Guys Like Me (5 page)

Their children were all at the movies, together, Marc's and Aïcha's, a reconstructed family. I've often thought about that. I've heard about it at work too. How do people manage that? I've never wanted to talk about it with Marco, whose life, in many respects, is like a criticism of mine, his choices against mine, and yet we're friends. Maybe that's part of the reason we're friends. Jean wasn't talking much, as if he had to learn how to talk all over again. I remembered that feeling that you've forgotten how to say things, it had happened to me between my divorce and being hired by the company where I'm still working today, but with him there was something else. Every once in a while, Aïcha glanced at the balcony. She said she wanted Marco to put up a hammock there, so that they could take afternoon naps when the weather was fine. He'd always tell her it was impossible. She'd ask why. They always got very heated about this hammock business. Jean perked up a bit on the subject, he'd spent a lot of time in northern Europe, and in Germany. He'd been on the road in the old days. After a while, his description of a trip to Norway got lost in limbo, and I couldn't help meeting Marc-André's amused gaze, we both felt like laughing, the way we had before. How slow he was these days.

Aïcha doesn't usually talk much. But she follows everything, commenting on it with a nod or a shake of the head, it's as if she knows hundreds of ways to do that. Marc-André is lucky to have found her, at an age when it was still possible to change. I tell myself that sometimes, when I'm alone and indulge in the jealousy of regrets. Then I'm no longer so sure, because even knowing his happiness, it seems too good for me. Since I've been living alone, I've often been ashamed of who I am, as if I've been spending too much time with myself. And yet I'm also part of guys like him, in a sense. Except that I have a job, so I don't have time these days to show my cracks, or let them open up even more. He was talking in an even tone, he seemed to be happy that evening. Aïcha put on some music, old stuff we all liked, I still know three albums by Leonard Cohen by heart, we sat down on the couch. After a while, the telephone rang.

“Excuse me,” she murmured.

Marco followed her with his eyes until she closed the door of their bedroom behind her. He'd sometimes talked to me about this. Aïcha's mother could spend hours on the phone and, to his wife, it was unthinkable to say stop, I'm in a hurry, I'll call you back, she couldn't do that. It scared him every time, although he couldn't explain it. Was he afraid that she'd leave one day after hanging up? He poured some more wine, there was much more to this phone business than just the phone. Once, when I'd told him that, he'd shrugged, he'd looked at me with those dark, feverish eyes of his, which he's always had since we've known each other.

“That's it, it's her mother,” he said.

He didn't seem to realize. He'd resumed his place at the end of the big couch in the corner of the room. They'd bought that couch for a ridiculously high price, I'd helped him to transport it in a rented Peugeot J7. He'd been pleased to do it with me. Aïcha spoke three languages in addition to ours, more beautifully than us, because it was Lebanese French that she spoke.

“By the way,” Marco said, looking at Jean, “I think I have something for you. Anyway, we can always try, the guy knows all about you.”

His eyes shone for a brief moment, while Marco explained to him what the work consisted of. Yes, they'd already checked his résumé.

“Do you think I'll be able to do it?”

Yes, it was right up his alley. He'd spent ten years with Linotier, hadn't he? Yes, until they closed following the buyback. The salary wasn't what he might reasonably expect, obviously. But it was a question of take it or leave it. I stopped myself from smiling, all the time Marco was explaining the job to him with his usual brusqueness, which is nothing like the fake kindness I sometimes assume in order to do nothing. Jean was listening the way you listen to a story that's somehow too mysterious to be really interesting. He nodded from time to time. If I'd been in Marc-André's place, it would have irritated me. I decided not to mention the translation. He might have felt un-comfortable being indebted to both of us the same time, while Aïcha was talking to her mother in Beirut, shut up in their bedroom after eleven at night. Toward the end, he stammered that he didn't know what to say, but Marc-André was only interested, so to speak, in the door of the bedroom, with his dark eyes.

“Is everything all right, Marco?”

After a while, as if he couldn't hold out any longer, he excused himself. When he came back, he was looking straight ahead of him at the window to the balcony, trying to put on a bold front, but he seemed hurt.

