Paris Trance (24 page)

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ she said.

‘What
I’ve
done?’ said Luke. His face was burning where she had scratched him. His shin felt like it was broken. ‘Christ, what a mess.’ He moved towards her, hands raised as if in surrender, careful not to slip on the bilge-water floor.

When they had cleaned up the kitchen Luke limped out for a walk. Nicole stayed at home. They were both stunned, exhausted by the sudden fury of the scene. They had quarrelled before but never as violently. It was like they had skipped three or four intervening stages – raised voices, heated arguments, recriminations, rows – and moved straight on to the fully fledged, all-out domestic riot. There was an element of novelty, of absurdity, to what had happened but they were both fearful that they had crashed through to that other dimension of domestic relationships where arguing and making up, yelling and apologising become the norm. Then the making up and apologising fall by the wayside. From there it is a small step to plate-smashing, hatred and attritional dependence.

At the Bastille Luke saw a weary Indian selling balloons. In addition to silver, helium-filled hearts he had a lovely Dalmatian: knee high, smiling, with a tightly inflated tail. He even had a little bell tied round his neck with a pink ribbon.

Nicole was sleeping when Luke got home. He lay on the floor and, using a broom, pushed the dog towards the bed. Nicole was awakened by the noise of the bell. She loved him immediately.

‘He’s the same one that followed us that night. The first time we went out.’

‘Exactly,’ said Luke, sitting on the bed.

‘I knew he would turn up again.’ She touched his face. ‘Your face is all scratched. Does it hurt?’

‘It stings a bit.’

‘Is your leg OK?’

‘It’s broken but it doesn’t matter. What about your arms?’

‘They’re OK.’

‘You really do have a temper.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m the one that should be sorry Nic. I’m sorry. God, I feel like I’ve been dragged backwards through a Greek tragedy.’

‘Me too.’

‘That was some serious splashing back there in the kitchen wasn’t it?’ said Luke. Then he pointed at their new dog. ‘What shall we call him?’

‘Let’s call him Spunk,’ said Nicole who had developed a fondness for the crude English words she had learned from Luke.

He was perfect. He stood by the bed waiting for them to wake up in the mornings. When they came home at night he was waiting by the door, always smiling, tail wagging. They would have taken him for walks but that would have seemed like an affectation and so he remained a house dog. Nicole bought a bowl for him. He was no trouble. In no time at all he acquired a personality of his own. They loved him.

Alex was more sceptical. ‘That dog of yours,’ he said, ‘has got an inflated sense of his own importance.’

‘Very funny,’ said Luke. They were due to play football. Alex had turned up for breakfast, as arranged, but Luke and Nicole were still in bed, drinking coffee. Spunk was by the side of the bed, eager, smiling. Alex was holding a bag of warm croissants.

‘The clocks went back today,’ said Nicole.

‘Forwards,’ said Luke.

‘So either I’m an hour early or an hour late,’ said Alex.

‘Early,’ said Nicole. ‘Which is nice. The coffee’s only just made. Have a cup.’ Alex fetched a plate for the croissants. He poured himself a coffee, sat at the end of the bed. Sun was streaming through the window. Their clothes were piled on the floor. A large mirror was propped against a wall. Nicole was wearing a white T-shirt, spooning jam on to a croissant. There were bruises on her arms.

‘Hmm. Fine jam,’ she said in an improbable English accent. She looked sleepy. Alex pictured her sitting dreamily at her desk in school, rubbing her eyes. Luke kissed the side of her head.

‘How many croissants did you bring, Alex?’ he said, finishing his first.

‘Six.’

‘Great,’ he said, plucking a second from the bag.

‘D’you often have breakfast in bed?’ said Alex.

‘Oh yes. You see, we do so like fine jam,’ said Nicole, spreading more on her croissant. A blob fell on the sheets and she began scraping it off.

‘Actually we never have breakfast in bed because I hate spillage. Today was an exception,’ said Luke, holding up both hands. ‘Look at this. I don’t know what to do with my hands. They’re greasy from the croissants so I don’t know where to put them. I can’t get out of bed and wash them because I haven’t got any clothes on and I can’t put my clothes on because I haven’t washed my hands and I don’t want to get greasy stickiness over my clothes.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Nicole said.

‘Make a run a for it,’ said Luke, climbing out of the bed and dashing, thin, naked, out of the room. Nicole was laughing. Alex was aware of a dryness in his throat. He was surprised that the mere fact of Nicole’s being in bed, a few feet from him, naked beneath her T-shirt, could generate such a tension.

‘What’s Sahra doing today?’ she said.

