Guys Like Me Read online

  I’d stopped thinking about Jean. Marc-André had called him to clarify a few points. He had a new e-mail address, he went to check his mail in an internet café in Colombes, not far from the station. By the way, was I free on Friday? Yes, I was free. Of course I was free. He told me he might have some good news for him, but it wasn’t really certain. Should we invite him on Friday too, then the three of us would be together? Yes, why not? Friday arrived without mishap. He’d called me at the office, but I had an outside meeting, I think, visiting clients. Marie didn’t go online every evening, I wondered if she was sulking, but because of what? I even wandered onto the other sites, where could you find love after the age of fifty? Nothing in the newspaper. Nothing on the cork noticeboard at work either, nothing anywhere. I burned the songs she’d sent me and listened to them in my room in the evening. Cesaria Evora. They were really beautiful. A woman who lived near Place Clichy was haunting my dreams. Well, why not? I read F. Scott Fitzgerald, around ten at night, when I wasn’t too tired. A few pages. Do you mind if I pull down the curtain? I didn’t worry all that much, behind my open shutters, they were never closed. I was feeling quite good that week. I thought about Marie, which just goes to show. The weather was gradually improving. I even slept all night and woke up with an erection in the morning. What woman could I have been dreaming about? When I was a teenager, I thought I’d be able to talk about these things, but when it came down to it, they were always going to be there, floating in front of me, and I’d never be able to grab hold of them, never be able to escape them. A whole lifetime.

  I made some phone calls on Friday afternoon. I’m well known in the business, but most of the guys I contacted were surprised I was calling them, especially on a Friday. Yes, they were already in the loop. Marco had called them. Or he’d called them himself, and with some of them their voices turned a bit too grim when they told me that, and what about you, how are you?

  “I’m fine, thanks anyway, how about you?”

  “I’m fine too, a few ups and downs, especially downs, anyway, mustn’t exaggerate, it goes in cycles.”

  We’d see each other soon enough. The trade fair is held at the Porte de Versailles at the beginning of June. I hate going to it but it’s part of my responsibilities. That’s where we all see each other, most of us anyway, every year there are fewer of us. Sometimes we look for someone and they’ve stopped coming, and each of these disappearances, real or supposed, prepares us in a way. I’d thought about that when I saw him that first time. Where had he drifted in from, to be on Rue d’Amsterdam with a long face like that? Then I called Benjamin, who was leaving for the weekend with Anaïs. He’d repaired his scooter all by himself, like a grown-up. He’d always surprised me like that, I’m barely able to do anything with my hands. Then, on Friday evening, I too left home, the way I used to do sometimes, a few years ago, when I’d go spend the weekend in a country hotel. I met quite a few guys and we’d exchange addresses, but the people you meet there aren’t really all that eager to follow through. Most of them are there having illicit weekends with female work colleagues, or else they’re trying desperately to live the kind of life they’ve never really known, or loved. And then, on Sunday evening, they drive back along the A6. The wind-shield wipers don’t wipe out anything, and when they get back home they don’t recognize anything, in fact they’ve never recognized anything. They end up telling themselves their best years are behind them, and sometimes they envy those who have the strength to pull down the curtain completely, like in the book I’d just finished.

  “I’m going to take a shower, I’m exhausted.”

  “Yes, you look it.”

  I’d read him four times, I think. As a teenager, then in my first tiny studio apartment, then soon after my divorce, and now. I wouldn’t have so many opportunities to read him again in this life. I deleted my profile, and then started to regret it. I hadn’t made love in two years. The last time I’d paid a prostitute, a woman who wasn’t very young anymore but wasn’t ugly, she’d held me in her arms. Is that all, wouldn’t you like me to give you a blowjob? No, thanks, no, no, it’s all right. She didn’t want to rob her customers. She’d give me a discount if I came back, just for that. But no. I wouldn’t have been able to, how long had it been? And now Marie had sent me her photos, she’d described the places she often hung out, and in some part of me I didn’t want to know more for the moment, she’d already told me too much. I really have to get rid of my computer. Who could I give it to? I knew lots of guys who spent their time inventing lives for themselves, and then, when when they were in over their heads, they found themselves chatting with their Myosotis and they didn’t really care anymore, in a way, whether they loved or didn’t love anymore. I went home early.

