Eyes Full of Empty

The Unnamed Press

1551 Colorado Blvd., Suite #201

Los Angeles, CA 90041

www.unnamedpress.com

Published in North America by The Unnamed Press
.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright 2013 © Jérémie Guez

Translation Copyright 2015 © Edward Gauvin

Originally published in French as
Du Vide Plein les Yeux
by La Tengo Editions in 2013.

ISBN: 978-1-939419-65-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015950955

This book is distributed by Publishers Group West

Designed & Typeset by Scott Arany

Cover Design by Jaya Nicely

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to
[email protected]
.

“So what do we do now?”

“Shut up. I'm trying to think.”

—J
AMES
B
ELLECK
,
R
ED
C
LAY
V
ISIONS

PROLOGUE

S
O TODAY
'
S MY BIRTHDAY
.

On a stool, elbows on my knees, head in my hands, I wait for the feeling to go away. This joint has fried my brain. Hash so bad you have to squeeze the glowing end till your thumb blisters, just to break it up. All so it can do you the service of shoving a rod through the middle of your skull, scattering thoughts good and bad and indifferent, mowing down everything in sight. This fucking piece-of-shit hash has done time in plastic wrap, pockets, socks, probably even someone's ass, before getting fobbed off in the yard. A gift horse from my cellmate, Tarik. I told him it was my birthday today, and he handed me the joint and said,
Have a happy one, on me
. I really lucked out with him. When all you have is a hundred square feet to live in, better get along with the guy you share it with.

“Gonna take a shit,” says Tarik.

I turn the lighter on an orange peel I keep in a plastic box under my bed for times like these, to freshen up the cell as needed. I watch the peel blacken, flames running down the coarse grain. I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with smoke. It smells like citrus and ash. I am seriously high.

Odds were almost zilch a guy like me would end up in prison. On paper, I was spotless. My dad thought he'd steered me down the straight and narrow; to be fair, he'd nearly killed himself to make it happen. He'd come looking for me whenever I was
hanging out on the stoop or somewhere else in town, messing around with the guys from the neighborhood. When I turned eighteen, it seemed like he'd won. I went to college. The old man, happy at last. His integration now 100 percent successful. A guy who'd grown up in a podunk village in the Djurdjura mountains—limestone everywhere you looked, a lunar landscape where he wore out his shoes each morning walking miles to the only school for natives. A kid from Buttfuck, Algeria, born to illiterates, who'd ended up a French citizen. And a doctor.

You're Kabyle. Don't you ever forget it
. He'd said that over and over to me, all through my childhood, clinging to his story even while occasionally denying it. I never forgot, which didn't keep me from fucking everything up. All those stories I never wanted to hear again—all I wanted was to hear about my mom, who wasn't Kabyle or French, just Absent, with a capital A. You catch on quick when your dad doesn't know his way around members of the opposite sex. It starts when you grow up without a mom. You might see a few random women over at the house, but they never get asked to stay for dinner. And then you never see them again.

The toilet flushes. Tarik pulls back the curtain and heads over to his cot. He lights a cigarette and watches TV with the sound off, as is his habit.

I don't blame my father for anything. I don't know anyone who had a better dad than me. He knows it too. That's probably why he took my time so hard. Six months, no appeal. I can still see the expression on his face in the courtroom. He looked more shattered than me when the judge pronounced the verdict. Assault and battery:
Guilty
. Premeditated aggression:
Guilty
. Didn't think the asshole would press charges, or that I'd hit him and he'd start choking on his own blood. Or that his
dad was the head of a huge media conglomerate. I didn't see any of it coming. But in the end, half a year isn't so much out of a whole lifetime.

I borrowed a book from the library. The author was an ex-con. All told, he did more than a dozen years inside. It's like some people are made for prison. Is that possible? He says he never thinks about it at all anymore. He also says he's known people who just did a few weeks for some bullshit—a license infraction, a scuffle with a brother-in-law—and they never get over it. I'm one of those people. I'll never forget this as long as I live, I already know it. I don't blame society. I don't blame the justice system. I blame myself, just myself, for having been so goddamned stupid. I wanted to be a tough guy. Every day I wake up and remember I'm just a little turd here, a fact soon confirmed in the exercise yard, where I'm at the very bottom of the food chain.

