Geoff Dyer - Paris Trance

Jean-Paul too. He broke through the cordon of conversation Luke had thrown around him and started in on his opinion of Cassavetes. That’s how it was at that time: no evening was complete unless everyone had their say about Cassavetes, his directorial style, his limitations, his influence. Jean-Paul was speaking French but Alex was hardly listening. He was watching Sara to see how she responded to what Jean-Paul was saying: was she listening to him with the same fascination that he had listened to her? No, he ventured to think, no. Alex was so preoccupied by this question that it scarcely occurred to him to wonder if she could be attracted to him. Even if Sara had not been attracted to Jean-Paul then Alex was sure it was Luke she would be drawn to. This was an essential part of Luke’s power: not the fact of his attractiveness to women but Alex’s belief — an assumption, almost — in that attractiveness. On this occasion there was a circumstantial logic behind that conviction: you are never more attractive to women, it seemed to Alex, than when you have just got out of bed with a woman. The corollary of this was depressing: the longer you went without sleeping with someone the less likely it was that you ever would. After a year, forget it. They can see the moss growing on your dick. .

Sara went to the toilet. Jean-Paul said he had to make a phone call.

‘What do you think?’ Alex asked Luke.

‘She’s great.’

‘What about him? D’you think they’re together?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘He’s the kind of man who knows how to seduce women. That’s all he knows about women, how to seduce them. Plus, he smokes and she doesn’t. She couldn’t put up with that.’

‘Do you think he’ll seduce her?’

‘Probably, yes.’

Sara rejoined them. Alex wanted to ask for her phone number but Jean-Paul returned from making his call. A few minutes later they left. Jean-Paul had a smirk of triumph about him. Sara kissed both the Englishmen goodbye, leaving Luke and Alex on their own again. Luke bought Alex a ‘consolation beer’.

‘I really like her,’ said Alex.

‘I think she likes you too.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘No, she does. We have come to believe French men are great lovers, romantic and so forth. But who do we keep hearing that from?’

‘French men?’

‘Exactly. More specifically, French men who smoke. But here is a little known fact. Women actually like English men. The Englishman is universally derided for being unromantic, bad at sex, uptight, mean, not washing his underpants enough — all that stuff. But it turns out that women actually quite like English men.’

‘I see. Just because you got down some Bosnian bimbo’s pants on your first date you’re now an authority on all matters erotic. Because you happened upon the one woman on earth who was willing to chow down on your cheesy English schlong, you think all women are attracted to all English men.’ Alex was joking, obviously, but the crudity of his words was the result, also, of a rumbling jealousy, anxiety about how Luke’s meeting Nicole would affect their friendship.

‘Not all English men,’ said Luke. ‘Not some no-hoper who looks like spending the rest of his life working at the Garnier warehouse.’

‘Someone like you, you mean?’

‘You’re just feeling bad because Jean-Paul is going to fuck her tonight. French-style. While smoking.’

‘Very funny.’

‘You should have got her phone number. You could call her first thing in the morning. If Jean-Paul answers you could ask him what it was like.’

‘Fuck you, Luke.’

As it turned out Alex had to wait less than forty-eight hours to ask her in person. He saw her on Tuesday morning but she was hurrying for a bus and they had time only to exchange greetings. Then, later that afternoon, he saw her coming out of a shoe shop on rue de la Roquette. She was adjusting her bags of shopping and did not notice him — which meant that he had a few moments to compose and prepare himself for a spontaneous greeting. It could not have worked out more conveniently if he had been stalking her. She was wearing sunglasses (it was not sunny), walking towards him. She saw him just as he prepared to call out her name.

‘How weird ,’ she said, taking off her glasses. She looked pleased to see him, he thought.

‘What?’

‘You won’t believe it.’

‘Oh I’m sure I will. I’m one of those people who believe anything.’

‘I set my alarm clock for eight fifteen—’

‘No!’

‘—I woke up and looked at the clock — eight fifteen — and turned off the alarm before it could go off. I forced myself to get up straight away. It was dark, very quiet. I showered and got dressed. Then I looked at the clock: six thirty. When I’d set the alarm I’d left it showing the time that I wanted it to go off at. It was only by turning off the alarm that I had revealed the real time. And so, having woken myself up and got up, I then got back into bed and tried to sleep. Then, an hour and a half later, I had to get up again. So all through the morning I was thinking to myself that this would always be remembered as The Day I Got Up Twice.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘There’s more. I met Jean-Paul for a coffee.’ Alex was both galled and relieved: galled to hear his name, relieved that they had evidently not spent last night together. ‘He went in and ordered the coffees. Then, a little later, I went in, ordered two more, and paid for all four. Only to discover that Jean-Paul had already paid for the first two. Effectively I had paid for them twice. Suddenly it seemed that this was not only The Day I Got Up Twice, this was The Day Everything Happened Twice.’

‘And then you bumped into me twice.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Tell it me again.’

‘I set my alarm clock for eight fifteen. .’

Alex pointed at her shopping bag. ‘What did you buy?’

She hauled a shoe from her shopping bag: an ankle-length boot actually: black, with elasticated sides.

‘And you bought two of them. A Pair. Effectively you bought the same boot twice as well. They look great,’ said Alex. ‘Would you like a coffee? I mean, shall we go for a coffee?’

She glanced at her watch. Alex found himself thinking, she is the kind of woman who wears a watch .

‘I really haven’t got time. I’m late.’

‘Right, yes, right,’ said Alex, wind emptying from his sails. ‘I’m kind of in a hurry myself.’ She looked at him. ‘Well no, I’m not actually, but I know the feeling. There have been occasions when I have been. In a hurry, I mean. Perhaps I could call you. If you wanted to go out one evening. As opposed to just bumping into each other.’

‘You mean we could arrange to bump into each other?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘Would you? I mean, great. And, incredibly, I have a pen.’

‘Four four, six oh, six two, four three.’

‘OK.’

‘Call me. OK. Ciao.’ With that she was hurrying across the street, waving, cars snarling around her.

He timed his call carefully. To have telephoned the next day would have appeared over-eager; the following week too casual. So he called after three days — exactly, as Sara calculated, when someone romantically inclined would do so. At the first attempt he got an answering machine: her voice, in French and English, with no music and, encouragingly, no mention of a flat-mate or live-in lover. Abiding by the manly notion that if you leave a message and she doesn’t call back then you have used up one of a very limited number of message-lives he hung up without speaking. He called back an hour later and this time — convinced suddenly that she was in her apartment, screening calls and guessing who was calling and hanging up like this — he left an agnostic message, asking her to call him. As soon as he put the phone down a tepid despair overcame him: the ball was out of his court now, he was no longer an active agent in his own life. Torn between staying in and waiting for her call (intolerable) and going out and missing her call (equally intolerable), he spent the next hour preparing to go out.