Guys Like Me Page 5

  Her eyes were very black, her gaze slightly sardonic, I thought. On several occasions, I had the impression she was sizing me up, so after a while I actually asked her, is there something wrong with me? Is that it? She seemed surprised at first. Then she softened a little, in any case it was still too early to love, let alone to let myself be loved, I needed time. I didn’t tell her that, of course, I didn’t say anything about the subject.

  “You aren’t very talkative, tell me something.”

  “Oh, really?”

  So I made an effort, as if I had to learn all over again, although I didn’t have time to learn all over again, but anyway. She had a couple of tickets for the theater, by the way, a friend of hers had begged off at the last moment, how does that grab you? Do you know it? No, I said, I’ve only seen the posters in the metro, but on the other hand I do know the story of the guy who’s always asking if he can pull down the curtain, and in the end nobody minds if he draws a veil over who he was, and also over his own life. He’d end his life alone. I was making a real hash of this first date, I just wasn’t used to it, I think that’s what it was. Fortunately, Marie loved books, she bought lots of them. Since she’d come back from Mali, she’d been making up for lost time. We talked for a good hour, in the end.

  I paid for our drinks and she got up while I was doing that and went downstairs to the toilet, I watched her, she was well dressed, in black with a white blouse. Her hair was black too. She wore lots of bracelets. Would it have been hard to say what she did for a living? She looked a lot like her photo on the website. Would we see each other again? I’d had enough of all those dates that never lead to anything, as if after a while, for guys like me, there’s no tomorrow. I waited for her outside, on the sidewalk. The stores were open, the weather wasn’t really nice yet, but all the same. It had taken me so many years to forget that I think, in the end, I wasn’t sure anymore what it was I wanted to forget. I looked at the customers in the café. The waiters, the high school kids, you often saw them laughing and smiling, how to take my place among them again? I wanted to make love with Marie. I remember very well how much I wanted that, standing there on the sidewalk, on Chaussée d’Antin. Without doing it deliberately, I looked at myself in the mirror at the end of the room, wondering if it was still possible for a woman to want to wake up in bed with a guy like me the following morning. How are you? Did you sleep well? Yes, how about you? Tea or coffee? For years and years. I had to remember not to let myself go when I was with her. When she came back, I saw she’d taken the time to touch up her lipstick. I was pleased about that, though I couldn’t quite say why. We talked a little more, smiling at each other, and at the corner of Rue du Havre, after all those hours talking online, I felt like kissing her.

  “You certainly don’t waste any time.”

  “There isn’t much of it, Marie.”

  She looked at me for a long time without replying. Then she said yes, that’s true. Her eyes clouded over a little at that moment. We’ll see later, shall we? Then she said goodbye, lovely to have met you, if you can’t make the theater, let me know. It was for that Friday evening. I watched her walk away, one woman among other women on her way to the Chaussée d’Antin station. I told myself she wouldn’t turn around, and she didn’t. In the metro I also told myself the game wasn’t over yet, of course it wasn’t. Among all those people going in and out of the metro, there had to be quite a few guys like me, just as there were among the people I met at work. We had to have a stroke of luck, another woman, someone to cling to … I took the metro to go home, I felt like calling her. I’d been rough, but she hadn’t seemed all that surprised. I thought of calling Benjamin instead, but I didn’t want to bother him too much. He’d always liked repairing things. When he was small he’d have liked to repair his parents’ divorce, he’d never be able to repair everything, obviously. I got out at Louise Michel.

