MY PARENTS WERE finishing their desserts. I was slumped in my seat, half-asleep. I’d eaten a lot and drunk a lot of wine to make myself feel better. My parents liked it when I drank wine. I looked at my phone: nothing. No one knew I’d gone to Dax, no one was wondering where I was. Luce had forgotten me.
“You’re not very chatty, Leonard.”
“Can I go see the fish in the aquarium?” Alma asked.
“Yes, but don’t go anywhere else.”
She left.
“You could make an effort, Leonard. It’s our last night, too, you know.”
“I’m going outside to call someone,” said Adrien.
He left and I found myself alone with them. Their four eyes were fixed on me. My mother smiled and took a breath. “We understand that your thoughts are elsewhere at the moment… We just hope that everything’s okay. With your friends, I mean, and…”
“And your girlfriend?” my father added.
My mother gave him a sharp look. I thought about all those times when they’d asked me about my “love life.” Stop asking me about that. I don’t have a love life. If I did, I’d tell you.
“Anyway,” said my father, who was also a bit drunk, a state that always made him want to talk very honestly, “if we’re cramping your style, you should tell us… I mean, for example, if you wanted to, um…”
“Bring someone back to my tent?” I said abruptly.
My mother laughed nervously. My father shrugged and smiled. “Well, yeah, for example.”
“To do what?”
They were embarrassed. I was finally giving them what they wanted and they were embarrassed. They started sweating like they were out in the sun.
“To sleep with a girl?”
My mother hurriedly looked away, but my father laughed lasciviously and gave me a frank, unshockable look. “Well, yeah, for example… I mean, that’s up to you, Leo…”
“No, I’m not interested in that.”
My mother took another breath. I sensed that something was coming.
“Listen… whatever your… your ‘orientation’… we would never judge you, Leo. Never.”
“God, you’re stupid! It has nothing to do with that.”
“Leo, what’s gotten into you?”
“I just don’t want to, okay? Girl, boy, I don’t care.”
They didn’t understand. I was enjoying this conversation. I wanted them to feel bad, too. I also wanted them to stop talking to me about sex while blushing. I finished the wine in their glasses. My father grabbed my arm.
“Leo, what’s going on?”
“Let me go.” I pushed him away.
“We’re just trying to help you!”
“No, you just want me to bring a girl home. That’s all you think about!”
There was a silence. Some of the other customers were watching us. My father stood up slowly and went to pay the check. Alma was clueless. She stared at me from the other end of the restaurant, frowning, one hand touching the glass wall of the aquarium. My mother concentrated on not bursting into tears. Then gave me an insistent look, as if demanding that I tell her everything, now, tell her everything that was on my mind, once and for all, while we were alone. She took hold of my hands and squeezed them. I was on the verge of tears. It was too much in one day. I almost spoke then, but… no, damn it, my mouth stayed shut. It was impossible. That’s all there was to it.
Outside, it was dark. Adrien was standing under a streetlight, talking on the phone. It was already late. My phone buzzed and my heart jumped. It was a text, my first of the day: Louis gave me your number. Come to the beach—there’s a party. Luce.
WE DROVE BACK to the campsite, gliding along those endless Landes roads, bordered by dark pine trees. No one dared say anything. Bubble was panting close to me. Alma was holding my hand. I could feel Adrien’s cold gaze on me. I stared at the dashboard lights and listened to the warm voice of the radio. A journalist was talking about the heatwave: a climatic event on an extraordinary scale, the worst to hit Europe since 2003. In France, many people had died. The government was on vacation. The lessons of the past had not been learned. The bonds of society were breaking. A political crisis was looming. My father turned off the radio. What did we know about the damage caused by the heat? For two weeks, we had lived without television or Internet, using our phones only to check what time it was when we were on the beach. Except Adrien. Maybe he knew how many people had died, but he didn’t say anything. We were cut off from the world. Beyond the campsite, France was in the grip of a crisis. Oscar was not alone. The heat had ravaged the country. When the silence grew too oppressive, my mother turned the radio on again. Some journalists were still arguing about society, and then it was the weather: “The expected storms will spare the Southwest and move northward. On the coast, however, the wind from the west will reach fifty miles per hour during the night, creating a heavy swell with significant tidal coefficients. Prudence is advised in the sea and on the beach.”
