He starts a new episode. Sometimes he makes lists. What do the walking dead in the series represent? Refugees? Aids victims? The unemployed? The poor? Memories? The dead who have not been forgotten? The victims of historic genocides? Or he makes a list of all the shelters used in the series. Prison, farmhouse, motorway, military research centre, hospital, supermarket, slaughterhouse. The lists are pointless. But Dopalet knows that this is how it works. By intently studying a successful project, by picking it apart. That’s how he knows that, the day someone offers him a good project, he’ll be ready. He’ll be on top of his game. Maybe “The Walking Dead” is just a fucking allegory about the Jews being led out of Egypt by Moses. He needs to make a list of the enemies faced by the survivors. Because obviously, in the series, the real threat is not from the walking dead. The most brutal enemies are the other groups of survivors. Zombies are fine: they’re slow, they’ve got nothing upstairs. He would love to have these conversations with someone. He has never been so alone.
There’s rarely been a leader as dumb as the guy who leads the survivors in the series. That’s a really clever idea. It makes it contemporary. There are about twenty of them, they’ve all got skills, intelligence, physical strength. And what do they do? They pick the dumbest fucker to lead them. It’s really well observed. It’s like the French political system. Look at all the available options and choose the most inappropriate.
At times, he doesn’t know whether he identifies with the humans or the zombies. He too is little more than a shambling, monstrous form clacking his jaws and moaning from a hunger that can never be sated.
*
Laurie is not coming round to sleep at his tonight. It’s been three days. He needs to clarify things with her. But when he has dumped her, he will have no-one, Laurie has signed up for night classes at the Beaux-Arts. She’s in the habit of having a drink in the ninth arrondissement – the hippest area these days. She hangs out with some girls she’s made friends with there. As to what she’s actually doing, go figure. Maybe she’s seeing someone else. Laurie is a liar. About big things as well as small. When he first met her, he imagined that he had only to reassure her for her to be more reliable. It’s insane, the lies people tell themselves when they don’t want to admit that the person they fancy is a slimeball. They go through all sorts of contortions, convincing themselves they can fix things. It never works. Someone who behaves like a shit is someone who has already had lots of opportunities to change and has no intention of doing so. Laurie is a dirty little bitch who manipulates him. He read her diary. A few days ago. “I don’t know why I spend so much time being nice to people who deserve nothing more than a good slap. I don’t know why I worry so much about what that fat fuck thinks about me.” Outside, the rain fell relentlessly, like a grey sheet hung in front of his window. He was standing in the doorway. He was devastated. He would never have expected such savagery from her. Pages and pages of sheer loathing, all devoted to him. Schmuck, dirty old man, grandad, fuckwit, needle-dick, arsewipe . . . Laurie is so pretty on the outside. An adorable little pixie – she has a sexy, husky voice and loves to be cuddled. Dopalet had been afraid of hurting her. He didn’t dare tell her that he often thought about his wife. He was afraid that she would get too attached.
That particular night, he had been on good form. He was thinking, I feel a lot better in this new apartment, this new area. He had been full of good intentions – he had been thinking about Laurie and telling himself that he should give the relationship a chance. That he was lucky to have stumbled on such a gentle woman.