When Aïcha rejoined us, the embarrassment faded rapidly. It was a nice evening. We celebrated the news, even though we were counting our chickens before they hatched. That expression made me laugh, I must have been a little drunk, and when they asked me why, I said it was a strange phrase, why should people bother to count chickens anyway? I'd also had too much aperitif, before that. Aïcha laughed at my joke, yes, she said, why should people count chickens? And how about you, how are things with you? We were both in the middle of putting our plates in the dishwasher. How's Benjamin? She lit a cigarette.

“He's fine.”

“Do you have anyone right now?”

I felt myself blush like a young man for the second time that evening. I said no, a few dates, you know how it is, it isn't so easy to find love. She held out her hand.

“You'll find her one day, when you've stopped looking!” Her eyes were smiling. We both laughed together, in the kitchen.

As we got out of the elevator downstairs, we ran into their children coming back from the movies. Marc-André's daughter kissed me on the cheek, and then they took the stairs. We were both on the street now. He was still carrying his case.

He pointed. “Right, I'm going to Porte de Champerret. There's a night bus that goes to La Garenne-Colombes.”

I suggested walking with him part of the way because I didn't feel like going straight home. We didn't talk much.

“Nice evening, wasn't it?”

“Yes, it was.”

By the way, he hadn't yet finished the translation. I told him not to worry, if he could give it to me by the end of the following week, it'd be fine. It was better to take too much time than too little, if he wanted it to be well received. We walked like two shadows, his empty case between the two of us. We were a long way from all those years together, when it came down to it. But anyway, we really had had a nice evening. He might have a job, at his age he hadn't expected that. We sat down on a bench in the big bus station at Porte Champerret. A lot of young people, with their headphones in their ears or their cell phones on, a few couples too. A lot of guys like him and me who didn't have cars. They'd be going a long way, when the night bus finally arrived. He was pleased. He told me in a low voice that, more than once, he'd thought to end it all, because he couldn't bear not having anything to do, day after day, night after night. I let him speak without interrupting him. What do you say to someone who confides his fears in you, his desire to end it all, when you yourself don't know? Another guy like me, that's what you are, my brother. Who'd want to abandon his brother, or refuse to hear him? We'd meet again soon.

Life resumed its course. I called Marie, who I definitely couldn't get out of my head. We met on Tuesday evening near Chaussée d'Antin. We went to a café she knew, she struck me as pretty right from the start, I think. She was smiling at me, I hadn't been very sure I'd recognize her. But in the end, I did. She really was the age she'd told me, and so was I. We sat down, surrounded by a whole bunch of women who worked in the big department stores, she spent a lot of time in this neighborhood. I used to go there too, as a child, with my mother, but in those days it hadn't yet been rebuilt. The area around Passage du Havre and Chaussée d'Antin had been part of the magic of the world for me. It was also here that I'd known a woman for the first time, in the biblical sense, to use Marc-André's phrase. He went with me to the place where I'd spotted her on the sidewalk several Sundays running, on Rue de Mogador. Marie ordered tea. She was a nurse. Right now, she was working for a local organization that helped people with HIV, she'd traveled a lot before that. She'd worked for various humanitarian organizations, she'd kind of drifted into it. She was pleased she'd been away so long and had come back after it all. It had only been two years. Time passes, doesn't it?

Her eyes were very black, her gaze slightly sardonic, I thought. On several occasions, I had the impression she was sizing me up, so after a while I actually asked her, is there something wrong with me? Is that it? She seemed surprised at first. Then she softened a little, in any case it was still too early to love, let alone to let myself be loved, I needed time. I didn't tell her that, of course, I didn't say anything about the subject.

“You aren't very talkative, tell me something.”

“Oh, really?”

So I made an effort, as if I had to learn all over again, although I didn't have time to learn all over again, but anyway. She had a couple of tickets for the theater, by the way, a friend of hers had begged off at the last moment, how does that grab you? Do you know it? No, I said, I've only seen the posters in the metro, but on the other hand I do know the story of the guy who's always asking if he can pull down the curtain, and in the end nobody minds if he draws a veil over who he was, and also over his own life. He'd end his life alone. I was making a real hash of this first date, I just wasn't used to it, I think that's what it was. Fortunately, Marie loved books, she bought lots of them. Since she'd come back from Mali, she'd been making up for lost time. We talked for a good hour, in the end.