In the main square, the concert was in full swing. The campsite’s rock group was playing “Jump” by Van Halen. It didn’t sound very good. They didn’t have a synthesizer to do those big chords in the introduction, so they played them on the trumpet. I could hear it from the car while we drove past the square. There were parents there, some children, and a few stray teenagers: the losers of the campsite, the ones who preferred Coke to beer, a gentle village fete to a rowdy beach party; the weak, the lame, the oppressed, the resigned, the ugly, the repressed homosexuals, the fat boys, the fat girls, the foreigners, the ones who were still too young, the ones who were already too old… they were all mixed up with the parents and children to spare themselves pain. Here, they were all happy and yet, at the same time, all lost, fucked over, left on the sidelines of adolescence.
Our car moved away. My phone buzzed several times. Luce called me and I didn’t answer. I wanted her to think I was dead.
We parked near our tents. The string lights looked pathetic. My parents wanted to talk to me again, to find out what was going on with their son, but I left.
I ran toward the dune. Little by little, the electronic dance music on the beach drowned out the rock music from the campsite. I ran faster, in time with the bass beats. The paths were empty, the colors had disappeared. The tents and the bungalows were lost in shadows. It was the same night as the one before. Oscar had been dead for almost twenty-four hours. The same night, except for the wind and the impression that I had been on a long journey. Suddenly I thought that the body was not well hidden. As crudely concealed as a child behind a curtain. All it would take was some wind and the sand would blow away, revealing fabric, skin, bruised neck. I thought about that now. I thought about it now because maybe I had wanted it to be badly hidden before, so that someone would find it without me having to help them. But now I had to bury it better. So deeply that it would not be discovered until an archaeological dig in the future, when nothing would remain of the body but bones, an old memory, and I would be dead, this campsite gone. A large plastic shovel was leaning against a bungalow. I grabbed it as I passed, like a javelin. Something in the music drew me toward the dune with fear and jubilation, the two feelings mixed up in my face, or alternating, maybe, in rhythm with the streetlights that illuminated each intersection. I climbed the dune. The sand was warm. My city shoes sank into it. High above, the horizon opened up to reveal bright little dots: a fire, phone screens, the foam of the waves in moonlight. There was no storm, just a warm wind and a huge swell forming out at sea. The tide was high. The party was taking place on what remained of the beach. Scattered figures drinking and dancing. The bunny, a pink glow in the darkness, was carrying the speaker that sent the bass beats in muffled waves up to my ears. The dance music made something rise in my chest. It petrified me with anxiety. It was the music of the dead, the music of tragedy. It reminded me, too, of those porn stars who pound away endlessly at orifices, eyes bulging, veins throbbing, fit to burst. For an instant I wanted to yell at them all
down below, to tell them that the music they were listening to was horrible, and that Oscar was dead. I didn’t dare go down the dune. I wanted to run away. But think about Oscar, I kept telling myself. Stay focused on Oscar. Don’t listen to the music. Bury Oscar so deep that you will forget him. Move his body without fuss, as if you were just doing some DIY at home on a Sunday. And maybe it is Sunday already. It’s past midnight. There’s not much time left.
