You Deserve Nothing (8 page)

“What Rick just said . . . It’s Rick, right?” I asked.

Rick had turned his attention from the board and was looking at me as he’d been looking at the diagrams.

“What Rick said, was that everything we
do
is our fault. Which seems to me exactly right. No matter what our parents do for a living, or where we grow up, or the diseases we have. We’re still responsible for what we
do
.”

“Whatever,” Ariel said.

Silver pushed himself off his desk and looked coldly at Ariel.

“Tell me your name again,” he said.

“It’s Ariel, Mr. Silver.” She seemed surprised that he didn’t remember.

“Ariel, right. You may or may not agree with Gilad but ‘whatever’ is an inappropriate response. Gilad spoke clearly and respectfully. Your dismissal of his comments only reveals your own shortcomings. Don’t do it again. Please.”

There was a long pause. Ariel’s pale face had turned red.

“If you have something intelligent to say please say it.”

She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at Silver. “O.K., O.K.” She smiled at him. “I’m sorry, you’re right.”

Lily said, “So what’s with the scribble?”

He laughed. “The scribble,” he said, looking finally away from Ariel, “is what human lives are—disorganized, meaningless, purposeless, insignificant, and without order.”

“Bummer,” Lily said.

“Maybe,” he said, and drew a grid over the chaos. “So what’s this?”

I knew.

I watched him, praying he’d call on me until he did.

“It’s what we pretend life is.”

“Meaning?”

“Oh!” Hala said. “Like, religion is the grid.”

“Go on.”

Lily looked up from her drawing, “So, all the stuff we do—eating with our forks in the left hand and our knives in the right. All that shit, that’s the grid?”

He smiled. “What else?”

“College. Jobs. Laws. Grades,” Rick said angrily to the grid.

“So, what? Those things don’t exist?”

“No, they do. They do exist,” Hala said. “It’s just that they exist because we made them exist. I mean we built the laws so that we’d have this idea that everything makes sense. We love everything in order. That’s the thing with religion, Abdul. Religion makes us feel like everything’s all organized. Like everything makes sense. Like there’s no other answer.”

“There
is
no other answer,” Abdul said to his notebook.

Then the bell rang and I wrote at the bottom of my first page, “Abdul says there is no other answer.”

“Good class,” Mr. Silver said leaning against his desk. “See you tomorrow. Come back angry.”

When I looked up he smiled at me.

* * *

The rest of the day I barely spoke. During my other classes I wasn’t asked to say anything other than my name.

I ate my lunch alone on the picnic bench beneath the pine tree.

Rick walked by and nodded.

When I passed Lily in the hall she smiled and said, “Hey dude.”

On the bus I sat alone.

I was unsettled. Nervous. I was in love the way you are with an actor or a guy on stage with a guitar. It’s instantaneous, a combination of jealousy and desire. Need. You want to change yourself entirely.

That day walking from the bus along the boulevard I wanted to possess him. Be him. Have him smile at me again. I wanted to be right. I wanted to go to war for him.

I would fight for him and against anyone who wouldn’t. It wasn’t complicated. In the beginning love never is.

MARIE

I
thought about him all summer. The whole time we were at our house in Biarritz. I thought about him every single day. At first I was giddy but soon that ended and I just felt lonely and embarrassed. I kept replaying the night, cringing at the way I’d behaved. I spent my days at the beach lying in the sun, determined to be beautiful when I returned to school. My sister was at the house for a few weeks and I nearly told her what had happened. Ariel was in the US with her family. I didn’t miss her.

Except for when my sister was there I spent most of my time alone. Sometimes I’d have lunch with my mother. But I tried to avoid it. She’d started cutting photographs out of Vogue and leaving them on my bed. I’d come back from the beach and there they’d be just lying there. No note or anything. Just those models looking up at me. I’d throw them away and the next day there’d be more. She never said anything about it and neither did I. But when that started I tried to avoid her completely.

To be honest I’d never thought much about sex or I mean that sex had never interested me. I’d never had any real desire. It was a part of my life in the sense that it was a constant subject at school and with Ariel but it had nothing to do with me physically. Ariel was always saying how horny she was. I never felt anything like that. I mean before Colin sex was an abstraction. And then afterward, for a long time afterward, I could barely feel my body. It was just vacant.

I’d never masturbated. Never had an orgasm. Never. Not until that summer when I began to think about him, in bed at night listening to the ocean. And then during the day with my fingers pressed into the hot sand, I’d imagine him kissing me. Lying on my towel, I mean right in the middle of the day, I’d imagine his hands on my body, and I’d feel a flush, a warmth spread up my thighs, hot between my legs, my nipples pulsing. I ached. All of me all the time.

