“For fuck’s sake, nobody asked whether she was hot! So you’ve no idea where you put her number?”
“I do. It’s just that I think it’s pathetic to call her and say ‘I don’t have the tapes but I was wondering whether you’re still looking for them because we’re searching for them and we’re searching for Subutex, we’re a bunch of useless cretins…’ What the hell is she going to think?”
The tattooed waitress is clearing the next table. Her eyes meet Patrice’s. She doesn’t smile. He stares at her as she walks away. Émilie nudges him in the ribs.
“D’you remember what we used to think of fortysomethings with a taste for young flesh when we were her age?”
“Don’t give me grief. I was just looking at her tattoo.”
“You had your eyes glued to her ass like an old perv in heat.”
“Was it that obvious?”
Xavier says:
“She knows Subutex. Used to hang out in Revolver when she was a kid. She heard me talking about him the other day and told me that her father used to take her to the record shop.”
“Really? You talked to her? I’m really annoyed that you’ve talked to her and I haven’t.”
Émilie can feel herself tense. She is pissed off that they’re desperate to fuck anything that moves—except her. Once again, Patrice commiserates. But he takes a strange pleasure in browbeating her. She plays with the zipper of her handbag, making a grating jangle with the buckles. Her cell phone vibrates and slides slowly across the table by itself, like an exhausted figure skater. She looks at the number and frowns:
“I gave my number to some homeless guy in the park who said he knew Vernon, but I think he was bullshitting … I hope it’s not him.”
“Well, answer it.”
“If it’s him, I know he’s going to be a pain.”
“Well, you’re single, aren’t you?
* * *
Émilie puts a finger in her left ear as she listens, head tilted forward, brows knitted, as though someone is talking to her in a language that is almost impossible to understand. She says okay, thank you, hangs up, and screws her nose doubtfully.
“It was the homeless guy … he said if we hang on here they’ll bring Vernon to us.”
“Did he sound serious?”
“Well, it must be worth waiting around, surely…”
“Especially since it’s not like we were going anywhere.”
GUSTS OF WIND SWEEP THROUGH THE HALL, making the door rattle on its hinges. The Hyena has tried to block it by wedging a piece of folded cardboard between the door and the frame, but still, at regular intervals, the banging starts up again, like someone brutally attempting to shoulder open the door.
Sitting cross-legged in front of the coffee table, she is following the Subutex gang’s WhatsApp conversation. They’re in the parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Émilie has probably told them that there was a break-in at her apartment and that the backpack has been stolen. The Hyena takes small sips of scalding ginger tea, it feels like swallowing fire. On the radio, a man with a grave voice is explaining that certain species of birds avoid hurricanes because they can sense the infrasonic vibrations that signal an approaching storm. She reaches out and turns down the volume; it is breaking her concentration.
Finding the Alex Bleach tapes had been child’s play. All she had had to do was be patient and leave Pamela Kant to stir things up, rack up the retweets about how she was looking for Vernon Subutex. At first the Hyena followed her progress somewhat abstractedly, finding the coincidence a little troubling, then she began to suspect that they were after the same thing … The day she had posted photos of herself flanked by two police officers, shamelessly crowing “Vernon Subutex in the house! Thx to all!” the Hyena had immediately called up a few old acquaintances to find out which police station she was at, and praise the gods, had arrived to see her leaving with Subutex … She had followed their taxi all the way to the hospital, but this was where she had made her mistake: seeing them go inside, she assumed she had time to park her brand-new moped. It was pouring and it had taken her five minutes to find a sheltered parking space. By the time she got back, Subutex had vanished into the night without a word of warning. Her plans thwarted, she had kept a close eye on Pamela. It wasn’t difficult, the woman seemed to spend her whole life glued to her cell phone. The Hyena had had no need to be inconspicuous, her target seemed determined to remain utterly oblivious to the world around her. Pamela knows that if she looks up from the screen, it is an open invitation for some idiot to tell her what he thinks of her legs, her career, or her bikini wax.
The most difficult thing was staking out her building. Pamela can go three days without leaving her apartment. Thankfully, no one has started a home delivery service for cigarettes, otherwise she wouldn’t need to go out at all. On the other hand, anyone can follow her daily routine, hour by hour, just by following her on Twitter. What she’s listening to, what she’s watching, what time she paints her toenails, whether she burned the roast, what she thinks about Obamacare or her latest Tetris score against some deranged Korean … You start out thinking, how old are you, woman, it’s like you think you’re still a teenage girl. But you quickly get used to the one-woman show. Pamela Kant is endearing, especially because she is difficult to pin down. Like a lot of professionals in the sex industry, she seems to have no sexuality in her private life—not so much into fucking, more into snail farming. The Hyena spent a whole week hiding out in a hotel across from her building, scrutinizing her online activities as though the security of the country depended on it. She has not quite worked out when the woman sleeps—she posts as much at night as she does during the day.