I walked down the dune, searching for the lifeguard’s flag. I couldn’t find it. They must have taken it out so the wind didn’t blow it away. Now I didn’t know where anything was. Everywhere I looked, it was just sand. I turned on the light on my phone and examined the ground. I got down on all fours and searched everywhere. I could hear shouting from the beach. Something was happening. I kept scraping away, like a dog, like the night before, exactly the same but in reverse, because Oscar was on the other side of the ground. Someone moaned. There he is, I thought. A few feet below, a figure was crawling. I approached it, trembling, shovel in hand in case it attacked. But it wasn’t Oscar. It was some stoned teenager dragging himself along on his belly as if his legs had been cut off. He laughed when he saw me. “Tsunami… Better watch out…”
A very small wave wet our feet. The boy was laughing so much, he swallowed a mouthful of salt water and almost choked. The swell out at sea was so enormous that the waves were now reaching the dune. I dropped the shovel and headed toward the lights. Where was Oscar? There was a second wave and the water came up to my calves. I found myself in the middle of the crowd, surrounded by laughter and yells, the wind, the bass beats, and the sound of the water rising, flooding everything. People were still dancing. Someone was holding the speaker above his head. Everyone was excited. Some fell, then reappeared farther out, laughing hysterically. It was dangerous. The riptides. Someone could die. Where was Luce? I wasn’t searching for Oscar anymore. The sea would reach him. It would suck him up and deposit him somewhere else. I swayed between the dancers. I was dancing, too, to avoid the waves. At last I was dancing, without shame or fear. Someone handed me a drink. I swallowed it. The alcohol warmed me inside. I drank some more. The bunny recognized me. “Hey, it’s you! You were the one who shoved me this afternoon! You beat that kid up in the square! What the hell is wrong with you, you little prick?”
He raised his paw to hit me, but in the end he held me gently in his arms and murmured into my ear: “All is forgiven… Here, all is love…”
I remained pressed against his fur, soaked with alcohol and filth. Suddenly he started laughing and let me fall. He vanished into a whirl of lights and yelling. I almost yelled, too. Maybe I did. Car headlights were shining down on the party.
“The sea will soon cover the entire beach. Come back to the campsite.” A voice through a megaphone addressing us from the top of the dune. “Do not try to find your belongings. Come directly to the campsite.”
People started climbing the dune. They shoved past me as I sat on the ground. Bottles and items of clothing were floating everywhere. Maybe Oscar was floating, too. The music and the lights moved into the distance. I was left alone. The water covered me. The backwash sucked me away from the dune and I drifted, slowly, through the cold water and out to sea. I wasn’t breathing anymore. In brief moments I could catch glimpses of sky. The water was entering my mouth and my nose. I was floating on my back… I thought about the waves that had knocked me over on other days, about those few seconds each time when I would lose my bearings, let the sea shake me up and down while waiting confidently to float back up to the surface. I let it do the same thing now. I wasn’t expecting anything. Something was slipping away.
“What the hell are you doing?”
A hand grabbed me. Luce pulled me up until I was standing, then dragged me forcibly back with her.
“I can’t believe you’re swimming now! Where were you? I called you so many times!”
She led me to the dune; not to where the others were but to the side, where there was a surf hut built on stilts. A wave swept away her sarong. She kept going in her swimsuit. She climbed the steps, felt around on the roof, found the key, and let us in. Then she closed the door behind us.
A little light and wind sneaked between the wooden slats. The hut smelled of sand and damp towels. Outside, the water kept rising. It caressed the stilts. The hut was tiny, like a boat in the night. I heard Luce breathing, very close. She smelled of alcohol. I probably did, too. She came closer. I stood leaning against the wall, waiting for her to do something.
“The campsite’s going to be flooded. It’s happened before, three years ago. It destroyed everything, it was horrible. There was a storm, too, with massive hailstones that smashed cars and hurt people, but I was happy. At least it changed things. I’m sick of this campsite. It’s always the same. I know it all by heart. I don’t like the campers. They all look the same… like the Landes, with all its stupid pine trees.”
She came even closer. “I lost my sarong… Why did you mention Oscar before? I don’t care about Oscar… He went crazy yesterday.”
