Eyes Full of Empty (2 page)

“The fuck you doing here?”

Jolted from romantic rapture, the guy shoves the girl off his dick, gets out of bed, and makes a beeline for me, looking all threatening, unimpressive boner preceding him. As if to compensate, his muscles are huge, horrendously sculpted by a serious weightlifting regimen and, undoubtedly, the abuse of questionably legal substances.

“Get out of my apartment or I'm calling the police!”

I laugh. “Your apartment?”

In my younger days, I used to know a bodybuilder. One night we wound up drunk in a dive near Porte de la Chapelle. Some
bikers were partying there. Given how big my buddy was—he must've had the prettiest triceps in the whole Goutte d'Or—I thought we were in no danger. I don't really remember what started the fight—probably a bad joke the bikers didn't get. We got our asses kicked. Well, my buddy did. He couldn't run fast enough to get away. I could. All this is to say it's hard for me to take seriously guys all swollen up on protein shakes who can't throw a goddamned punch to save their lives.

I slap him once, hard, with my palm. He whimpers.

“What'd you do that for? Are you crazy or something?”

I move forward. He sticks his hands out to protect himself.

“I'm looking for Thibaut. The fuck are you doing at his place?”

“I—I'm his roommate.”

And here I thought he lived alone. I'm learning something new every minute. “What's your name?”

“Charles.”

“OK, Charles, I just want to ask you a few questions. I'll take two minutes of your time, and after that, I'm out of your hair.”

“OK.”

“How long has it been since you've seen Thibaut?”

“I don't know…two months? Maybe three.”

“You're not worried?”

“No, he's kind of…special. Sometimes he vanishes for a week or two at a time every now and then. Keeps to himself. His dad pays his share of the rent, so…can I put my clothes on?”

“He have a girlfriend?”

The kid doesn't answer, just stares at his feet. The girl, who I'd forgotten was there, answers for him. “Yes.”

“You know her?”

She gets up from the bed and walks toward me, her full breasts pointing proudly my way. “That's me.”

“Get dressed, we're going for a coffee. I'll wait for you downstairs.” I turn my back on her. “Thanks for the help, Charles. And a piece of advice—lay off the steroids, they shrink your dick.”

I wait for the girl in the lobby. She takes her sweet time coming down. Naturally, when she does, she's all made up. “What's your name?”

“Eve.”

Just Eve.

“OK, Eve, you know the neighborhood. I'll let you pick the café. Seeing as it's going to cost us an arm and a leg, it might as well be a good one.”

We sit down on a terrace. I get a good look at her up close. She's prettier than I thought. Brunette, olive skin, big green eyes. “What're you having?”

“A café crème.”

I pass it on to the waiter, who drifts off.

“Aren't you having anything?”

“I'm not thirsty.”

She nods vaguely, clueless about the holiday, but why should she? For someone like her, fasting's what you do when you've just bought a dress a size too small and have a big party the next night.

I let her think another minute. I don't want to rush her; I have the feeling I'll need her.

“So you're not a cop?”

“No, Thibaut's brother hired me to find him. You know him?”

“I've run into him before. Does that mean you're some kind of detective?”

“No. It means I'm looking for Thibaut. You got something to tell me about him?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing special. He was kind of secretive,
like Charles said.”

“You try and call him, ask him where he was?”

“Yeah. But he didn't pick up.”

“And you don't care?”

“Sure I do. But I'm not worried.”

What with the scene I walked in on earlier, it was hardly a surprise she was in no hurry to see him again. “What kind of relationship did you have with him?”

She gives me a look like I'm the biggest dipshit on the planet. “Um, we were dating?”

A lull in the conversation. She doesn't seem to understand what I'm after. Or her mind is elsewhere.

Eve's eyes flare defiantly: “Call me a slut if it will make you feel better.”

“What, because you're sleeping with your boyfriend's roommate after he's been gone for two months? No, not at all.” I laugh despite myself. She gives me a dark look. I won't be getting anything more out of her. I signal the waiter for the check and drop a five-euro bill on the table.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Keep me updated. Call me if he turns up.” After exchanging phone numbers with her, I let the girl go and start walking, trying to put together what I've gathered so far. No one appears to be worried about Thibaut's absence, and I don't know much about him. He seems to be a stranger to his brother, and not much more than that to his friends from school, never mind his girlfriend.

By the time I reach home, I'm convinced the kid will wind up coming back on his own; he'll turn up as soon as he needs some cash. When you've lived in a huge apartment in the Marais, it's hard to turn your back on comfort and slum it bohemian style.

I lie down on my sofa, fully intending to keep thinking about the case, but I fall asleep. When I open my eyes again, it's dark out, and I'm late for my grandmother's.

With my free hand—the other one busy with a box of pastries I bought at Barbès—I knock on the door. My grandmother opens up and a smile lights her face from ear to ear. Her Berber tattoos stretch on skin that time and a life spent looking after her own have creased with wrinkles. Lines on her temples, her chin; crosses on cheekbones—all traced in ink, now faded. Indelible markings to protect her family from the evil eye and mourn her deceased husband. These are tattoos that visibly irritate my father, though they seem to have worked. I've always liked them.

“You came!
Mashallah!
” she says.

She kisses me on either cheek. A long hug, then she loosens her embrace. “Come in, come in!”

“Here—for you.” I hold out the pastries; she takes them from me without a word of thanks.

