by Geoff Dyer
‘I have to go,’ Nicole said, gesturing for the waiter. She had an uncancellable appointment at the university.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Luke, touching her hair. ‘You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and last night we made love, on our first date. I can’t believe my luck.’
‘Maybe it’s not luck.’
‘What then?’
‘I don’t know.’ She ran the two words together, as in ‘dunno’. Luke was a little disappointed: at that moment, especially in the wake of Nicole’s finding herself in the photograph in his apartment, even a word like ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’ would not have embarrassed him.
‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘Are you leaving too?’
‘No, I’m going to stay here a little while.’
‘Then what do you do?’
‘I’m going to sit here and watch you walk away. Then I’m going to sit here and have another coffee which I shouldn’t have and which I’ll probably regret having. I’ll think about you, and then, just in case last night was a dream, I’m going to go home and lie in bed and hopefully fall asleep and dream it again.’
‘What will you dream?’
‘Of me pulling your dress over your head and seeing you naked for the first time, of you taking me in your mouth, the way you tasted when I first pushed my tongue into you, and how, as soon as you came, I came in your mouth too. Kissing you afterwards, then being inside you for the first time . . .’
‘What a rude dream!’
‘Can you come tonight as well?’
‘In a dream?’
‘No, for real. Can I see you tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll stay in. I’ll cook. We’ll go to sleep early. We’ll sleep for ten hours.’
‘OK.’
‘The code is C25E,’ said Luke. Nicole wrote down the number. Her pen was white, decorated with dots that matched exactly the dark green ink. Love someone, thought Luke, love their possessions.
‘Are you not working today?’
‘I don’t have to go in till later. There’s very little to do.’
‘No football?’
‘I’m too tired. Aren’t you tired?’
‘Yes.’
She kissed him on the mouth, stood up and slalomed through the thicket of café chairs, shoving one with her hip, only slightly, once. He watched her go. Tennis shoes. Tanned legs. Lime green dress. Bare arms. Long black hair. Her.
He would always love watching her walk away, seeing her disappear into the Métro, around a corner or becoming lost in the crowd. Her floaty walk. Even when, years later, they parted for the last time, he would be the one to watch her walk away. It would be up to her to stand, to look at him and walk away, feeling his eyes on her: a final concession.
A bicycle messenger wearing a luminous bib – Speedy Boys – came in and ordered a coffee. The sun squeezed between clouds, flooding the café terrace with hot light. A bus shuddered to a halt and passengers began spilling out. Spotting a gap in traffic, a little dog wagged across the road. Luke remembered the utter passivity of the previous night, how neither of them had needed to make the slightest move towards each other, how, instead, they had simply waited . . .
He finished his second coffee and then returned to the apartment, opening the door slowly as if not to disturb someone who was sleeping. It was exactly as he had left it but it was changed, utterly, from how it had been the morning before, from any morning except this one. The curtains were open. Sun streamed through the dust-patterned window. One of the two towels was hung over the bathroom door, the other was in a lump on the back of a chair. The coffee cups were on the floor. Nearby were his socks. Wax from the candles had solidified in a saucer. There was no sign of her clothes. She had taken them all with her. The quilt was piled up at the end of the bed. The sheets were wrinkled, the pillows still bore the dent of their heads. Luke went into the bathroom and saw, in the basin, two hair grips: hers.
The door-bell jolted him out of his sleep. He opened the door. Her hair was tied up. She held a bike light in each hand. She was wearing a suede jacket, a loose skirt.
‘Did you dream there was someone at the door?’
‘As it happens, yes.’
He stood aside to let her in, closed the door behind them. She put her arms round him, kissed him, pressed the rear light to his left ear and the front to his right. Then she turned them on, like electrodes.
‘Bzzzzzzz!’
‘You cycled.’
‘It was a little chilly. I should have worn trousers.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t. Would you like the heating on?’
‘No, I’m OK.’
‘How are you?’
‘Tired.’
‘Me too. I was asleep when you rang the door. I fell asleep, I mean. I’m still waking up.’
‘I brought some nice wine.’
‘How kind. Would you like a glass?’
‘Yes.’ She kissed him on the mouth. ‘Your mouth tastes sleepy,’ she said.
‘Not nice?’
‘Yes, is nice. Nice and sleepy.’ He had his hands on her hips. She kissed him again and he kissed her back. He undid the buttons of her blouse. She was wearing a bra. He unclipped it and pushed her against the wall. She tossed the bike lights on to the bed. They were turned on still. She reached between her legs, moved her knickers aside and guided his fingers into her, kissing him hard.
They felt bewildered afterwards, by this fundamental breach of etiquette: screwing before they’d even unwrapped the wine – let alone opened it – while the lasagna was still baking. Nicole took off her wet knickers and they lay on the bed, not speaking until Luke said:
‘Would you like some wine now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stay there. I’ll get it.’ His jeans were around his ankles. He took off his socks as well, turned down the oven and came back with wine, glasses, a corkscrew, olives and a bowl to put the pits of the olives in. She was still wearing her suede jacket.