She was mixing everything up. Her hand touched mine and everything became mixed up for me, too: the alcohol, the hut surrounded by water, the bottles and bodies floating outside, Luce, sad and drunk and sweetly reassuring amid all this wreckage. I didn’t know her. I had spent a long day with her, but I didn’t know her, except for her voice, her pale skin, her dry lips. She kissed me. And then it happened. There was nothing violent about it. It was like tired music. The sensation wasn’t really disorienting; it was pretty much like I’d imagined. It wasn’t a liberation, either: I came, and the world stayed the same. Oscar and the waves continued outside. But something pleasant spread through my body, and I think through hers, too. She held me in her arms. I thought that I was in love with her and that it was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time. She fell asleep.
I woke up. The wind and the waves had died down. I’d been sleeping next to Luce on a pile of towels. Her arm was under my neck and our heads were touching. I carefully detached myself from her and left the hut. Outside, everything was calm. The sky was already tinged with pink. The sea had retreated, but during the night, the water had overflowed the dune and reached the campsite. It had left behind an altered beach. I didn’t recognize it anymore. The bumps and the hollows had all switched places. A large part of the dune had collapsed. I took a few steps on the soaked sand, which was littered with trash from the party. After dawn, it would all be cleaned up. I had to find Oscar before then. But I was cold. Winter would reach this place. All that trouble, just for this. I went to find Luce and nestled against her. There were still a few hours of sleep left.
MORNING CREPT THROUGH the slats. Luce took up a lot of space when she slept. She was sweating. The breath from her half-open mouth smelled sour. She moved in her sleep, forcing me to the edge of the towels as if they were a bed. She kept kicking and elbowing me, but I patiently put up with it. I could have stayed for hours in that position, bones aching but a smile on my face, my heart soothed by the knowledge that she was comfortable. Sometimes I wanted to kiss her shoulder, but I didn’t dare disturb her. I watched her, waiting for her to wake up. I dreamed, eyes open… I met Luce and we are going to stay together. The bad years are behind me. The worst is just behind me. Oscar was swept away by the sea. Now he is drifting far from us, toward America. One day he will stop floating and he will sink to the bottom of the ocean, and that will be the end of it. We will live somewhere. I will atone for it, year by year. I will give back as much as I have ruined this August. I will pay my debt in silence. No one will come looking for us or make us do anything. We will have a gun to shoot pink bunnies.
Luce woke. She sat up, stretched, already impatient. “How are you, Leo? Did you sleep well?”
“Very well.” I wanted to kiss her, but she started yawning.
She picked up her phone. “It’s nine already!”
“Ah. What do you think we should do, Luce?”
“Your pare
nts will be leaving at ten, won’t they, like everyone else? You’d better hurry.”
I felt less good now. Our condom—the one Louis had given me—was lying on the floor. I’d thought about throwing it away while Luce slept, but in the end I’d left it there. I’d thought we would look at it and laugh, complicit, that we would have sex again, perhaps, and that we’d then take a walk, hand in hand, to the main square, to eat brunch, pleasantly tired after our night. But she kept staring at her phone, smiling as she answered her messages.
She kissed me on the cheek and everything became wonderful again. I kissed her on the mouth, like a big thank-you.
“You should call your parents,” she said.
“I lost my phone in the sea.”
“Shit.”
“Doesn’t matter. There are worse things.”
“Use mine.” She gave it to me and lay down again. She wasn’t trying to make me like her, that was obvious. Her neck folded and gave her a double chin. “I’m going to leave today, too. I don’t think I’ll ever come back to this campsite. In September, I start university, in Bordeaux. I’ll try to spend my summers there.”
How many miles were there between Bordeaux and Lorient? Probably not many, compared to the distance between other cities or countries. I googled it to check, covering the screen with my hand to shade it from the sunlight, even though there wasn’t any; I’d used this same trick every time I’d pretended to send messages on the beach at night, so I wouldn’t have to dance. No one had realized.
“So are you calling them or what?”
“Yeah, yeah…”
For a moment I imagined my phone in the depths of the sea, with all the missed calls from my mother. Then I looked at Luce and I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “And after?” I asked, looking deep into her eyes for the first time.
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