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.