Dominique Fabre - Guys Like Me

She wasn’t alone like some people you saw getting chemo in Beaujon. On the table she’d put the bunch of flowers that some of the regulars from the boulevard had given her, they had all signed a picture postcard of the Batignolles, her colleagues and her patients. It wasn’t far away, but it was a long way too, these days. She was tired of the chemo. She was tired of not knowing, and of feeling her body get rapidly weaker. She was tired of the cold sweats. Plus, she was putting on weight, have you seen how fat I’m getting? My eyes must have gone as round as marbles. That made her laugh, and then she stopped. She was too on edge. She didn’t want me to see her in that state. She asked me to forgive her. Don’t talk nonsense, please. I’ll call you when I get home. Yes, I understand, don’t worry. Marie. I worked three more days. She really wasn’t feeling well, but it’ll be OK, you can drop by later, don’t worry.

“Why’s everyone worrying? I’m not going to die tomorrow.”

I wasn’t very sure what I should do. On Friday I couldn’t stop looking at my cell phone, it rang once but it was Benjamin, he wanted to know how I was. Anaïs was coming next week, oh, and how about the scooter? I hadn’t done anything about it yet. Is something wrong? Marie isn’t very well, I don’t know, Ben. I thought to myself that he was right about the scooter. I wasn’t as alone as all that, when it came down to it, I would never be as alone as all that.

Once, a year after the divorce, his mother had come to see me. I’ve never forgotten that, whereas if I met her again today I’d probably have the impression she was returning from another life, one where I could never take my place. We hadn’t had any contact for a year. She’d had her lawyer send me letters, and out of the whole of our relation-ship, all I remembered now was the end, that anger I had against her, and she against me. Today, I’ve forgotten that anger. Why? I don’t know. Was I already living in Levallois at the time? I can’t remember, although it’d be easy enough to check. I hadn’t yet left Asnières in my head, all my life I’d go to a lot of trouble not to move. But after only a few years, there was hardly anybody left I recognized, apart from Marco, obviously. She called me, she had something to tell me. I asked her where she wanted us to meet and she said, how about the café? We arranged to meet at the end of Rue de Rome, toward evening, after work. We’d been regulars in that place. I’d even taken Benjamin there once, we’d just been to see a movie on Rue du Pasquier, in a theater I’d often gone to with his mother. I liked that theater, a long time ago. The female ushers were dressed in sky blue and lots of people came from the nearby suburbs. Ben was still all excited by the movie, was it Star Wars ? I’m not sure. We had a Coke and everything I’d wanted to tell him, so that he’d know it and never forget it, I finally kept to myself. I got there early. I sat down to wait for her, and without meaning to I went over in my mind all the things she was going to blame me for, the times I was late bringing back Benjamin, the two months’ alimony I hadn’t paid, and that anger I felt, because I hadn’t defended myself in order not to hurt my son, or even not to hurt us, the memories we had in common, and which are our only wealth, I think.

I thought she looked very beautiful when she arrived. Her hair was pulled back and her lips were very red, she’d never have worn that kind of lipstick when we were married. It suited her. She sat down opposite me, she was a little out of breath. Do you mind if I pull down the curtain? Well? She wanted us to make peace. She wanted us to be friends. That had to be possible between us. I sat there stunned all the time she spoke. I replied that it was weird, she was asking me this after a year of lawyers and notices from bailiffs, I’d only just found work again. She’d had no choice.

“We always have a choice,” I said.

There are no second acts. Then we talked about Benjamin, since she wanted us to be friends. I would really have liked him to come on Friday evening straight after school, from time to time. Not just before noon on Saturday. There isn’t much time, if you start at noon on Saturday. She never answered yes or no to this. She told me she would see. But it wasn’t in the divorce settlement. So after a while, when she and I realized that we would never again be able to speak to each other, we sat there in that café without saying a word. How many couples had been there before us? How many couples who had thought they would love each other forever and had realized that in spite of everything it was all over? It was so commonplace, so why did we feel so bad? I felt as if I was in a boat swaying from side to side. But nothing is moving on deck. The filled glasses are emptied. The words burn for a brief moment, but as soon as the door of the café opens or closes they disappear, blown away by the wind. And in the end, when she leaves, or he goes out onto the street hardly able to breathe, with his eyes clouded over with nothing at all that you can name, not a single word of what has been said remains.

She stood up and searched in her handbag. She took out some cigarettes, she’d never smoked before.

“I’m seeing Ben next Saturday, is that right?”

I don’t know if he ever knew she and I had seen each other. We never talked about it. Could I have been the friend she wanted? What was in it for me? I found myself in this same café after Benjamin’s phone call. Why was it all coming back to me now, what I’d been through with his mother in this place fifteen years ago? That day, without knowing it, I’d signed up for years of not living. It had happened very quickly. Of course I hadn’t realized it. After a few months on my own, I’d met some women, but we hadn’t taken the time to get to know each other. It was like the empty words we’d spoken in that café at the end of Rue de Rome. Now I didn’t want to lose Marie. I finished my beer and didn’t waste time going all the way to Brochant on foot. She hadn’t called me today and she hadn’t answered my calls either.

I knocked several times at her door. I ran downstairs four steps at a time and asked the concierge for the key. I called the emergency medical service. I went with them from Brochant to Beaujon and they asked me what my connection was to her, but it didn’t really matter. An intern came to see me after a while, it was an infection that had nothing to do with the illness, it happened sometimes, it wasn’t serious. They were going to keep her in overnight, and tomorrow they’d see how she was and do some tests.

“Can I see her?”

They told me to wait while they got a room ready. They let me see her for five minutes, she had tubes in her nostrils and pills on the night table to be taken later, she had an IV in. She looked at me, we couldn’t say anything to each other, and it was at that moment that I knew, I don’t know why I knew but I knew, and I think Marie knew too, she was my second act. We held hands, without the words to tell each other this. She was looking deep into me, where I was the only guy like me at that moment. And there it was, and I left the hospital.

It was bright outside now, I didn’t have to pretend anymore that I wasn’t scared. I went back to the apartment in Brochant, I aired out the rooms, the smell of cooking came from the upper floor and made me feel good. There were always birds although there weren’t any treetops around, I wondered where they came from. I felt like staying there for a while. We’d already spent a whole lot of hours like that, and in closing my eyes, I asked her the question. It was something like what the guy was asking in the F. Scott Fitzgerald book, when it came down to it, but I’d never found the right words in my life. It wouldn’t be easy, with or without the illness. It had never been easy. I fell asleep. It was the dead of night by the time I got back home. The next day I finally bought my scooter. I got the salesman to explain everything, he was a young man the same age as Ben, he offered to take me for a spin. I also bought two helmets and a pair of gloves. I hadn’t been on a two-wheeled vehicle since I was a teenager. But in the end it’s just like a bicycle. I rode on the sidewalks in Levallois and people yelled at me, but what else could I do? I really think I was looking at everything in a new light. Was it a guy like me crossing at a red light, at a green? Where was he going? To his office? To see his family, to look for his memories? His mother in Marseilles or somewhere else? Was he alone that day? Had he always been alone? What were they all thinking about? There were so many places I wanted to go back to, I wanted to revisit my whole past. I quickly called Benjamin to tell him, he was fine, we’d speak soon on the phone. Two days later, Marie was already better. She didn’t want to talk about what she’d had, it happened, and it might not be the last time. She wanted to go home, but the doctors didn’t want her to, she was tired of it all, she was going to sign a discharge.