Hunting and Gathering (32 page)

“I stand by what I said: a food factory. But a well-made factory.”

 
Camille picked up the tab, Yes, yes, I insist, you guys can do the vacuuming; they retrieved the suitcase, stepping over a few more bums here and there, and then Lucky Strike straddled his motorbike and the other two hailed a taxi.

53

SHE watched for him in vain the next day, the day after that, and the days which followed. No news. The security guard, with whom she now regularly had a chat (Matrix's right testicle hadn't descended, what a drama), didn't seem to know anything about him. And yet Camille knew he was around somewhere. Whenever she left a net bag full of bread, cheese, little salads, bananas and dog food behind the bottles of detergent, it would consistently disappear. Never the tiniest dog hair or crumb, never the faintest odor. For a junkie he was remarkably well organized, to such a degree that she even wondered about the recipient of her kindness. It might well be the guard who was feeding his uni-testicular mutt for free. She explored discreetly, only to find out that Matrix ate nothing but vitamin B
₁₂
-enriched dog biscuits with a soup spoon of castor oil for his fur. Canned food was crap. Why would you give your dog something you wouldn't eat yourself?

Good point, why?

“But dog biscuits, that's the same thing, you'd never eat them yourself,” said Camille.

“Of course I would!”

“Yeah, really.”

“I swear!”

The sad thing was that she could believe it. She could imagine just-one-ball and just-one-brain-cell sitting together nibbling on doggy chicken croquettes in front of a porn film in their overheated hut in the middle of the night; that wasn't just a remote possibility. In fact, it seemed quite appropriate.

 
Several days went by like this. Sometimes he didn't show. The baguette went hard and the cigarettes were still there. Sometimes he came by and took nothing but the dog food. Too much dope or not enough to enjoy a feast . . . Sometimes she wasn't able to bring anything. But she wasn't going to worry about it anymore. Just a quick glance around the back of the storage room to see if she should empty out her bag or not.

 
Camille had other things on her mind.

 
At the apartment everything was fine, going smoothly, charter or no charter, Myriam or no Myriam, OCD or no OCD: everyone went merrily on their way without disturbing their neighbor. They greeted one another in the morning and got gently stoned in the evening. Grass, hash, booze, incunabula, Marie Antoinette or Heineken, it was to each his or her own trip, and Marvin for all.

 
During the day, Camille made her sketches, and when he was there Philibert would read to her or give her a running commentary on his family albums:

“This is my great-grandfather. The young man next to him is his brother, Uncle Élie, and in front of them are their fox terriers . . . They used to organize dog races and it was the village priest—you can see him sitting there by the finish line—who designated the winner.”

“Hey, they had fun in their day, didn't they.”

“And good thing they did. Two years later they left for the front lines in the Ardennes and six months after that they were dead, both of them.”

 
No, it was at work that everything was falling apart. First of all, the guy on the sixth floor had come up to her one night and asked her where she'd put his feather duster. Ha-ha, he was so pleased with his joke that he'd followed her all the way down the hall, shouting over and over, “I'm sure it was you! I'm sure it was you!” Get lost, fat slob, you're in my way.

“No, it was my co-worker,” she had eventually barked, pointing to Super Josy, who was in the midst of counting her varicose veins.

Game over.

 
Secondly, she just couldn't stomach Ms. Bredart anymore.

She was as thick as two planks, and abused the tiny bit of power she had (site head at All-Kleen wasn't exactly head of the Pentagon, after all). She sweated, she spat, pinched the caps off ballpoint pens to pick at bits of meat stuck in her molars; and she often took Camille aside and whispered to her a racist joke, since Camille was the only other white person on the team.

 
Camille often had to cling to her floor mop simply in order not to scream in Josy's face, and the other day she'd finally begged her to keep her trash thoughts to herself because she was beginning to annoy everyone.

“And who d'you think you are,” countered Josy. “What makes you think you can talk to me like that? What the hell you doing here, anyways? Spying or something? Matter of fact I was wondering that just the other day. That maybe the bosses sent you to spy on us or some-thin' like that. I seen on your pay slip where you live. And look how you talk and all—you're not one of us, are you? You stink of bourgeois, you stink of money. You little snobby bitch.”

The other girls didn't react. Camille gave a push to her cart and started to walk away.

Then she turned around:

“Whatever Josy here has to say, I don't give a damn because I despise her, but you guys-you're useless. I opened my big mouth for your sake, so that she'd stop humiliating you, and I don't expect you to thank me—I really don't give a fuck about that—but the least you could do is come and do the toilets with me. Because I may be bourgeois but it's me who always gets stuck with the toilets, in case you hadn't noticed.”

 
Mamadou made a funny noise with her mouth and dribbled a huge gob of spit at Josy's feet, a truly monstrous thing. Then she picked up her bucket, swung it in front of her and hit Camille in the buttocks:

“How can a girl with such a tiny ass have such a huge mouth? With you around, wonders will never cease.”

 
The others grumbled and groused and began to drift away. Camille didn't care about Samia; but she did care about Carine. Camille really liked her. Carine, whose real name was Rachida, but who didn't like her name, and who was slaving away for that fascist pig. Well, that girl would go far.

 
From that day on, a new order reigned. But the work was still just as brainless and the atmosphere was sickening. Altogether it was quite a package.

Camille may have lost her co-workers, but she was in the process of winning a friend. Mamadou had begun to wait for her outside the métro, and they teamed up. Mamadou talked while Camille did the work for two. It was not that Mamadou was trying to get out of doing her share; it was simply, sincerely, that she was just too fat to be very efficient. What took her a quarter of an hour, Camille could do in two minutes, and, on top of that, Mamadou ached all over. And she wasn't pretending. Her poor body could hardly take it anymore: her monstrous thighs, her enormous breasts, her even bigger heart. If something inside her balked at the idea of work, it made sense.