  At seven I took a shower and changed for my dinner with Aïcha and Marc-André. He’d be there too, in their apartment in Levallois. I was sure he’d make a point of giving me the translation I’d assigned him at the beginning of the week. Having had a bit of time, I now remembered when the three of us were fifteen. He used to love languages and traveling, I admired him for that. Marco was the only one of us living with both parents. I don’t know where it leads sometimes, I’m fed up with remembering, starting to talk to myself without being able to do anything about it. I didn’t regret living alone, though, I wasn’t desperate. In fact, I felt better than I had before. I went out. There were buds on the trees in Levallois. How things had changed around here. The town that had once had two hundred cafés, the headquarters of Hispano-Suiza, and a whole heap of body shops, was unrecognizable. The Hauts-de-Seine had been colonized by the hard right for about thirty years. It was no longer my world, no longer my home, not for me or for guys like Marc-André, who was obliged because of his job to talk with quite a lot of town councils in the area. Sometimes, I had a strong desire to leave, even though I’d spent my whole life here. But to go where? The trees didn’t give a damn, obviously, although they’d been trimmed a bit too much on my street. All the plane trees and chestnut trees near Louise Michel had been punished for their appearance. We had Irish pubs, business restaurants, head offices, a swarm of municipal cops, and surveillance cameras all over the place. Benjamin used to count them on the street on his way to see me when he was in high school. I didn’t buy any flowers from the shop near my apartment. I went and had a walk over toward Porte d’Asnières to kill time. For a moment, I had the impression I was being followed, and the guy who was following me was surely a guy like him, a guy like me. Except that when I turned around, there was nobody there.

  I bought a bottle of Bordeaux, a very good one, I couldn’t remember if Aïcha drank it or not. I’ve often made errors in tact without realizing it. The trees in the Eiffel neighborhood lining the beltway had also been trimmed. When had they even been planted? Who’d made that decision? I had an old man’s thoughts, as Benjamin always said. I had an old man’s thoughts, but I was still fed up with it. I walked as far as Sainte-Odile, which is one of the ugliest churches in Paris. I lit a two-euro candle. I don’t tell anyone I do that, but I do it all the same, because I’m superstitious. I stood looking at the candle, next to a very beautiful African woman in a denim miniskirt and high-heeled shoes. She was very straight-backed. She was smiling at the flames. Her eyes became bright in the candlelight, I met her gaze. I guess I was disturbing her? We don’t always need to look for reasons. Finally, I sat down on a bench near Porte Champerret. The cars were going very slowly where I was, the traffic system was being rerouted. It was good, right then, to have gotten through another week’s work and to be going to see my only friend. Tomorrow, I would figure out what to do, spring was on its way. I waited until it was after 8:30 and then walked to their place. I walked quickly, pretending, the way all guys like me do, that I was a man in a hurry, a man who’d never begged for love or anything like that.

  He was already there, sitting on the couch in the living room. Aïcha opened the door for me and I don’t know why, but when I saw her, I felt a pang in my heart,
I don’t think she noticed. I don’t trust my emotions, because of my solitude, because of my job, because of everything and nothing, both together, all mixed up.

  “Ah, there you are!”

  She smiled and gave me a hug. We kissed each other on the cheek. Marco took the bottle out of my hands, oh, it’s a good one. Jean murmured something I didn’t hear. When he went into the kitchen, I noticed that the tail of his shirt was sticking out of his pants, that surprised me coming from him. Aïcha sat down, she’s about forty. She’s a child psychologist, she does lots of other things too, she’s traveled a lot for her work. She’s at ease wherever she goes, I think Marco admires her for that too. She knows it, but doesn’t exploit it. You get the feeling they’ve never hidden anything from each other, but I’m not sure. We exchanged a few words and I found myself facing Jean. He gave me his big, slow, tired smile. He stood up, a bit like a fifty-year-old teenager, his hand seemed too long when he held it out to me across the coffee table. Without meaning to, he kept it too long in mine, and then Marco suggested we have a drink.