‘What about the heating? Would you like the heating on?’
‘Is OK.’ Luke opened the wine. They clinked glasses and sat with their legs entwined. The light was fading. Occasionally there were shouts from the street. There was a silence in the room. She was at the centre of the silence, he was at its edge, constantly on the brink of saying things: It’s lovely wine. It’s a lovely evening. You look lovely. If he could have thought of a sentence which did not have the word ‘lovely’ in it he would have said something. Instead, he waited for her, watched her chew away the olive and then, discreetly, put the stone in a bowl. After a while, she said:
‘It’s lovely wine.’
When it had grown dark he put on a light and took the lasagna from the oven. He served it and brought it to the bed where they ate off their knees. Nicole had half a plate left when Luke served himself a second portion.
‘What do your parents do?’ he asked.
‘My mother was a professor. Now she is retired. My father was a doctor. He’s dead.’ Immediately, instinctively, Luke thought, she is the first woman I’ve been to bed with whose father is dead. This seemed to explain everything even though he was unsure what it explained. ‘He died when I was eleven.’
‘What happened?’ said Luke, unsure, even as he asked, if this was a question he should have avoided.
‘He had a heart attack.’ Matter-of-factly. ‘What about your parents?’
‘They split up when I was sixteen. My mother remarried but it was my father who left.’
‘He met someone else?’
‘No. That’s the strange thing. He went to live on his own. He died when I was twenty-two.’
‘Were you close to him?’
‘Not really. I hardly saw him after he left. He was nice when I was young but, well, he made my mother incredibly unhappy. She met someone else but I think she never really recovered from my father’s leaving like that. He ended up very twisted, bitter. An alcoholic. He was a disappointed man.’
/> ‘Disappointed by what?’
‘By everything, I think, but himself mainly. I have a friend here, Alex. You’ll meet him. His parents are still alive but they’re old. He doesn’t see them much and he’s worried about their dying. He asked me if I wished I’d told my dad I loved him before he died.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. But I wished I’d told him I hated him.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘I know, I really missed my chance.’ She hit him on the arm, not sure if he was joking. Luke had already polished off his second plate of food; Nicole had not yet finished her first.
‘You know that picture,’ she said, ‘of me in Belgrade?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have a picture of me before we met. I’d like one of you.’
‘I don’t know if I have one.’
‘You must have.’
‘Actually, maybe I do. Does it matter when it was taken?’
‘No. As long as it’s you.’
He took the plates away and began trawling through the box file in which he kept his papers.
‘Here you are.’ He handed her the photograph. It showed a little boy wearing a cowboy hat, standing in front of a car, pointing a toy gun at the camera.
‘Is it really you?’
‘Of course.’ The picture was of Luke but it was no different from any number of pictures of little boys. There are hundreds, thousands, of pictures like this and they are all the same. From a selection of such photos there is no telling which little boy might become a famous footballer or painter, which ones will grow up to have families and take pictures like this of their own children. Then someone tells you that this photo is of a boy who died, aged twenty, in a car crash, or killed himself before he was thirty, or became a down-and-out, or a painter or a well-known footballer. And nothing changes. It remains indistinguishable from the hundreds of other pictures of little boys in shorts, hair cut straight across their foreheads, pointing toy guns at cameras.
While Nicole looked at the photo Luke lay on the bed again, his head in her lap. She stroked his head. He turned over so that he was looking up at her face. A police car wailed past. Music began in the apartment next door: five minutes of Techno, intense, pounding, then it stopped and the door slammed and there was silence. It was Friday night, the neighbours were going out.
‘What would you like to do?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Do you want to go out?’
‘I don’t mind.’
She held up his head slightly and tilted wine into his mouth, as if it were water from a canteen and he was an actor who had been shot. He moved around on to his side, facing away from her and again he caught the smell of sex which he wanted to smell more closely, more deeply. He raised his head from her lap and crawled back under her knees, his face towards her cunt.
‘Open your legs,’ he said, and then lay there, breathing in her smell. He breathed on her, hard enough for her to feel, enough to make her push herself towards him. He wriggled back so that she could move away from the wall, could lie with her knees steepled over him. He pushed his tongue into her. While he licked her he also pushed two fingers inside her. She was on the brink of coming for a long while and by the time she did his left arm was almost numb. He rolled on to his back. She moved around, touched his prick which was not quite hard. She masturbated him and then, as he was about to come, moved her face over him so that his semen sprang into her mouth.
She took off her blouse, he pulled his T-shirt over his head and they snuggled under the quilt, already almost asleep.
‘It’s no good,’ he said, getting up. ‘I can’t go to sleep if I haven’t brushed my teeth.’
If I were to make a film of this story I know exactly the image I would begin with. An aerial shot, from the height of the middle branches of one of the trees in the park bordering a path on which are painted the words interdit aux velos. Then, from above, we would hear the ringing of a bicycle bell and see pedestrians scattering out of the way of two cyclists speeding over those words: Luke and Nicole.
