“Why don’t you send me on vacation? Why not me?”
Yves gave Agnieszka one last look, and slid her ticket across the table to her. She leaned forward to kiss him, for the very first time, on the lips.
Then he left the table. Someone was waiting, clear across Paris.
Denis Benitez did not calm down, far from it; his spite intensified when it came in contact with thirty or more customers all smiling at his sardonic witticisms. Over half of them were women, and Denis did not neglect a single one, whether they were on their own or in pairs, and his preference was for tables of four or five, for that was where things were really difficult: how to make each one feel she was his favorite? With the help of his talent for deciphering, Denis pinned them like butterflies in an endless collection, wings spread wide, caught in full flight.
That one by the bar, a chic sixtysomething, a former beauty who would give anything for one last ride on the merry-go-round.
And that one, the arrogance of the woman who has never loved, she’s finally learning to lower her guard, but it’s surely too late.
Or that one, with her voice of a former smoker, still likes her drink, laugh lines, no regrets.
And then that strange little person, nearsighted, curly hair, enormous patience toward life, she’ll only ever love one man, not necessarily the right one.
Oh, if only he could have used this same power over the only woman who was undecipherable in his eyes. Afraid she might get fed up, he had foregone the basic questions—Who is Marie-Jeanne Pereyres? Where does she come from? What does she want from me?—to keep only one: When is she going to leave me? Every night he was burning to ask her, and every night he merely told her about his day and fell asleep at her side. The next morning, she was still there, a book in her hands, a mug of hot coffee on the night table. They would resume their exploration of each other’s body, trying to surprise each other before they returned to the motifs they both were fond of. Then Denis left for work, and the week went by without the slightest variation. On Sundays they might go for some fresh air by a canal, have a drink at a sidewalk café, talk about the past, but never the future, then Denis would suggest they head back so he could get some rest for his accumulated fatigue. The next morning it was back to his frenzied existence, his mind was nimble once again, he spoke to his female customers in a singularly casual manner, delivered his witticisms as if they were lines in a vaudeville comedy, and like a magician he performed the tricks he had learned in his twenty years as a waiter. Through the dozens of women he encountered day after day, it was Marie-Jeanne Pereyres he was seeking to entertain, tease, shock, and seduce. And, above all, to prevent from leaving.
As he was clearing the table before his break, he found a paper napkin next to a cup with the following handwritten message: The pudding was sweet, and the waiter even more so, followed by a phone number. Denis crumpled it up instinctively. Then smoothed it out again. Hesitated for a long time. And crumpled it up again.
Whenever Yves Lehaleur happened to enter the paved courtyard of a very old building, he liked to picture the way it was in bygone eras—the clothes people wore, and all the life that had been lived there and which gave the place its charm. In this quiet quartier of the Porte Dorée, in southwest Paris, an old stable from the 1700s had been home for over a century to various craftsmen who, when it came time to retire, transferred their lease to younger colleagues, who were ambitious, carefree, and ready to forge ahead with their careers while respecting tradition. The rectangular courtyard, where a gigantic cedar tree spread its branches over an uneven paving, gave onto the workshops of an upholsterer, a varnisher, a cabinetmaker, and a framer. Between the smell of varnish and the crackling of a transistor radio, Yves wandered aimlessly past the doors and glassed-in workshops looking for the space that had been recently vacated.
“You’re one of the very first to see it,” said a neighbor who had the keys. “It used to be a print shop, with a lithography press.”
Yves entered a large empty room with peeling plastered walls and a Godin woodstove right in the middle of the room, old-fashioned but still functioning, and its odor of burning wood could not hide the lingering, persistent smell of ink. Once he was alone, he imagined once again the many artists who had visited this place over time, moved to see their work reborn in the lithographer’s expert hands. He could feel the walls vibrating to the rolling of the press, heard the clicking of its intricate workings, even pictured the prints as they came fresh and colorful from the bowels of the machine. Céline roused him from his daydreaming with a prosaic, What the hell are we doing here?
Yves let her imagine the most extravagant replies, but none would be as extravagant as the real one.
“Don’t tell me you wanted me to meet you here so we could fuck. Some fantasy you got into your head. A quickie behind a carriage entrance? Something like that. Because if so, I’m all for it. Let’s start right away and then we head home.”
“Commercial lease. There’s some key money to pay, but then the rent is very affordable.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I’ll write the check for the key money. You pay me back when you can. That will allow you to invest in supplies.”
She went on acting surprised when, in fact, she knew very well what he was getting at, and in such a perverse way. From the moment she entered the room, the space had seemed so familiar, so right. She could already see where to put a six cubic foot kiln, and a potter’s wheel, near the water source, opposite the enameling kiln, right near the light fixture. The workbench? Over there, against the wall, and above it she could install a rack to stock her clay and her tools. Near the entrance she could have a shelf display for her products, and it would all fit in five hundred square feet, in this dream of a courtyard.
“I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready.”
After she’d worked the stoneware, lava, porcelain, or kaolin, she’d design small objects to begin with—cups, bowls, bud vases, and a teapot she had designed years earlier and never produced. She’d go back and forth between simple shapes with sophisticated motifs and sophisticated shapes with simple motifs. Every item would be unique.
