Guys Like Me Read online

  I’d forgotten all about him. Marco heard from him from time to time, they weren’t calls for help, although not far off, but he didn’t see what more he could do for him. In any case, in his opinion, strange as it might seem, Jean had never really wanted to get back to work. He talked to him mostly about Adeline Vlasquez. He really would have liked to find her again. He was also thinking about his mother in Marseilles. How old was she now? Marco and I both remembered the concierge’s lodge where we sometimes went to pick him up. Every year it was a little grayer in our memories when we talked about it. Maybe one day the color wouldn’t even exist anymore? It was a bit further away also. But when it came down to it, he’d only left it temporarily, he was back on the ground floor looking out on a courtyard. He’d been born like that. He hadn’t really suffered from his childhood, or maybe he couldn’t talk about it? Marco would ask me how Marie was and I didn’t know what to reply. Her illness was bringing her and me closer together. I had the feeling I’d known her for a very long time. Whenever she thought she was alone, she’d look out of the window of Beaujon, at the other side of the Seine, with her sunglasses. Do you mind if I pull down the curtain? It was too hot in the wards. There were fans in the corridor, which were almost no use at all.

  Once or twice we slipped out because she wanted to smoke a cigarette, which was completely forbidden because of what she had.

  “You won’t do it again, will you?”

  Marie smiled at the nurse who came rushing to us as we stood by the elevators. In the end, the nurse shrugged and told her not to stay up too long, and then I left. Marco asked me casually what would happen when she finally left the hospital, and then when she had finished her treatment and recovered?

  “We haven’t talked about it yet, I don’t know.”

  I could tell he was smiling on the other end.

  “What are you doing? Are you still there?”

  “It’s been a long time since you were last in love, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “Oh, really? Is that true?”

  He laughed softly, of course it was true. I realized that yes, it was true. In the end, I’d only waited twenty years for Marie. We had to stop talking on the phone, we had to see each other at least. Otherwise life soon became nothing.

  “Wait, I’ll have a look.”

  Marco whistled as he suggested dates. Apart from my evening visits to Brochant and to the hospital, I was alone, the dates were all the same to me, and I didn’t really mind. Quite the opposite. I was pleased to realize it, we’d meet on Friday. Should I come to his place? Aïcha was leaving for another conference in Marseilles, we could eat out if you like?

  I took my son and Anaïs to the airport. We were in the terminal, they’d already left in a way, we had no more time to lose. They’d spent the last night at my ex-wife’s, she hadn’t been able to get away, she would go to see them, but she didn’t yet know when. It would have been easier if after our separation we’d learned to talk, but we hadn’t. We’d been at each other’s throats for years. He gave me their temporary address, Anaïs was at a newsstand buying some magazines. At first they’d be staying with a colleague who was also from Paris, they didn’t have anywhere to live yet. I really would have liked to tell my son a few things at that moment, as if we were never going to see each other again, as if I was going to leave before them. Instead of which, we chatted as if he would be there the following weekend. He’d given me a little digital camera and had showed me how it worked, we’d both laughed and made faces, these last few days, between his lab and the office.

  I don’t like airports. It’s never guys like me who are leaving, I’m one of those who stay. After a while, we’re even the only ones who remember, and nobody much seems to care. My son … yes, my father? He talked like that when he was twelve, we always spoke to each other in the same way.

  “My son will set the table.”

  “Has my father made pasta again?”

  I was filled with those words, and what else did I have, when it came down to it? The three of us went out to have a smoke before they left and there was a lot of noise.

  “By the way.” Ben gave me a little package. “Here it is, open it when we’re gone, OK?”

  “For me? What is it?”

  Anaïs was laughing and I put it in my pocket without having the slightest idea.

  “It’s nothing, a trifle.”

  I must have made a funny face, I guess, but I don’t know. They’d be in touch within a week, what the hell would they be able to do in that idiotic country? Eat fondue? Go skiing in winter? Carry suitcases full of fake banknotes? They weren’t really happy to be leaving, but in an hour, if I knew them, they would have decided once and for all and Ben would keep it to himself. We went back into the concourse. Anaïs moved away to make a phone call, Ben looked at her two or three times out of the corner of his eye. Is everything all right, my son?

  “Yes. She’s really down. Leaving her mom and dad and her friends, plus she can’t find a job … You know how it is.”

  I wondered if he hadn’t become a guy like me at that moment, watching her as she phoned home. Do you mind if I pull down the curtain? No, father, what about you? My son, let’s open it gently and look together at the landscape, I really wonder what this place is where we’ve landed. Are you all right? Yes, yes. I opened one eye. Your turn. It’s hard to see, but wherever we go, I’m fine. Then we had to say goodbye.

  They were already on the plane when I realized I hadn’t managed to tell them I loved them, as I would have wanted. I hoped that, in the end, he’d never become a guy like me. He’d been lucky, he’d left in time, he’d gotten away from all that, at least I hoped so. I could feel the little package in my jacket pocket. I paid for the parking time at a machine, and then I noticed that I had lost my car, I went crazy, it took me a good quarter of an hour to find it again, in parking garage B2. I hadn’t forgotten which row it was in, I’d simply gotten the wrong floor, well anyway. As I was leaving, just after I went through the gates, a plane took off just above my head, I closed my eyes without wanting to. I took my time going home. I felt sad and happy, as we all are, I’m talking about guys of my type, there are only a few million of us, I think.