Al fin las tristeza es la muerte lenta de las simples cosas. Esas cosas simples que quedan doliendo en el corazón. Without thinking, she has been compiling a playlist. The voice of Chavela Vargas fills the space and her throat fills with a familiar sensation of gravity and grace. The Hyena’s back aches from hours spent bent over the coffee table. She needs to buy a chair. But a chair would require a table, and before you know it you’re living in a pigsty full of furniture … She likes to live in places that are almost empty. White walls, a few boxes on the floor, a low table for the laptop, and a sofa in case she gets a migraine. She is an expert in vertical piles—the books, the newspapers she collects, the shoeboxes in which she keeps a few documents. A rail on which to hang her clothes next to a mattress on the floor. Minimalism reassures her. With a single trip in a minivan, she can move house, something that has frequently proved useful. She likes her current apartment. Places are like people, there are some with which one has a greater affinity. She immediately felt at home here, in the dark depths of the fifteenth arrondissement, in this two-room apartment with its wood floors, high ceilings, and skewed angles. There are no curtains on the windows, but there are lots of blind spots. It lacks light. This was why she could get it so cheaply. People want light. The Hyena prefers the shadows. Que el amor es simple, y a las cosas simples las devora el tiempo.
* * *
It is something the Hyena hasn’t done in a long time. Cleave to someone’s life without their permission and not let go. Old reflexes, at once familiar and outdated, quickly resurface. And it was Pamela Kant who had led her to Émilie’s door. The Hyena had eavesdropped on their conversation, they had not noticed her peering into the window of a nearby real estate agent, and, within two minutes, she had heard enough to be able to walk on and leave them to finish their conversation, observing them from the corner of the street. Pamela had left empty-handed. As she walked away, even seen from behind, she seemed devastated and the Hyena felt oddly moved to see that she could be so easily discouraged. The Hyena was familiar with Émilie from the conversation on WhatsApp. She had been following them for some time now. Xavier, whom she had met early on in her investigation, had quite simply given her his password. She hadn’t even asked. He had wanted to show her Vernon’s Facebook page to prove that he was being honest when he said he couldn’t co
ntact him. He had told her his life story: “I always log off afterward, you never know. I wouldn’t want my wife reading some message, getting the wrong idea, and being hurt for no reason. So I log off. I can’t be dealing with all the passwords you have to use online these days—you’re supposed to have passwords for everything, it’s tedious. I always use the same one: Agnostic Front—a band no one’s ever heard of—that way I don’t need to worry.” She didn’t need to worry either—she had only to add “66”—his birth year—to the name of the obscure band he’d mentioned, and ever since she has been able to follow every conversation thread. Never discard a piece of information freely given, even if it seems unimportant at the time, every lock has a key, you just need to be patient.
Émilie is pretty relaxed for a Parisian. She goes down to the local shop without double-locking her door. This was useful, the Hyena didn’t want to creep in while she was asleep, she knows people don’t like that sort of thing and she feels no personal animus toward her new target. A credit card, a little jiggling, and she was in. Only the faintest rush of adrenaline. The backpack Vernon had left with her was under the bed. It was the second place the Hyena checked. She felt obliged to open a few drawers before she left, out of respect for her victim.
Finding the tapes had been child’s play. It had been afterward that things began to go wrong. She hadn’t dived for her phone to let her employer know—Hey, boss, it’s all sorted, I found them. She wanted to have a quick look at the tapes. Just to get a sense of the price she could demand. It was a bit of a hassle tracking down a video camera that still took cassettes, but as she finally watched the footage, she rubbed her hands: it was exactly what Dopalet feared. He would pay whatever he was asked to be able to destroy the tapes.
Not that the stoner singer actually said very much. Off his face on whiskey and yayo, he ranted and raved, bitching about his lot in life. There was an extraordinary beauty about him, he could read the shipping forecast and people would hang on every word. His eyes were mesmerizing. It had less to do with their almond shape and long eyelashes, more their power to communicate. His gaze is magnetic: without choosing to, you connect, and he opens the floodgates of his emotions. The texture of his voice, the soft hiss of sand, accentuates the hypnotic effect. He was not saying anything interesting, but the Hyena knows Dopalet, the producer’s name is mentioned, and that alone would give him a lifetime of sleepless nights. He cannot bear the idea of being hassled by the media. Actually, watching the tapes, he would be better off heaving a sigh of relief, shrugging and thinking, fuck it. If it ever did become public, he had only to say, “Just look at the state the poor bastard was in a few weeks before he croaked.” The work they had done together smearing Bleach’s name online would do the rest … But the foundations of Dopalet’s egoism are too fragile to make him a shrewd tactician. The slightest contradiction is enough to have him squirming like a devil spit-roasted on a barbecue. He’d pay whatever was necessary to get the tapes, and be pathetically grateful to boot.
