Dominique Fabre - Guys Like Me

“Well,” he said, “it was great to see you again, even if the circumstances could be better.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Shall we have a bite to eat one of these days?”

He said yes, shall I call you or will you call me?

I didn’t need to think too much, I said no, I’ll call you, no problem, we can meet next week.

We shook hands before we left the bar. The young woman at the cash register said goodbye, her voice sounded dull and worn. Her hard features under her blonde hair, in a bar on Rue d’Amsterdam. He wasn’t sad or depressed, that time, any more than the following times. Most of the time, he kept in good spirits. He was born like that, in good spirits. What was he doing that evening? He shrugged, one hand holding the empty case and the other in the pocket of his raincoat, as if he could have stayed like that for years.

“I’m going for a walk, I may catch a movie, now that I have the card.”

He still had his boyish smile, he meant his unemployment card, stamped so that he could get discounts.

“So long, I’ll call you.”

Then I walked down the street without turning around. Anyone seeing us together might have thought that two old friends had just had a drink, and that these moments stolen from everyday life (work, a wife, the children already flown the nest) had been a sliver of pleasure in their lives. I mean guys who’ve known each other for more than thirty years, yes, that’s it, much more than thirty years in fact. All things considered, I’d enjoyed seeing him again. Apart from that, I wasn’t sure what else to think.

That evening, thanks to him, I went back home with an idea in my head, something important to do, I had to try to help him get work. If it was only up to me … That’s the kind of crap I’ve often told myself, since I’ve been alone and no woman has spent the night with me. I went through his résumé, trying to cross-check. If I could believe what I was reading, things had started to go wrong for him in 1997, which was already quite a while ago. What was going on in my life that year? I can remember people, events, sometimes I can remember very clearly conversations Benjamin and I had twenty years ago, I can even quote what he said word for word. But I get con-fused about dates. 1997, I really can’t remember what that year had been like for me. Jean had even worked abroad for a short time, in Germany, he knew the language, I remembered that. I thought about two or three people I could call, though I didn’t hold out much hope. For a few years now, all the guys like me have been putting together résumés and distributing them conscientiously, knowing there isn’t really any point. He runs into you suddenly, one way or another, the one who gives and the one who asks, and you never really know why you’re on one side or the other. Why had he run into me near Cour du Havre on the occasion of an interview I’d twice postponed, rather than someone else who might not have recognized him? I thought of Marc-André, he might be interested, thinking about Germany. Then I put away his papers, I tried only not to think about him, in other words about me too, and also a few others, guys from my teenage years. The Hauts-de-Seine had changed a hell of a lot, but we were still alive, some of us still kept in touch, they didn’t want to let it all go. In a very short time, you end up forgetting. Sometimes I remembered passionate conversations we’d had, he was there too, we’d been to the movies, they still sometimes had debates after the movie in those days. Was it Marc-André who’d worked for a sound engineer while he was studying? All of us knew already, even at the age of twenty, that the world we came from was in the process of disappearing, but we didn’t think about it most of the time. I put his résumé away in my desk, where I spend a lot of time. Sometimes I bring back work, but most of the time I sit there and do nothing at all, it’s next to the window.

At the start, Benjamin’s mother and I lived in a two-room apartment, my office was in the bedroom, then, when he was ten, we moved, and I had a room specially for my office, but I didn’t really use it. I’ve forgotten why, anyway. Nowadays, almost every day, I sit down at my desk for a while. When I get home from work, I sit down at my desk for five minutes, trying to relax, or else, in the morning, I often sit there briefly, for no reason. Something’s waiting for me there, but what? As a result, my desk always seems like somebody else is inhabiting it, somebody else who’s exactly like me. Saturday morning is when I read the newspaper. Sometimes, when I feel like it, I write letters. I have a photo of my son and me, he’s thirteen, we’re both in Collioure, I’m in the midst of separating from his mother, I’m trying not to let anything show. The weather is fantastic. I’ve put my laptop in the living room, I don’t use it much. All I did was join a dating site, which I look at when I feel like it. A lot of people do that where I work, not all of them are married. The photograph on my profile is already a bit old, I can’t make up my mind to change it. But in spite of that deception, all I’ve had are some pretty dull dates, women obsessed with their age, in a hurry to rebuild their lives. That’s why I soon stopped putting on a show for most of my dates. I also have photos in the dresser, mainly of Benjamin. For a long time I tried not to look at them during the week, between the weekends, when I was allowed to see him, because they sometimes made me feel really bad. Anaïs asked me to show them to her. All three of us were moved. It was like looking at a life. I keep two of him in my wallet, one when he’s about ten, we were both with his mother, and another taken at the Buttes-Chaumont park last year, he’s with Anaïs and some other guys from the same biology lab, they’re all lying on the grass. I filched it from him one evening when he and Anaïs invited me for dinner. Filched it like a little boy. I stayed there five minutes. Things were going poorly for him too. The country really wasn’t working, you heard people say that more and more often, and I ended up believing it. Sometimes also, when I’m sitting at my desk, memories come to me, there are often good moments waiting for me. Or at other times, I expect the opposite, and I don’t open the door to that room all weekend, in order not to spoil anything.

I’d enjoyed seeing him again. I hadn’t asked him any questions, and in the end he hadn’t told me much about himself. Maybe there was nothing to say. Things were the way they were. We’d only decided to have a drink together the following week. I hadn’t suggested lunch, because I didn’t have my appointments book with me. It was in my desk, I also have two personal organizers, and lots of others from past years. My mother used to keep them too. Sometimes, she’d cross out every page and write the important appointments in shorthand so that nobody would know what they were. Who could have known them? I knew all the initials in her life, and I could imagine who without wanting to. Much later, I started collecting movie tickets, I used to go quite often at one point, just after my divorce. I’d go directly from my office to the movie theater, when I wasn’t invited over to friends’, and immediately afterwards, when I got back, I’d take a shower and go straight to bed, with sleeping pills. That way I didn’t have too much time to think about anything else. Of course, sometimes it didn’t work, but anyway. I also collected business cards of all the guys I met, and one summer, I’d only been away for ten days with Benjamin, I placed them all in a row and glued them like that, it took me two days. I bought some glass mounts in Paris, and then spent two days on it. Why was I in that state? For a long time I looked at those cards without daring to hang them on the wall, and then, one day, a woman came to my apartment and looked at them in a strange way, and that was when I understood. Or rather, I didn’t really understand, but since I wanted her to stick around, I realized that I probably had to do something else as far as decoration went. Sylvie. 1997. That was the year his résumé seemed to have the most gaps, not very well concealed. Eight years of hard times? 1997: Sylvie and I lived together for almost two years. We both made an effort, but in different directions, and in the end we drifted apart. And then she met a man who was a few years younger than her and fell “madly in love.” I like that expression, I wrote it on a card I sent her from Martinique, with a question mark. That was dumb of me, obviously. She never replied to my question. Had I ever loved as much as she had? Had I ever been loved?