Geoff Dyer - Paris Trance

‘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.

‘What did you see?’ Alex said. ‘More precisely, which Cassavetes film did you see?’ There was a Cassavetes season on. You could not move for Cassavetes films.

‘ Faces .’

‘ Faces ? I can’t remember whether I’ve seen that one or not. It’s the one that’s exactly like all the others, right?’

‘That’s the one. Have you seen it?’

‘Yes. Or maybe it was one of the others.’

‘Actually they’re beginning to get on my nerves, Cassavetes films. I don’t think I’m going to see any more.’

‘Why’s that? I agree, but why is that? For me it’s because the characters are always wearing dinner jackets. I hate films where the characters are always wearing dinner jackets. I hate James Bond films for the same reason,’ said Alex, glad to have got a quick purchase on the conversation. Jean-Paul also wanted to get in on it but Luke, spotting Alex’s chance to engage Sara, immediately set up a conversational barricade to keep him from her. If Jean-Paul wanted to have his say about the film they’d just seen he would have to say it to Luke.

‘He’s too indoors,’ Sara said to Alex. ‘There are outdoors films and indoors films. His are indoors films. I only like outdoors films.’ Alex was stopped in his tracks. He saw immediately that she was right: all great films were outdoor films. He searched rapidly through his memory but could not think of a single exception to this rule.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘That is absolutely it. It’s as simple as that. Dinner jacket-wearing is just a whatever the word is of indoorness.’

‘Metonym?’

‘I guess.’ Jean-Paul lit a cigarette. Alex could sense him monitoring their conversation: everyone, it seemed, was monitoring everyone else’s conversation. ‘Are there no exceptions?’

‘None,’ she said, with absolute certainty.

How they change, the faces of our friends, of the people we love. When they had met at Steve’s dinner Alex had not noticed Sara particularly. They had been sitting at opposite ends of the table and had not spoken to each other. Then, when they had met at the gallery opening, he had begun to study her face, which changed, became attractive to him, as if it took on the qualities of what she said. Now he looked at her with longing.