But that was the last time I got plastered.
And because they don’t seem like much, those six virtuous little words all lined up in a row: the-last-time-I-got-plastered, I wasn’t suspicious of them.
Big mistake.
It was a very bad sign.
Because what’s left for people who have stopped drinking, even though they were using it as a last refuge against despair?
Despair.
It was all muddled. It’s a muddle, despair. Especially in my case, as a three-card trick player who’d known how to mix it all up so well for so many years.
I had trouble distinguishing overindulgence from actual suffering, and since I’m much too cowardly to lift up my big rock and try to understand what’s swarming around under it, I’ll stick to the symptoms—the external signs of distress. Yes, I’d stopped drinking, but I wasn’t eating either, and I could barely sleep. That was a lot of unpleasantness for simple overindulgence, you have to admit.
Someone else, someone braver or smarter or less of a cheapskate, would have gone in for a consultation. Maybe not a psychiatrist right away, but at least a doctor, the good family doctor she no longer had, or any old GP in her neighborhood, and without going into detail, she would have said up front: Hi Doctor, everything’s fine, really really fine, I swear, but I have to get some sleep, do you understand? I have to sleep at least a little, or I’m going to keel over. Oh, my appetite, that’s no big deal. I have hips like nice big brioche tops. And plus, look, I’m up to almost two packs of Marlboros a day, that’s plenty. But the nights . . . the nights, all of them, always, always totally sleepless . . . that’ll kill you in the end, right?
That’s exactly what I was in the middle of brooding about at the very beginning of this story, when I was dragging myself from the Place de l’Étoile to the Montmartre cemetery in the middle of the night, stuffing a seventh unsuccessful receipt into my pocket.
Yep. I’m not very clever. It took all of that to bring us here. The starting point.
What?
Seven?!?
But—but, Mathilde—you just turned over all three of your cards at once! You’ve had it, my dear! You’re lost! Do you know what the three-card trick is called in English? Find the Lady. And that’s it? That’s what your queen of hearts was hiding? You’re letting that fatso get you in such a state?
. . .
With his patent-leather shoes and the gym socks with the reinforced toes?
. . .
And his missing finger? And the sharp knives chained to his pants?
. . .
And his jacket that stinks of goat?
. . .
And his nocturnal whims?
. . .
Let me remind you that he still has your number. You may be too hopeless to write a phone number down legibly, but he could have called you back eventually, if he’d wanted to.
. . .
Well, maybe not. I mean, with only nine fingers, maybe he couldn’t manage it . . .
. . .
Yo, Mathilde! You should answer when someone speaks to you!
Shut up. Make fun of me, taunt me, put me down as much as you want, but don’t reprimand me. Don’t tell me the lesson. You know how much I hate that. If you persist in that tone you’re going to lose me completely. So . . . so what do you want me to tell you, then?
Everything, gorgeous.
Everything.
Get comfortable and have a seat.