Guys Like Me Read online

  She stood up and searched in her handbag. She took out some cigarettes, she’d never smoked before.

  “I’m seeing Ben next Saturday, is that right?”

  I don’t know if he ever knew she and I had seen each other. We never talked about it. Could I have been the friend she wanted? What was in it for me? I found myself in this same café after Benjamin’s phone call. Why was it all coming back to me now, what I’d been through with his mother in this place fifteen years ago? That day, without knowing it, I’d signed up for years of not living. It had happened very quickly. Of course I hadn’t realized it. After a few months on my own, I’d met some women, but we hadn’t taken the time to get to know each other. It was like the empty words we’d spoken in that café at the end of Rue de Rome. Now I didn’t want to lose Marie. I finished my beer and didn’t waste time going all the way to Brochant on foot. She hadn’t called me today and she hadn’t answered my calls either.

  I knocked several times at her door. I ran downstairs four steps at a time and asked the concierge for the key. I called the emergency medical service. I went with them from Brochant to Beaujon and they asked me what my connection was to her, but it didn’t really matter. An intern came to see me after a while, it was an infection that had nothing to do with the illness, it happened sometimes, it wasn’t serious. They were going to keep her in overnight, and tomorrow they’d see how she was and do some tests.

  “Can I see her?”

  They told me to wait while they got a room ready. They let me see her for five minutes, she had tubes in her nostrils and pills on the night table to be taken later, she had an IV in. She looked at me, we couldn’t say anything to each other, and it was at that moment that I knew, I don’t know why I knew but I knew, and I think Marie knew too, she was my second act. We held hands, without the words to tell each other this. She was looking deep into me, where I was the only guy like me at that moment. And there it was, and I left the hospital.

  It was bright outside now, I didn’t have to pretend anymore that I wasn’t scared. I went back to the apartment in Brochant, I aired out the rooms, the smell of cooking came from the upper floor and made me feel good. There were always birds although there weren’t any treetops around, I wondered where they came from. I felt like staying there for a while. We’d already spent a whole lot of hours like that, and in closing my eyes, I asked her the question. It was something like what the guy was asking in the F. Scott Fitzgerald book, when it came down to it, but I’d never found the right words in my life. It wouldn’t be easy, with or without the illness. It had never been easy. I fell asleep. It was the dead of night by the time I got back home. The next day I finally bought my scooter. I got the salesman to explain everything, he was a young man the same age as Ben, he offered to take me for a spin. I also bought two helmets and a pair of gloves. I hadn’t been on a two-wheeled vehicle since I was a teenager. But in the end it’s just like a bicycle. I rode on the sidewalks in Levallois and people yelled at me, but what else could I do? I really think I was looking at everything in a new light. Was it a guy like me crossing at a red light, at a green? Where was he going? To his office? To see his family, to look for his memories? His mother in Marseilles or somewhere else? Was he alone that day? Had he always been alone? What were they all thinking about? There were so many places I wanted to go back to, I wanted to revisit my whole past. I quickly called Benjamin to tell him, he was fine, we’d speak soon on the phone. Two days later, Marie was already better. She didn’t want to talk about what she’d had, it happened, and it might not be the last time. She wanted to go home, but the doctors didn’t want her to, she was tired of it all, she was going to sign a discharge.

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Marie. What do you want me to bring you?”

  “Do you still not understand? Something to get rid of the cancer, do you have it?”

  “Marie, please. Calm down.”

  When she was angry, her eyes glowed very black, and she didn’t look the same as when she was waiting on the couch thinking about things that didn’t concern me.

  After half an hour, a female resident came to see her, I had to wait outside in the corridor. We’d get through this together, the two of us. I was sure now. How is she? She’s better. Don’t stay too long, it tires her. Yes, thanks.