“You've got to lose weight, Mamadou.”

“Yes, indeedy. And you? When you going to come and try my homemade chicken?” she'd retort, every time.

 
Camille made a deal with her: I'll do the work, but you talk to me.

 
Who would have thought that such an innocent proposal would lead so far. Mamadou's childhood in Senegal, the sea, the dust, the little goats, the birds, the poverty, her eleven brothers and sisters, the old white priest who would remove his glass eye to make them laugh, her arrival in France in 1972 with her brother Léopold, the garbage cans, her failed marriage, her husband who was kind despite it all, her kids, her sister-in-law who spent her afternoons in the department stores while Mamadou did all the work, the kid who pooped again but in the stairway this time, all the parties they had, all the hassles, her cousin Germaine who hanged herself last year, leaving behind two adorable twin girls, Sunday afternoons in the phone booth, her colorful African clothing, her recipes and a million other images that Camille never tired of. No need to read
Courrier International
, Senghor or the Seine-Saint-Denis edition of the
Parisien
: all you had to do was scrub a little harder and open your ears wide. And if Josy happened by, which was rare, Mamadou would bend over, give a little wipe to the floor and wait for the smell to disperse before raising her head again.

 
Story upon story, secret upon secret, Camille dared to ask more personal questions. Her co-worker told her some horrible things, or things which seemed horrible to Camille at least, with a disarming nonchalance.

“But how do you manage all that? How do you hold up? How do you cope? A schedule like that is sheer hell.”

“Ta ta ta . . . don't talk about things you don't know about. Hell's a lot worse than what you know. Hell is when you can't see the folks you love. All the rest don't count. Say, don't you want me to get you some clean rags?”

“I'm sure you could find some work closer to home. Your kids shouldn't be staying alone at night, you never know what could happen.”

“My sister-in-law is there.”

“But you said you can't count on her.”

“Sometimes I can.”

“All-Kleen is a big company, I'm sure you could find a site nearer to home . . . You want me to help? Want me to ask for you? Write to the head of personnel?” said Camille, standing up.

“No, better leave well enough alone. Josy is who she is, but she turns a blind eye on a lot of things, you know. I'm such a fat gossip, I'm lucky to have this job in the first place. You remember that medical visit we had last fall? That stupid little doctor? He gave me a hard time because he said my heart was buried in too much fat or some bullshit like that, and it was Josy who fixed things for me. So you see, better not mess with things as they are.”

“Hang on . . . are we even talking about the same person? That old cow who's always treating you like you were the bottom of the shit heap?”

“Yes, we are talking about the same person!” said Mamadou with a laugh. “She's the only Josy I know, and thank God for that!”

“But you just finished spitting at her.”

“What do you mean, I been spitting at her?” she said angrily. “I wouldn't do a thing like that.”

Camille emptied the shredder in silence. Any way you looked at it, life could deliver some odd surprises sometimes.

“Well, anyways, it's nice of you to offer. You're a good kid, you are. You have to come around the house one evening so my brother can fix it so you'll have a nice life with true love and lots of kids.”

“Ugh.”

“What, ‘ugh'? You don't want kids?”

“No.”

“Don't say that, Camille. You'll bring bad luck.”

“Too late for that.”

Mamadou gave her a nasty look: “You should be ashamed of yourself talking like that. You have a job, a roof, two arms, two legs, a country, an admirer—”

“Excuse me?”

“Ha!” she said triumphantly. “You think I haven't see you with Nourdeen downstairs? How you're always petting his big dog . . . you think my eyes are buried in fat too?”

Camille blushed.

To please her.

 
Nourdeen was hyper that evening and even plumper than usual in his law enforcement boiler suit, exciting his dog and acting as if he were Dirty Harry.

“Well, what's going on?” Mamadou asked him. “Why your dog growling like that?”

“I don't know what it is, but there's something funny going on. Don't hang around, girls. Don't stay here.”

 
Oh, he was in pig heaven; all he needed was a pair of Ray-Bans and a Kalashnikov.

“Don't stay here, I said!”

“Hey, calm down,” Mamadou replied. “Don't get so worked up.”

“Let me do my job, fat lady! I don't come and tell you how to hold your broom, do I?”

Hmm. What's bred in the bone . . .

 
Camille pretended to take the métro with Mamadou, then went back up the steps using the other exit. She walked around the block twice, and finally found them in the deep entryway of a shoe store. He was sitting with his back against the shop window and his dog was asleep on his legs.

“Are you doing okay?” she asked casually.

He raised his eyes and it took him a moment to recognize her.

“Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“The food and stuff, too?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, thanks.”

Camille was silent.

“Does that crazy guy have a gun?”

“I have no idea.”

“Okay, then. So long.”

“I can show you a place to sleep if you want.”

“A squat?”

“Sort of.”

“Who's there?”

“No one.”

“Is it far?”

“Near the Eiffel Tower.”

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

She had hardly gone three steps down the street when a cop car, siren wailing, pulled up in front of hyperexcited Nourdeen. The boy caught up with Camille just as she was reaching the boulevard:

“What do you want in exchange?”

“Nothing.”

No more métro. They walked to the stop for the Night Owl bus. “You go ahead and leave me your dog, they won't let you get on with him. What's his name?”

“Barbès.”

 
“That's where I found him, the Barbès-Rochechouart métro station.”

“Right, like Paddington bear.”

She took the dog in her arms and gave the driver a big smile; he didn't give a damn.

 
They met up at the back of the bus.

“What kind of dog is this?”

“Do we really have to talk, too?”

“No.”

 
“I put a new padlock on but it's symbolic. Here's the key. Just don't lose it, I only have one.”