larrieu, I’d run into him on one of the floors or on the street and he’d ask me how I was. Or else the girl on the switchboard, over the past few years I’d gotten into the habit of joking with her, and now she was openly ignoring me, as if I was in trouble with the law. I had to get a grip on myself. Nobody’s interested in a guy like you, old chap. Anaïs had found the original expression in Gatsby, old chap. I hated that expression. But I was finding it difficult to put on a brave face in the office. I made a few mistakes, and on two occasions, a file I’d approved came back onto my desk, after going up three floors, with a post-it and some initials in red. I mustn’t fall behind, they didn’t say anything but there were a number of guys like me they were waiting to see make mistakes.

  When I left work, I wouldn’t stop to have a beer or a coffee in the bar at the end of the street, the way I used to, I’d go straight to Brochant on foot. I’d walk in the company of the trees as far as the darkness on the ground floor of Marie’s building, to pick up her mail. The operation had gone well but she was extremely tired, quite apart from the treatment she was starting. She was worried, how was she going to stand it? Some friends of hers had painted a picture of it that terrified her, plus, what made her sad was seeing all these people alone in life, apparently. How to find the strength to get out of their ward in the hospital, to go where?

  Two days after the operation, I went to help Benjamin put his things in storage. I stayed in the locker he’d rented at the port, I arranged the things as best I could to fill the space. Anaïs had marked all the boxes: their departure was very well organized. His mother and I had lived in Gennevilliers for two years, in my head it was still a place where I’d dissipated my youth, along with a few other places in the Hauts-de-Seine, with Marco most of the time. In the aisles of the storage facility, Africans with rap in their ears and sometimes betting slips from the horse races in their hands made the rounds, I also saw dogs with their handlers in the aisles. Behind the row of birches on the edge of the site, you could see the high fence of the port, and beyond that, a whole heap of places whose names I couldn’t remember, but which I’d crisscross as soon as I had my scooter and Marie had recovered as I hoped she would. I could take photographs. They’d gone back to load the J7 with the last boxes and my son had suggested I wait for them, Anaïs had left with him. Right, so we’ll see each other at the airport, then? She and I had kissed and I’d realized that it was almost as if I was grieving, in a small way, but it probably wouldn’t be the last time.

  They took almost an hour to finish loading and come back. I was exhausted after the last two weeks, dividing my time between the office, Beaujon, Marie’s apartment, and mine. That was why I didn’t look at myself too closely in the mirror, in the morning or at night, because I wasn’t too curious to know what I looked like at such moments. Probably another guy like me, old chap. He was really fascinating, that man. He was a poor guy from the sticks, and when he reached the bright lights, he started to have his doubts, things weren’t any better here than there. He messed up his life, without meaning to. There were probably millions like him on both sides of the ocean. Who could I talk to about that? Marc-André and I had supported each other quite a bit on the phone lately. His son had lost ten pounds in a month since he’d stopped his treatment. Marco was scared that he’d go back to his habit. Marie was very anxious, and Benjamin’s leaving was weighing on my mind. I still bore just as much of a grudge against my life, in a way. For many years, you had to fight against the sensation of living for nothing, and then, when you thought you more or less knew why, the reason could disappear like that, and you realized you’d been tricked. How could you get over these things? Of course, Marco knew all this as well as I did and he didn’t have the answer. Neither did I. When can we meet? We asked each other that every time. I’ll call you when I can.

  Aïcha always asked me to give Marie her regards, and then we’d call each other again two or three days later, to chat. The trips to Beaujon were starting to get on my nerves. I realized that one evening on my way there: since the birth of my son, I’d only ever set foot in there for bad news, a stay in the hospital when I was fifty, and two deaths.

  Marie read a lot. When I arrived, she was often also asleep. As soon as she was able to get up after the operation, she started taking care of herself, she put on make-up, she didn’t want to let herself go. I went to the cosmetics department of Printemps with a tube of lipstick, she wanted me to find the same one. I liked doing that a lot. She’d put on perfume, she could still stand Chanel No. 5.

