The end credits had barely started—I wasn’t going to tell this part, but what the hell, at this point it’s probably not worth it to try to make myself look good—when I took out my phone, hoping he’d called.
Hoping he had called. Jean-Baptiste the Warrior.
Of course, at the time, I would have sworn up and down that that wasn’t true, no, really, blah blah blah, but if I look back honestly at the dishonest girl walking back up the Rue Caulaincourt on that April night, pulling her shabby old duffle coat more closely around her, I can tell you—and you can put it in writing, Madam Court Reporter—that it wasn’t the six o’clock movie occupying her thoughts.
It was his face she couldn’t stop thinking about. Their conversation (unforgettable) playing in a loop in her head. His sugar lumps she counted again and again while clutching the silent piece of plastic in her pocket.
* * *
And then? Then, life went back to normal.
That’s what people say when nothing happens, right?
When you forget your New Year’s resolutions, when you abandon your dreams of freedom (why leave when my room was just repainted?) and greatness (why resume my studies when my computer’s raking in money for me like a one-armed bandit?), and when you drink like a fish and run around making up comedies that aren’t romantic at all.
Taking Paul’s clothes off and putting Pierre’s clothes back on and finally ending up naked in Jacques’s arms.
Yeah, that’s what they say.
That waiting room called youth.
What had my sleepy nutcase become? A joke, an anecdote, a funny story to tell at dinner. It was a hit; I gave him one less finger and one more knife every time I told it. After a while it was like Lord of War in a Calcutta leper colony.
I thought about him, in the beginning. There were things about him that still bothered me: the way he’d said, “Are you coming?” in such an authoritative voice; the precise way he’d memorized me from head to toe; how sad he’d seemed when he talked about seeing me again, and the fact that he hadn’t had to fumble around so much, when he could have gotten the number from my phone all by himself. And then I saw his white socks again in my head, and turned back to my brother-in-law’s webcoms feeling freshly inspired.
My trusty GPS was right: dead end, straight ahead.
* * *
Three times over the next few days, someone tried to call me in the middle of the night but didn’t leave a message. The first time I thought it was a mistake; the second, I had my doubts, and the last time I knew it was him. I recognized his silence.
It was two o’clock in the morning but I was still awake; I tried to call him back but the number was a landline somewhere in Île-de-France, and the rings died away in the distance.
That was when something started to come unhinged inside me. I went against one of my few principles (both moral and “health-related,” if you know what I mean) and slept with my phone turned on next to my pillow. Too bad about the radiation, too bad about cancer, and too bad about my pride and my getting any sleep; I needed to be sure. Who was calling me so furtively, as if they were trying to make sure I wouldn’t pick up? Who? And if it was him, why? What did he want from me, really? At the time I didn’t think at all about the . . . I don’t know . . . the significance of an act like that, and yet . . . what better way to insinuate yourself into someone else’s private life than by interfering with their sleep?
From then on, every night, I turned up my ringer to its maximum volume and shared my bed with a phantom.
I went out less. Yeah, it kills me to admit it, and I had a thousand reasons ready for anyone who might act curious about it, but the simple fact was that I went out less. Ten days—or rather, ten nights—had passed without a hitch, and I’d decided to turn off my mobile phone because I wasn’t sleeping well. I woke up from time to time to see if the little “missed call” signal was blinking, or to make sure my telephone hadn’t been suffocated by the duvet.
And I was angry at him. And angry at myself, really angry, for having become such a flake. I was so angry at both of us that I remember going to bed that night promising myself it would be the last time. His last chance to come back to haunt me.
He could go right to hell with his chains and his knives and his sneaky calls. I was tired of this crap.
Phones, text messages, screens, chats, and e-mails . . . I didn’t want these imaginary borders on my map of Tendre anymore.
I’d given; I’d suffered; I’d paid for my share of all these half-assed, absurd, naïve plans imposed on us by love in the digital age.
Yes. I was tired. Even worse, I felt worn down, emptied out, disembodied by loving so many times without really loving. Now I wanted real experiences with real people who had real flesh on their bones. Otherwise, I’d prefer to skip my turn.
And because he’s very strong, and when it comes to fat he’s right there, you know; that night, he called back.