“I’m only interested in you,” he replied gently.
“I know that,” she said with a smile. “Shall I switch off?” And as she said it, she did so.
He put his arms around her. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he whispered in her ear.
He didn’t mean it. But he wanted to fuck her. Just to get his revenge on Alain. His cock in the snow. The way he made Sophie laugh. His desire for her. That was the only reason. And to reassure himself too. To convince himself that he was still the love of her life. And that his own cock was irreplaceable.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, this time sliding his hand inside her pajama top.
“It’s late . . .”
“Do you think so?”
And he put his erect cock against her naked buttocks. Sophie parted her thighs for him to caress her the way she liked. But Rico entered her suddenly and violently.
“Oh!” she cried out. “It’s huge.”
He lifted her to take her doggie-fashion. And for the first time in his life, he made love to Sophie without any love at all, without any tenderness. He fucked her for himself. Forcefully. As if marking out his territory.
After Sophie left, Rico often wondered if that night, and the nights that followed, she had thought about Alain when he fucked her.
He supplied his own answer. Yes.
“Fucking bitch,” he said, putting the bottle back on the sink.
“I don’t care. I have my ball.”
For some minutes, Félix had been watching Rico.
9.
LIZARD’S HEAD, LIZARD’S TAIL
Félix gave Rico a big smile. A shy, profoundly sad—and unsettling—smile.
“My name’s Félix.”
Absorbed in his own thoughts, Rico had not heard him come in, and he had jumped when he saw him standing there, a slender, motionless, silent figure. It was if he had been listening to all the things Rico had been saying to himself in his head.
This had to be Félix, Rico knew that. Jo and Dédé’s friend. Because of the football he was holding under his arm. But Rico had been surprised all the same. It had never occurred to him that Félix was still around. Dédé and Monique hadn’t mentioned it, at least before he fell asleep.
Félix was hopping from one foot to another, as if he was desperate to take a leak.
“How did you get in?” Rico asked.
“Coming and going’s not a problem.”
Rico could not take his eyes of this shaggy-haired figure wriggling in front of him. Especially the tattoo at the corner of Félix’s left eye. A lizard’s head.
“Lizard’s head,” Félix said.
He shifted the ball from his left arm to his right arm, then opened his left hand and showed Rico his palm. The lizard’s tail.
“Lizard’s tail,” Félix said with a laugh.
They looked at each other in silence. Félix stopped hopping, then declared in a monotonous voice, “Monique and Dédé went to the supermarket. To do the shopping. There’s nothing in the fridge.”
“Want some?” Rico said finally, holding out the bottle to Félix.
He grimaced and shook his head. “I have my ball.”
Rico nodded, as if to say he understood. Then he took another long swig, looked at what was left in the bottle and decided to finish it. If they’d gone to the supermarket, they’d bring back some wine, for sure. Dédé wouldn’t forget.
“Do you live here?” Rico asked, following Félix into the living room.
“No,” he replied, sitting down on the couch. “In the forest. I have a cabin.”
“You live in a cabin? In this weather?”
“I can’t sleep in houses. Houses stink at night.”
Rico didn’t reply. Again, he was mesmerized by that lizard’s head bursting from the corner of Félix’s left eye. He wondered if the lizard’s tail moved when Félix blinked.
“Haven’t you noticed? Houses stink at night. There’s this kind of smell, as soon as you close your eyes. A smell of pu-tre-fac-tion,” he said, separating each syllable, as if he had just discovered the word.
Rico shrugged. He didn’t know anything about that. He’d forgotten what it was like to live in a house. This apartment was different. It was like being between two worlds. And he wouldn’t be staying.
“I can’t breathe it. Before, I never even noticed . . .”
Félix broke off, smiled at Rico, then grabbed the remote control and switched on the TV.
“They show lots of cartoons on Wednesdays. I like cartoons. That’s why I came.”
He channel-hopped until something caught his attention.
“The Power Rangers! Hey, I love that show!”
He settled on the couch, his ball held tight against his chest, and didn’t say another word, spellbound by the images on the screen.