I paid for our drinks and she got up while I was doing that and went downstairs to the toilet, I watched her, she was well dressed, in black with a white blouse. Her hair was black too. She wore lots of bracelets. Would it have been hard to say what she did for a living? She looked a lot like her photo on the website. Would we see each other again? I'd had enough of all those dates that never lead to anything, as if after a while, for guys like me, there's no tomorrow. I waited for her outside, on the sidewalk. The stores were open, the weather wasn't really nice yet, but all the same. It had taken me so many years to forget that I think, in the end, I wasn't sure anymore what it was I wanted to forget. I looked at the customers in the café. The waiters, the high school kids, you often saw them laughing and smiling, how to take my place among them again? I wanted to make love with Marie. I remember very well how much I wanted that, standing there on the sidewalk, on Chaussée d'Antin. Without doing it deliberately, I looked at myself in the mirror at the end of the room, wondering if it was still possible for a woman to want to wake up in bed with a guy like me the following morning. How are you? Did you sleep well? Yes, how about you? Tea or coffee? For years and years. I had to remember not to let myself go when I was with her. When she came back, I saw she'd taken the time to touch up her lipstick. I was pleased about that, though I couldn't quite say why. We talked a little more, smiling at each other, and at the corner of Rue du Havre, after all those hours talking online, I felt like kissing her.

“You certainly don't waste any time.”

“There isn't much of it, Marie.”

She looked at me for a long time without replying. Then she said yes, that's true. Her eyes clouded over a little at that moment. We'll see later, shall we? Then she said goodbye, lovely to have met you, if you can't make the theater, let me know. It was for that Friday evening. I watched her walk away, one woman among other women on her way to the Chaussée d'Antin station. I told myself she wouldn't turn around, and she didn't. In the metro I also told myself the game wasn't over yet, of course it wasn't. Among all those people going in and out of the metro, there had to be quite a few guys like me, just as there were among the people I met at work. We had to have a stroke of luck, another woman, someone to cling to … I took the metro to go home, I felt like calling her. I'd been rough, but she hadn't seemed all that surprised. I thought of calling Benjamin instead, but I didn't want to bother him too much. He'd always liked repairing things. When he was small he'd have liked to repair his parents' divorce, he'd never be able to repair everything, obviously. I got out at Louise Michel.

He was at the metro exit. When I saw him, he was looking at the name of the street on the corner, his body a bit lopsided, as if he'd had to lean back to see the sign. He turned right in the direction of my place. I wanted to be alone, I was thinking about Marie, about all those weeks of empty words, those confidences we'd shared with each other, none of that had anything to do with him. When he got to my street, he leaned back again to see the sign on the wall at the corner. That made me smile, he was making it clear what he was looking for, as if he might risk arrest if he didn't. He took a big envelope from his case, he'd surely come to drop off the work I'd given him. Marc-André had told me they'd cut off his phone, after too many unpaid bills. He'd offered him money so that he could pay, but he'd refused. I stood there hidden by part of a wall, and then, after he'd deposited the envelope, I decided to follow him, like a fool playing a foolish game. We walked some distance from each other, toward Porte de Champerret. We passed the bench where we'd sat after the evening at Marco's and talked while waiting for the night bus.

He was walking quickly, a lot quicker than me, as if he was always in a hurry. Sometimes that's the way people walk when they're dying, that was the impression I had, but I always have a lot of thoughts that don't mean anything at all, so anyway. He was about to get on his bus when he turned around, I was maybe about a hundred feet away, on the other side of Place du Général Pershing. I don't know if he saw me. He got on his bus, he was going back to the far end of the Hauts-de-Seine, where he and Marc-André and I had spent our childhood. Young people, people alone. People still with earphones in their ears and free newspapers in their hands. The news often seems old and out of date at seven in the morning, even though the paper's new. Maybe that's why they give it to us for free these days? I walked toward the bus, I didn't want him to think I'd seen him without even deigning to make a sign. I couldn't even call him about the translation, he'd told me he'd be finished soon, and he was enjoying getting back into the swing of things, the bus left. I turned back, some nice things had happened in my life today, I'd met Marie. I picked up the envelope when I got home, he had specially bought one of those expandable envelopes and marked the flap with a cross. I put it down on the coffee table and tidied up the place a little. Marie must be home by now. I went on the website and kept going back to the screen to see if she was online, because I wanted to say thank you, and above all to tell her all the things that had crossed my mind beforehand and afterwards, but not at the time. Why not call her? It was better to wait. I called Benjamin, he was fine, Anaïs was spending a few days at her mother's, he'd be happy to drop by.