“How do you know this? No one ever said she was taking heroin…”
“Because he told me. I spent hours talking to him. In the early days. But you can’t reason with a lunatic. He made my life a living hell. He tormented me for years.”
“Why you?”
“Because I was the one who tried to save her. The one who did what he couldn’t do.”
He is still in the same position, arms wrenched behind his back, face pressed against the wall. But the girls are listening to him. There are a few little white lies in the story he’s telling, they would be easily exposed. But it would take them some time to check. The version they would find on the internet would not be very different. If they use Google, he doesn’t have to worry, they’ll come across the stories he paid the Hyena to spread: alleged rape, harassment, a violent, dangerous homophobe. He drives the nail home:
“He was eaten up by guilt. He took it out on me. I became his punching bag.”
“I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”
“Maybe, but it’s the truth.”
“I’m going to trust my instincts: he told me you were a liar.”
Behind his back, he hears the other girl open her bag and take out something. He is convinced he can persuade them to leave him alone. They don’t trust Bleach any more than they do him: they haven’t said a word in his defense.
“So I’m the handy scapegoat? I’m convenient? And obviously, since I’m rich, I can’t possibly be innocent—so you can just destroy my life without worrying? You can burst into my apartment, smash things, torture me, insult me … But it doesn’t matter, I’m rich, I’m paying for all the other rich guys, after all we’re interchangeable, is that what this is about?”
“No, no. This is about the fact that my mother is dead. I choose to believe that things could have been different for her. That I might have had a chance to know her.”
* * *
She grabs him and drags him to a kitchen chair and forces him to straddle it, facing the back. The other girl is waiting, she has ropes. They tie his hands behind his back. They have a powerful grip and enough common sense to hobble his ankles, his knees, his waist, and his arms. It is like being in a straitjacket. Blood trickles from the fingers of Satana’s daughter, she grazed herself while tugging at the knots, and seeing the blood galvanizes her, she redoubles her fury. In the prettier girl’s eyes, he imagines he can see a flicker of compassion. He pleads with her, summoning all the sincerity he can muster:
“You do realize I’m innocent, don’t you?”
And the girl in the hijab gives him a clip on the ear.
“How long are you planning to whine about that? Don’t tell me that at your age you still believe in justice, that the guilty pay and the innocent are pardoned…? That’s not how things work in this world. You’re tied up and we’re free to move. It’s not difficult to understand: you come off worst.”
The pretty one lays a hand on her friend’s shoulder as though to calm her.
“Give him a chance anyway.”
Turning toward him, in an almost friendly tone that makes Dopalet want to sob, she says:
“Talk to her about her mother. How you were friends, all that. Tell her. What kind of stuff did you do together?”
“She loved music. She had an astonishing knowledge of music.”
“So you listened to records together?”
“Sometimes.”
“That’s sweet. Sometimes she’d come over to your place, she’d be here in this room and she’d spend the evening impressing you with her musical knowledge?”
“No, not my place. I never bring people here. This is for family.”
“Family?”
“My wife, her children … I kept my private and professional lives separate.”
“So, your relationship with her mother was professional?”
“No. But sometimes we’d listen to music in the car.”
“In the car?”
“Yes. She’d sing at the top of her voice, she’d dance, when we stopped at traffic lights people would laugh, she loved it.”
“And where were you going in this car?”
“To dinner, to the movies, to a party…”
The girl in the hijab barks:
“And where did you have dinner with my mother?’
“I don’t remember … at the Hôtel Costes, maybe … or somewhere … anywhere…”
“You picked her up outside her place?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where did she live?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Or maybe she came to see you at the office and you screwed her and then she got into your car so you could pimp her out elsewhere.”
“I’ve already told you I didn’t screw anyone.”
“So you were friends. Okay. What kind of music did my mother like?”
“Rap.”
“Wrong. She only listened to white music. You don’t even know that. Mostly rock and techno. You’ve got no idea. Because to do what you did together, music didn’t matter much.”
This is what the Inquisition must have been like. Pathetic torturers who didn’t even listen to what you were saying. Behind his back, he hears the shorter one take something else out of her bag. He doesn’t know what she’s doing, but it is taking her a long time. He feels perspiration trickle down his chest. He realizes he is sweating as if he were in a sauna. Then he feels them slice through the back of his shirt. At the feel of metal against his skin, he is plunged into abject terror. There is no point screaming. The whole apartment is soundproofed. It dates back to the time when he used to have parties here and was sick and tired of complaints about the noise. He is going to die here. Tortured by these two little shits. A short paragraph in “News in Brief.” He has a fleeting image of Satana crawling toward him on all fours, panties down around her thighs, her ass spread wide, in the living room of one of his friends; there were several of them sitting in white leather armchairs. All that for this. It’s absurd. It has always bothered him that he is led around by his dick. He always knew it would be the death of him. But how can he explain to these two retards that it was a consensual relationship between adults, that there is always something uncertain when it comes to sex. Satana understood that.