Laurie had forgotten her sports bag, the one she takes when she does Krav Maga and aquabiking. The zip had been open. He had not been prying. That’s not his style. But he had seen the blue Clairefontaine notebook sticking out. He found the fact that she had an exercise book strangely moving. He had flicked through it. He realised that he had never seen her handwriting. These days, it’s possible to spend months on end with someone without knowing whether their handwriting is round, slanted, illegible or spidery . . . He had been surprised by Laurie’s writing. It looks like that of an older, more mature woman. Desultorily, he had read a few lines. He hadn’t known that she kept a diary. He assumed she used the notebook to jot down ideas for diets, song titles, the address of a hairdresser or the name of a masseuse. “He never asks my opinion, he fucks me even when I don’t feel like it and I stare at the ceiling and don’t move and it doesn’t even bother that filthy pig, he climbs on top of me though I’m lying there like a corpse but he jerks off in my pussy he doesn’t care that I don’t like it. That’ll teach me to sleep with dirty old men.” He had not immediately realised that this torrent of excrement was devoted entirely to him. He initially assumed that she had copied out the text from something written by someone else. Maybe she was preparing an audition. A role. Some piece of gritty realism. The words could not come from her. Her delicate little mouth, her slender fingers, her splendid buttocks. Little Laurie, so feminine, so smiling, whose fundamental quality was gentleness. She had nothing in common with these words. He had put down the exercise book, a little disgusted. After a few minutes he had gone back to the sports bag, taken out the notebook, and settled himself on the sofa to read it seriously. It was a chronicle of day-to-day hatred, together with a list of the gifts he had given her. The worst thing, she said, was having sex with him. Alright, granted she had never shown a passionate enthusiasm for the act. But women in general are like that, except the ones who have a problem, obviously. It’s a natural dissymmetry – something to do with hormones, easy to understand. Men want sex and women want love. It had already occurred to him that Laurie might be frigid. He had never imagined that she despised him because he liked sleeping with her. He had read the words she had written about him. Outside, the downpour had stopped and the living room was ablaze with ironic late-afternoon sun. He had carefully put the exercise book back where he had found it and listened to Gould playing the Brahms intermezzi. He wished he could wash out his insides.
He has said nothing to Laurie. He has spaced out their dates. Soon, he will ask her to delete his address and phone number. He won’t mention the notebook. A flickering joy in him has guttered out. He hadn’t realised how happy she made him until now. What a waste.
He thought that she liked his tattoo. In the notebook, she mocks him “and that tacky yakuza tattoo on his back, the muppet”. He doesn’t care. He likes his new back. It means something. Several times a day, he goes into the bathroom and, using a double mirror, contemplates the finished artwork. It’s sublime. Now that he knows he will never have to see the guy again, he feels a sort of gratitude to the tattooist. Magnificent work. In the last two sessions, as he worked on the shadows and the details, Dopalet had seen the image on his back suddenly appear, become three-dimensional. Exist. He loves the image that adorns his skin. It is a powerful shield. Any guy capable of enduring what he has had to endure to gain a second skin can’t be a complete loser. When he gazes at his back in the mirror, he thinks he will get through this. Get back on his feet. He has forgotten the original inscription. It has been covered over, buried. He is getting used to the idea that this powerful, unsettling body is his. He wants to start going to the swimming pool again. To shrug off the water wings and start doing lengths again.
He is once more as round as a balloon. Worse than before he dieted. His fondness for Michel and Augustin desserts has been his undoing. He wolfs down a bucket of chocolate mousse every night while he watches his T.V. shows. Plus a variety of other shit that he munches on during the day. Everyone has a defence mechanism. He has placed a layer of fat between himself and the world.
*
He feels like taking a break between episodes. But he doesn’t want to turn on the radio, or B.F.M. Business. Rolling news channels are factories that churn out fear. Since the terrorist attacks in November, he has not had the strength to watch them. He is stunned. He often thinks of an article he read about dogs. “Learnt Helplessness”. You lock dogs in a ca
ge and you slam them against the floor. Pretty soon, the dogs stop trying to get out to ward off the shock. Or to bite. They just lie on the ground and take it.
Like the rest of his compatriots, he had still not got over the Charlie Hebdo massacre. How could he possibly process the Bataclan? So, he no longer listens to the news. He does not want to hear about Syria. Or the Congo. Or Palestine. He has reached peak saturation for atrocities.