  The scooter immediately changed my life. After my hospital visits, I wouldn’t go straight home. I’d go for a ride, have a drink somewhere, in La Garenne-Colombes, or Bois-Colombes, or Asnières, or Saint-Denis, or Gennevilliers, often without any aim, just like that. There were places I’d never forgotten in Argenteuil and Sannois, where I had a girlfriend when I was a teenager, and also in Gennevilliers, where we spent quite a lot of time during our high school years. Marc-André also knew all these places. The others, where had they scattered to? I’d stop outside buildings that didn’t have the answer. By the time I got home in the evening, I was happy to be there. I hadn’t gone a long way, but somehow, it had been full of adventures, I told myself. They have nobody to get them into the flow of life, guys like me. So in the end their trajectories are like loops, they always have a tendency to retrace their steps. But that doesn’t stop us from living, when it comes down to it. In the evening, after my day’s work, I went back to the places I’d known as a child. I started taking photographs. I was leaving the office a little later now. That was because I wasn’t sure of myself yet when I passed between the lines of cars that had stopped, waiting for them to start again. One evening after going to see Marie, I went back to La Garenne-Colombes, where he had lived before joining his mother. He hadn’t been in touch yet. I parked just outside the entrance to his building, I felt like going inside to take a look. Not that there was anything of interest.

  Everything around it had already been rebuilt, there were glass buildings and a lot of office space for rent, the cars were going fast along the expressway. There was nothing left to see around here. It wasn’t the way it had been before. It would never be the way it had been before … As for the building where he used to live, they must have been waiting for it to fall apart, and then they’d demolish it like the rest. Adeline Vlasquez, in the end I think I came back for her. The entry code didn’t work, the lock had been forced. His name wasn’t on the mailbox anymore. On top, there were some envelopes addressed to him, and I took them. Had he even notified anyone of his change of address or found someone to forward his mail? I pressed the button to turn on the light, and in spite of the noise from the expressway outside, you could hear it buzzing, just like when I was a kid, and also at my grandmother’s house, a long time ago. A reminder letter from the phone company, a card from the electricity company saying their engineer had called, a few brochures, G20, Carrefour, Auchan, Celibaclub, a club for singles? Don’t stay single anymore. A handwritten letter. A woman’s handwriting, the name didn’t mean anything to me. Should I take the letter or leave it with the bills? It would have been a bit of a headache, and besides, it was none of my business. I went into the inner courtyard. It had been raining that day. Behind the window, I saw the TV screen, the television was on, the kids seemed to be alone again, waiting for their parents. I knocked softly on the window pane.

  “Hello, aren’t your parents in? I came to see the neighbor.”

  “The neighbor Jean? The one who went to Marseilles?”

  The kid looked back at the TV screen.

  “Don’t know, he left.”

  That was it, then. I said goodbye, and under my breath wished them a speedy departure too. I got back on my scooter. Honestly, how had I ever been able to live without it?

  It’s a straight shot all the way to Clichy, in twenty minutes, something like that. Just beyond the bridge is the Bar des Trois Communes, not far from the building where I lived more than forty years ago, which had only recently been demolished. I hadn’t been in that area when it happened. I’d only seen the rubble. But here, on this section of the road to Asnières, nothing had changed, opposite the bar you still had the garage that rented ol
d cars for movies, and the cobblestones had been poorly paved over, as if the asphalt didn’t want to be there. One after the other, the buildings were boarded up, soon there wouldn’t be a Bar des Trois Communes anymore. It was a bar of ill repute, a bar where nasty things happened, though of course nothing had ever happened to Marco and me there. On the wall facing the street, a pink marble plaque had been put up in 2000, engraved photographs of two young girls knocked down by a car, and there were flowers below them, a few bunches, to say that they would never be forgotten. I had always thought I wouldn’t be forgotten either. But of course, everyone forgets. And sometimes it’s better that way. I stayed there long enough to smoke a cigarette, I didn’t go into the bar. There was a kind of war going on inside me, what had become of my life, and what could I do to change it? I calmed down, thinking about the good things that might still happen to me, but later it would be like the building where I spent my childhood or the Bar des Trois Communes, I was in no hurry to wait my turn but I wouldn’t try to hide, the way children do.