‘Nothing really. She’s going to call you, I think.’
He took a big gulp of coffee and looked at the window, the tray, the clothes in piles on the floor – everywhere but where he most wanted to. He glanced at the wall and saw her reflection in the mirror. She was looking away and he let his eyes rest on her image. He could see himself too, and then he saw Luke’s reflection coming into the edge of the frame, his hair wet. Alex looked over his shoulder, surprised to find that Luke was already by his side. In the mirror Luke saw Alex as he had been a few moments earlier, his eyes fixed on Nicole’s reflection.

Alex stood up and took the tray over to the sink where he washed the cups and plates more thoroughly than was necessary. Luke sat on the edge of the bed, one hand on Spunk’s head, the other on Nicole’s shoulder.

‘What are you doing this morning?’

‘I’m sleepy. Maybe I’ll see Sahra.’

‘I’ll see you later.’ He kissed her on the mouth, her lips buttery.

‘Bye Alex,’ she said. ‘Have a good game.’

‘See you Nicole.’

Luke and Alex walked to the station. Nothing they saw on the way there seemed worth mentioning. Alex said he was looking forward to the game. Luke too. A train pulled in as soon as they got to the platform. The carriage was empty and clean, new.

‘We’re going to be early,’ said Alex.

‘Yes.’

They sat in clanging silence for a couple of stops. Then Alex said, ‘You know when you first came here, you were planning to write a book?’

‘Indeed I was.’

‘What was it going to be? A novel?’

‘I suppose.’

‘And what was it going to be about?’

‘Ah, I never gave that much thought.’

‘You had no idea what it was going to be about?’

‘It was going to be about . . . Well, that’s the funny thing. I suppose it would have been about the life we lead now. About you and Sahra and Nicole. About that house we stayed in over Christmas. It would have been about you and me and Nicole eating breakfast in our apartment. About our dog, Spunk. About you and I sitting on the Métro on our way to football . . .’

‘Having this conversation?’

‘Yes. Reflecting on things. So to speak.’

‘And why didn’t you write it?’

‘I didn’t have the faintest idea how to. It was just an adolescent idea.’

‘There’s still time.’

‘But there’s no need,’ said Luke. ‘What’s the point? Why write something if you can live it?’

‘Because you can’t live it for ever, I suppose,’ said Alex, getting up. ‘This is our stop.’

It was only a five-minute walk from the Métro to the football pitch. They passed a homeless guy with a dog, hustling for change.

‘That’ll be you in a few years’ time,’ said Alex. ‘Sitting there with your bowl and your plastic dog.’

‘His name’s Spunk,’ Luke insisted.

They had been playing for less than ten minutes when Luke stretched to block a shot on goal. He felt his foot twist horribly, forced round by the impact of his opponent’s kick. His teammates applauded the tackle but Luke could not play on, could not put any weight on his left leg. In minutes his ankle swelled up like an orange, then a grapefruit. He felt as if his foot had been torn off. His ankle was broken, he was sure. He sat behind the goal, on the brink of tears. Then, not even waiting for the game to end, he pulled on his tracksuit and told Alex he was taking a taxi home. Alex offered to come with him (Luke was emphatically not a taxi-taker, he had obviously hurt himself badly) but Luke urged him to stay and play on. He held his leg very still in the taxi, paid and hobbled up the stairs to the apartment. Nicole was still in bed. When she opened her eyes he began crying. Swollen beyond the realm of fruit, his ankle had assumed the colour of a bad banana, the kind of banana Sahra liked. He lay on the bed. Nicole put his foot on a cushion, wrapped a pack of frozen peas in a towel and wrapped the towel round his ankle.

‘You should have done this straight away,’ she said. ‘And we should go to the hospital.’ Luke lay on the bed, lost in pain, on the brink of throwing up.

At the hospital they waited for two hours to see a doctor and then waited another hour for an X-ray. The ankle was not broken but the ligaments were torn so badly that it would be best to have it put in plaster. The doctor said this as though there was a choice. When Luke asked if there
were
a choice the doctor said no, not really.

It was five in the afternoon by the time they left hospital with crutches and a bottle of pain-killers. Back home they found three messages from Alex on the answering machine. Nicole was tender, loving. Luke had never loved her more: a predictable enough reaction, partly comprising self-pity, shock, helplessness; but Nicole, too, felt as if her love for him were being raised . . . no, not raised, the opposite: deepened. They had tapped into some elemental current that has always existed between men and women, that causes nurses to fall in love with the crippled men they are caring for. And this did not extinguish or run counter to the sexual energy between them. Having arranged Luke comfortably on the bed she undressed and knelt over his face. She closed her eyes and began stroking her breasts, reached down and separated her lips with her fingers. She stopped after a while and walked over to the filing cabinets. When she returned she knelt over him again, facing away from him, rubbing the vibro along her cunt.