Some time during the afternoon, Dédé had told Rico that no one knew where Félix came from. Moustache had met him one day in Toulouse, at a reception center run by Abbé Pierre called the Casa. At night, he slept next to the prefabricated huts that were used as dormitories. Everyone assumed he was crazy. One night, as a joke, Moustache had suggested they travel together. Félix had stuck with Moustache. Until Moustache took off, without warning, after his argument with Jo.
At that time, Dédé had continued, Félix never spoke. He could only say two sentences: “I’m alone” and “I have my ball.” And he would repeat them, until it drove everyone crazy. According to Abdul, one of the people in charge of the Casa, Félix had ended up on the street after a long stay in a mental hospital. Before that, he had worked on a small farm. Which explained why he liked nature so much.
It was while kicking a ball with Abdul for fifteen minutes each day that Félix had started talking again. A little. But without ever really opening up about himself.
“He doesn’t remember anything,” Dédé had said. “Just fragments. He remembers he grew up in a state orphanage. And that he used to have a wife and child. But it was all ‘a long time ago.’ He has no idea how long he’s been on the street. It’s like he doesn’t have any notion of time.”
“What about his tattoos?”
“He’s had those done since he’s been on the street. But God alone knows where! And anyway, if you ask him too many questions, he always answers that he’d ‘rather not talk about it’ . . .”
“I don’t like the commercials,” Félix said.
And he started channel hopping again. Then he turned to Rico and smiled. “A ball is better than a dog. It’s more faithful. More faithful even than a woman. Did your wife leave too?”
Rico nodded.
“I’m alone too. But it’s O.K. now, I have my ball.”
“Yes, so I see.”
Another cartoon came on and Félix became so absorbed in it, he seemed to forget Rico was even there.
Rico was feeling feverish again. The cheap wine he had drunk hadn’t had the desired effect. He was still thirsty. For a moment, he thought he might join Monique and Dédé at the supermarket, but then he thought about all that snow outside, and the cold, and decided against it. What was the point, he thought, they wouldn’t be much longer.
Rico had tried to stop drinking once. A few months after meeting Titi. At the time—the end of his first year on the street—he was drinking forty cans of beer a day. Kronenbourg or Bavaria, whichever he could afford. His day was divided into blocks of four or five hours. Time enough for sleep, then another dose. And this would happen three or four times a day.
“Drop the beer, and start drinking wine,” Titi advised him. “And try to keep to about a gallon. A gallon is my dose. Don’t go beyond that, or you’re fucked. It’s the slippery slope.”
Rico agreed, of course. He already knew all about alcohol and its effects. The total lack of reflexes. The permanent feeling of pins and needles in the legs. The loss of balance. Already toward the end of his time with Malika, he kept hurting himself on the stairs. Even at night, when he got up to take a leak, he often fell.
“Yes, you’re right,” he had replied to Titi.
But he couldn’t control himself. On the contrary. He’d started drinking wine—Bienvenu and Fleurval—but had continued with beer too.
“How much have you drunk since this morning?” Titi asked.
They had decided to walk to Sacré-Coeur, and on the steps of the Butte Montmartre, Rico started to drag his feet. He was tired and out of breath.
“Stop pissing me off, Titi! Who do you think you are, Jiminy Cricket? Just leave me alone, will you!”
Rico collapsed onto a step. Determined not to move. Ready to die on the spot. In any case, he didn’t have any strength left. His legs wouldn’t carry him anymore.
“Go ahead, then! Die, asshole!” Titi climbed a few more steps, then turned and said, “I’ll piss on you when I see you in the gutter . . .”
Rico lit a cigarette. He took two drags, nervously, then started crying, like a kid caught doing something he shouldn’t. Without his noticing, Titi had come back and sat down next to him.
“For fuck’s sake, don’t start bawling!”
“I’ll stop, Titi. I’ll stop drinking. Tomorrow.”
That was when Titi tried to tell him that he couldn’t do it alone. He needed medical help. The best thing was to go to hospital. He’d go with him tomorrow.