* * *

Colin. Somehow we were together. I don’t know. We were all drinking on the Champ de Mars. Colin was there and we were drunk and we ended up kissing on a bench somewhere and then we were together. That’s it. That went on for a while and he was nice to me. I mean, he was O.K. He used to tell me what to wear to school and I’d do it. Jeans, tight T-shirts, that kind of thing. After a few months he started to get on my nerves. He was pushy and always wanted to have sex. I wasn’t necessarily against having sex, but I didn’t like the pressure and he wouldn’t shut up about it. And I don’t know if I was ready or not but he just pushed and pushed so one day we had sex in my bedroom when my parents were away.

It was horrible. I mean everything about him was hard. His lips, his body, his face, the way he touched me, everything about him. It was over fast and there was a small spot of blood on the towel I’d laid beneath us.

That was it.

He was O.K. for a while. He was nice to me usually and sometimes he was funny. Then one night after a school play, a musical, it was
Mame
, we got on the bus together. They were the late buses and ours wasn’t very full. We sat at the very back and were hidden away behind the seats. There were maybe ten or fifteen other kids toward the front and we were pretty much alone in the back. He’d been pushing me to go down on him. He didn’t shut up about it.

That night he starts talking about it again. Whispering to me in the dark and finally I said, Fine, I’ll do it, O.K.? But he meant right there in the bus. And he pushes and pushes and pushes and finally I said I’d do it. He pulls down his jeans and he takes out his penis and he’s hard. Then he starts to push my head down with his hand and I put a little bit into my mouth and I’m breathing through my nose like Ariel told me but I feel sick, like I’m going to choke, and now he’s got my hair in his fists and he won’t let go and he starts to push up with his hips. I begin to panic and breathe faster and faster through my nose and try to stop but he’s got his hands on my head and he’s forcing himself into my mouth. I’m afraid to make any noise. I feel like I’m going to choke to death, like I’m suffocating, like I’m going to die right there and still I can’t make any noise. I’m shaking my head and digging my nails into his thigh and trying to get away, to get my mouth away, to tell him to stop but I can’t, no matter what I do, he’s too strong and I can’t get away and I’m crying and I can’t breathe.

I felt myself lightheaded as if I might pass out. I was shaking and then he comes and the minute I feel it in my mouth I sort of gag and then vomit a little bit of it into his lap and he makes this noise, this noise I’ll never forget, of complete disgust and disapproval. And he lets go of me and I pull my head up and wipe my mouth and my face with the sleeve of my sweater. He says, What the fuck, Marie? And I don’t look at him. I just sit there staring at the back of the seat. I’m crying and crying and my nose is running but I sit up straight the way my mom would have wanted and try not to breathe. I just concentrate on a single point and think of going home, of being in the shower.

He kept talking and shaking my shoulder, and saying, What’s wrong, Marie? What’s wrong? Why are you crying? As if he didn’t fucking know. Anyway, I stopped hearing him. After a while I didn’t hear a thing he said, and when the bus stopped on my corner, I got off and walked home. I don’t know if he followed me.

I got home and locked the door and walked upstairs. I took off my clothes and got into the shower. I never talked to him again.

I
was eating lunch at the picnic bench beneath the pine tree when Mazin sat down across from me. He’d grown over the summer and seemed so much older.

“Dude I miss your class. I hate English now. I’m going to die of boredom.”

“Come on, Maz. It’ll take some getting used to. Give it a chance.”

“No, man. It doesn’t mean anything. We don’t talk about, I don’t know, stuff. It’s all this analyzing paragraphs and shit. I miss our talks.”

“But here we are having one now.”

“Yeah, on my free period. Lame.”

“I’m flattered you’d waste your free period with me, Maz.”

“Yeah, well don’t get too excited. Anyway Silver, school’s a waste of my time.”

“Carrot?”

“No man, I don’t want a carrot, I want to know why I shouldn’t just move to LA and start a band.”

“Who says you shouldn’t?”

“Please. Everyone.”

“You realize, right, that this is a tired conversation? You know everything I’m going to tell you. It’s the height of boring.”

“No I don’t. You’re the height of boring. What are you going to tell me?”

“You’ve heard it all before, Maz.”

“Oh come on. Tell me. Please.”

“There’s nothing to tell you. You want to move to LA and start a band? Go. Otherwise, shut up and do your homework.”