They had woken at ten, sun streaming through the window. Nicole got out of bed and looked down into the street. Luke wondered if anyone could see her there, naked, saying:
‘Do you have a bike?’
‘Sort of. The guy I’m renting this apartment from left me his. I haven’t used it. Why?’
‘We could go for a ride.’
‘We could ride the 29.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A bus. My favourite bus. But no, we can do that another day. I’d love to go for a bike ride.’ Nicole turned on the radio. A DJ was babbling about the great day that was in prospect. This is what you are meant to do in the mornings, thought Luke. You turn on the radio and receive encouragement. You wake up, turn on the radio and get out of bed. What could be simpler? Why had he never done that? Nicole found Radio Nova and began dancing: exaggerated disco dancing. Her small breasts hardly moved as she danced. You turn on the radio and watch your woman, naked, dancing her way to the bathroom. Then you get up and go for a cycle ride . . .
Except the photographer’s bike turned out to be in very poor repair. It was hanging on a rack in the damp courtyard, the tyres were flat, the seat was too low, the back brake rubbed . . .
‘Shit!’ Luke kicked the front wheel in disgust and disappointment. ‘No wonder he left it with me. It’s completely fucked.’
‘We can fix it.’
‘It’ll take all day. And I hate getting my hands all oily.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Nicole. ‘It takes twenty minutes.’
‘I don’t have any fucking tools.’
‘You swear too much,’ said Nicole. ‘I have tools. In my bag.’ She even had a puncture repair kit. Luke went back up to the apartment to get a bowl of water to test the inner tube for punctures. While he was there he rolled a joint. When he came down again, the bike was upside down and Nicole was taking the front wheel off.
‘What’s that in your hand?’ he said.
‘A spanner.’
‘Ah, I thought as much. Very evening class. And what are you doing with this so-called spanner? Loosening something I’ll be bound.’
‘Yes. It’s almost ready.’ Luke crouched down and watched. Nicole fixed the puncture and eased the inner tube back on to the wheel and into the tyre. Then she fitted the wheel back between the forks. She stood up and swept the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a smudge of oil on her forehead. She flipped the bike over and made some further adjustments.
‘You like fixing things,’ said Luke banally.
‘Things break.’
‘Whereupon one throws them away.’ She did not look up. ‘Bicycle maintenance,’ Luke went on. ‘It’s never been a strong point of mine.’
‘What are your strong points?’
‘That’s the thing. I don’t actually have any.’
‘The lasagna was nice.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And you kiss nicely.’
‘Don’t tell me, tell your friends,’ said Luke. ‘What are you doing now?’
‘Tightening something.’
‘Tightening and loosening,’ said Luke. ‘Such is the dismal life of the spanner.’
‘Sit on the saddle,’ said Nicole. ‘To check the height.’
Luke straddled the bike. ‘That’s perfect.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘You see, it was easy,’ said Nicole, clearing the tools away. ‘How long did it take?’
‘About two hours. And the saddle is way too high. I can hardly touch the floor.’
‘No!’
‘Joke. And the repairs only took half an hour. But your hands are covered in oil.’
She washed them in a puddle.
Her bike was a red racer, tuned to perfection, stripped to sleek essentials: thin tyres, strapless toe clips, no mud guards, rack or saddle bag. It hummed. Luke’s rattled, clanked and rubbed. N
icole said she would fix it properly next week. After they had been cycling for twenty minutes they came to the botanical gardens and sat there for a while.
‘Would you like to get stoned?’ said Luke.
‘Stoned?’
‘Smoke dope. Get high,’ he said, holding up the joint he had made.
‘OK.’
They set off again, cycling aimlessly. Nicole had taken off her suede jacket and tied it round her waist. Everywhere they went they saw green-overalled Africans cleaning up litter and dog shit. Parisians have always been terrible litterers – why bother throwing cans in a bin, or training your dog to crap in a gutter when there are all these silent Africans to tidy up after you? – but now they had an excuse: most of the litter bins in the city had been sealed in the wake of fundamentalist bomb attacks. A poster for Le Pen was overshadowed by an advertisement for the United Colours of Benetton. They were partners of a kind, it didn’t matter what either of them said or stood for: all that counted was that the names – Le Pen, Benetton – stuck in people’s minds. They spoke the same language, a language in which there were no verbs, only nouns: names and brand-names. Both were dwarfed by the billboard which displayed the global apotheosis of this tendency: ‘Coke is Coke’.
Construction work was in progress everywhere. Great swathes of the city were being demolished and redeveloped but wherever they went they saw cafés they intended, one day, to return to. Roller-bladers, solitary or in packs, roamed swiftly through the dream-time of the city. Stoned, Luke found himself looking forward to a time when not having learned to roller-blade would be one of the major regrets of his life. They followed buses, cut through parks, crossed over railway lines, annoyed drivers, skirted traffic jams and orbited churches whose names they made no attempt to establish. After two hours they were hopelessly lost.
‘Let’s go in here then,’ said Nicole, pointing at a shop specialising in maps and atlases.