  Their children were all at the movies, together, Marc’s and Aïcha’s, a reconstructed family. I’ve often thought about that. I’ve heard about it at work too. How do people manage that? I’ve never wanted to talk about it with Marco, whose life, in many respects, is like a criticism of mine, his choices against mine, and yet we’re friends. Maybe that’s part of the reason we’re friends. Jean wasn’t talking much, as if he had to learn how to talk all over again. I remembered that feeling that you’ve forgotten how to say things, it had happened to me between my divorce and being hired by the company where I’m still working today, but with him there was something else. Every once in a while, Aïcha glanced at the balcony. She said she wanted Marco to put up a hammock there, so that they could take afternoon naps when the weather was fine. He’d always tell her it was impossible. She’d ask why. They always got very heated about this hammock business. Jean perked up a bit on the subject, he’d spent a lot of time in northern Europe, and in Germany. He’d been on the road in the old days. After a while, his description of a trip to Norway got lost in limbo, and I couldn’t help meeting Marc-André’s amused gaze, we both felt like laughing, the way we had before. How slow he was these days.

  Aïcha doesn’t usually talk much. But she follows everything, commenting on it with a nod or a shake of the head, it’s as if she knows hundreds of ways to do that. Marc-André is lucky to have found her, at an age when it was still possible to change. I tell myself that sometimes, when I’m alone and indulge in the jealousy of regrets. Then I’m no longer so sure, because even knowing his happiness, it seems too good for me. Since I’ve been living alone, I’ve often been ashamed of who I am, as if I’ve been spending too much time with myself. And yet I’m also part of guys like him, in a sense. Except that I have a job, so I don’t have time these days to show my cracks, or let them open up even more. He was talking in an even tone, he seemed to be happy that evening. Aïcha put on some music, old stuff we all liked, I still know three albums by Leonard Cohen by heart, we sat down on the couch. After a while, the telephone rang.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured.

  Marco followed her with his eyes until she closed the door of their bedroom behind her. He’d sometimes talked to me about this. Aïcha’s mother could spend hours on the phone and, to his wife, it was unthinkable to say stop, I’m in a hurry, I’ll call you back, she couldn’t do that. It scared him every time, although he couldn’t explain it. Was he afraid that she’d leave one day after hanging up? He poured some more wine, there was much more to this phone business than just the phone. Once, when I’d told him that, he’d shrugged, he’d looked at me with those dark, feverish eyes of his, which he’s always had since we’ve known each other.

  “That’s it, it’s her mother,” he said.

  He didn’t seem to realize. He’d resumed his place at the end of the big couch in the corner of the room. They’d bought that couch for a ridiculously high price, I’d helped him to transport it in a rented Peugeot J7. He’d been pleased to do it with me. Aïcha spoke three languages in addition to ours, more beautifully than us, because it was Lebanese French that she spoke.

  “By the way,” Marco said, looking at Jean, “I think I have something for you. Anyway, we can always try, the guy knows all about you.”

  His eyes shone for a brief moment, while Marco explained to him what the work consisted of. Yes, they’d already checked his résumé.

  “Do you think I’ll be able to do it?”

  Yes, it was right up his alley. He’d spent ten years with Linotier, hadn’t he? Yes, until they closed following the buyback. The salary wasn’t what he might reasonably expect, obviously. But it was a question of take it or leave it. I stopped myself from smiling, all the time Marco was explaining the job to him with his usual brusqueness, which is nothing like the fake kindness I sometimes assume in order to do nothing. Jean was listening the way you listen to a story that’s somehow too mysterious to be really interesting. He nodded from time to time. If I’d been in Marc-André’s place, it would have irritated me. I decided not to mention the translation. He might have felt un-comfortable being indebted to both of us the same time, while Aïcha was talking to her mother in Beirut, shut up in their bedroom after eleven at night. Toward the end, he stammered that he didn’t know what to say, but Marc-André was only interested, so to speak, in the door of the bedroom, with his dark eyes.