  “I don’t smell of illness, do I? You wouldn’t lie to me?”

  Her girlfriends came to see her almost every day. I’d already seen some of them at her place, she’d talked about them for months on the internet, the others too, now I’d see them arriving with flowers or candy. When they left Marie would give it all to the nurses, and to the nurses’ aides who cleaned the corridors and the wards. Little by little, seeing her living like that, almost furtively, I told myself that she was a real chance for me. She’d received a postcard from Benjamin and Anaïs. Show me, did you really? She would have to stay here almost another month, for short periods. Later, there would be outpatient radiation therapy, and then it would be over, that was what everybody hoped. Sometimes we actually managed to be alone for a while, she and I. She didn’t know what had happened to the young woman she’d seen when she first came. It had been really depressing, hearing her get up at night, call for help in a low voice, then go and spew her guts out. In Beaujon, so close to the Seine, so close to where Marco and I both lived, you were already far from other people, from life as it goes on.

  One time, I told Marie that when Benjamin was born I’d gone down to the emergency room to phone my parents who were asking for news. A hairy young guy button-holed me, he wanted to scrounge a little money from me, I told him to leave me alone, I had other things on my mind, I’d just had a child! He gave me a crooked smile and said: you’ve just had a kid and you don’t even want to stand me a drink to celebrate? He turned around, genuinely disgusted. I’d never forgotten that, though I didn’t really understand why it had made such an impression. Do you mind if I pull down the curtain? Benjamin knew that story by heart, he’d always listened to it politely, as if to say, why did that memory matter so much to me?

  “You should have had a drink with him,” Marie said, “that way you wouldn’t have thought about it anymore.”

  Then she
asked me to sit down next to her and we stayed like that for a while, looking toward the other bank of the Seine. She didn’t feel too bad. Most of the time she didn’t feel anything. She spent her time not feeling anything. She was waiting. It was too hot in Beaujon. The last days of April and the first days of May, I was pleased that month was coming, with its long weekends and its public holidays. I was exhausted. I’ve never in my life been good at doing lots of things at the same time.

  When I left Marie, she was tired.

  “Do you need anything?”

  She summoned up the courage to smile, and I don’t think she was faking it. Well, maybe sometimes.

  “Yes, I need you to get rid of my cancer, could you do that for me?”

  She never asked me to leave. Whenever I went, she would turn her head toward the window of her room, sometimes she had to put on her sunglasses, and it was if she was waiting her turn in a detox center or something like that. But we were out of luck. All I could do was tell myself crap like that. I looked on the internet two or three times, I bought magazines with articles about breast cancer, but there were never any answers to the questions I asked myself. They were irrelevant, obviously. What did she think about during all those hours of waiting? Everything and nothing. She tried above all not to ask herself too many questions, she told me she was trying to stop wondering why. “Why” kills faster than any other word.

  The doctors had told her she would lose her hair. She didn’t know when. She didn’t want to wait. She was going to have her hair shaved off and buy herself a wig the following week, when she left the hospital. I offered to come with her, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She wanted to hear about the Brasserie Wepler, or for me to tell her about the boulevard, the trees on her street, she missed that, her life, her friends, her neighbors, and all those people she met in the clinic, her love of the night people, as she called them. She unwittingly came out with these grand but simple phrases. Damn Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, old chap. We hadn’t led the same life at all, she and I. They kept her in for a few more days after the first chemo, to see how she reacted. Then they let her go. Marie didn’t have any family, she’d dumped them the day she turned eighteen, but that didn’t mean she was alone. I liked seeing her surrounded by her girlfriends, and when I was there, they all looked at me in the same way, they all gave me the same slightly vague, slightly fake smile, a bit like, when you’re hiring, you smile at the applicant as you ask him to sit down. But I was probably just imagining things.