“Hurry up! Give me your coat. They're all here and waiting on you to eat.”

“Who's they?”

She doesn't reply. From her silence, I realize it's not just my father, which already doesn't exactly thrill me, but other family members too. And since I can only stand so much of them, I have to give the old woman credit for not telling me they'd be here.

She lets me walk into the living room alone.

“Good evening.” There's my father; his brother, Aziz; Aziz's wife, Anne; and their son, Dmitri, who's in his early twenties.
I start regretting not asking my grandmother more questions about tonight. Still, what was I expecting? After all, you can't take the “family” out of “family dinner.”

I go around kissing cheeks, finishing up with my father, who slips in a “How are you?”

“Fine. You come alone? Where's Nadia?”

“She, uh, had a lot of work she couldn't get out of.”

Nadia's been with my father for going on ten years now. But he still balks at inviting her over, like his people, his tattooed mother and thug son, aren't good enough for a brilliant French-Moroccan lawyer.

“Hiding her, eh?” I say in a moderately unpleasant tone.

I can't stand the people in this room, and since my father's worth more than all the others put together, I take it out on him first. He says nothing. I sit down at the table, which is laden with all sorts of dishes. Anne smiles at me and asks, “Makes your mouth water, doesn't it?”

Anne's one of those people hooked on all things Oriental. As soon as she became a teenager, she knew she'd marry a foreign guy, if only to piss off her parents. And yet she named her son Dmitri. Even people like that can't take too much of the exotic. I've never been able to stomach her comments—they seem plucked right out of travel guides she's spent a little too much time poring over.

Instead of answering, I just shrug, not yet resolved to engage in hostilities. Of course it's mouthwatering, especially for people like me who work during the fast. I pour myself a glass of lemonade and toss it back in one gulp, telling myself that at this point, dinner can still go well. But she keeps laying it on: “Aren't you hungry?”

“No, no. I haven't eaten all day, but I'm fine.”

My father gives me a dark look.

“Kidding, just kidding.”

“We haven't seen you in a while. Ramadan go well?” my uncle asks.

“Yes, it's done me a lot of good. I needed it,” I reply, meaning it.

My grandmother brings the last of the dishes to the table and serves us all soup. The sucking noises start. I should never have come. I try to put it all behind me and focus on my bowl, sneaking glances at the others now and then from the corner of my eye. The conversation has a hard time getting started. I can feel my presence making everyone uneasy. I decide not to overplay my role as an asshole, even if today has seriously gotten on my nerves, and for the good of everyone present I toss off a “How's work, Dad?”

“Fine,” he says, a man of few words.

My uncle bravely tries to run with it. “How about you, Idir? What are you doing these days?”

“Oh, helping people out here and there. Odd jobs. You know, the usual. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Did you know your cousin signed with a record label?”

I don't like people who ask a question just so you'll have to ask them the same question back, even though you couldn't give a fuck about the answer. “No, really?”

Dmitri gives me a shy little smile.

“
Mabrouk!
How'd that happen?”

Anne tells me her son's success story, tears springing to her eyes.

Unlike my father, who accepts who he is, my uncle's always been ashamed of his origins and just loves playing the perfect little Frenchman. He raised his son to be the same way. From the way Dmitri's hair falls over his eyes and the grossed-out
look he gives his soup, it looks like my uncle succeeded.

“Careful, I hear music can be a dirty business…drugs and all.”

“Your son never lets up,” my uncle tells my father in Kabyle.

I take it up with him in French. “Hey, you think he can't speak up for himself if he doesn't like my comments? How about it, Dmitri? You'd tell me, right?”

Dmitri blushes, mutters a quick,
“Oui.”

“There, you see? And speak French, will you? Or else your wife and son won't understand a word you're saying.”

“You're such a little shit,” my uncle says.

“Uncle, if you've got something to work off, we could go settle this outside.”

“That's enough,” my father says, rising from the table. “Get out, Idir.”

I get up before he has to repeat himself and duck into the kitchen to kiss my grandmother good-bye.

She reaches up and her dry hand settles on my cheek. “Idir. Take care, slow down.”

“Gotta run, I'll stop by tomorrow afternoon.”

Before she can respond, I dash out of the apartment, slamming the door behind me, relieved.

On boulevard de Clichy the next day, I stop by a call shop. I don't have Internet at home. When I need it—and it's just for work—this is where I go. Seated at his desk, the owner, a young Pakistani of about twenty, is playing with his cell phone.

“How's it going, Anam?”

He looks up at me and smiles. I like it better when his wife is minding the shop. She should be starring in a Bollywood movie,
not running a cybercafé that caters to losers and pervs.

“Idir! Good, and you?”

“I need a computer.”

“Make yourself at home.” He waves me into the room, where four computers are lined up against a wall. There's no one else around. I sit down at the last one, open a browser, and start searching. I type in the name Thibaut Crumley and get a Facebook page plus several newspaper articles. Photos of Oscar and Thibaut, arm in arm. And their father, the three of them together, a family: “We're very close…” It hurts to say these words; the brothers' smiles are forced. I check the dates; the oldest article is less than a year old. All very recent. Nothing particularly interesting, just PR bullshit. The problem with my line of work is no one ever tells you everything. Otherwise, the kind of people who pay me would never call on my services. It's something I've learned. A kind of tacit agreement. The client sits down across from you and tells you his problem with its share of lies and gray areas. There's no point asking for explanations; you won't get any. It's part of the deal.