  He was at the metro exit. When I saw him, he was looking at the name of the street on the corner, his body a bit lopsided, as if he’d had to lean back to see the sign. He turned right in the direction of my place. I wanted to be alone, I was thinking about Marie, about all those weeks of empty words, those confidences we’d shared with each other, none of that had anything to do with him. When he got to my street, he leaned back again to see the sign on the wall at the corner. That made me smile, he was making it clear what he was looking for, as if he might risk arrest if he didn’t. He took a big envelope from his case, he’d surely come to drop off the work I’d given him. Marc-André had told me they’d cut off his phone, after too many unpaid bills. He’d offered him money so that he could pay, but he’d refused. I stood there hidden by part of a wall, and then, after he’d deposited the envelope, I decided to follow him, like a fool playing a foolish game. We walked some distance from each other, toward Porte de Champerret. We passed the bench where we’d sat after the evening at Marco’s and talked while waiting for the night bus.

  He was walking quickly, a lot quicker than me, as if he was always in a hurry. Sometimes that’s the way people walk when they’re dying, that was the impression I had, but I always have a lot of thoughts that don’t mean anything at all, so anyway. He was about to get on his bus when he turned around, I was maybe about a hundred feet away, on the other side of Place du Général Pershing. I don’t know if he saw me. He got on his bus, he was going back to the far end of the Hauts-de-Seine, where he and Marc-André and I had spent our childhood. Young people, people alone. People still with earphones in their ears and free newspapers in their hands. The news often seems old and out of date at seven in the morning, even though the paper’s new. Maybe that’s why they give it to us for free these days? I walked toward the bus, I didn’t want him to think I’d seen him without even deigning to make a sign. I couldn’t even call him about the translation, he’d told me he’d be finished soon, and he was enjoying getting back into the swing of things, the bus left. I turned back, some nice things had happened in my life today, I’d met Marie. I picked up the envelope when I got home, he had specially bought one of those expandable envelopes and marked the flap with a cross. I put it down on the coffee table and tidied up the place a little. Marie must be home by now. I went on the website and kept going back to the screen to see if she was online, because I wanted to say thank you, and above all to tell her all the things that had crossed my mind beforehand and afterwards, but not at the time. Why not call her? It was better to wait. I called Benjamin, he was fine, Anaïs was spending a few days at her mother’s, he’d be happy to drop by.

  “Great, you’re coming, then? Be careful on the road.”

  I switched off the computer and left a message on Marie’s answering machine, I waited a while, then said it was really nice to meet you, something dumb like that, thanks for this afternoon. See you soon. Do you mind if I pull down the curtain? No, go ahead, why not?

  My son and I wanted to go to the pizzeria, but in the end we went to Place Voltaire. My head was too big for Anaïs’s helmet. What was that Italian movie where a guy visited Rome on a scooter, with the music of Keith Jarrett over images of the city as he rode through it? I asked Benjamin when we came to a red light. Nanni Moretti! Oh yes, that’s right. We reached the couscous place on the other side of the Seine, at Asnières. We were almost alone in the restaurant. It wasn’t yet nine in the evening. We had the Royale, which isn’t expensive. It was a place I used to go, occasionally on my own just to treat myself, I know the guy who runs it, from having been so often. Since my divorce, the Kabyle man and I had both aged, there were times now when he wasn’t there. But whenever we saw each other, we always shook hands, how’s the family? Fine, and yours? And I’d never leave the restaurant without saying goodbye, even if I had to go through the kitchens, where the radio was always playing with the volume way down. Benjamin was exhausted. He had exams and he was working with some friends on a complicated project. I tried to follow his explanations, but I could hardly understand a word of what he told me. I’d already heard so many sto
ries like that, it was something he’d wanted to do since the age of ten or eleven. And how’s your life these days? His eyes are very bright, sometimes he’s like, here’s the answer, what was the question? He was fine. Everything was really fine. His mother always said you never know with him, but I didn’t find that. We finished the couscous, I thought it was very good, and we had quite a bit of time after that to do what both of us liked the most, we looked around the room without saying anything. It was pretty much always the same around here, guys on their own, regulars from Place Voltaire and the surrounding area. I really had to buy a scooter so that I could get to the places I liked more easily. We had a mint tea with pine nuts. We smoked, and I realized that a day like this, an evening like this too, like a whole lot of other evenings really, shouldn’t be forgotten. I was quite emotional about it. I asked him are you coming, shall we go? Ben didn’t ask for his change. It was almost a month since we’d last seen each other in the flesh, Anaïs was always telling him to invite me over for dinner, but most of the time he was snowed under with his research in the lab. The Kabyle man wasn’t there. Say hello to Slimane for me. No problem, see you soon!

