The Thursday Night Men

  As he walked into another salon he finally espied his fair lady, surrounded exclusively by men on the young side who all seemed perfectly at home in their bespoke tailoring, luxury leather and Swiss watches. Philippe stood to one side for a moment to enjoy the spectacle of the fuss they made over her and observe the posturing of a handful of predators. Among them was a mega-rich captain of industry, a good-looking playboy by vocation, all of which made him the likeliest pretender to a woman like Mia. Far from viewing him as a serious rival, Philippe, as a good entomologist of human behavior, identified him as an insect of the arthropod variety, which includes spiders but also crabs, creatures that move tangentially, qualified as pests for the environment. Philippe had always been fascinated by the spectacle of arrogance in action, for he found therein an absolute lack of self-doubt that summed up the contemporary era. He could just imagine the witticisms spouting from the man’s mouth, pathetic outbursts which, once they’d been stripped of the cynicism stolen from thoroughgoing sniggerers and insolent mediagenic posers, were proof of a rare vulgarity. Of a refined vulgarity, of the educated sort, knowing how far was too far, capable at any moment of brandishing the grain-of-salt card when an interlocutor verged on complacency. If Philippe Saint-Jean had ever been out looking for his perfect symmetrical counterpart, the obscene version of his ego, as of tonight he knew what he looked like.

  Mia spotted him at last and motioned to him to join her. With one furtive kiss on the lips, she decreed who was chosen and who was damned. Arrogance had changed sides. As he savored this rare moment, Philippe knew he had just avenged the little boy he once was, for the time when the prettiest girl in school only had eyes for the bad boys—and it was partly her fault if the shy boy he had once been turned into a contemplative soul. The dashing CEO found it difficult to hide his shock upon hearing the word philosopher, which delighted Mia. Thus, this creature with her divine measurements was sleeping with a thinking entity? Was this how the supermodel got her rocks off? With this egghead, this pinched intellectual? A guy who was neither loaded, nor dead handsome, nor world famous, but who had dreamt up a few ideas and published books that changed hands at the Sorbonne? Who would have believed it? Ordinarily, sirens like her swallowed the bait on the shiniest hooks and were easily reeled in from the side of a yacht. Not to lose his haughty stance altogether, the deposed admirer displayed a knowing scorn for all things written and thought. He was practically boasting about confusing Schopenhauer with a Formula 1 driver; he was lousy at spelling, but his two assistants, with their postgraduate degrees, could take care of that; he had not read Sartre’s Being and Nothingness but he would rent the DVD. When faced with ignorance that was flaunted as a banner of social standing, Philippe never hesitated to brandish his fists—he had wiped out bankers, speculators, self-proclaimed artists and sons of who were only too happy to follow in Daddy’s footsteps. This pinched intellectual boxed in a category that could knock out any arrogant jerk who even tried do battle by the word. His challenger, beaten before he’d begun, knew when it was time to throw in the towel.

  A few photographers had been allowed into the salons, and when Mia spotted them starting to head their way, she led Philippe out onto the balcony, asked him to put her glass somewhere, adjusted the top of her gown and took his hand as she turned to face the cameras, with the Ferris wheel of the Tuileries in the background. The photograph would be perfect, and the moment was, too: a high point, no doubt, of the kind that leaves one, already, nostalgic.

  At the Montparnasse stop all, of a sudden the carriage emptied out and then filled again just as quickly; Denis Benitez could not help but envy all those people who were about to go home for dinner and would be able to sleep peacefully, their minds at rest. The closer he got to his home, the more the image of Marie-Jeanne Pereyres in her nightgown took over, the woman more ensconced than ever, silent but ready to face a new onslaught of questions. What really got to him was the way she reversed the roles, acting patient, even kindly toward her host while she got in his way, to the point of seeming surprised by his mood or his eagerness for things to return to normal. And there was no way he could go to the police or file a complaint for forcible entry, he could just imagine the duty officer’s look, and his reaction as he wrote down the complaint: This is really a very ordinary case you’re bringing us, Monsieur Benitez, me too I wake up every morning with a perfect stranger in my bed, the same one for the last twenty-five years, impossible to get rid of her, and I still don’t know what she wants from me.

  A woman in her fifties came and sat down on the seat opposite Denis, glanced at him briefly, then opened her magazine.

  She wears her hat as if it were a crown, and her gaze says, “I may be taking the métro but I have a life elsewhere.”

  What use was this power of his to decrypt if the only woman he needed desperately to decode remained opaque? There must be a meaning to this mysterious irony, but what was it?

  He saw a young teenage girl a short distance away, leaning against the door.

  She’s pregnant but not flaunting it, her features are relaxed, she’s not sorry to be swapping her role as a girl for that of a mother.