Out of the corner of his left eye, he catches a glimpse of the pretty girl, she is pulling on black gloves. He is about to pass out. Then they blindfold him, he hears the sound of a motor whirring behind his back and feels a glacial fear steal over him.
LOÏC IS LISTENING TO “MODERN WORLD” by the Jam as he rides along on his moped. The traffic is clear. The sun is shining, but Loïc has kept his gloves on. According to the forecast, it will rain around midday. The weather is all the guys talk about before their shifts this year. For a motorcycle courier, the weather is much more than just whether you’re going to wear your shiny new shoes. Apparently, there hasn’t been a summer this cold and rainy since 1988. He can’t remember what the weather was like back then. He would have been twenty-four—the weather was the least of his worries. He was living in Montpellier. 1988. The year Mitterrand was elected. Loïc hadn’t bothered to vote. By then, he already knew the whole thing was a farce. Back then, he would have been listening to Les Sheriff’s “A coups de batte de baseball.” He always liked fucktards. The past couple of days he’s been having trouble with his cervical vertebrae. The doc says there’s nothing to be done except take it easy. Not something he can do in his job: being a courier is nonstop pressure. Stress is part of the job, if you’re not constantly on the alert a car will sideswipe you, if you’re not the fastest, you won’t get your contract renewed. He’s the oldest member of the team. He’s not the best anymore. The kids are faster. And more reckless.
The light turns red at the bottom of the avenue Marceau. A bunch of people from Virgin are holding up traffic. Though not for long. There’s maybe fifty of them. Loïc heard about the protest on the radio this morning. It’s just a handful of employees. The line
outside Virgin the day it shut its doors, now that was a crowd. Everyone had set an alarm clock so as not to miss out on the going-out-of-business sale. It was a full-scale riot. But the number who’ve turned out to defend workers’ rights this morning could be a bunch of friends at a bachelor party. Loïc feels bad for them. Buildings have become more important than the people who work in them. Have to say, it was a beautiful building, the Virgin Megastore. He wore the red vest himself. Worked for six months on the information desk. If people had questions, they came to him. The Champs Élysées will seem weird without Virgin. Not that he could afford to go there and buy anything on what he earns, but at least it was there.
Besides, he hates Paris. He’s been working here for more than fifteen years. He never liked this fucking city. He crosses the sunlit place Vendôme, deserted at this time of day, then heads along the banks of the Seine, overtaking taxis, crossing bridges, the Musée d’Orsay with tourist buses parked out front, the waters of the Seine are high, muddy, almost yellow. Within minutes, he reaches the lines of garden centers along the Quai de la Mégisserie. Pottery chimpanzees astride plastic alligators, fake palm trees, and garden gnomes.
The difference between a broken love affair and a broken friendship is how long they take to heal. At the time, a breakup is more painful, there is a lot of craziness involved, that sort of shit can easily become obsessive. It’s unbearable. But it passes pretty quickly and leaves no trace. A girlfriend is easily replaced. It’s not hard deciding you want to sleep with a girl. Most of them have got something or other that warrants taking an interest. If you want to settle down, you’ve got to be realistic. The half-decent girl who knows how to cook, has no bad habits, accepts you for who you are, and doesn’t try to change you or get you to eat your vegetables, that’s about as much as you can ask from love. It’s always the same story, give or take a few details. The important thing is not to go looking for things in a relationship that you’re never going to find. Loïc has long since realized that, to be happy in love, you have to make do with what’s on offer.
Friendship, on the other hand, brooks no compromises. It demands complete sincerity from both parties. It’s easy to find someone to a sink a few beers, tell a few jokes. But finding someone you can really talk to, now that’s rare. Loïc is dealing with a broken friendship. He feels betrayed. And alone. He goes through phases of anger, contempt, misery. But the worst thing is the withdrawal. Last night, he was watching TV at his place in Garges-lès-Gonesse—there’s footage of a young black guy in London, hands covered in blood, wielding a machete, his bagging jeans slipping off his ass, in the background you can see the body of the soldier he’s just murdered, and the young black guy is just standing there, chill, talking straight to the camera. Immediately, Loïc thinks about the text he wants to send to Noël. He still can’t get used to the breakup. Now he’s got no one to share his thoughts with. He’s lost his best friend. They laughed at the same stuff, they had a sort of secret code. They constantly quoted Maradona at each other—they would look up Spanish quotes online. They knew every insult he’d ever made against Pelé by heart. They would watch every goal by Ronaldinho. That Brazil 2011 free kick. He knows the defenders are going to jump, so he shoots it underneath. Not going for the corner of the net. Straight in. Counterintuitive. They could watch it a hundred times. The intelligence of the guy. They didn’t want to like Messi, but watching his goals side by side, they had to admit he was the true heir to the master. The same command in midfield, dodging diving defenders, and that same genius for putting the ball exactly where the goalie least expects it.