  I’d never been able to talk to his mother again. Ben has suffered a lot from that, I think. She sent the bailiff to me twice in a row, during a period of unemployment and depression, I’ve never forgiven her. All I could do was not let anything pass that would embarrass Benjamin, I don’t even know if I managed that at least. We’ve never talked about it directly. Marco knew these things by heart, he’d held my head above water for months. I’d also been lucky, when you think about it. With the years, all the words I reserved for her had been drained of their meaning, and even the features of her face had gradually lost their sub-stance. The things I could have blamed her for, the failure of our marriage, none of it meant anything to me now. There was a big hold-up near Bondy on the A3, and then another one on the beltway. I found a parking spot under the trees at Louise Michel. It was pleasantly gray on my street. I lowered the blind in the living room and lay down on the couch, I tried to reason with myself but I’d had enough of being reasonable and I let myself go, it did me a lot of good.

  But because of that, I looked really terrible in the bathroom mirror. I took a shower, as I usually do in such cases. I changed. Then I opened Benjamin’s little package, it was a child’s toy. He’d been ten years old. Maybe I was already dreaming of a scooter. It was his old red Vespa made out of scrap iron, I’d completely forgotten it. But he’d carried it around with him in his pocket for a good couple of years, as if he was saying to me, one day we’ll both have one when I’m big. OK? Only it was all worn, the color had gone on the wheels and the handlebars. I looked for a place where I wouldn’t lose it. I put it on my desk, just under the lamp. I sat down in front of it. I remembered those things. And that was it.

  In the days that followed, I went to the office early. The weather was quite good. It was a
pleasure to leave early, carrying my jacket over my shoulder. Sometimes it seemed as if I’d spent a long night, and the rest of the time I never stopped remembering. Marie and I hadn’t talked any more about the summer, in theory, around July, she would have a few days’ respite between chemo sessions, and if it was OK, she’d be able to leave. She had a friend in Trouville, who had a house by the sea. She could let us use it. Do you know Trouville? Yes, I’ve been before, I really like it there. I’d planned my vacation for July, one week, and another week in August, since Ben had stopped going away with me I’d always taken them in installments, because what would I have done with all that time, on my own, with nothing to do? He called me a week after his arrival, Anaïs was happy, she’d already found a part-time job … As for him, he wasn’t sure yet. I didn’t go to see Marie every evening. She was starting to be exhausted by it all. She’d started losing her hair after the second session, and she’d thrown up a lot. When they let her out, I saw her home. She wanted to ask them for a break from therapy, but they wouldn’t let her. She’d see about it later, when she felt better. She was happy to be going home for a few days. I’d only been to Brochant to air the place out and pick up her mail, a girlfriend of hers from the boulevard also dropped by sometimes.

  “Home at last!”

  She was in a good mood, and we went for a meal at the Brasserie Wepler. She only picked at her food, to be honest, but she had a wonderful auburn wig now, she looked stunning. She was also happy to see the boulevard again: it was still just as ugly, noisy, and gray, all the way to Brochant metro station.

  Several times I felt her looking at me out of the corner of her eye. In the end, I asked her what it was she wanted to tell me and couldn’t, or was I imagining things? No, I wasn’t imagining things. She’d have liked to be less tired and to show me another side of herself. She’d had too much time to think when she was in Beaujon. She’d never wanted to live with a man, not in a long time anyway. But we could see each other, if she wasn’t too tired. In the evening, she cried a lot because she’d been very happy and very unhappy in her life, and she accepted that, but today she was scared that she wouldn’t see the rest of it. She needed some time alone, she said.

  “We have plenty of time ahead of us, Marie.”

  It came out without thinking. She looked at me without a word, do you really believe that? And I was so sure of myself at that moment, in a way I’d rarely ever been in my life. So then she even wanted to go to the movies, just as she had hundreds of times, but there were too many people waiting in line, too many dumb films. It was hard for her to bear the noise and the gasoline smells. We walked back from the square to her apartment in Brochant, would I like a drink? No, thanks, I’m fine. So we just lay there in her bedroom, and then, when she was very tired, I left to go home and sleep. See you tomorrow?

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Can you let the phone ring twice so that I know you’ve arrived?”

  “Sure. Call if you need me, will you do that?”

  “Yes, sleep well.”

  6

  THERE HE WAS, WITH HIS VERY BLUE EYES, STANDING BY the boxes. He hadn’t finished, but almost. The window was open, like the first time I’d paid him a visit. The window of the apartment opposite was closed. I don’t know why I remember that family so well, is it because of the two children? He’d already packed the boxes. His rolling tobacco on the carpet, which was gray like the carpets in offices that haven’t been rented yet. Stains. Marks from the feet of the table, where he must have spent hundreds of hours waiting, without finding. He’d closed the door, I’d simply given it a push to come in, calling out: are you there?

