‘That was the bathroom, obviously. And this,’ she said archly, ‘is the bedroom.’ There was a single mattress on the floor, true, but it bore a closer resemblance to a vast walk-in wardrobe. Except it was almost impossible to walk in. A rail was crammed with coats and dresses. Shirts, trousers, socks lay in heaps on the floor or were piled on chairs.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘although this is officially the bedroom, we don’t sleep in here.’ (He loved that ‘we’.) ‘Mainly because there’s not actually any room.’
‘You could do with a chest of drawers.’
‘I hate drawers. I always stuff them too full and they get stuck so I have to saw them open.’ Luke followed her back into the kitchen.
‘Would you like a beer?’ he said.
‘Please.’
He rummaged in the fridge, decided that the bottles were not cold enough, took the glasses out of the freezer, crammed the bottles in there instead and found room for the glasses in the fridge.
‘Put a record on,’ she said. He played the record that was already on the turntable, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ by Serge Gainsbourg, duetting (somewhat absurdly) with Brigitte Bardot. While that was playing he looked at her LPs which were stacked on top of each other so that any dust became wedged in the grooves. He pulled out a recording of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier — at least that’s what it said in the cover. Inside was a Chet Baker record. He put it on anyway.
‘Where’s the lid to the record player?’
‘It got broken when I tried to make cheese in it.’
‘Ah yes, of course.’ He opened the fridge, took the beer out of the freezer and poured two bottles into the chilled glasses which they clinked before drinking. Still holding her glass, Nicole crouched down and looked in the oven. Chet played some trumpet and then began singing ‘There Will Never Be Another You’.
‘Did you see that mirror by the filing cabinet?’ said Nicole.
‘Yes. It’s nice.’
‘It’s from Belgrade. Very old. So old that it doesn’t work properly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sometimes is slow to work. Like an old wireless. It takes time to warm up. Come. I’ll show you.’ They walked around the filing cabinet and stood to one side of the mirror. ‘Usually it works normally. Sometimes not. We’ll see.’ Nicole took Luke’s hand and they moved in front of the mirror which, for a second, showed only the bed. Then their reflections moved inside the frame and looked back at them. They stepped aside but, for a few moments, the mirror continued to hold their images.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Luke.
‘We were lucky. It is only very rarely that it happens.’
‘Isn’t it spooky?’
‘It’s just old.’ Luke moved back in front of the mirror, in synch with his image. He repeated the action several times and each time the mirror worked absolutely normally.
‘Did it really happen, first time?’
‘Oh, yes. Sometimes there is a very long delay. You can never tell.’
‘And you don’t think it’s scary?’
‘It’s just old,’ said Nicole. ‘We can eat soon if you like.’
‘OK,’ said Luke, stepping in front of the mirror once more: again it worked normally. Nicole put on oven gloves and began tugging the roast chicken out of the oven.
‘Oh we need some big plates. Could you get them? They’re in the — what’s it called? That thing. The cupboard that washes.’
‘The dishwasher?’
‘Dishwasher, yes.’
‘Cupboard that washes is much better,’ said Luke. He kissed her neck while she served the food.
‘You’re supposed to correct my English.’
‘Your English is perfect. But how come you have one of these things, whatever it’s called?’
‘A misunderstanding. The person who had the apartment before said she had a washing machine and if I wanted it I could have it. I said yes but what she called a washing machine was actually—’
‘A cupboard that washes.’
‘Yes. You see, that is why you must correct my English.’
Nicole carved, sort of, and they sat down to their plates of oven-dried chicken, raw roast potatoes and peas.
‘It’s awful isn’t it?’ said Nicole, watching Luke chew.
‘The peas are fine.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not that hungry anyway.’
‘I can’t cook.’ She looked as if she might cry.
‘You should have said. I love cooking. You can maintain the bicycles and I’ll cook.’
‘OK.’ She reached for his hand.
Luke pushed his plate away. ‘That really was fucking disgusting.’
‘Have some prosciutto,’ said Nicole. ‘There’s lots.’
They went to bed early. Nicole moved the TV to the end of the bed and they watched a thriller they had both seen before. The main segment of the film featured a famously devastating car chase. Nicole claimed that car chases took place only on film, never in print, never in books. She was wearing a green and white striped robe that made Luke think of toothpaste. A bowl of fruit was on the floor close by. Luke reached for an orange and began peeling it.
‘Don’t spurt in my bed,’ said Nicole. He passed segments to her, dripping. The car chase had come to a standstill. Half the vehicles in the city had been destroyed or damaged. Nicole’s period had started. They fucked with a towel under them, in the blue blaze of TV, their faces inches from the screen. Luke mouthed the words silently into her ear: I love you, I love you. She pulled her face away and pressed her mouth to his ear. He felt her lips moving, forming words he could not hear.
On Sunday night Luke met Alex at the Petit Centre. It was normally quiet on a Sunday but, for some reason — maybe everyone had spent the weekend with their new lovers and had been unable to get there until now — the Centre was packed. Luke was ecstatic, glowing in the way that women are said to when they are in love. He was not the only one with romantic news, though. Alex had met Sara, an interpreter.
‘Where did you meet her?’
‘At Steve’s house. The gay guy you met here that first night after work. I went there for dinner. Then I bumped into her last Thursday, just quickly, at an opening. And then I saw her again — though not to speak to — the following night.’
‘What does she look like?’
‘Short hair, black. Brown eyes, dark skin. And, crucially, she doesn’t smoke.’
‘She’s not French then?’
‘American, I think.’
‘You need to move quickly. Non-smoking women in this fucking smoke-filled pit of a city are hard to come by. Have you got her phone number?’
‘I hardly need it. I keep running into her.’
‘D’you know if she’s got a boyfriend?’
‘I don’t think so.’
But when she turned up in the bar half an hour later she was with a man. She was wearing a dark sweater, leather jacket and narrow, pale trousers. The guy she was with was called Jean-Paul. To hide his disappointment at seeing Sara in the company of a man, Alex bought them both a drink. Jean-Paul may have been the same age as Luke and Alex but, since he appeared successful, had an implied sense of direction, of purposefulness, of money, he looked considerably older. They stood at the crowded bar, Alex monitoring the movements of Jean-Paul and Sara, trying to establish the state of their relationship. It was obvious they didn’t know each other well — and equally obvious that Jean-Paul was aiming to remedy this situation. Sara’s attitude to him was more difficult to decipher. She was friendly to everyone but she retained some essential loyalty to her date. They had been to the cinema together.