But she had not called to let him know. She is only half surprised. It is latent knowledge—information she has had for some time without quite being aware of it, yet sensing its shape. Once it is brought into the light, she does not find it startling. It is simply a beam of light trained on a corner that had been in shadow. It is there. For a long time now, she has known she would reach a fork in the road. So this is what it feels like, a crossroads. The problem is not complex. In fact, it is simple mathematics: how much should she ask for. And still she doesn’t phone. It’s Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues.” Except that in the case of Robert Johnson, they say he sold his soul to the devil. Now that has a real ring to it. No one ever talks about selling your soul to an angel. Ever. Angels don’t do deals. The problem with redemption is that it’s like swapping crack for chamomile tea: there’s no doubt it has its advantages, but mostly it’s a fuck of a lot less entertaining.
It shouldn’t be complicated. She says it over and over like a mantra. She should bring the information back to her client, jack up the price, and take a long vacation. That would be the best decision, the wisest decision: cynical and lucrative. And on the other hand there is an absurd temptation: get in touch with the seven or eight assholes mentioned by Bleach, let them know she has the tapes, show them the footage. In other words, make trouble for herself, tip the world off its axis, toss a cluster bomb into a few quiet, peaceful lives, deal with the resulting shitstorm, and, in the end, have everyone despising her. We might call this second option the left field solution. Why is she wavering? She’s on the field for the cash, not the beautiful game. You don’t do this job and then wallow in qualms and scruples. So what the hell is wrong with her?
She thinks back to Aïcha, when they were in Barcelona, doing her homework at the kitchen table. Her stubborn little head, narrow to the point of pettiness, without an ounce of generosity. The rounded forehead, the nose a little shiny in the late afternoon, lit by the glow of her laptop screen, the aching shoulders she absently massaged without ever taking her eyes off her work. Her single-mindedness, her intensity in everything she did. Now there was a girl who would find the tapes interesting. They’d screw up her whole life, but she’d find them interesting.
Shit—you can tell yourself you don’t believe in anything, but in the end you can’t help admiring the impeccably organized clusterfuck. It’s as if some pickled pen pusher has been holed up in a corner plotting this whole thing for months. Because that is how it seems to her, now: the girl came to her hoping for information about her mother. At the time, it made absolutely no sense. But now, everything is different, now the Hyena can call her and say—I’ve got some information for you. Come to my place with the others, we’ll all watch the tapes together. Just to see what happens. Out of a sheer love of poetry—of wantonness and extreme chaos.
What do you do with the truth? Pamela Kant, now there is someone else who would be interested by this. Not to mention her testosterone-fueled friend Daniel who shows up at her place every night, it would interest him too. Everyone thinks they want to know. Truth is a blue-chip security on the open market. But what can you do with it? What can you make from it? Dopalet, the producer, wants to cancel it, repudiate it, destroy it. Well, at least someone has a coherent plan.
The Hyena fumes about not doing so, but still she does not phone to tell him the good news. A lot of people claim that they grow wiser with age. The truth is that they shrivel, they slow down. They lose their importance. They get trapped in quicksand and sink in good faith. The Hyena belongs to that rare breed of bullies—those who develop a sentimental streak late in the day, watch their armor transform into skin, and, dumbfounded, find themselves suddenly connected to the world, and—unaccustomed as they are—suffering qualms of doubt. Many habits adopted during adolescence begin to wane with age, and she has caught a dose of conscience the way others might come down with rheumatism. She has come to the end of her pact with evil. To carry on would mean lying to herself. It is not generosity of spirit that prevents her from calling her producer. What holds her back is stubborn intuition. She will inform all those looking for Vernon that she has the tapes. And she will make sure that everyone gets to see them. It’s none of her business, but she’ll organize a little screening.
She has not mentioned anything to Anaïs. The producer’s assistant. They don’t talk about business. Though they see a lot of each other. At first, the Hyena had a classic fixation: given that her job is boring as fuck, she focused on a scheme to ensnare the girl. She vaguely wondered what it was she found so attractive about her. Anaïs is not her type. She’s too normal, sensible, and easygoing. Though there are lesbians fascinated by the idea of converting someone, she has a tendency to avoid straights. You have to deal with all the bullshit insecurities of the first night, “Oh, I’ve no idea what to do, I’ve never done this before,” as though they’re sexual decathletes with guys, and you feel like saying, “Woman, if you don’t know what to do with me in bed, I doubt you’d do much b
etter with a prick and a pair of balls.” Having fun in bed is not tantric yoga as long as there are two of you and you’re both up for it. Obviously if your thing is to just lie there and let it happen, it might be a little more complicated with two girls. Otherwise, just go with the flow, you’ll see, you’ll get the hang of it. Straight women are so fucking uptight. It’s like they’re always studying for a certificate of good conduct.
