‘Would you like some prosciutto?’
‘Um, no thanks.’
‘I don’t like prosciutto either. A relative brought it from Italy. I don’t know what to do with it.’
There was a bed at the far end of the room. Her bike – which she had carried upstairs – was propped against the wrought metal of the headboard. Papers and ill-treated books were all over the floor. There was even a piano. Luke lifted the lid and asked Nicole if she could play.
‘It’s just here because it’s too heavy to move. It’s hopelessly out of tune. Let me show you the rest of the place.’ She ushered him out of the main room and along a short corridor and into the bathroom. A pale green bath and toilet, a round wooden mirror. Lotions. Shampoo. Candles. She led him out into the corridor again.
‘That was the bathroom, obviously. And this,’ she said archly, ‘is the bedroom.’ There was a single mattress on the floor, true, but it bore a closer resemblance to a vast walk-in wardrobe. Except it was almost impossible to walk in. A rail was crammed with coats and dresses. Shirts, trousers, socks lay in heaps on the floor or were piled on chairs.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘although this is officially the bedroom, we don’t sleep in here.’ (He loved that ‘we’.) ‘Mainly because there’s not actually any room.’
‘You could do with a chest of drawers.’
‘I hate drawers. I always stuff them too full and they get stuck so I have to saw them open.’ Luke followed her back into the kitchen.
‘Would you like a beer?’ he said.
‘Please.’
He rummaged in the fridge, decided that the bottles were not cold enough, took the glasses out of the freezer, crammed the bottles in there instead and found room for the glasses in the fridge.
‘Put a record on,’ she said. He played the record that was already on the turntable, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ by Serge Gainsbourg, duetting (somewhat absurdly) with Brigitte Bardot. While that was playing he looked at her LPs which were stacked on top of each other so that any dust became wedged in the grooves. He pulled out a recording of Bach’s
Well-Tempered Clavier
– at least that’s what it said in the cover. Inside was a Chet Baker record. He put it on anyway.
‘Where’s the lid to the record player?’
‘It got broken when I tried to make cheese in it.’
‘Ah yes, of course.’ He opened the fridge, took the beer out of the freezer and poured two bottles into the chilled glasses which they clinked before drinking. Still holding her glass, Nicole crouched down and looked in the oven. Chet played some trumpet and then began singing ‘There Will Never Be Another You’.
‘Did you see that mirror by the filing cabinet?’ said Nicole.
‘Yes. It’s nice.’
‘It’s from Belgrade. Very old. So old that it doesn’t work properly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sometimes is slow to work. Like an old wireless. It takes time to warm up. Come. I’ll show you.’ They walked around the filing cabinet and stood to one side of the mirror. ‘Usually it works normally. Sometimes not. We’ll see.’ Nicole took Luke’s hand and they moved in front of the mirror which, for a second, showed only the bed. Then their reflections moved inside the frame and looked back at them. They stepped aside but, for a few moments, the mirror continued to hold their images.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Luke.
‘We were lucky. It is only very rarely that it happens.’
‘Isn’t it spooky?’
‘It’s just old.’ Luke moved back in front of the mirror, in synch with his image. He repeated the action several times and each time the mirror worked absolutely normally.
‘Did it really happen, first time?’
‘Oh, yes. Sometimes there is a very long delay. You can never tell.’
‘And you don’t think it’s scary?’
‘It’s just old,’ said Nicole. ‘We can eat soon if you like.’
‘OK,’ said Luke, stepping in front of the mirror once more: again it worked normally. Nicole put on oven gloves and began tugging the roast chicken out of the oven.
‘Oh we need some big plates. Could you get them? They’re in the – what’s it called? That thing. The cupboard that washes.’
‘The dishwasher?’
‘Dishwasher, yes.’
‘Cupboard that washes is much better,’ said Luke. He kissed her neck while she served the food.
‘You’re supposed to correct my English.’
‘Your English is perfect. But how come you have one of these things, whatever it’s called?’
‘A misunderstanding. The person who had the apartment before said she had a washing machine and if I wanted it I could have it. I said yes but what she called a washing machine was actually—’
‘A cupboard that washes.’
‘Yes. You see, that is why you must correct my English.’
Nicole carved, sort of, and they sat down to their plates of oven-dried chicken, raw roast potatoes and peas.