  Sometimes Denis wondered why none of the women he had known had seen him as a potential father. No doubt he didn’t inspire the trust and solidity that create that desire for fusion. Not one of them had been reckless enough to say, Let’s make a human being we can be proud of. Not one of them had wanted to embark on that adventure with him, even the ones who had loved him.

  But what could one say about the intruder?

  About her stubbornness of tempered steel? Her formidable talent for interfering? The way she could strut about on a dingy sofa? How stupid could he get, not to have thought of it earlier! It was as old as the dawn of time! It went round and round, like a biological clock. Why waste his time on the romantic hypothesis that Marie-Jeanne Pereyres was some passionate heroine, or even the more pragmatic theory that she was an old maid looking for an end no matter what? There was only one hypothesis that made more sense than all the others now: Marie-Jeanne had tried everything to get pregnant.

  As lovers filed by one after the other, she had persevered until she had her fortieth birthday in her sights: if she couldn’t find a father, she’d make do with a genitor. A guy just passing by, a guy she’d recruit for the occasion, a married man, already a father, in good health, and who would never find out he’d been used. But as each of her appointments with her ovular destiny failed, she turned to science and test tubes. Alas, the lady at the Center for the Study and Preservation of Human Eggs and Sperm had pronounced her far too single to aspire to insemination, and Marie-Jeanne had gone away with a heavy heart and an empty gut. The most preposterous ideas had crossed her mind: ask a friend, present the scheme to him as a joke, a proof of friendship. She’d take care of the diapers, all he had to do was come over one night with a bottle of vodka for Dutch courage and then he could disappear. The lad wasn’t too sure about it all, but he was flattered, then he vanished without a trace. In spite of everything, Marie-Jeanne Pereyres had not yet reached the limits of her imagination or of her patience. There must be a solution, however extravagant. Any woman who had ever burned with the desire to have a child would absolve her. What better way to get pregnant than to take a man hostage?

  Kris was clearly the one who was more ill at ease, as she wondered what the true purpose of this impromptu off-duty meeting was.

  “Would you like a little limoncello, Kris?”

  “What I would like would be for you to call me by my real name, Christelle.”

  This sounded like a far more intimate request than some new variation on the lotus position. For a whole hour she had talked about herself, how she’d interrupted her studies too soon, her wild youth, her future dreams. He had listened to her the way he did between two bouts of lovemaking, because he listened to all the women, and each one imagined she was the only one entitled to such special attention.
Kris allowed herself a brief incursion of insane ideas, Edenic images. Having a never-ending affair with her special client. As for Yves, he was merely spending a pleasant moment with one of his bed partners.

  “You’ve always told me that prostitutes play a role, and that their pseudonym is a part of it, just like their look and the way they speak. You are prepared to abandon that persona, just because we’ve shared a plate of spaghetti al nero di seppia?”

  And here she’d thought she wasn’t the least bit vulnerable, not even to insults: it was as if she’d been slapped.

  “With you I can’t be Kris anymore.”

  Yves suddenly found himself in the position of an ingénue who thinks she’s with a confidant when he’s really only another suitor in her wake. He was flattered, but he was afraid he’d made a gaffe inviting her to dinner like this, since now it looked suspiciously like a romantic tête-à-tête. In her features he suddenly saw Pauline as she had been during their first times alone together—the modestly lowered eyes, the flushed cheeks, the impish smile. It was precisely the sort of face that he no longer wanted to see, that face of disarmed sincerity, pure intentions, and infinite tenderness to come. Ever since women of easy virtue had begun parading through his house, so many other emotions had become indispensable to him. In addition to the fever a stranger’s body could provoke, with that frenzy of immediate nudity and the bliss of hitherto unknown caresses, there was also the terrible pride of seeing the women leave his bed less mistrustful than upon arrival. This was essential: he had to get her to let her guard down, this woman who saw him either as an embarrassed fool, a cash register, or an enemy. Yves was not especially gifted as a lover, and had a perfectly ordinary body, but he knew now how to tame the wildest among them, and after a night or two he had them eating out of his hand. And so what if he never became a one-woman man ever again, if he never knew the joys coupledom: let his peers take care of that, they had the skills and the patience. For every Asia, Jessica, or Victoire who ardently impaled herself upon him, there was a Pauline he could thank for having betrayed him, for having released him from the duty of constancy.

  “You don’t think it suits me?”

  “What?”

  “Christelle.”

  “It does. Makes me imagine the little girl you used to be.”

  That little girl was coming to the surface now, impressed by an adult, a man she wanted to charm with candor and frankness, the opposite of her usual weapons. Not taking his eyes from her, Yves tugged discreetly on his sleeve to look at the time, then asked the waiter for the check.