“You have to decide by six o’clock tonight.”
Then she could get back in touch with her old contacts, she’d do the rounds of the boutiques, visit the pottery markets and crafts fairs, she’d make a name for herself with her range and they would recognize her style, even in the most discreet of her objects.
“Say yes, and I’ll go with you to a business start-up center. You give them your information and they take care of the rest, and before the day is done you’re no longer a whore, you’re a ceramist.”
Twenty minutes later, as the scooter wove in and out of the streets of the twelfth arrondissement, Céline, clinging to Yves’s torso, her chin on his shoulder, whispered in his ear that she was not pregnant. Even if he had never thought she was, Yves was relieved.
“I’ll pay you back, I’ll take the time I need. I can even offer you a deal.”
“What would that be?”
“You call me whenever you want me. You’ll be my last client from my former life.”
“Are you joking?”
“It wouldn’t be hustling, I’d be paying you back!”
A moment later he dropped her off outside a building, took her in his arms, and promised he’d consider her proposal. Of all the women, Céline was the only one Yves would remember as a fille de joie.
When the time came to take the checks around to the last diners, Denis Benitez and his colleagues savored the moment when they could remove their aprons and decompress. That meant either smoking a cigarette out on the terrace, or counting tips, or chatting at the bar while they waited for the most stubborn clients to leave. Denis went behind the bar to make himself the cocktail he’d been craving all through his service. David and Remo, the chefs de rang, were perc
hed on barstools wondering what to do with the rest of their evening, when they heard two young women giggling as they finished their white wine.
“Who’s on fourteen?”
Denis nodded, then sipped the bitter sweetness of a proper mix of gin and Campari.
“They look cooked, medium rare,” said Remo.
“They’re looking our way, but who at?” asked David.
Denis didn’t join in the conversation, but made himself a second, even stronger drink, to rid himself of the melancholy that had been getting stronger since nightfall. With the help of the alcohol, his obsessions, like his colleagues’ voices, began to fade.
“The one in red is hot,” said Remo.
“I prefer the other one, with her back to us.”
“If she has her back to us, how can you tell?”
“She’s classier, you can tell, even from behind. That’s what class is all about.”
“I figure they’re single.”
“No, they’re having one of those ‘girls-only’ dinners. They’re debriefing.”
“Debriefing or catching up?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Two chicks who haven’t seen each other for a while, they catch up. But if one of them has something important going on in her life, then they debrief.”
“Shall we do the digestif on the house thing?”
“They’ve had enough to drink.”
“I figure they’re bourgeois. Not the sort who go in for waiters. We’re out of luck. What did they order?”
Remo grabbed the check from the saucer that Denis had prepared.
“Two chanterelles, one carpaccio de Saint-Jacques, tuna a la plancha, two mi-cuits au chocolat.”
“Shit, intellectuals.”
“Intellectuals, but hot.”
“Hot intellectuals, but married to senior executives.”
Glass in hand, Denis felt himself entering a peaceful zone; he was no longer waiting or in limbo, and he no longer feared the intruder’s logic: if she persisted in remaining undecipherable, that was her tough luck. A sudden impulse drove him to put an end to the absurd conversation he’d been listening to for long enough.
“The one in red is called Myriam, she works as a bookkeeper at a TV station. She takes classes in modern dance. She’s just left her guy, he’s the ‘dull heavy type’ according to her, and she can’t stop telling people she’s free, she wants everyone to know. The other is called Charlotte, she lives in Montrouge, she’s a PA, she’s having an affair with a guy in marketing from her company but she claims she’s ‘too much of a flirt to be faithful.’”
“Bah, at least now we know who they’ve been looking at,” said Remo.
“Denis! See if they want to go somewhere for a drink. Do it for our sake! The time it’ll take us for the introductions you can sneak off.”
“Sneak off? Why would I do that?”
Sylvie was not one to wear black to try and hide her curves; she wore bright colors to trumpet them in broad daylight. Most of the time she had a smile on her face, even when things were serious, even at work; this smile disconcerted a number of her clients, who thought she might be making fun of them, which would be unthinkably detached behavior for a whore; her smile helped her to withstand the psychological hardship, to elude the traps of ordinary ugliness, and nothing could wipe it off her face, not even her tears.
“I don’t know how to thank you for not filing a complaint. Ask me for whatever you want.”
“Anything I want?”
“You can’t surprise me.”
Yves had invited her to a café on the Place du Châtelet at an hour when theatres were emptying out and bars were filling up. Normally at that time of day, she would be wringing out her last client to the point of exultation, and if need be she would console him in his post-coital sadness, then back she’d go to her pimp. In front of the TV, his dirty plate still lying around, he would ask, all excited, How’d your day go? Which she translated as meaning, How much did you make? On a good evening, after they’d added it up, he would gratify her with a Well done, honeybun, and off he’d go somewhere, who knows where, with the money in his pocket.
“Leave that stupid fuck.”
“What?”