‘It’s awful isn’t it?’ said Nicole, watching Luke chew.
‘The peas are fine.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not that hungry anyway.’
‘I can’t cook.’ She looked as if she might cry.
‘You should have said. I love cooking. You can maintain the bicycles and I’ll cook.’
‘OK.’ She reached for his hand.
Luke pushed his plate away. ‘That really was fucking disgusting.’
‘Have some prosciutto,’ said Nicole. ‘There’s lots.’
They went to bed early. Nicole moved the TV to the end of the bed and they watched a thriller they had both seen before. The main segment of the film featured a famously devastating car chase. Nicole claimed that car chases took place only on film, never in print, never in books. She was wearing a green and white striped robe that made Luke think of toothpaste. A bowl of fruit was on the floor close by. Luke reached for an orange and began peeling it.
‘Don’t spurt in my bed,’ said Nicole. He passed segments to her, dripping. The car chase had come to a standstill. Half the vehicles in the city had been destroyed or damaged. Nicole’s period had started. They fucked with a towel under them, in the blue blaze of TV, their faces inches from the screen. Luke mouthed the words silently into her ear: I love you, I love you. She pulled her face away and pressed her mouth to his ear. He felt her lips moving, forming words he could not hear.
On Sunday night Luke met Alex at the Petit Centre. It was normally quiet on a Sunday but, for some reason – maybe everyone had spent the weekend with their new lovers and had been unable to get there until now – the Centre was packed. Luke was ecstatic, glowing in the way that women are said to when they are in love. He was not the only one with romantic news, though. Alex had met Sara, an interpreter.
‘Where did you meet her?’
‘At Steve’s house. The gay guy you met here that first night after work. I went there for dinner. Then I bumped into her last Thursday, just quickly, at an opening. And then I saw her again – though not to speak to – the following night.’
‘What does she look like?’
‘Short hair, black. Brown eyes, dark skin. And, crucially, she doesn’t smoke.’
‘She’s not French then?’
‘American, I think.’
‘You need to move quickly. Non-smoking women in this fucking smoke-filled pit of a city are hard to come by. Have you got her phone number?’
‘I hardly need it. I keep running into her.’
‘D’you know if she’s got a boyfriend?’
‘I don’t think so.’
But when she turned up in the bar half an hour later she
was
with a man. She was wearing a dark sweater, leather jacket and narrow, pale trousers. The guy she was with was called Jean-Paul. To hide his disappointment at seeing Sara in the company of a man, Alex bought them both a drink. Jean-Paul may have been the same age as Luke and Alex but, since he appeared successful, had an implied sense of direction, of purposefulness, of money, he looked considerably older. They stood at the crowded bar, Alex monitoring the movements of Jean-Paul and Sara, trying to establish the state of their relationship. It was obvious they didn’t know each other well – and equally obvious that Jean-Paul was aiming to remedy this situation. Sara’s attitude to him was more difficult to decipher. She was friendly to everyone but she retained some essential loyalty to her date. They had been to the cinema together.
‘What did you see?’ Alex said. ‘More precisely, which Cassavetes film did you see?’ There was a Cassavetes season on. You could not move for Cassavetes films.
‘
Faces
.’
‘
Faces
? I can’t remember whether I’ve seen that one or not. It’s the one that’s exactly like all the others, right?’
‘That’s the one. Have you seen it?’
‘Yes. Or maybe it was one of the others.’
‘Actually they’re beginning to get on my nerves, Cassavetes films. I don’t think I’m going to see any more.’
‘Why’s that? I agree, but why is that? For me it’s because the characters are always wearing dinner jackets. I hate films where the characters are always wearing dinner jackets. I hate James Bond films for the same reason,’ said Alex, glad to have got a quick purchase on the conversation. Jean-Paul also wanted to get in on it but Luke, spotting Alex’s chance to engage Sara, immediately set up a conversational barricade to keep him from her. If Jean-Paul wanted to have his say about the film they’d just seen he would have to say it to Luke.
‘He’s too indoors,’ Sara said to Alex. ‘There are outdoors films and indoors films. His are indoors films. I only like outdoors films.’ Alex was stopped in his tracks. He saw immediately that she was right: all great films were
outdoor
films. He searched rapidly through his memory but could not think of a single exception to this rule.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘That is absolutely it. It’s as simple as that. Dinner jacket-wearing is just a whatever the word is of indoorness.’