On the day of the Charlie Hebdo attack, he had been in a bakery buying a galette des rois when he heard two men talking and the taller of them saying, “There’ve been shots fired at Charlie Hebdo.” The guy looked like a hipster. Instinctively, Dopalet had taken out his phone. He was thinking about the mentally disturbed man who had fired shots in the offices of Libération. But this was not the same. He didn’t often buy Charlie Hebdo. The annual “caricature issue”, by way of support, like everyone else. He had spent the afternoon on Facebook. He had watched as, one by one, his friends’ Facebook icons turned black. Like a landscape growing dark. He had called the office to tell the staff they could go home. He had been on the January 11 march. Although an ochlophobe, he felt no fear in this vast, slow-moving crowd. He had already been emotionally devastated by his own recent assault. He had never quite got back on his feet. He never wanted to watch the video of the bouncers being slaughtered that was circulating on the internet. Nor will he ever watch the videos of those who survived the Bataclan.
But this time, he is done with being complacent. You’re either the butcher or the cattle. Whether Arabs or Jews, these people have to learn to shut up. People like him are in shock. It’s temporary. The country will pull itself together. Defend itself.
On the night of the Bataclan, he had been with Laurie. This was before he knew who he was dealing with. She had been terrified. He had assumed the protective male role. He missed Amélie. He didn’t dare call her. He hadn’t told her that he had met someone else. He doesn’t want to hurt her. He felt that telling her he was with a girl ten years her junior would be hurtful. Not that he blames Amélie for anything. Her behaviour has been exemplary. After his assault, she was so supportive. She put up with his insomnia, his migraines, his weight gain. He would explode with rage over trivial things. He would scream because the internet connection was down. He would seethe and fume because his flight had been delayed. He could no longer control himself. He reminded himself of the nervous cases of the nineteenth century who were advised to stay in bed and avoid all activity. This would have suited him – having nothing to do, no irritations to deal with. But he had a company, a staff that depended on him. Amélie had put up with everything. Later he had been unfair to her. She had warned him. She had told him, I’m constantly on edge, wondering what’s going to set off your next outburst, I’m exhausted. His ugly mood infected all around him. He knew that he needed to calm down. But he would call her a bitch when she came home late from a dinner with her girlfriends while he had been brooding at home. He would make rude comments about her English accent when they entertained American friends. She would spend Saturday at a sauna leaving him at home, pacing the floor, waiting, and cursing her for spending her weekends on such frivolities when she had the whole week in which to sweat. He would dwell on these slights. Sharpen his knives. And when she was least expecting it, he would let rip with a diatribe of insults. One night she told him she needed time out. On the night before an important premiere. Even though she knew that he was in the shit at work, that he needed her to back him up. He had said, are you fucking kidding me? Who has time outs? Who? But she had simply said, I can’t do this anymore, I need to find myself again, to protect myself from you, I can’t put up with it anymore, your problems, your demands, your mood swings. I’ve asked my father for the keys to the house in Biarritz, I’m leaving tomorrow morning. He had raged and pleaded and wept all night. She had left with their daughter.
Since the assault, everything has been crumbling. At work, in his private life, in the country as a whole, and beyond the borders . . . a succession of terrifying news stories. The whole world is falling apart. He no longer listens to the news on the radio or on television. He no longer listens to his voicemails. He takes a square of dark chocolate with sea salt and a handful of almonds, settles himself on the sofa and presses PLAY on a new episode. The battery on his laptop is dead. He sighs, then gets up and goes into the kitchen to look for the charger. In passing, he glances at his mobile phone. He opens his e-mail. In an act of sheer bravura, he reads the most recent message. The characters in “The Walking Dead” would laugh if they knew that a guy like him, holed up in an apartment with running water and a freezer full of food, panics at the thought of opening an e-mail.
He doesn’t know the sender – probably some smart-arse who’s about to tell him he’s written the finest screenplay of the century. Someone who doesn’t include a subject line – that in itself is infuriating.
“Bleach. Subutex. Céleste, et cetera . . . We haven’t met yet, but I think I have something to say that may interest you.”
Shit! Every time he thinks he is getting back on his feet, life punches him in the face and he falls down again. The first e-mail he has opened in weeks, and it has to be this?