  We rode along the Seine. It was the route I took every day when I was a teenager, on my moped, with Marco and Jean and a whole bunch of other guys I’d stopped seeing. After a while, I tapped him on the shoulder. Step on the gas! He didn’t seem to understand, but we did eighty on the section of the road running alongside the river over toward Tour Bellini. Finally he came out and drove nice and gently in the opposite direction, toward Pont de Levallois. I wanted to give my son a hug, but instead we just talked about the following week. We turned left, in the direction of Louise Michel, and I felt very happy and very old at the same time, that evening. I didn’t feel like going to bed, I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  “Are you coming up?”

  “No, I’m going home, I’m exhausted. So long, call me!”

  She hadn’t left any message on the answering machine. I didn’t turn on the computer. I was pleased that I didn’t, who could I say that to? The best thing would still have been not to have to say it at all, not to want to talk to another guy like me. I still had the music from the Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett in my head and the images from the movie by Nanni Moretti, that movie didn’t mean much to Benjamin. Barely a childhood memory.

  He’d taped a floppy disk onto a sheet of cardboard. I read a few passages, a complicated transfer contract, it made my mind go numb, it was very boring, I went to bed. I skimmed through the pages. It seemed OK to me. He hadn’t given me any invoice. Surely that was the most important thing? I’d had a good day. I tried to revisit Rome in my sleep, to go all the way to Ostia, but I wasn’t very successful. That was my first trip when I was eighteen, Marco and his girlfriend, the girl who would become my wife, and me. I decided I couldn’t wait any longer, I was going to buy myself a scooter. I’d wanted one for a long time. And besides, for a guy like me, who almost never goes on vacation, I could go for rides in my suburb, my whole life was in that area. I dreamed about someone behind me, I had her hair on my neck, she was holding me very tight. I even remembered her perfume. Who was it? I didn’t have many dreams like that these days. When I woke up it was after eight.

  3

  I SAW MARIE TWICE THE FOLLOWING WEEK. SHE OFTEN had things to do near the Opéra, so we ended up meeting in that area. We quickly got used to each other, I think. I had the impression she was making an effort. Sometimes she seemed to be looking for something in my eyes, a trace of what, I wondered? I didn’t know the name of it. Had I ever known it? Nobody could tell me. I liked those first dates, we kissed, we laughed like kids. She liked it too, the old teenager in the photo, anyone would think that was me. In any case, I made some good resolutions, even though for several years I’ve been trying to avoid mirrors as if they were the ones cheating. I’d finished the book, put the computer back in its place, on the desk in my office, not on the coffee table in the living room. I don’t remember when I called him about his invoice, I hadn’t received it. He replied in a flat voice, exactly the voice you’d expect from the lost guy I’d met a few weeks earlier, that he didn’t pay much attention to things like that. I’d spoken with Marco on the phone, he was snowed under with work. All the same he’d taken the time to set up a meeting for him, now it was in his hands.

  “How’s Antoine?”

  He hadn’t been to see him, usually he went every week.

  “I haven’t heard from him. Listen, I’m in a hurry, see you soon.”