But of course, Rico wouldn’t listen. He told himself he could manage. And he could do it on his own, like a grown-up. Just to prove to himself that he was still capable of taking control of his life. All the next day, and the days that followed, he avoided going anywhere where he could run into Titi.
He’d held out for three days. Three days of hell. He almost went crazy. On the second day, he started sweating, then shaking. He drank gallons of water. He had heard that alcohol dehydrated you and you needed to drink lots of water.
It was at noon on the third day that the “accident” happened. He was walking along Rue Alexandre-Dumas. His hands suddenly went all tense, and he couldn’t untangle his fingers. Then his whole body froze. His eyes misted over. His legs gave way. And he collapsed. A woman cried out, “My God!” He remembered that. And the strident blast of a car horn, because his body had rolled out onto the road.
When he came to, he was in hospital. The doctors gave him a talking-to. They said pretty much what Titi had said. Wanting to stop drinking was a laudable aim. But it wasn’t easy. You needed help. Aftercare. “Especially with a cirrhotic liver like yours,” the doctor said. He explained to Rico that the lack of Vitamin B in his diet increased the toxicity of the alcohol. He would have to be given vitamin injections. Ten injections a month, for two months.
In the five days he spent in hospital, Rico’s spirits improved. He was fed, housed, looked after. Everything became simple again. Life. The future. Once he was cured, he’d make a fresh start. He’d finally recover.
Recovery. That was the word that was always in his mind. It was like a magic potion. He’d talk about it with the nurses, when they took the time to listen to him. “Getting real work straight away is too much to ask, I know. But there are lots of little jobs, aren’t there? Messenger, delivery man, window cleaner. Just to help me recover.”
The first week, he went for all his injections. Every other day. Then his visits became less frequent. One morning, he decided not to go back. Surviving on the street took all his energy. The time he spent in hospital, the time it took to get there and come back, was time he could spend begging. With only forty or fifty francs in his pocket in the evening, life was getting hard again.
“Why don’t they give us a bit of money during the treatment?”
“It’s a hospital,” Titi replied. “A hospital, not a charity.”
Titi meant it humorously, but Rico didn’t laugh.
With Titi’s help, he negotiated his relationship with alcohol. He drank, but he drank sensibly. In order never to be caught short. He took Titi’s advice and forced himself to always buy his wine at the same grocery, drink his beer in the same bar.
“They’re markers,” he had said. “If you see the same face too many times in a day, you’ll know you’re over the limit.”
Rico graduated to a gallon of wine and ten beers a day. That lasted for a year. But gradually, he deviated from this routine. He allowed himself “extras.” Spirits. Vodka, whisky. At night at first, then at the end of the day. Especially in the last few months. And Titi’s death didn’t help.
He sensed the lizard’s head on him. Félix was looking at him. The same way he’d looked at him in the kitchen. Rico noticed that his hands were moist. Mechanically, he wiped them on his jeans.
“You want me to get you some wine?” Félix asked.
“Where from?”
“One of the neighbors. A retired guy. He always keeps a stock, and he knows me. Shall I get you a bottle?”
Rico gave Félix fifty francs, and Félix went off to see the neighbour, still holding his ball. He brought back a bottle of Valombre. One step above Castelvin. The bottle was even made of glass.
“Here,” Félix said, giving him his change. “He charged me fifteen francs. It’s expensive, but he’s a poor old guy, so you can’t blame him. And he’s always there, in case . . .”
Rico’s hands shook as he unscrewed the top of the bottle. Félix grabbed it and filled him a glass. Rico drank it slowly, then poured himself another, which he didn’t touch. Now that he had a fifth of a gallon of wine within reach, he felt calmer.
“For me, it’s the smell,” Félix said. “I can’t stand it. Wine, beer, anything.”
“Didn’t you ever drink?”
“Before, I think. Like everyone else. But now . . .”
“Now you have your ball.”
“That’s right. It’s really important. We’ll go kick it around a little later on. I’m good, you’ll see.”
“Maybe.”
“Yes, later. When they’re back. There’s no hurry, is there?”