* * *
I mean, obviously he’s got Pénélope on the sofa next to him in the evenings. But she’s a girl. Which means she takes everything hyper-seriously. If he makes one of his dumb jokes, she goes ballistic. It’s like she’s paid by the PC brigade to make sure no one has any fucking fun.
He and Noël used to have a good time together. Loïc would regularly crash on Noël’s sofa, it was easier than catching the last train on the RER and saved him a two-hour commute in the morning, which was pretty useful. Friendship breakups are more painful. Loïc knows that a good friend is something you find only once or twice in a lifetime. Friendship isn’t something you can generate. Usually, it’s girls who come between friends. A guy hooks up with some girl and she gets all clingy and possessive. In desperation, the guy decides it’s easier to hit PAUSE with his friend. He lays down his arms. The girl has won. A friendship has died.
The irony is that it was some bourgeois idiot who came between him and Noël. He’d never have imagined that Noël would fall for that bullshit. Middle-class people are always fucking things up. Julien goes around busting everybody’s balls about the Jewish lobby—the guy might not be circumcised himself, but that doesn’t stop him owning a fancy apartment, on the rue de Bretagne, no less. And he slums it with guys from working-class families and tells them how they should behave. Julien’s always going on about real French people, but he doesn’t know shit about working-class people or where they live. The bourgeois fuck is always trying to get people to hand out blankets to the homeless—like he’s ever likely to be homeless. Why the hell does the guy have to be such a monumental pain in the ass?
Loïc never could stomach the middle classes. Even when he was a kid and hung around with all sorts, the parents of the rich kids would always tell them not to invite him over. Not that he wasn’t well behaved, but the parents always took a dislike to him. He looked too much like what he was: a fucking pauper. His mother weighed, like, three hundred pounds. People would shout insults at her from their cars. There she was, holding her son’s hand, he was old enough to know what was going on, but too young to run to the next set of traffic lights and smash the driver’s face in. He can still hear the way his mother used to breathe on the stairs. They lived on the sixth floor. The elevators were out of order for at least one week every month. He was terrified that she would drop dead in that stairwell. She would turn to Loïc, who always walked behind her, terrified that she might collapse at any moment and furious that she had to suffer like this. For him, this is the sound of being working class. His mother stopping on the third floor, unable to catch her breath. Given her weight, she was grateful that anyone gave her a job. She was a junior hairdresser in a salon in a Carrefour shopping mall. She became allergic to the shampoo. Even if she wore gloves, it gave her eczema. She would break out in a red rash all over her torso and her neck.
Little Julien can dress up the “will of the people” any way he chooses, he’ll never know what it’s like to be six years old and have to watch your mother ruin her health and not even earn enough to buy you a bike. Julien doesn’t know what it’s like, but that doesn’t stop him opening his big mouth. The left wing is full of the same sort of cretins.
Loïc’s had to deal with his fair share of them in his time. He was sucked in by rock music when he was a kid. The whole industry was riddled with Trots, Maoists, anarchists, libertarians. A lot of them hated the music, but they saw it as a breeding ground for young minds they could brainwash. Loïc was really into the Redskins. And all the hard-core punk stuff: Bérurier noir’s “Concerto,” La Souris Déglinguée around the time they released “Une cause à rallier,” Sham 69’s “If the Kids Are United.” In the beginning, he allowed himself to be indoctrinated. He took lessons in radicalism with guys he would run into five years later living in apartments paid for by their parents. None of them ever started their sermons with: “I’m the son of landowners and I grew up in the lap of luxury.” It had worked like a vaccine. If you want to talk to me, first tell me where you grew up.
The right wing has the same clowns as the left. But there’s one thing that sets them apart: they’re more sincere. Human beings are shit. All they want is to be told what to do. To be punished, rewarded, guided. Kill thy neighbor, that’s the essence of human nature. That’s how you can tell which of two civilizations is superior: who’s got the biggest weapons. Put three families from different
religions in a city, leave them to get on with it, wait a generation, and they’ll be killing each other. An ego is like a cock: no conscience can stop a hard-on. There’s no point pretending human beings aren’t shit. The only thing that stops people killing each other is control. They need a leader. That’s what the people want. A leader is someone who says: this one we kill, this one we reward. And everyone’s happy. In the end, it doesn’t fucking matter whether the leader advocates this ideology or that. What the alpha male gets off on is power. He can base it on any book he likes, it’s all the same.
He doesn’t give a shit. What he cares about is who I hang with, who I have a blast with. After that: he’s loyal. If Noël really believed that L’Œuvre française was a cure-all, they wouldn’t be spending all night arguing when they could be talking soccer. Go join Jeunesse nationalistes. Loïc doesn’t belong to any political party, doesn’t buy into any ideology. It’s something that comes with age—one day Noël will realize that everyone thinks he’s an idiot. There’s no point expecting anything from politicians. Even if they were decent people to start off with, the system would turn them into assholes. You get swept away by the discipline: once you’re prepared to betray your convictions, you’re ready to betray your friends. At that point, you’re done for. It pisses him off that Noël has allowed himself to be suckered.
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