But she really had a thing for Anaïs, and the Hyena thought, it’s not like heterosexuality is a defect—it’s always possible to square your convictions and your desires—so she started hovering around, making sure there was no ambiguity about her intentions. She constantly popped by the office. And Dopalet never said, “Listen, I don’t have time to see you today,” quite the reverse: the Hyena was indispensable to him, like an amulet with the power to ward off fate. The mission he had entrusted to her was one that left him worried sick. She could request an audience at any time of the day and he accepted. With the producer’s agreement, she passed herself off to friends and acquaintances of Alex Bleach as a documentary filmmaker who had been asked to decide whether there was sufficient material for a biopic. To justify her comings and goings to the office, she had met with a succession of Alex’s personal managers, all of whom had been fired on a whim, the driver of the tour bus on his last tour, a former roadie, a PR girl, the trusted “friend” who had been paid to watch the star day and night, a woman who had also been canned overnight only a few weeks before Bleach’s death, a photographer, a graphic designer … and several doctors. Bleach sought them out, and impressed them with his encyclopedic knowledge of organs, the brain, chemical messengers, and treatments. He demanded that his cardiologist come for coffee at his apartment every week, that his doctor accompany him on vacation, that his osteopath come on tour with him … Not so much pushers of prescription meds as benign confidants, the doctors invariably started out feeling flattered before realizing that they were being used, co-opted, and exploited as part of the star’s madness. Alex readily came across as polite, humble, and respectful, people in his inner circle often believed they had tamed him, had forged an intimate bond with him. At some point or other, all of them believed that things would be different with them, that they knew “how to handle him.” All of them had been disillusioned. The singer made no attempt to hide his vulnerability, he was funny and charming and extraordinarily affectionate. Then he fired them. Just when they least expected it, which usually coincided with the point when they needed him most. They all tried to discover the root cause of his erratic behavior: the father who walked out before he was born, the cold, distant mother, a single mother in a village in the ass end of nowhere with a black kid to bring up, the stepfather who acknowledged the little mixed-race bastard but never forgot he was not the boy’s biological father, the premature success, the enduring passion for class-A drugs … whichever way you looked at it, the conclusion was always the same: the guy was a self-saboteur on a grand scale. The Hyena related all this to her boss, who hung on her every word but remembered only one thing: Alex had never spoken about him to his friends. She had felt like saying, “Well, obviously, monsieur, no one is particularly interested in you outside your offices…” but she kept this to herself. Nor did she mention Pamela Kant, Lydia Bazooka, or Sylvia … Withholding crucial information is the very basis of fruitful collaboration. She also had declined to share her theory about Alex Bleach: those like him who are constantly going off the rails do it simply to piss people off. They do it because they can, and because it must be exhilarating. Fucking up three successive recording sessions and having the manager of the record label crawl back to eat out of his hand. Because he had no choice. And Alex Bleach was an equal-opportunity disappointment—from the hip tour manager to the old friend opening a neighborhood bar and relying on him to show up, from the editor in chief of Vogue to the little quadriplegic girl to whom he had promised an interview for her blog campaigning for disability rights. His reputation as a useless asshole preceded him, and no affinities of friendship would change his modus operandi: he charmed, forged a bond, created a sense of expectation and then disappeared without a word. He would say, “Sure, I’ll be there,” with convincing sincerity. Because, in the moment, he probably believed in his promise. Then he left them in the lurch. He claimed not to think of himself as a star all the while indulging in more whims, more cancellations, knowing that people had no choice but to forgive him. It was an aggressive stance: you need me too much to be able to treat me the way I deserve. Yet in all the confusion he choreographed, Bleach was conspicuously different from other smack-addict rock stars in that he never fucked up his records, when he bothered to record, or his concerts, when he condescended to perform. He did nothing right, except what was essential. His whole entourage regularly gave him up as a lost cause, Bleach would stage a comeback, and each time it reconfirmed his stardom. For years now, everyone had said things “couldn’t carry on like this,” according to the people the Hyena interviewed. His inner circle seemed more surprised that it had taken him so long to die than by the event itself … but what most shocked them—all of them—was his success. With each new album, the professionals would gently shake their heads—this time, he had really lost it—but the public, in a massive sign of approbation, howled “We love you!” And his fame was not confined within the borders of France. His charm worked. As did the facile songs he wrote and deconstructed just enough to make sure they didn’t sound like MOR, while still being catchy and easy on the ear. He had a formula that worked without fail, and he was an extraordinary live performer. Everywhere he played, audiences became devoted fans.
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