Eyes glued to my shoes, I hear a shout from the hallway. I pay no attention, don't even realize the shouting's louder than usual, until Tarik gets all excited.

“Oh, holy shit! Look at that!”

I look up at the corner of the cell with our commissary-bought TV. I see the images, but my brain isn't processing them. A plane
in
a skyscraper. A commercial jet. A massive building. Tarik yells, “It's New York!”

We have no idea what's going down as we turn up the volume and start listening to the news. Word spreads swiftly from cell to cell, dumb rats in cages given a bit of a distraction. The guards tell us to shut up. They shouldn't have raised their voices. And suddenly, it's on. All the prisoners start going at it: blacks and whites, reds and yellows, believers and everyone else with no god but their dad and a few belt-whippings for their sins.

I celebrate my twenty-fourth birthday behind bars, my only gifts the worst joint I've ever had and the first major disaster of the new century, joining everybody else in the world with no fucking clue of what's going on. So I start screaming too, as loud as I can, half hoping the tears will come, but they don't. And it wouldn't change a thing. I just want to do something. Because I wish the planes had crashed here. For once, something's going down; I'm not about to miss out. Happy birthday my ass. They can all go fuck themselves.

                    
TEN

                    
YEARS

                    
LATER...

CHAPTER 1

I
F THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE YOU DON
'
T SEE ANYMORE, IT
'
S
usually by choice.

When he called, I didn't recognize the voice and he refused to give his name. He said he had some work for me, paid well. I said meet me at the café across from the Rex, the movie theater. I got there early, to be sure I saw him coming. The sun glared down, too hot for September. Call me a typical Parisian. We complain when it's not nice out, and the minute it is, we start saying it's too hot, our city isn't made for this.

When I see him, I instantly regret accepting the meeting. My only hope is he's not the asshole who called and he'll just walk by. No such luck. He sits himself down across from me and checks out my hairline. I started losing my hair in prison; these days I comb what's left over my forehead and hope against hope. Soon it won't make a difference. I'll end up like my dad in a year or two, bald at thirty-five. One last slap in the face, to prove once and for all I'm actually part of the family.

He grins like he knows all that. “Idir! You haven't changed a bit!”

I shift in my chair, preparing to bolt. He looks just like he used to: same face—the face of an entitled teenager who refuses to grow up—scraggly mustache, blue eyes, and dirty blond hair brushed back. How many times had I seen him strut that long,
skinny frame of his around on TV, talking about the news like an appliance salesman gushing over the latest bagless vacuum? Oscar Crumley. I've known him for ten years, give or take. His mother's French, a former model. British father, a Francophile, came over after a brilliant career and found himself head of a media conglomerate. Naturally, Oscar is a consummate asshole. The kind of guy who—not dumb, exactly—can give indignant political rants while blasted on champagne, nostrils rimmed with powder, at a party in some palatial apartment overlooking the Jardin du Luxembourg. Back in the day, he lived like a Saudi prince—every night fucking girls I could barely dream of asking for a light. If there are guys you want to headbutt each time they open their mouths, then Oscar's one of them, no doubt about it.

These days his dad's wearing adult diapers in a five-star clinic, waiting to quietly die, while Oscar's graduated from TV personality to corporate boss. The guy I used to be jealous of is now “the biggest media mogul in France.” Son of a bitch, I ate prison food for six months because of him.

“Got a nose job, I see.” I can't help but point this out. He hadn't really had a choice. I'd pretty much beaten his face in.

He grins back, no apparent grudges. “Well, you broke it in three places.”