‘Metonym?’
‘I guess.’ Jean-Paul lit a cigarette. Alex could sense him monitoring their conversation: everyone, it seemed, was monitoring everyone else’s conversation. ‘Are there no exceptions?’
‘None,’ she said, with absolute certainty.
How they change, the faces of our friends, of the people we love. When they had met at Steve’s dinner Alex had not noticed Sara particularly. They had been sitting at opposite ends of the table and had not spoken to each other. Then, when they had met at the gallery opening, he had begun to study her face, which changed, became attractive to him, as if it took on the qualities of what she said. Now he looked at her with longing.
Jean-Paul too. He broke through the cordon of conversation Luke had thrown around him and started in on his opinion of Cassavetes. That’s how it was at that time: no evening was complete unless everyone had their say about Cassavetes, his directorial style, his limitations, his influence. Jean-Paul was speaking French but Alex was hardly listening. He was watching Sara to see how she responded to what Jean-Paul was saying: was she listening to him with the same fascination that he had listened to her? No, he ventured to think, no. Alex was so preoccupied by this question that it scarcely occurred to him to wonder if she could be attracted to him. Even if Sara had not been attracted to Jean-Paul then Alex was sure it was Luke she would be drawn to. This was an essential part of Luke’s power: not the
fact
of his attractiveness to women but Alex’s belief – an assumption, almost – in that attractiveness. On this occasion there was a circumstantial logic behind that conviction: you are never more attractive to women, it seemed to Alex, than when you have just got out of bed with a woman. The corollary of this was depressing: the longer you went without sleeping with someone the less likely it was that you ever would. After a year, forget it. They can see the moss growing on your dick . . .
Sara went to the toilet. Jean-Paul said he had to make a phone call.
‘What do you think?’ Alex asked Luke.
‘She’s great.’
‘What about him? D’you think they’re together?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘He’s the kind of man who knows how to seduce women. That’s all he knows about women, how to seduce them. Plus, he smokes and she doesn’t. She couldn’t put up with that.’
‘Do you think he’ll seduce her?’
‘Probably, yes.’
Sara rejoined them. Alex wanted to ask for her phone number but Jean-Paul returned from making his call. A few minutes later they left. Jean-Paul had a smirk of triumph about him. Sara kissed both the Englishmen goodbye, leaving Luke and Alex on their own again. Luke bought Alex a ‘consolation beer’.
‘I really like her,’ said Alex.
‘I think she likes you too.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘No, she does. We have come to believe French men are great lovers, romantic and so forth. But who do we keep hearing that from?’
‘French men?’
‘Exactly. More specifically, French men who smoke. But here is a little known fact. Women actually like English men. The Englishman is universally derided for being unromantic, bad at sex, uptight, mean, not washing his underpants enough – all that stuff. But it turns out that women actually quite like English men.’
‘I see. Just because you got down some Bosnian bimbo’s pants on your first date you’re now an authority on all matters erotic. Because you happened upon the one woman on earth who was willing to chow down on your cheesy English schlong, you think all women are attracted to all English men.’ Alex was joking, obviously, but the crudity of his words was the result, also, of a rumbling jealousy, anxiety about how Luke’s meeting Nicole would affect their friendship.
‘Not
all
English men,’ said Luke. ‘Not some no-hoper who looks like spending the rest of his life working at the Garnier warehouse.’
‘Someone like you, you mean?’
‘You’re just feeling bad because Jean-Paul is going to fuck her tonight. French-style. While smoking.’
‘Very funny.’
‘You should have got her phone number. You could call her first thing in the morning. If Jean-Paul answers you could ask him what it was like.’
‘Fuck you, Luke.’
As it turned out Alex had to wait less than forty-eight hours to ask her in person. He saw her on Tuesday morning but she was hurrying for a bus and they had time only to exchange greetings. Then, later that afternoon, he saw her coming out of a shoe shop on rue de la Roquette. She was adjusting her bags of shopping and did not notice him – which meant that he had a few moments to compose and prepare himself for a spontaneous greeting. It could not have worked out more conveniently if he had been stalking her. She was wearing sunglasses (it was not sunny), walking towards him. She saw him just as he prepared to call out her name.