Rico was starting to like Félix. He was like a teenager. In the way he moved, the way he talked. With great fragility and, at the same time, great confidence. What had surprised Rico, earlier, in the kitchen, was the look in Félix’s eyes. As if he wasn’t sure where he was, maybe even who he was. The lizard’s head somehow emphasized this feeling.
What would happen, Rico wondered, if someone tried to take away his ball? Would he turn violent? Or would he say nothing and just go off into a corner somewhere to die? But what difference did it make? It wouldn’t change what Félix was.
“What’s on TV?”
“Don’t know,” Félix replied, pleased that someone was sharing his enthusiasm. “Shall we switch channels?”
A real kid, Rico said to himself again. He drank some of his wine, settled comfortably on the couch. He felt the back of Félix’s neck resting on his shoulder. The lizard’s head turned to him. There was something soothing about it. Everything was fine now. An episode of Inspector Gadget was starting.
“Perfect!” Félix cried. “This is the life, eh?”
It was the only life left, Rico thought.
10.
MEANINGLESS MOMENTS,
STOLEN FROM TIME AS IT PASSES
That night, Rico slept on the couch. He didn’t sleep well. He kept tossing and turning, trying to find a comfortable position so that he could get to sleep.
On the other side of the living room wall, Maeva would moan from time to time, and he would hear Monique whispering “Shh, shh . . .” to calm her. After a while, Maeva started crying and Monique got up. She came out of the bedroom carrying the little girl, crossed the living room and went into the kitchen.
“Shhh . . . Shhh. There, there, sweetheart, there, there . . . It’s over . . . Come, now . . . Shhh . . .”
Rico assumed that, since Jo’s arrest, Monique had been letting Maeva sleep in her bed. The warmth of another body must have been a comfort for both of them. But that night, Dédé had taken Maeva’s place in the bed. Her father’s place. And that must have been what was upsetting the little
girl.
During the evening—they were on their sixth or seventh Ricard, but who was keeping count?—Dédé had leaned toward Rico and whispered, “Hot, isn’t she?”
He nodded toward the kitchen, where Monique was making spaghetti Bolognese. It wasn’t a question. Just the easiest way to tell Rico that the two of them were going to sleep together that night. And that he, Rico, had to understand. If you had the opportunity to get laid, you’d be a fool to pass it up.
Yes, Rico could understand that. He’d only gotten laid twice since he’d been on the street. The first time was with Monika, a German girl who bummed around Edgar-Quinet. He’d bought her a beer and a sandwich at the Café d’Odessa, then fucked her in a coin-operated toilet. The second time was with a hooker on Rue du Caire, to celebrate his first year as a bum. Three hundred francs, it had cost him. A fortune.
“You’re in, and then you’re out, and it’s over,” Dédé had said one evening when Rico was with the gang, eyeing women in the metro. “And you never get your money back. Eh, Titi?”
“I prefer to use my eyes rather than my dick. It’s cheaper that way. Besides, for me to get a hard-on I’d need . . . I don’t know, Claudia Schiffer!”
“Get a load of that one!” Fred had said.
A little brunette, with an ass that was too big for her tight-fitting jeans, had just passed them.
“She’s just a big lump, bozo!” Lulu had replied.
“Who cares? I could fuck her . . .”
“And how do you manage?” Rico had asked Dédé.
“If I pick up a woman, I take her to a hotel. I like fucking in a bed.”
Titi, who was starting to get drunk, had sung:
. . . going home with your heart shot to hell
and your dick in your hand . . .
Rico had shrugged. So Monique was hot, was she? Well, why not? Although the idea of taking her in his arms didn’t exactly give him a hard-on. Far from it. Nothing about her aroused his desire. She had the tired, flaccid, prematurely aged body of one of those women life hasn’t been kind to. Women on welfare, divorcées, battered wives . . . He’d seen plenty of them at the post office on Rue des Boulets. Even the ones who made an effort to disguise the lines on their faces and the bags under their eyes with make-up were instantly recognizable. By the weary way they moved. By their hesitant gestures, which gave away the fact that they were on tranquilizers.
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