  The weather was nice now, people went out with colorful umbrellas, there were showers almost every day. On those days, it was as if people were off to discover the world in the morning, and then, how beautiful the world is, when they’re on their lunch break. As soon as I got his invoice, I took it to accounts myself to make sure he’d be paid quickly. I insisted, he’d done us a great service, I called him to tell him. It looked like there might be a storm, the windows in my apartment were open. He picked up after the second ring, as if he’d been waiting all day by the phone, and in his case that wasn’t just a figure of speech. Yes, he’d spoken with Marco. He’d tell me if he had the slightest problem. When I hung up, I felt like shaking him from afar. But after all, who was I to get irritated by his attitude? He didn’t always seem to be all there, that was all. I felt very tired, I remember. I closed the windows. I looked at myself in the closet mirror, full face, then profile, then three-quarters, that belly I couldn’t completely pull in, because I was fifty-four. I felt sorry about how things had gone for him, but that was it. He might have a job again thanks to Marc-André’s intervention. On Friday night, I took Marie out to dinner, I’d gone home beforehand to take a shower and change. I’d hesitated like a young man, she didn’t like guys from offices dressed like penguins. So I was in a real fix. I put on a pair of jeans and looked at myself in the closet mirror. I could have spent three whole days of my life looking at myself in the closet mirror, trying to decide if it was OK, or if it wasn’t OK, and it still wouldn’t have given me the right answer.

  We talked for a long time, she and I. We had time to drink a bottle and I saw her home. She lived not far from Brochant, in a little three-room apartment she’d had for a long time. She’d paid next to nothing for it at the time. Sometimes she seemed lost in thought. I looked at her without knowing. We made love, we’d both been wanting it for a long time, since the e-mails and the last few weeks. We’d simply waited a while, we’d needed time. Do you mind if I switch off the light? We did it gently, for a long time, I didn’t have any difficulty in getting an erection. I liked the way we both lay there afterwards, without moving, holding each other tight. There was more noise at her place than in my building in Levallois, and besides, it was Saturday. I went to buy some croissants from the bakery on the corner. When I went back upstairs, Marie was already dressed, I didn’t know what to expect.

  “Are you OK? I’ve brought some croissants.”

  “Yes, I’m fine, how about you?”

  We kept looking at each other, on the sly, I’d say. We sometimes smiled at each other without saying anything.

  “Marie, are you sure you’re OK?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Would you like tea or coffee?”

  She had to go to work in the afternoon, she was the nurse on duty. She wanted to be alone for a while before that, we’ll speak on the phone tonight, OK? I felt pleased to be going home, I went down the boulevard as far as Porte de Clichy. I knew the area quite well, I looked at the people curiously, eyes wide open. I walked to the Cité des Fleurs, I’d spent some time not far from there in the ’80s in connection with a job, it was a private street, with houses on either side, a well-preserved place, with birds in the trees and very clear clouds in the blue sky. Marie. I had no regrets this time. Maybe in the life of a guy like me, there was still room for a few good years? I hadn’t had my fair share, to be honest. I’d screwed up without realizing it. I crossed the Maréchaux and found myself in Clichy, after the Lycée
Balzac, the service stations, and the entrance ramp to the northern beltway. For almost a quarter of a mile, there are Arab shops and used car lots, and then, as if I was a prince or something, I raised my hand to hail a passing taxi. It took me home in less than ten minutes and

  I was happy about all that. Another life. Again. I only had to wait until tonight to talk to her. Another life. For free. Yet another life. It’s a gift. She often looked worried, I thought. I wondered why. After all, she was very popular. I went to the library in Levallois, and then I changed my mind, I decided I’d rather buy F. Scott Fitzgerald’s other books. I did a bit of shopping at the Monoprix near the town hall, surrounded by other guys like me. I went back home and waited for her to call me.

  “I know almost nothing about him,” I said to Marco.

  We were both sitting in his living room, the picture window wide open at the end of April. It was as if the trees had spread the word, the ones beside the Seine seemed incredibly green, as if they weren’t yet used to it. I remembered how when my father, who I hadn’t known very well, died, I was twenty-four at the time, the sun came through a stained glass window in the transept of the church of Notre Dame de la Croix in Ménilmontant and hit my forehead.

  “I remember a bit,” Marco replied. “Don’t you remember how friendly he was to us?”