“Forget the bastard. If you want to go on being a whore, do it for yourself, not for that asshole.”
“You don’t understand.”
“At a push if you were hooked on a real hood, a public enemy, an honorable bandit, a prison escapee—apparently there are women who go in for that sort of guy—then I wouldn’t want to get involved, but that guy of yours is a yellow-bellied punk. His little eyes shine when he watches gangster movies, but he needs to break your arm to feel like a man. And you’re not even in love with him anymore, if you ever were. You just feel sorry for him.”
Like a man in love, Yves sang Sylvie’s praises—told her how she was so much more courageous and generous than that retard who only knew how to flatter her sense of sacrifice. Yves left her no time to argue, but tried to make her dizzy with words, to push her, to force her into the only decision she could make.
“Leave him. Leave him tonight.”
“He’ll go crazy.”
“He’s a coward. What do you think he’ll do? The only strength he has is the strength you give him.”
“I know.”
“Don’t go home. Go away, far away from Paris. Have you got an address? Someone he doesn’t know?”
She didn’t answer.
“Think, damn it!”
“My girlfriend Maïté . . . ”
“Where?”
“In Biarritz.”
Yves consulted his watch, grabbed the telephone. Since he had anticipated this conversation and known what it might lead to, Yves had told Sylvie to meet him in the center of Paris. From there he could reach any train station in less time than it would take to convince her. He took her by the hand, dragged her outside, and with considerable authority placed a helmet on her head.
“Gare d’Austerlitz, we’ll just make it.”
“What?”
“The last train is at 23:11, you’ll be there at 6:53 a.m.”
“But . . . I can’t just leave like that, with nothing, without letting anyone know!”
“Above all, without letting anyone know.”
Unable to run away, she watched as he maneuvered his scooter in the direction of the riverbank. He ordered her to climb on, and she obeyed, paralyzed by this authoritarian manner which was completely new to her. She straddled the scooter as best she could, clinging to the strap and almost losing her balance the moment he accelerated. As they were crossing the Pont de Bercy, he suddenly stopped, but left the motor on and asked Sylvie to hand him her cell phone.
“What for?”
“Give it to me, I said.”
The moment he had the telephone in his hand, Yves tossed it into the Seine.
“That way, you won’t be tempted to answer him or call him.”
Sylvie’s cries of outrage stuck in her throat. They continued on their way to the station, parked on the sidewalk, went tearing over to the ticket office where he bought her a one-way ticket. With one minute until departure, they ran headlong to the last train still on the platform. On the run like this she felt light, proud, a fugitive, as if wind-borne, already out of reach.
“When you get there, go straight to your friend’s, and let some time go by. You know how to do that better than anybody.”
“And what if Grégoire is trying to reach me?”
“If he’s as in love as he says he is, if he’s ready to assume the terrible shame of being seen with you, let him stew, he’ll wait. Better yet, he’ll find you.”
Breathless, she said, “I didn’t . . . I didn’t know . . . that I could even run anymore.”
To keep from bursting in
to tears, she burst out laughing, then climbed into the carriage. Once the door was closed, she put the palm of her hand against the window. Yves placed his on the same spot. She said a long sentence that he could not hear.
All too soon he was alone on the deserted platform.
Couples had formed around a vodka bottle in an ice bucket. Remo filled Myriam’s glass, feigning a lively interest in her job with a television channel. She told him repeatedly that there was nothing exciting about it, but at the same time she went along with the pretence of being interviewed. On the dance floor, David moved closer to Charlotte; both of them liked nightclubs not so much for the people you could meet there as for the state of spontaneous combustion sparked off by the earsplitting music and molten bodies all around; their bodies were drawn together like magnets, swaying in harmony, creating an intimate bond. Denis, on a red leatherette couch, his hand glued to his glass, was listening distractedly to the confessions of a certain Mélanie who’d let him buy her a drink. There had been a time when he was well-accustomed to this nocturnal atmosphere, but nowadays he thought this form of communication was paradoxical to say the least, when complete strangers, uninhibited by alcohol, shared moments of great sincerity screaming in each other’s ears. At around three o’clock in the morning, Mélanie was trying to convince her interlocutor how perfectly unjust the diploma equivalencies were for admission into the prestigious École Nationale d’Administration. Denis, whose eardrums were being hammered, nodded his head to show he was listening, but in fact his fuddled mind was transporting him to Marie-Jeanne’s bedside; perhaps she was awake, waiting for him. He tossed back another shot of vodka to maintain his drunkenness and calm his anger; that woman whom he’d never stopped calling the intruder persisted in refusing to reveal any of the reasons for her presence in his place, nor had she reassured him in any way as to their future together. To be sure, she gave him her body and her love of life, but had Denis even asked for them? She had finagled her way past his door then into his life, without the slightest permission, without a single explanation. Tired of hypotheses and speculation, he wanted to get to the bottom of it, that very night. He now knew how to make her confess her hidden intentions, and to get her with her back to the wall, how to pressure her, torment her if it came to that. Without a doubt, Marie-Jeanne Pereyres was also waiting for this ultimate confrontation.