  I made a phone call before getting back on my scooter. Hard to believe I’d only just bought it, it was as if I’d had it my whole life, and I’d go traveling without moving from the Hauts-de-Seine and two or three arrondissements of Paris. Sometimes I slept at Marie’s place, but most of the time I went home. I picked up her mail, watered the plants. I would stay there for a while, sitting on her couch in the empty apartment, daydreaming, hoping that we’d soon be living together, I really hoped for that. Plans for the future buzzed in my head at night, but the only way to deal with them was to go to sleep and keep them to myself. Too early? Too late? I couldn’t decide. According to Marco anyway, I didn’t have too much time left to let myself go. Aïcha had visited Marie in Beaujon, by the way. Oh, really? The four of us had only met once, the last time she’d come home after a chemo session. Marie wouldn’t be moving into my place. With all that time ahead of me, I could start looking for a larger apartment, something to rent maybe, and I’d see if she liked it. Once or twice, when I started having my doubts, I took a shower, and another time, from the office, I called Benjamin and we spent quite a while chatting away. He was spending twelve hours a day in his lab. But do you like it? And what about Anaïs? Oh, so-so … Bye, then. Speak again soon. Every week, we got in touch once or twice, and it had immediately become as important to me as the days when he came to me, when I’d go and wait for him outside school or at the end of the platform at Saint-Lazare, I would always wait for him anyway.

  I’d had a drink with Marco the week before. He’d seen me coming on my Vespa and his face had lit up in a smile. He wanted to try it, but in our suburb it was better when there was nobody on the streets. At the office too, people laughed when they saw me. I was feeling more confident now and would go on long rides. We had a few days of rain, and then good weather again. Sometimes I’d set off blindly, or else a place from my past would come back into my mind and I’d decide to take a look at it. I must have been the old fool who only notices one thing, that which-ever way you look at it, things aren’t what they used to be. I kept these visits to myself, but gradually the idea came to me that I should tell all, that I should keep a record. Of course I didn’t know how, or how long I’d do it for, I probably wouldn’t have time to get to the end. I went back to his place, on the expressway. I’d hoped that someone would take care of his letters. They had boarded up the door and his windows in the meantime. The family who looked out on the courtyard hadn’t left the place yet, but it couldn’t be long now. When I arrived, they shut their window. What did they imagine? I didn’t dare ask. There were more letters and reminders addressed to him, but what the hell, he’d been getting ready to disappear completely.

  We did hear from him, the following month. He’d sent Marco a letter. He was pleased to be living in Marseilles. What beat everything was that he’d immediately found a job, luck often waits until the last moment. He was taking care of a large house with a garden and swimming pool in a ritzy neighborhood. It just goes to show, it must have been in his genes, taking care of a house. He had quite a lot to do, which he liked. The owners were German, but that was another story! He was living in a studio apartment away from the main house, and he took care of the maintenance, the gardening, he was starting to feel more self-confident. And then there was the sea and the sun. He went to see his mother once a week, she’d aged a lot, they’d diagnosed the onset of Alzheimer’s. He should have gone earlier. His handwriting was clear and well rounded, as if he hadn’t yet reached our age but had stayed the way he’d been before, in high school, when we were twelve or thirteen. When I went back to his last address on my scooter, the family across the courtyard had gone. The mailboxes had been torn off and someone had dumped hundreds of leaflets from a nearby supermarket. The entrance hall smelled of urine. That’s it, I told myself, it’s over. I did what I’d wanted to do the time before, or even a long time earlier to tell the truth. I took several photos with my little digital camera and returned home. In the evening, I went to Brochant. Marie and I went for a walk, as far as Place de Clichy, she wanted to see the new titles in the window of the bookstore. This time I saw two guys turn to look at her, and I think she noticed, so that was fine.

