‘That’s so stupid, Nicole,’ said Luke. ‘Dancing is much better if you take E.’
‘But I love dancing anyway.’
‘That’s not the point. The point is that everything can always be improved.’
‘How can you ever be happy if you think that?’
‘How can you ever be happy if you don’t?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means everything can always be improved by drugs. It’s just a question of fitting the substance to the activity in question. Or finding the right activity for the substance. You admit that listening to music is much better if you’re stoned, right? And dancing is much better if you take—’
‘For you, yes.’
‘For everyone.’
‘But I don’t want to take it. I don’t try to persuade you not to. So why do you try to persuade me to?’
‘Because you’re missing out on something great. It can get to the point where there’s nothing but lights and music. You can feel yourself dissolving as an individual. You can feel yourself not existing.’
‘I love my existence.’
‘And we could do all that kissy-feely stuff you see people doing.’
‘We can do that anyway,’ said Nicole. ‘We can do it now if you like.’
Eventually Nicole was persuaded — by Sahra, who loved it — to try a half when they went to their favourite club, The Coast, as this near-derelict space bizarrely called itself.
The evening began at the cinema. Strange Days was showing and, as the lights went down, the four of them passed a bucket-sized Coca-Cola — ‘small’ by the gigantic standards of cinematic refreshment — along the row and swallowed their pills. Luke had seen the movie twice before but this time it blew his mind, totally. Coming up, he began to feel — in the film’s millennial argot — like he was wire-tripping, not so much seeing the film as jacking into it, living the experience of a movie which was a commentary on all the movies it had come out of: a pastiche of everything, even itself. Oh, it was perfect, perfect as the playback of Faith in her T-shirt and black bikini bottoms, teaching Lenny Nero how to roller-blade, and then heading back to the apartment and undressing in front of him. ‘So,’ she says, ‘you want to watch or you going to do?’ And Nero, sitting in his lousy apartment, looped into the past, feels and hears and sees himself say, ‘Watch and see.’ ‘I love your eyes Lenny,’ she says, moving beneath him. ‘I love the way they see.’
The apocalyptic party at the end of the film made them so desperate to get to the club that they practically ran there. As soon as they checked their coats they were like dogs let off a leash. The dance floor was crowded, the music pumping. With every track the surge of the music deepened. The lights poured into their faces. Under Nicole’s tuition Luke’s dancing had improved to the extent that he was no longer, in Alex’s words, ‘quite the embarrassment he used to be’. If it still seemed like he was having a seizure it was at least a rhythmic one. Luke looked at Nicole and Sahra. They had their arms round each other, laughing. Sahra moved over to Alex and they began dancing together. Nicole danced over to Luke and kissed him. She was wearing a sleeveless white dress, plimsolls. Her eyes were wet with laughter. Luke touched her arms, still dancing. The music surged and returned and paused, surged even while pausing, paused and surged and pumped again. The only light was a strobe: Luke saw Nicole’s arms and hair, coming and going, illuminated and vanishing, crackling into view and disappearing. Smoke began pouring on to the dance floor, so thick it was impossible to see. The trance deepened. The light became solid: purple, then green, then gold. Luke could see no one, not even Nicole, not even his own arms. There was no distance or direction, only the impenetrable light, the endless pump of the music.
Their eyes were still as wide as planets when they left the club, just as it was beginning to get light. Being outside made them realize how out of it they still were. It felt less like the city was getting light, more like it was reconstituting itself, as if it hadn’t been there in the night, as if it had dissolved and now, in the grey non-light, was becoming substantial again. As it did so they saw things they wouldn’t otherwise have noticed: bits of buildings, architectural details whose names only Nicole knew. It became lighter as they walked. At boulevard Richard Lenoir the market stalls were being assembled. Vans were crowded with boxes of fresh produce. Scales were being set up, prices written on cards. The immensity of the effort of getting the produce here — sowing, planting, ploughing, growing, digging up and transporting — seemed out of all proportion to the end results which, when all was said and done, were only versions of the onions, carrots and potatoes they had eaten for dinner the night before. It didn’t make sense.
‘It would be nice if somewhere was open,’ said Sahra.
‘We could try the Kanterbrau,’ said Luke. The sky was blue-grey now, birds were already flying in it. The Kanterbrau had just opened. They were the first customers. No one knew what to order, whether to opt for a night-cap or a morning coffee. Luke fancied a refreshing lager. Alex thought he’d have a refreshing lager too. Nicole wanted an orange pressé. Sahra was ready for coffee. Alex changed to coffee and so did Luke. Then he changed to an orange juice and the waiter trudged off, undaunted.
They were still full of chemically engendered expectation but that anticipation was gradually coming to refer to the past, to something that had already taken place. They were wide awake, distracted, glowing. They said things without being sure who had said them. Speaking and listening had become indistinct. Alex paid for the drinks. Their bodies were still full of the pump and colour of the music so they went back to Luke and Nicole’s and danced some more. When Alex and Sahra had gone home Nicole took a shower. She came back into the main room, wrapped in a towel.
‘Do you want to watch or do?’ she said.
After a few hours’ sleep the four were back together, still spaced out, tired and not tired, overcome by a lovely nostalgia for events that had taken place only hours earlier. Luke squeezed a jug of orange and carrot juice and then, as soon as they had drunk that, he made another jugful, this time adding a knuckle of ginger. Sahra lay with her head in Nicole’s lap, drifting. Alex played records. They danced some more and reminded each other of things they had seen and felt the night before, in the club and in the film, the two parts of the evening becoming more and more deeply intermingled as they did so.
Alex and Sahra left, Nicole went to lie in the bath ‘for two or three hours’. Luke tidied up and switched on the TV: rugby. With the sound turned down he forgot he was in France. He sat facing the screen, feeling suddenly alone, worn-out, dejected. The door-bell rang: Alex, back for something Sahra had left behind. As Luke opened the door to let him in he felt a surge of déjà vu. When Alex had retrieved Sahra’s bag Luke returned to the TV, trying to locate the origin of that sensation, the original experience of which he had just felt the tantalising echo.
He couldn’t, of course, you never can, because although that misleadingly named sensation sends you scurrying into your past, the moment it urges you towards is that moment itself. And at that moment you glimpse the Eternal Recurrence as a potential fact, as a mechanism, rather than a metaphor. That is the solution contained in the riddle of déjà vu. All memories are premonitions, all premonitions are memories.
For her part, Nicole was converted; after that weekend the four of them always took E when they went out dancing.
They also decided to spend Christmas together — without having any idea of what they would do or where they would go. Ideally they wanted to find a house in the country and spend the holiday there. Sahra had an uncle who, she thought, owned a house somewhere. She wrote to him the next day but heard nothing back. Staying in the city seemed a dismal option but, they agreed, if the worst came to the worst they would do that. They would cook a huge meal, get high, and let the day ripple over them.