“That’s it? That’s your advice?”

“You were asking for advice?”

“Obviously.”

“Look, Maz, I’ve said it a thousand times. You do what you feel is right. But it’s
do
what you feel is right, not talk about doing. You understand?”

“So you’re saying I should drop out of school?”

I laughed. “You know exactly what I’m saying.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe moving to LA to become a rock star isn’t the best alternative to doing your homework.”

He got up and smiled at me. “I’m glad we can still have these talks, man. You never let me down. I got to go to class. I’ll tell you if I decide to move to LA.” He gave me a complicated handshake. The hugging had stopped.

“Peace, Mr. Silver.”

* * *

That afternoon, I went with Mia to the Marché d’Aligre where we shopped for dinner. Afterward, we ate oysters and stayed late drinking too much wine at Le Baron Rouge and then went back to her apartment. I sat at the bar that separated her tiny kitchen from the living room and watched her cut small red potatoes into quarters.

I loved being there that evening—watching her cook, setting the table, following her orders, waiting for our guests. In the long cobbled courtyard below, a group of boys was playing soccer and with each goal came a burst of noise. I leaned out the window to watch the game.

Mia opened a bottle of wine and brought me a glass.

“Cheers,” she said.

“Cheers.”

“It’s getting dark earlier and earlier.”

I nodded.

“I say the same things every year,” she said.

A boy in a green T-shirt scored a goal, raised his hands above his head, did a victory lap, and then disappeared into the building. Quickly the game dissipated and soon the courtyard was empty and quiet.

We didn’t know Séb and Pauline very well, but Mia was always looking to befriend French people, who were, to her surprise and disappointment, difficult to know. So, after the four of us had drinks together a few weeks before, she called and invited them for dinner.

In those years, it felt that having dinner with other Americans was a kind of failure, that the purer, more authentic experience was always with the French and she was happy to have met Parisians she liked. She’d been taking cooking classes and had become a confident and talented cook. This would be her first dinner for a French couple and she was thrilled.

“You realize, Will, that this is one of the fantasies?”

“Which?”

“The Paris fantasies. To cook a French meal, for French people, in my Parisian apartment.”

“Well, you’ll do it beautifully.”

“Thank you, William.” She smiled at me.

“They’re here,” I said.

Séb and Pauline had pushed the heavy wooden door open, allowing a brief swell of street noise, before it closed behind them.

“
Salut,
” Mia called down.

They waved at us. We watched them holding hands, their footsteps echoing in the courtyard. Mia returned to the kitchen and I went to let them in.

The three of us drank wine and watched as Mia dredged pieces of sole through flour while butter melted in an iron skillet.

We ate at a small table in the living room. Mia insisted that we all sit before she would serve us and then one by one, she delivered plates of
sole meunière
and small bowls full of roasted potatoes. Séb, who worked for a wine distributor, opened one of the three bottles of
chablis grand crus
he’d brought.

“To new friends,” Mia said and raised her glass. Her face was flushed from the kitchen heat, those wisps of hair falling around her face.

“To new friends,” we all repeated and touched glasses.

After we’d eaten, after the requisite jokes were made about the rarity of Americans who could cook, and Parisians who could smile, after we talked about Chirac’s noble defiance of George Bush, Mia asked how Séb and Pauline had met.

“It was the simplest thing,” Pauline said. “We were in a café. Both of us alone at the bar having our coffee. Both of us reading our papers. Séb smiled at me. I smiled back. He said,
bonjour,
and that was it. We’ve been together since.”

She touched the back of his neck and moved her fingers through his hair.

“
She
smiled at me,” Séb said, “but everything else is true.”

Pauline looked at Mia and rolled her eyes.

“How long has it been?” I asked.

“Nearly eight years,” Pauline said. “I’d just finished law school.”

“And you?” Sèb asked. “How did you two meet?”

“Oh, we’re not—” Mia began.

“We’re not together,” I said.

They both laughed.

“You’re serious?” Pauline looked amazed.

“Friends,” I said.

“I don’t believe you,” Séb said.

“
Moi non plus
.” Pauline smiled.

“No, it’s true.” Mia looked up and when Pauline saw her eyes, she stopped laughing.

“We just assumed.”

“Oh, you’re not the first,” I said.

Mia began to clear and Pauline followed. When they were in the kitchen talking, Séb put his arms on the table and leaned forward.

“
Mais pourquoi?
” He asked, like I was a lunatic.

“
C’est ma faute
,” I said. “
Je sais pas
.”

He looked at me for a long moment and then shook his head.