  When we’re together, we never talk about the future. I try not to talk too much about my past either, about all those years spent waiting for her, but well, you know guys like me. The doctors seem pleased with themselves anyway. We invited Marco and Aïcha to Brochant, I did the cooking, we had a good laugh, Marie was sick as a dog again the next day, but it isn’t serious, she said. I took some photos too. I e-mailed them to Ben, saying look, it’ll soon be September in Paris, isn’t life beautiful? I wasn’t completely drunk when I wrote that. Aïcha talked for a long time with Marie about the organization where she worked, they might be able to do some things together. Later, Marco offered me a cigar. We went out on the little balcony because it stank. We talked a little about him. Nothing to report, he said. He had a big smile. We were both happy that evening. We talked about the others we’d lost contact with. We both agreed that when it came down to it, everyone was alone, after a certain number of years. And then we smoked without saying anything, above the noises of the boulevard. I continued with my rides.

  I sent Jean photos of our school, lots of places where we’d been, buildings, cafés. I’d gone back to the Bar des Trois Communes, at the end of the bridge on the border of Asnières. The plaque of the two little girls killed by a reckless driver, with the bunches of flowers below. The black cars with front-wheel drive in the garage opposite, and the slightly ridiculous limousines, fluorescent pink and petroleum blue, in an obscure corner of the suburbs, near the Seine. The demolished apartment block where I’d lived as a small child, which was probably the one that meant the most to Marco, because we’d both grown up there. He gave me back the photos and said: it’s funny, I couldn’t do that, it really tears me up. Doesn’t it affect you? I realized it did, thinking about it. But it did me good, and besides, doing this, I wasn’t idle when I wasn’t at work, waiting for Marie to recover completely. We came back with them. When they left, Marie asked me will you stay a while? We cleared the table and she started talking, she liked both of them, they seemed nice. Life could be normal every now and again. One last session to go, at Beaujon. She was scared every time. She was a little more scared, and she was expecting the worst. Or else, she’d completely forgotten and it was even harder to go back there. She didn’t want to go back there, this evening. She didn’t want to go to bed. She didn’t want to. I said to Marie, I have an idea, are you coming? Let’s go for a ride. I handed her a helmet, it was two o’clock in the morning. She’d ridden a motorbike before and she laughed because I’m not very expert. We took the Maréchaux toward Porte Maillot, it’s the Way of the Cross for guys like me, and then we went to look at the Seine. We both love it. We were almost alone on the Pont Bineau. The reflections on the water were dark, almost proud, it seemed to be watching us, it was as if we could count
on it and it would never abandon us. We parked on the sidewalk of the Pont Bineau. Marie held herself up against me, without saying anything, we turned north-east, toward Saint-Denis, it was funny how my whole life had been spent around that area, more or less. We looked in the direction of Beaujon too. It was a little cold on the bridge, so we went back. We couldn’t keep from laughing. The following day, she got her bag ready at the last moment, and we went hand in hand to that horrible hospital, for the very last time, I swear. Oh, yes.

  I went on with my life. Work, Marie in the evening, the photographs, the calls to Marco and my son. He was going to spend a few days in Jussieu and we decided we’d try to see each other. He was still just as badly dressed when I went to wait for him that evening at the bus stop near Porte d’Orléans. We had a beer in a brasserie, he looked at my scooter and said, you certainly took your time! Anaïs sent her love.

  “How is she?”

  “Well … not too bad. It isn’t always easy, you know.”

  He was going to sleep at his mother’s tonight.

  “I brought the second helmet. Would you like me to give you a ride there?”

  “Could you?”

  “Sure,” I said to Benjamin, “why not?”

  He had a backpack and a small bag, I managed to wedge the bag between my legs, and he carried the backpack on his shoulders. I’ll give you directions, OK? We headed north. We passed through the Maréchaux, it was easy to ride in the bus lane, so why hesitate? After a while, he tapped me on the shoulder and we turned right, she was living in Les Lilas now, she had an apartment there. We rode easily, at Porte des Lilas there was a van full of cops and I was sure they were going to arrest us, but they didn’t. We drove up toward the park next to the water tower. It was another world, where Ben’s mother lived. I parked on her street, not right outside the building, I tried not to think about all those trains I’d waited for at the Gare de Lyon and the Gare Saint-Lazare, and I think I managed.