After Nicole had come she said, ‘Can you move over on to your side?’ He did so slowly, careful not to jolt his ankle. He felt the slick touch of saliva and her finger slipping inside him. Then the harder buzz and pressure of the vibrator. He had never wanted anything more. He pressed back. At first there was a sensation of extreme tightness and then he felt himself open up. She had often pushed her finger inside him but he had never felt anything like this. It was as if he were dissolving. He moved his right knee up towards his stomach and felt her move more deeply into him. She touched his prick and in seconds he was coming.

‘Now we’re quids,’ said Nicole.

‘Quits,’ he said, correcting her English for once.

For three days Luke didn’t leave the apartment. Then he began hobbling around, going to the shops for milk, to the Petit Centre for breakfast. The world had changed utterly in the interim. Now, he realized, it was peopled overwhelmingly by the halt and the lame. Everywhere he went he saw fellow limpers, hobbling and shuffling their way through the world. Infirmity was the norm. The highly mobile minority were missing out on a fundamental fact of life: getting around was difficult. It was like a premonition of being old, when even the smallest task would require planning, concentration and determination. Everything changed. Those men who levered themselves along the street in gallant, hour-long expeditions to the tabac for a Lotto card seemed less like unfortunates, more like the elders of the city, gurus in possession of the final secret of debility.

Lazare transferred Luke to what Alex termed a ‘desk job’ at the warehouse: filling in orders and manifests, checking deliveries. The lunch-time kick-arounds were starting again and Luke went along too, on his crutches, feeling sorry for himself, to watch. He was glad when the lunch break was over and they went back to work.

An outsider might have thought it strange that we stayed so long at the warehouse, working at what must have seemed a dead-end job. It
was
a dead-end job but everyone was happy to stay there. Several people – Matthias, Daniel – had vague plans to paint, to write, to make films (Luke’s
Route 29
was a case in point), but no one showed any sign of putting these plans into practice, possibly because working at the warehouse, surrounded by other people who had no immediate plans to get on, made it easy to forget that in the world beyond the warehouse people
were
making plans and films, holding exhibitions and forging careers. And at the same time, because the guys at the warehouse were working – as opposed to being miserably unemployed – and because most of them were foreigners, working abroad (gastarbeiters, according to Alex), this easy-going purposelessness had an automatic element of achievement built into it. Besides, Luke insisted, it didn’t matter if they weren’t achieving anything.

‘Life is
there
to be wasted,’ he joked.

At her job, meanwhile, Nicole was becoming increasingly aware of the attentions of her boss, Pierre. He was approachable, polite, friendly, interested. He complimented her on her work, listened attentively to any suggestions she had about the projects that were coming through the office. He sought out her opinions and then, when they had finished discussing work-related matters, he asked her about films, books. They had lunch together (he paid). He found himself wanting to stand closer to her when they were talking in the office, drinking mugs of coffee. Pierre loved his work, was ambitious, had always looked forward to going into the office, but now what he most looked forward to was seeing what Nicole would wear to work, how she would wear her hair. He came to recognize her perfume. Sometimes she was sure she could feel his eyes on her back, the touch of his gaze. When she turned round he would be looking the other way, doing something else, but he was there, always. Nicole was efficient, reliable, friendly. She never flirted. Describing her to a friend at lunch one day Pierre said that what fascinated him about her most was her absolute chastity. What he didn’t say was that he felt – as surely as Nicole could feel his eyes on her back – her to be a woman who would give herself utterly to a man. Her chasteness was somehow the outward proof, the external manifestation, of a potential for sexual abandon all the more alluring for being hidden, invisible. This certainty – a conviction whose strength derived, paradoxically, from an apparent lack of evidence – drove him to distraction. He came to love and, almost, to hate her. He bought her a present – an expensive fountain pen – and then made light of it. On several occasions Nicole made a point of using the word ‘boyfriend’ but to Pierre this nameless boyfriend seemed just that, a boy who was not to be taken seriously, an impediment. When he heard that the boyfriend had injured his ankle this seemed less an accident than a manifestation of his physical inadequacy. The knowledge, the certainty, that Nicole’s erotic ‘potential’ – and he found himself using that word frequently when telling her about future business ventures – was still to be unleashed, caused his attitude towards her gradually to coarsen. Pierre was urbane, charming, but Nicole was becoming increasingly aware of a leer in the things he said. As she came to know him better his charm began to falter. His habitual poise only just managed to prevent his flirting and innuendoes appearing crude rather than suave, suggestive. Nicole came to dread days that ended with just the two of them alone at the office: not because she feared him but – as she told Luke – because it was becoming tiresome dealing with him.