“What can I say? Things are OK for me. Yes, they’re OK. I haven’t had all these money problems like you.”
He nodded. “It won’t happen to you, I’m sure of that, you’re not the kind.”
Fortunately, the cat from the courtyard distracted our attention, it came in through the window and strolled between our legs. We sat there, watching the cat.
We left just after midnight. He left us on the sidewalk outside his building, both hands in his pockets, standing very straight. Marco had his car with him and we went back together, going through Courbevoie, through places we’d known forever and which I really couldn’t recognize anymore in spite of everything. I would never have suspected … Neither would I, I said. Neither would I.
“Did you notice how he carefully avoided talking about his job today?”
We were driving along the riverbank now, no need to go that way, but after all why not?
“By the way,” I said, “I’m going to buy a scooter.”
“Is that so?”
We slowed down on the Pont de Levallois.
“Why didn’t he talk about his job, do you know?”
“It isn’t going well … I talked to the guy I know, they don’t want to keep him on.”
“Really?”
For years, there had been cobblestones along here. The road had been restored and enlarged, but in places there were still cobblestones on the road to Asnières.
“He’s always late, he gets into arguments, he has a nasty temper.”
We didn’t say anything more after that. Marco dropped me off outside my building. I didn’t have any messages on the answering machine. I drank a large glass of water. I took a couple of aspirin because of all the pastis, I should have been more careful. If I’d dared I would have called Benjamin, but it was far too late. So I went to bed.
I hadn’t heard much from Marie lately. We were a little angry with each other, especially her, I think. How have you lived all these years, why don’t you go back to your wife? She blamed me for not telling her these things, it was the first time in a very long time that I’d been asked that question, I hadn’t been able to answer her immediately. She drove in the naiclass="underline" it’s as if you haven’t gotten over her, is that it? We were at her place, in Brochant, we’d actually had a nice evening. We were still trying to please each other, and perhaps to love each other, it was a gift when it came down to it, for a guy like me, but it was that thing about not getting over my wife that set me off. Why had her saying that gotten me so riled up?
“She’s the mother of my son, we haven’t spoken for about five years, I don’t even see her, and you’re saying I’m still not over her?”
“Yes,” Marie had stood up, “that’s exactly what I’m saying, it’s what I see right now, look at yourself, you can’t even talk about her calmly.”
The blood drained from my temples, I’ve rarely felt that, in my life. But I tried to stay.
“Never talk to me like that again,” I said.
She must have sensed that she’d said too much all at once, and she wanted me to stay, I’m sorry. You have nothing to apologize for, and since I couldn’t sleep, after a while I left and caught a taxi. She didn’t try to stop me. There were still a lot of people on the square, people around the movie theater, customers from the Brasserie Wepler, and opposite, a long line of people on the sidewalk waiting to buy cigarettes from the little tobacco shop. I waited at the taxi stand until I’d calmed down. It was one o’clock in the morning, maybe that was why. I called Marie. She wasn’t completely asleep yet.
“I was hoping you’d call me, are you angry with me?”
“No, I’m fine.”
Marie said nothing.
“It’s good that you didn’t sulk for long.”
It had been strange, that meal at his place. His place? On the other side of the avenue in La Garenne-Colombes, there were still big glass buildings for banks and insurance companies, with lots of square feet of unused office space, but it would come, with time. On his side of the street, that last block of old houses and apartments where he lived, it had been almost fifty years, shit, I told myself, half a century, since you’d started seeing high-rises going up, and it wasn’t finished yet. It would probably never be finished. When I lived in Gennevilliers with Benjamin’s mother, I’d watched an apartment building being demolished, the weather was glorious that day. I’ve never forgotten it. We’d all watched open-mouthed under the blue sky: how had we been able to live where there was nothing left to remind you? The building where I spent my childhood has been repainted several times, it’s been years since I last went back there. In his apartment, he had only the basics, a sofa bed, two stools in the kitchen, plus a TV set, there was always at least a TV set everywhere you went. I told Marie about it, how this guy who’d been a good friend had invited us over for dinner. We must have been his first guests in a long time. And in spite of all these differences, he was still in some way a guy like me, there was so much in our lives that came down to chance. Marie was following my lips, maybe she was finding it hard to take an interest in my ramblings, but I kept on all the same.
“Marie, is everything OK?”
We’d gone back to Brochant for a last drink after having dinner near my apartment, close by the town hall. She had some news. She hadn’t told me before, but she’d had to have some tests, actually she was hoping it was a false alarm. She hadn’t wanted to worry me about it. But she was going to have to go to the hospital for two or three days. Really? There, now you know everything. Then she didn’t say anything more about it.
There was quite a lot of noise in the café, we looked at each other, I had nothing more to say either. She was very patient with me. I felt I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her tight, in that café in Brochant. I wouldn’t let this one go. Why? How to know? She stopped smiling out into the night when I asked her which hospital? Beaujon, she said, but the aftercare, if necessary, could be in a private clinic in Boulogne, she had contacts there. It would probably be several months. She’d cared for people all her life, it was strange to her that it was her turn now to be sick, she’d almost never thought about it before. And besides, it was too early to know.
“I’ll go with you if you want.”
She said, would you really? She told me I wasn’t obliged. Then she held out her hand and said to me come, quickly, let’s go back home. We left the bar in Brochant. She looked out of place among the people in Place Clichy that night, there were transvestites at the counter, laughing loudly and getting loaded before starting work. She liked this place a lot. The guys knew her, they would stop on the boulevard to kiss her, she liked the nightlife. She would show it to me, she’d already told me about it. As soon as we closed the door, we kissed, and I told myself we were doing something important, something precious and important, I mustn’t pull down the curtain, I must give her all my strength, then it would be all right and we could do it. I didn’t know what it was we could do. But we could do it. That was what I’d decided. I think that was the night I started smoking again.
She laughed when I went to get a cigarette and asked me why it was that people smoked after making love. It was a long time since I’d last done that. Yes, absolutely, like a guy younger than me. She drew the sheet over her, all I could see now was that dark hair. By the way, she pointed to a little package on her chest of drawers, against the wall, I have something for you, it’s a gift. It was another book by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I hadn’t even opened a newspaper since I’d finished the story of the guy who always wants to pull down the curtain.