Feverishly, he Googles the name of the sender, Maxime Chapio. He has to sit down to organise his thoughts. On the second page of Google results, he finds a blue hyperlink to – a former manager of Bleach. He’ll break the little fucker’s face for him. What is this? Some kind of revenge? A threat? Dopalet feels rage roiling in his blood. In his hands, in his legs. In his churning stomach. The terrorism has gone on long enough, in all its forms. The time has come to stand up to it. Although for days he has not had the strength to write a single e-mail, he immediately pings back a reply to this one. “What do you want from me?” They’ll see what he’s made of. He’s sick and tired of letting himself be walked all over. People think he’s down, that he’s on the ropes, that they have done for him. They think he is finished. A sudden madness wells in him. He is going to get this guy. How dare he? How dare he send this kind of message? Instantly, he receives a reply: “Why don’t we meet up and talk about it?”
*
He arranges to meet in the bar of the Georges-V. It is a place he rarely goes. The last time was to meet Sophie Marceau, which was five, maybe six years ago . . . It is a long time since Sophie went out of her way to have a drink with him. He’s no longer the sort of producer she might find interesting. It will come back. He showered, shaved and dug out the old Armani jeans he had stuffed in the back of the wardrobe, convinced that he would never again be fat enough to wear them. Before slipping on his Dior Homme shirt, he stood in three-quarter profile and glanced at his tattoo. The fuckwit who sent him that e-mail had better watch his step. He doesn’t realise he’s messing with a guy with a tattoo. A modern-day yakuza. Dopalet will eat him alive.
He is glad that he went out. The moment he steps into the bar, he realises he made the right decision. Everything is muted, the rosy glow of the lights, the carpets, the wood panelling. That particular bustle of Parisian palaces. Everything is arranged to reassure him, to make him feel comfortable. It is working. It’s good for him to get a little fresh air. He has succeeded. He dressed himself, he went out. Now that he is calm, it occurs to him that the guy he is meeting does not necessarily wish him ill.
His appointment arrives ten minutes late. Who the hell is this guy? He is wearing a jacket tailored in purple velvet. Dopalet would never dare wear such a thing. He has often envied those people who fashion a look. He finds them ridiculous, but he envies them nonetheless. They create characters for themselves. It’s an artistic thing. He could never do it; he has responsibilities. The guy is tall, with a jutting chin, he doesn’t take off his dark glasses. In the bar of the Georges-V. He’s got some nerve. Dopalet waves him over. Difficult to guess his age. He could be a jaundiced thirty-something or a well-preserved fifty. He is clearly not accustomed to opulence, but he acts casually. If he is impressed, he does not let it show.
His handshake is firm, his wiry body and his smile remind Dopalet of Willem Dafoe.
Having spent days holed up watching “The Walking Dead”, Dopalet weighs up the man with the eye of a man setting off to war. If a zombie were to walk into the bar, Max looks like the type to plunge a razorblade into his throat. In a zombie attack, he would be a good partner.
The waiter comes over to their table before they have time to get to the heart of the matter. The guy orders a whisky. Either he has no idea how much things cost here, or he is assuming that Dopalet will be picking up the tab. The producer folds his arms in a gesture of defiance, but smiles, to show that he wants to see the other man’s hand.
“I was a little thrown by your e-mail. What a mystery!”
“Oh, I like to think that we immediately understood one another. Otherwise, it was pointless either of us coming here.”
Max twists a huge scorpion-shaped ring around his middle finger. Dopalet finds the gesture irritating, though he could not say why. He is afraid that the man has been sent by those two little bitches. It seems obvious that he has underestimated them. This has sometimes been a weakness with him. He had assumed that, in hiring the finest professionals, he would quickly track them down. He was wrong. They are still on the run, and he has had time to have a Japanese print tattooed on his back. Dopalet waits for the man to explain himself. Max leans towards him, his tone shifting as he makes a confession:
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