After all these years, he was still afraid to leave me on my own. The Seine was very full near the railroad bridge, it was a little oily, the lights spread out with the current, the lights from the towers of La Défense and the lights of the cars driving along the banks. My son. My ex-wife. Marco and the other guys like me. My mother so long ago, my father whom I’d barely known, which was probably why I could put him on my list. I’d enjoyed the evening, having dinner with them, knowing that he was going to leave but that Anaïs wanted to go with him and also knowing that around midnight that night, Marie would be coming back from the theater. She and her girlfriends had a subscription, I’d give her a call. We’d chat as long as we needed to, five minutes or an hour, I don’t know. It was good anyway. Guys like me don’t have any more to say to those who don’t really want to listen. But with those who are like them, they can talk for hours, they could just as easily keep quiet, I think. Anyway, it didn’t matter. Then the platform, in the direction of Pont de Levallois.
Marie hadn’t liked the play. She told me about her day. I remember where I was, near the glass doors leading into the living room. She wasn’t far from my place, as the crow flies. After Porte de Champerret, you had to turn left, it wasn’t so far. I bit my lips, I didn’t tell her about the funeral. I hadn’t wanted to tell her about the scooter, she’d said, oh yes, it’s a good idea, but it was no concern of hers. We hadn’t argued yet, maybe those hours on end behind computer screens had taught us more about each other than I imagined, but sometimes I thought she was on the verge of blowing a fuse. She told me off for being too attached to my past, my previous life, my friends, my years of marriage, I hadn’t gotten over it. I didn’t reply. What could I have found to tell her off about? Do you mind if I pull down the curtain? She read parts of me like a book, but after all, why not? Good night, Marie, and then I hung up. I’d also have to buy a scooter if I had another disappointment in love. That evening, I spent quite a lot of time on the computer, bicycle websites, I didn’t know which one to choose. I went back to the dating website after a while, she was online, which shocked me. I could have called her and asked her why? Friends, strangers like you. Life, often, finds it hard to be like us. I had his wife and daughter in my eyes that night. It was two in the morning, I went and took a shower. I barely recognized my face, who had I been before? It wouldn’t do me any harm to spend the evening at home the following day. I was exhausted. Worry lines that make you look like a thinker were one thing, but why those crow’s feet at the corners of the eyes and those first brown patches on the backs of my hands, yes, why?
“Well,” Marc-André said. “I didn’t know it was here. Did you remember?”
I wasn’t sure. Jean lived in one of the few places in La Garenne-Colombes that hadn’t yet changed, which meant it looked pretty decrepit. If you turned around, you couldn’t recognize the neighborhood at all, from there to Place de Belgique. We looked at each other and smiled. Jean had called me again the previous evening, this invitation seemed to be really important to him. I didn’t know what to expect. I was pleased to be going there, there are hundreds of pointless evenings in a life, this one though was different, plus to be going back to La Garenne-Colombes, which had been part of me since my teenage years. The first things I saw, entering his apartment, were the second-hand furniture and the linoleum in the kitchen, as if nothing had changed since our childhood. He had his weary look, he’d just taken a shower, that’s the impression I had. He shook our hands really firmly, like one of those salesmen who want to impress you and strike the fear of God into you without showing it.
He couldn’t stop thanking us, how nice of us to come, and it would have become embarrassing if we’d kept saying no, what was embarrassing was that we hadn’t yet had anything to drink. It was the end of April now. He lived on the ground floor facing the courtyard. He couldn’t stay there, it was a short-term lease. Through the half-open window a cat came and looked at us, and although he was carrying the ice tray he couldn’t stop himself from approaching the cat.
“He’s been coming to see me every day since I’ve been living here.”
The three of us sat down, he took the stool. He looked at us, drinking the pastis.
“How long have you been living here?”
He looked as if he was counting before answering. Nearly six months. It had belonged to his uncle. Did we remember him? He sometimes came to the lodge in Asnières, don’t you remember? I saw Marco make an effort to remember, but no, he didn’t, even though he too spent more and more time remembering, trying and sometimes really remembering things. We said no. I thought it might be best to quickly change the subject, but he was already launched. He’d been through three and a half years of hell. It was his family that had supported him in the last year, he hadn’t wanted to go on welfare, it was thanks to them that he’d rented this apartment.
“It’s not bad here, anyway,” we told him. He wanted to show us everything. We all went out into the inner courtyard, there were two children’s bikes and a little orange tent, which belonged to the kids opposite. He’d never had children. He told us that even more slowly, actually there were a lot of things he hadn’t had in this life. Once or twice, that evening, I laughed very loudly, I wasn’t really laughing at him, because when it came down to it he was like me, except that our lives weren’t similar anymore. We went back into the room, he poured us some more pastis. He’d put small plates inside larger ones, he served a big mixed salad, I realized what it meant to him. When was the last time he’d had guests? And, although it was impossible to ask him, when was the last time he’d had a woman here? So we were really there for him, he kept looking at us, there were moments of silence between the salad and the chicken. Then he started talking. He really didn’t know anymore when his troubles had started. When we were together in high school? Or even before? He’d never asked himself the question. After a while, he said to us, guys like him have to learn everything over again, and nobody gives them a hand, they can’t. This wasn’t going to be much fun, I thought, Marc-André lit a cigarette, so I did too, in memory of the good old days, so to speak, he hadn’t had any of those either, good old days, but to be honest, he didn’t give a damn.
The first thing he always did when he got up in the morning was to open the window and let the cat in and give it a little milk. From the morning onwards, he’d think of all those distant years, those years outside, in the unlike-liest places, oh really? He gave us that slow smile, yes, a place here, a room there, not far from here, but he would never have suspected their existence, like when you see guys sleeping under the entrance ramps to the northern beltway, around La Chapelle, Clichy too. We sat down on the sofa bed, he was sorry, he hadn’t made any dessert. He wasn’t really good at desserts yet. We talked, when it came down to it things hadn’t been too bad for him, did he have any music at least? He looked around, he had some old LPs and also a few DVDs of movies, since he’d started in his new job he’d been buying Le Monde, they sold DVDs as a supplement on the weekends, he got them in the hopes of buying a player one day. We smiled. When he’d had his troubles, video cassettes were still the thing, how long ago was that anyway, how long? We didn’t ask him the question. So, to cheer himself up, he suggested some more pastis, with a greedy air, he himself had never taken to drink during his bad years, but he knew guys, guys who weren’t like him for that very reason, except that to be honest he could have. You never know where the wind takes you, or what can happen to you. After a while, Marc-André couldn’t help smiling. The two of us were sitting on the sofa bed and he on a second-hand chair, he leaned toward us: how about you two? We didn’t know what to say, obviously. Marco lit another cigarette.