  “Come in, it’s nice of you to drop by.”

  I was a bit surprised because we’d agreed to meet, all three of us, to have dinner. His sense of humor was a bit of a problem sometimes, in his life. I watched him scotch-tape the boxes with great skill. He’d never been comfortable with words, but things like that he could do well, overcome that kind of difficulty. He didn’t have many possessions. At a certain point, the window opposite half-opened and he took the opportunity to look up and offer me some tobacco. Just then, the image of his mother came back to me. He really did look like her, suddenly, lifting his head. How old had we been then?

  “Do you want one? Help yourself.”

  I rolled myself a cigarette. He had a few ready-made filters in the pack, but I didn’t even try to put one in. He approached the window with a big smile. It was the same little boy as last time. He climbed over the sill and came in to take a look. Our eyes met for a moment.

  “So you were at home, Akim? Are you OK?”

  The boy nodded. “Where are you going? Are you going a long way?”

  I recognized some things from when his mother had been a concierge.

  “I’m going to Marseilles. By the way, tell your father to drop in, is he around now?”

  “I don’t know, he never says where he is. I’ll tell him if I see him.”

  I sat down on the radiator under the window.

  “Good, I’ll do the rest later, what time’s Marc-André coming?”

  He still had some pastis, if I wanted. Yes, why not? Without daring to admit it to myself, I was almost impatient for the evening to end, this thing that didn’t mean anything, from way down in our past. The kind of thing veterans do, except there hadn’t been a war. There had simply been a life together, side by side in the Hauts-de-Seine, so many years on the streets of Asnières, Gennevilliers, Clichy, and La Garenne, and then, for each of us, love affairs, plans for the future, successes and failures, but he, in a way, had specialized. I couldn’t help smiling to myself, thinking about it. He looked in the closet, then in the refrigerator, which he was leaving behind for whoever came after him, if there was anybody. It would only be a temporary lease, obviously, they were going to demolish everything around here. There was also the TV set, which he’d bought quite cheap, but it worked perfectly, he’d give it to the children opposite. He liked the idea of giving them a present. He wouldn’t need it now. Oh, really?

  “Yes, my mother has one, and anyway I don’t like it.”

  “I’m like you, I never watch it.”

  He took the bottle of pastis from the almost empty closet. Sorry, I don’t have any ice. He seemed to enjoy putting on this performance for me, as if he hadn’t felt so happy to be alive in years. He rolled himself a cigarette too. His things piled up in the middle of the room, like the last possessions of a guy who’s about to disappear.

  The watch on his wrist drew my attention: it was an old watch, I’d seen watches like that a long time ago, on the wrists of uncles and neighbors during my childhood. He saw what I was looking at, it was my father’s last watch, he said. He’d gotten nothing from him except beatings, in his early years. He’d been very happy when he’d left, when he was about ten, and so was his mother. He was smiling as if to himself. It occurred to me that this wasn’t the first time he’d told this to someone. Then, when he died, in some little town in Brittany, it was a long time since they’d heard from him, either his mother or him. Anyway, he’d gotten his watch, a few photos, his mother had never wanted to tell him who the woman was beside him in the photographs. In any case it was working well.

  “They made things properly in those days.”

  He said it as if it was a joke, and I had to smile again. He looked less weary than usual. He seemed happy to be leaving, I think.

  “How about you? How are you?”

  I’m fine, life’s the same as usual. What could I really talk to him about? Marie? Of course not. He was one of those guys you can’t imagine living for a long time with a woman, but who was I to think that of him? I told him that my son had gone away for six months for his work …

  “Your son, oh, yes, what’s his name again?”

  “Benjamin.”

  He nodded, with a big smile. He remembered the christening well, at Sainte Odile, near the Porte de Champerret. I haven’t seen him since, he added. Does he look l
ike you? Then, having shot his arrow, he put his almost spent cigarette back in the corner of his mouth without waiting for my answer.

  “Could you help me, please?”

  By the time Marco arrived, we were taking out plastic bags filled with garbage, things to throw away, unusable things he’d amassed in this apartment. He’d always re-cycled, even when he wasn’t obliged to. You surrounded yourself with tons of things without knowing, and it was always the same, with each move you had a big spring cleaning. Marc-André waved to us and took out his cell phone, he had an important call to make. We finished transporting what he had to throw away into the courtyard of the building. The kids opposite were looking at us, kneeling on the couch, the TV set on behind them, although they weren’t looking at it. We could also hear the noise of the boulevard in La Garenne-Colombes where we used to walk together, all those years ago. It was still us, it wasn’t really our home any more. Marc-André was standing in the doorway of the inner courtyard.

  “Hi, how are you? Why don’t you have the light on?”

  We shook hands. “Fine, and you?”

  “Not bad. One more day gone. Right, shall we go?”

  He hadn’t had time to give it any thought, and Jean didn’t know the local restaurants. Maybe we could take the car and go to the big pizzeria in Clichy? It wasn’t far from Beaujon, on the way back I could go there and look at the windows on her floor. Was I more superstitious than before? What were we really afraid of, time rushing by and taking us to our end? Marc-André was looking around.