Dominique Fabre - Guys Like Me

In the days that followed, I went to the office early. The weather was quite good. It was a pleasure to leave early, carrying my jacket over my shoulder. Sometimes it seemed as if I’d spent a long night, and the rest of the time I never stopped remembering. Marie and I hadn’t talked any more about the summer, in theory, around July, she would have a few days’ respite between chemo sessions, and if it was OK, she’d be able to leave. She had a friend in Trouville, who had a house by the sea. She could let us use it. Do you know Trouville? Yes, I’ve been before, I really like it there. I’d planned my vacation for July, one week, and another week in August, since Ben had stopped going away with me I’d always taken them in installments, because what would I have done with all that time, on my own, with nothing to do? He called me a week after his arrival, Anaïs was happy, she’d already found a part-time job … As for him, he wasn’t sure yet. I didn’t go to see Marie every evening. She was starting to be exhausted by it all. She’d started losing her hair after the second session, and she’d thrown up a lot. When they let her out, I saw her home. She wanted to ask them for a break from therapy, but they wouldn’t let her. She’d see about it later, when she felt better. She was happy to be going home for a few days. I’d only been to Brochant to air the place out and pick up her mail, a girlfriend of hers from the boulevard also dropped by sometimes.

“Home at last!”

She was in a good mood, and we went for a meal at the Brasserie Wepler. She only picked at her food, to be honest, but she had a wonderful auburn wig now, she looked stunning. She was also happy to see the boulevard again: it was still just as ugly, noisy, and gray, all the way to Brochant metro station.

Several times I felt her looking at me out of the corner of her eye. In the end, I asked her what it was she wanted to tell me and couldn’t, or was I imagining things? No, I wasn’t imagining things. She’d have liked to be less tired and to show me another side of herself. She’d had too much time to think when she was in Beaujon. She’d never wanted to live with a man, not in a long time anyway. But we could see each other, if she wasn’t too tired. In the evening, she cried a lot because she’d been very happy and very unhappy in her life, and she accepted that, but today she was scared that she wouldn’t see the rest of it. She needed some time alone, she said.

“We have plenty of time ahead of us, Marie.”

It came out without thinking. She looked at me without a word, do you really believe that? And I was so sure of myself at that moment, in a way I’d rarely ever been in my life. So then she even wanted to go to the movies, just as she had hundreds of times, but there were too many people waiting in line, too many dumb films. It was hard for her to bear the noise and the gasoline smells. We walked back from the square to her apartment in Brochant, would I like a drink? No, thanks, I’m fine. So we just lay there in her bedroom, and then, when she was very tired, I left to go home and sleep. See you tomorrow?

“Yes, of course.”

“Can you let the phone ring twice so that I know you’ve arrived?”

“Sure. Call if you need me, will you do that?”

“Yes, sleep well.”

THERE HE WAS, WITH HIS VERY BLUE EYES, STANDING BY the boxes. He hadn’t finished, but almost. The window was open, like the first time I’d paid him a visit. The window of the apartment opposite was closed. I don’t know why I remember that family so well, is it because of the two children? He’d already packed the boxes. His rolling tobacco on the carpet, which was gray like the carpets in offices that haven’t been rented yet. Stains. Marks from the feet of the table, where he must have spent hundreds of hours waiting, without finding. He’d closed the door, I’d simply given it a push to come in, calling out: are you there?

“Come in, it’s nice of you to drop by.”

I was a bit surprised because we’d agreed to meet, all three of us, to have dinner. His sense of humor was a bit of a problem sometimes, in his life. I watched him scotch-tape the boxes with great skill. He’d never been comfortable with words, but things like that he could do well, overcome that kind of difficulty. He didn’t have many possessions. At a certain point, the window opposite half-opened and he took the opportunity to look up and offer me some tobacco. Just then, the image of his mother came back to me. He really did look like her, suddenly, lifting his head. How old had we been then?

“Do you want one? Help yourself.”

I rolled myself a cigarette. He had a few ready-made filters in the pack, but I didn’t even try to put one in. He approached the window with a big smile. It was the same little boy as last time. He climbed over the sill and came in to take a look. Our eyes met for a moment.

“So you were at home, Akim? Are you OK?”

The boy nodded. “Where are you going? Are you going a long way?”

I recognized some things from when his mother had been a concierge.

“I’m going to Marseilles. By the way, tell your father to drop in, is he around now?”

“I don’t know, he never says where he is. I’ll tell him if I see him.”

I sat down on the radiator under the window.

“Good, I’ll do the rest later, what time’s Marc-André coming?”

He still had some pastis, if I wanted. Yes, why not? Without daring to admit it to myself, I was almost impatient for the evening to end, this thing that didn’t mean anything, from way down in our past. The kind of thing veterans do, except there hadn’t been a war. There had simply been a life together, side by side in the Hauts-de-Seine, so many years on the streets of Asnières, Gennevilliers, Clichy, and La Garenne, and then, for each of us, love affairs, plans for the future, successes and failures, but he, in a way, had specialized. I couldn’t help smiling to myself, thinking about it. He looked in the closet, then in the refrigerator, which he was leaving behind for whoever came after him, if there was anybody. It would only be a temporary lease, obviously, they were going to demolish everything around here. There was also the TV set, which he’d bought quite cheap, but it worked perfectly, he’d give it to the children opposite. He liked the idea of giving them a present. He wouldn’t need it now. Oh, really?

“Yes, my mother has one, and anyway I don’t like it.”

“I’m like you, I never watch it.”

He took the bottle of pastis from the almost empty closet. Sorry, I don’t have any ice. He seemed to enjoy putting on this performance for me, as if he hadn’t felt so happy to be alive in years. He rolled himself a cigarette too. His things piled up in the middle of the room, like the last possessions of a guy who’s about to disappear.

The watch on his wrist drew my attention: it was an old watch, I’d seen watches like that a long time ago, on the wrists of uncles and neighbors during my childhood. He saw what I was looking at, it was my father’s last watch, he said. He’d gotten nothing from him except beatings, in his early years. He’d been very happy when he’d left, when he was about ten, and so was his mother. He was smiling as if to himself. It occurred to me that this wasn’t the first time he’d told this to someone. Then, when he died, in some little town in Brittany, it was a long time since they’d heard from him, either his mother or him. Anyway, he’d gotten his watch, a few photos, his mother had never wanted to tell him who the woman was beside him in the photographs. In any case it was working well.