  “Are you going home?” she asked.

  “I can give you a lift, I have two helmets.”

  Resolved to confide further in him, to confess what she felt for him, Kris decided that this night would be her treat. And a luxury for herself at the same time.

  “I’ll come with you. On me this time.”

  Not to ruffle her feelings, Yves tried to think of a way out, and could already hear himself lying about how tired he was, how he’d woken up at the crack of dawn. But what was the point justifying himself to Kris: didn’t he pay her in order to see her appear and disappear without having to owe her any explanations? He had almost reacted like a husband, or even a single guy bogged down in a relationship. As he was neither, he laid his hand on Kris’s and told her, as he generally did, the truth.

  “Tonight I have an appointment with Kim, a Vietnamese girl who Jessica recommended. She wasn’t free until one in the morning. I can’t cancel. You don’t like it either, when a customer does that to you.”

  She didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve never made love with an Asian woman, I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks. I’ve often told you as much but you don’t know anyone.”

  What Kris heard above all was that he had trusted someone else for that sort of recommendation.

  “You won’t hold it against me?”

  “Me, hold something against you? The only clients I hold anything against are the ones who beat me up.”

  Once again she was the whore, he was the john, everything was back in place. Kris might feel hurt, but he had broken no rules, he had never come to her wearing a mask, he had never reneged on a promise. He was simply, calmly pursuing his quest to the end.

  Before leaving the table, she could not help but give him a warning.

  “You can forget what I’m about to tell you, but I’ll say it all the same. Be careful. Be careful with your freedom, the ease of what you’ve chosen. I know where it leads. Today you can pick up the phone and have all the women you want, and this can go on as long as there are men with money in their pockets and women ready to relieve them of it. But ask yourself what you’re sacrificing by giving up the hunt, by not playing the charm game. Sooner or later your senses will become dulled, you won’t know how to recognize the signals anymore, you’ll no longer take the risk that a woman might read into you, and you’ll lose your fine casual attitude. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

  He promised her, although he didn’t really think he would. Once they were outside he kissed her on both cheeks and left her, saying, “Bye, Kris.”

  Philippe Saint-Jean was now the partner of one of the most beautiful women in the world, and the world had just found out about it. Thus, their few months of clandestine existence had come to an end, an existence that had given them the illusion of overcoming certain hurdles, of creating their relationship in opposition to, of deserving their future. By becoming Mia’s official companion, Philippe was in danger of finding himself in the public eye far more than he ever had been as a philosopher; no doubt that was the price you paid, but why turn down such an adventure? Even if he refused to see his companion as a trophy, her exceptional fame had played a huge role. He had always known the importance of another person’s gaze on the object of one’s desire and, in the case of someone like Mia, that gaze was multiplied by a global coefficient; a simple exponential calculation allowed him to conclude that you don’t get tired of a girl like her: he had the odds on his side. And anyway, he felt he deserved Mia, she was his just reward for so many years spent defending just causes, separating truth from falsehood, advocating Beauty and Good, preserving his faith in humankind. Philippe may not have believed in fate, but fate, not one to hold grudges, had seen the wisdom, not once but twice, of placing Mia in his path.

  He did, however, have one last reason to be seen on Mia’s arm that night. And that reason wore a pearl gray dress whose neckline proudly revealed, above her breast, a swashbuckler’s scar that Philippe could not get enough of. Mia could sense her boyfriend was troubled.

  “Do you know her?”

  He only ever ran into Juliette by chance, now; he refused to convert into mere friendship a love affair that had been so intense. They sometimes came across each other at lunchtime in a restaurant on the Rue de Bièvre where they used to dine together, back in the days, or in the corridors of a shared publishing house. As a rule, he acted indifferent and gratified her with a compliment taking them back to their lost intimacy. In those furtive moments he had to restrain himself from lifting his hand to stroke those curls he had smoothed so often with his fingers.

  However, this sudden encounter in the gilt of the Hôtel Crillon owed nothing to chance. Because she had written a significant work on turn-of-the-century artistic movements, Juliette had been a consultant on the film being honored that night. Philippe had always known this.

  “Go say hello to her,” said Mia.

  He did not need her permission, but he thanked her with his eyes.

  “Still six foot one and a hundred and thirty-nine pounds?”

  “What are you doing here? In a tux no less?”

  Somewhat too evasively, they both tried to find out whether the other was seeing someone. Not wanting to face the answers, Philippe refrained from asking her the questions that were burning his lips. He would rather
preserve his image of a Juliette finding it hard to get over their separation, incapable of falling in love from that moment on, feeling somehow soiled if she spent the night with another man. On the other hand, he managed to slip the words my partner into the conversation fairly quickly, pointing her out a short way away, where she was surrounded by admirers.