* * *

After they’d gone, I washed the dishes while Mia sat at the bar finishing the second bottle of wine. Then I felt her behind me. My hands were in the warm water. She wrapped her arms around my waist. She pulled me harder against her and kissed my neck.

“Mia.”

She turned her head to the side and pressed it against my back. We stood like that, her arms around my waist, my hands in the water.

* * *

As I walked home, there was the familiar crush of isolation, that bodily loneliness that swept through me every winter. It was as if I’d been injected with something cold and viscous. I could feel it spreading through me, falling heavy in the center of my chest, pooling there. It was bitter and it was devastating and it frightened me.

* * *

From time to time I’d pass Marie in the hallway and she’d give me a knowing look. In those early days of the school year, passing her in the halls, I’d meet her eyes and feel a slight surge of desire. There was nothing more. I didn’t think about her and wasn’t much tempted. She pouted, flipped her hair and led with her breasts. She took on the mannerisms of an older, more confident woman, and none of it appealed to me.

* * *

The morning of October fourth I stood at the Odéon
métro
waiting for my train.

It was just before eight. People milled around, reading their papers, looking at their watches.

I’d been there maybe ten minutes already when a man my age arrived. The trains were slow that day.

“
Pardon,”
he said. “
Excusez-moi, ça fait longtemps que vous attendez?”

Taller than me, he was wearing a suit, a black overcoat, a gray scarf wrapped twice around his neck. I was struck by him. Everything in place. Everything considered. It was a quality that I had, before moving to Paris, associated with elegant women. I admired these Parisian men, their precision, their attention to detail.

He was clean-shaven, wore thin-framed, rectangular glasses. His hair cut short, maybe half an inch long.

“
Dix minutes environ
,” I said.

He thanked me, looked at his watch and blew air through his closed lips—a national gesture acknowledging that life is and will always be this way. Then there was the sound of the train.

“
Le voila
.”

“
Enfin,
” I said smiling.

The train came fast into the station. Just as it did I sensed a flash of movement behind me and to my left. And then in an instant the man shot forward. The rushing train slammed into his body with a dull muffled noise and he vanished.

Someone screamed. My eyes went clear, I stepped back immediately turning to my left, bracing myself, and saw a large, haggard man standing alone. We locked eyes, unblinking. I didn’t move. He nodded at me as if I were somehow involved, turned and began to walk toward the exit. I watched him go and imagined tackling him to the ground.

I heard footsteps pounding behind me, coming from the other end of the platform. Someone ran past and drove his shoulder into the man’s back. There was more screaming.

I did nothing.

Soon the station was filled with police.

I was sweating. And then I saw Gilad standing alone. He’d been waiting for the same train. He watched me come toward him. I stopped in front of him.

“You saw it?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Come on,” I said.

We walked to the Luxembourg Gardens and sat down on a bench beneath some trees. There was no one there. It was very cold. I was nauseated. I called the school and explained what had happened, that I wouldn’t be there, that I’d need a sub, that Gilad was with me, that he wouldn’t be at school, the
métro
wouldn’t be running for a while.

I didn’t know what to do next so the two of us sat there in silence in the cold park. I kept imagining the man with his white scarf, his delicate glasses and his immaculate clothes. Although I hadn’t seen them, I thought about his fingernails. I was sure they’d been neatly manicured.

“
Ça fait longtemps que vous attendez?
”

“
Ça fait longtemps que vous attendez?
”

“
Ça fait longtemps que vous attendez?
”

“
Le voila
.”

I wondered about his glasses, whether they’d been broken. I watched him die over and over again. I listened to the sound of the train hitting his body. It was the sound of a heavy duffel bag hitting a concrete floor.

My phone rang several times but I didn’t answer it. They wanted my lesson plans.

Eventually I stood. Gilad looked up with the same expression he’d had on the platform. As if asking, What happens now?

“We can go to a café I like.”

We took a table in the mezzanine and ordered
cafés crèmes
. When they came we wrapped our hands around the warm cups.

“Did you see it?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“I mean you saw it happen?”

“Yes.”

“You O.K.?” I asked him.

“Yeah. You know, I’ve seen bad things before. Violence. I don’t know. The thing is I saw you first.” He was playing with his spoon, turning it slowly through his coffee. “I saw you standing there. I recognized you and was thinking of maybe coming over to say hello or something. And then I saw that homeless guy, he was pacing around you know, and all of a sudden he just spun and charged and from where I was standing, it looked like it was you he was going to push. I mean it could have been you.”