“I was a rookie then. My hands were overenthusiastic.” Back in the day, going to college for me was like parachuting into hostile country, a descent at once swift and secret. Unlike the other kids in my class, I needed cash. Sure, my dad fed me and kept a roof over my head. But I wanted money, money to burn. Because a bottle in a club on the Champs-Élysées was no malt liquor from your corner bodega. Because fucking cost money, cost champagne, cost meals, cost weekends in Italy. I was a
lazy ass, still am. So I started doing people favors they were too embarrassed to handle. The favors became more complicated, more sensitive. Without trying, I'd become your basic fixer. And then a friend came along asking me to cave Crumley's face in. Why not? At the time, I thought I'd done a thorough job. My friend was satisfied. Then Crumley had the nerve to track me down and identify me, which got me arrested for the first and only time. His decision to press charges put me in prison for half a year. Pathetic as sentences go, but enough to fuck a depressive like me over good.

The waiter shows up. Oscar orders a coffee, asks if I want anything.

“No thanks.”

Less than thrilled, the waiter pulls an about-face.

“Let's get this over with. Who gave you my number?”

“Morel. He spoke highly of your improved skill set.”

I scowl and look around for more pleasant things to stare at than Oscar Crumley. Ten years ago, I didn't have much of a choice when I got out. My father told me to come home until I could get back on my feet, get a job, rebuild my life. But I couldn't do that. Not after prison. So I made the most of my network and my early reputation, which my jail time had only solidified since I never snitched on my client. The rich have a habit of solving their problems in a very civilized way. Of course, in a pinch, they might call on some actual hoodlums. Their business. But usually the rich are afraid of guys like that blackmailing them once the job's done, having too big a mouth or too heavy a hand. If Morel had paid some bangers from the projects to take care of the little shit harassing his daughter at school, they might've beaten the kid to death, which would've led to a whole ton of bullshit. Me, with a jerk like that, I pay him
a visit in the foyer of his parents' Haussmann town house, slap him around a bit, make him sweat. Problem solved.

I give the rich an easy answer to their problems. I speak their language, understand their needs, and guarantee things won't go too far. I also have boundaries: I've turned down several murder contracts. My job is very simple. I follow women, sometimes mistresses, for jealous men. I watch over kids for worried parents. If it comes to it, I threaten people sometimes, but that's it. I'm not a gangster and I never will be. It's all a matter of scale. On the streets, I'm a huge pussy, but for these people, I'm the big bad fucking wolf. I own my little niche market and, so far, I've had no competitors; no one's come up with the shitty idea of trying to horn in on my territory for a measly few thousand euros a year.

“What do you want?” I finally ask.

“As I said before, I have a job for you.”

“You really think I'd take it?”

“Look, we were young.” He uncrosses his arms in a conciliatory gesture. “My father pressured me to press charges—”

I wave away his excuses.
Please stop. Stop before I burst into tears
. I want to tell him to piss off, go fuck himself. I want to absolutely destroy him again, just for kicks, because I feel like it and I still can. But I hold back. I don't have the balls, and I need money, as usual.

“Two hundred euros a day, plus expenses.” I aim high, pick a number at random.

“Sure,” he responds right away.

Dumbass me—money just got left on the table. I tap my foot impatiently. “OK, I'm listening.”

He reaches for his messenger bag and pulls out an accordion folder, the kind with the rubber band that snaps around. “I'd
like you to find my brother—my half brother, I mean. His name is Thibaut. I haven't heard from him for two months. No one knows where he is. It's all in here.”

He slides the folder over.

“Your dad's son?”

“Yes. When my mom died, he remarried.” For a second his face tightens, like he's trying to swallow a horse pill without water. You'd think he wasn't really into that part of his past. Like he's watching his stepmother, just a few years older than he is, playfully ruffle his dad's hair over breakfast right now.

“Does he know? That your brother disappeared I mean.”

“My father is quite ill. The slightest shock could send him over the edge. My stepmother is the one who came to see me. I told her I'd take care of everything.”

“Tell the police?”

“He's an adult, twenty-two. They say he'll turn up on his own.”

Times have changed indeed
, I think. Back in the day, the Crumley family could make anyone rethink their opinion. Even a judge. “School?”

“Same as us.”

“So he'll go into business, like his big brother?”

Crumley smiles. “I'm a broadcaster.”

“Can I see his mother?”