  “Is everything all right, Marco?”

  After a while, as if he couldn’t hold out any longer, he excused himself. When he came back, he was looking straight ahead of him at the window to the balcony, trying to put on a bold front, but he seemed hurt.

  When Aïcha rejoined us, the embarrassment faded rapidly. It was a nice evening. We celebrated the news, even though we were counting our chickens before they hatched. That expression made me laugh, I must have been a little drunk, and when they asked me why, I said it was a strange phrase, why should people bother to count chickens anyway? I’d also had too much aperitif, before that. Aïcha laughed at my joke, yes, she said, why should people count chickens? And how about you, how are things with you? We were both in the middle of putting our plates in the dishwasher. How’s Benjamin? She lit a cigarette.

  “He’s fine.”

  “Do you have anyone right now?”

  I felt myself blush like a young man for the second time that evening. I said no, a few dates, you know how it is, it isn’t so easy to find love. She held out her hand.

  “You’ll find her one day, when you’ve stopped looking!” Her eyes were smiling. We both laughed together, in the kitchen.

  As we got out of the elevator downstairs, we ran into their children coming back from the movies. Marc-André’s daughter kissed me on the cheek, and then they took the stairs. We were both on the street now. He was still carrying his case.

  He pointed. “Right, I’m going to Porte de Champerret. There’s a night bus that goes to La Garenne-Colombes.”

  I suggested walking with him part of the way because I didn’t feel like going straight home. We didn’t talk much.

  “Nice evening, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  By the way, he hadn’t yet finished the translation. I told him not to worry, if he could give it to me by the end of the following week, it’d be fine. It was better to take too much time than too little, if he wanted it to be well received. We walked like two shadows, his empty case between the two of us. We were a long way from all those years together, when it came down to it. But anyway, we really had had a nice evening. He might have a job, at his age he hadn’t expected that. We sat down on a bench in the big bus station at Porte Champerret. A lot of young people, with their headphones in their ears or their cell phones on, a few couples too. A lot of guys like him and me who didn’t have cars. They’d be going a long way, when the night bus finally arrived. He was pleased. He told me in a low voice that, more than once, he’d thought to end
it all, because he couldn’t bear not having anything to do, day after day, night after night. I let him speak without interrupting him. What do you say to someone who confides his fears in you, his desire to end it all, when you yourself don’t know? Another guy like me, that’s what you are, my brother. Who’d want to abandon his brother, or refuse to hear him? We’d meet again soon.

  Life resumed its course. I called Marie, who I definitely couldn’t get out of my head. We met on Tuesday evening near Chaussée d’Antin. We went to a café she knew, she struck me as pretty right from the start, I think. She was smiling at me, I hadn’t been very sure I’d recognize her. But in the end, I did. She really was the age she’d told me, and so was I. We sat down, surrounded by a whole bunch of women who worked in the big department stores, she spent a lot of time in this neighborhood. I used to go there too, as a child, with my mother, but in those days it hadn’t yet been rebuilt. The area around Passage du Havre and Chaussée d’Antin had been part of the magic of the world for me. It was also here that I’d known a woman for the first time, in the biblical sense, to use Marc-André’s phrase. He went with me to the place where I’d spotted her on the sidewalk several Sundays running, on Rue de Mogador. Marie ordered tea. She was a nurse. Right now, she was working for a local organization that helped people with HIV, she’d traveled a lot before that. She’d worked for various humanitarian organizations, she’d kind of drifted into it. She was pleased she’d been away so long and had come back after it all. It had only been two years. Time passes, doesn’t it?