“No, I'd rather you didn't. It wouldn't do any good—it would just complicate things.”

I nod, used to stipulations like this. “The customer is always right.”

For a second, his left eyelid gives a nervous twitch. He pulls his wallet from his jacket, opens it, and removes four five-hundred-euro bills, fanning them out on the table. “Call me in ten days.”

“Got any bigger bills while you're at it? Shit, man, I don't live in Auteuil, you know. How am I supposed to buy anything with these in my neighborhood? They're gonna think it's funny money.”

He pulls a face, implying I'm as big an ass as I ever was, and leaves me alone at the table.

It's hard to argue with the money in my wallet. It lets me pick up some produce and eat something besides Tuna Helper. My sublet's on a little street leading to place Pigalle not far from the café where I met up with Oscar, so I decide to walk home, a plastic bag of groceries in each hand. I get a stitch in my side going uphill toward Saint-Georges, which sucks: I don't smoke and hardly drink, but big-ass me is out of shape all the same. My building has no elevator, and I live on the sixth floor, so by the time I'm back home I slam my door shut and collapse on my fake leather sofa. I look through the file Oscar gave me. The first thing I find in the accordion folder is a photo—a portrait of Thibaut Crumley. Most likely an enlargement of something taken at a party. He's got a three-day beard and tortoiseshell glasses, and is staring in all seriousness right at the camera, like he's posing for a fashion mag. He looks like half the young guys in town.

I empty out the rest of the folder's contents on the coffee table. His transcripts. I give them a quick once-over. Conclusion: he was a good student. A pair of keys with an address in the Marais—probably his apartment. Oscar could've told me his brother didn't live at home anymore. I would've headed straight over.

I rouse myself, ready to leave, when my cell phone rings. “Hello? Good, and you? What, tonight? Oh right,
iftar
. No, of course I haven't forgotten.”

I'm lying. I've totally forgotten. Tonight is the last night of Ramadan, and my grandmother has summoned me to dinner.

“Don't worry,” I promise. “I'll be on time.”

I take the metro to République and walk to rue de Bretagne, where café owners wear aprons like the wholesalers at Rungis, except that around here rent must be pushing a thousand euros a square foot. I don't have the keypad code for the building, so me and my brown face hang around out front until a little old lady opens the door. I go in behind her, giving her the nicest smile in my repertoire so she won't think I'm going to rape her and her tiny dog in the closet where they keep the trash cans.

I check out the mailboxes. No name tags. Why don't students ever put their names on their mailboxes? Do they not know that court summonses never come by e-mail? Fucking maladjusted children.

Five floors, two doors on each landing. I start up top; students always live in the garret. I run into the little old lady again, unlocking her door. I make like I don't see her and try my key on the door across the way. No dice. Fourth floor, key works on the first try. I turn it slowly in the lock and push the door open with my foot. The apartment's huge. But I knew that. One look at the lobby and you knew; you don't need a real estate broker to tell you. The kitchen opens on the living room, American style. A long hallway, a door on the right: his room. Nothing special. A closet with some clothes inside. Books lining shelves
built in above a desk. A full bed, flawlessly made. I peek underneath. Among the dust bunnies is another accordion folder. I have to get down on the floor to reach it. Inside are a dozen cassette tapes, unlabeled. It's strange. The only loser of his generation who didn't switch to MP3s? Impossible. A sound distracts me from the tapes and I shove them back under the bed. I hear the same sound again, same volume. Moaning. I poke my head out the door to see where it's coming from, treading lightly now. There. A second door at the end of the hall. I take a deep breath and bust through—not much point in knocking.

Only the girl sees me. She quits her back-and-forth and turns her head my way, neither scared nor embarrassed, still perched on the guy. She's pretty, with a phenomenal ass. His eyes are still closed, and he starts pumping away twice as hard to make up for her stopping. Walking in on people having sex is never pleasant, but over the years I've mostly gotten used to it. When you go poking into other people's shit, you are, unfortunately, confronted with this kind of scene more often than you'd like. I enjoy watching her ass shudder for a split second longer before he notices I'm there.