The first time he had come into the shop, Alexandre was still a kid. His big eyes with those long eyelashes gave him a childlike appearance. He would show up with some random Jenlain girl, perch on a stool and ask to listen to records. Alex always believed that it was Vernon who introduced him to the magic, the one who had first made him listen to the Stiff Little Fingers live double-album, the Redskins, the Bad Brains’ first E.P., Sham 69’s “Peel Sessions” or Code of Honor’s “Fight or Die”. Alex was still a kid, he was chubby-cheeked and did not play the hard man. His smile probably played a major part in his meteoric success – it had the same effect as watching videos of kittens on YouTube. You had to have the empathy of a psycho killer not to feel something. He strummed his axe and wailed like every other dude, playing with this group or that. As it often does, fame struck where no-one was expecting. The music scene back then had its heroes, guys that people would have bet their shirts on. And all of them, every last one, had disappeared into the ether. Alex’s passion for drugs came late and swept all before it. But the guy had always walked around with an invisible knife sticking out of his chest. He could laugh at the slightest thing, but there in his eyes was a fracture that nothing could prevent becoming a yawning chasm.
A callously pragmatic thought nags at Vernon: who is going to pay his rent now? It began shortly after the death of Jean-No. They had run into each other by chance near Bonsergent Métro station. Alex had flung his arms around Vernon. They had not seen each other in an age, not since Tricky’s gig at the Elysée-Montmartre. After a few awkward minutes when they felt forced to play out the peevish farce of two old mates with so much to tell each other – as though Vernon’s activities on eBay were as fascinating as the tales of drug-fucked nights on Iggy Pop’s yacht – hanging out with Alexandre was cool.
Alexandre had been completely out of it that day. He had the puppyish enthusiasm and the mile-a-minute chatter of a guy who has not been home in a long time and really should get around to it. The pavements were blanketed with snow, and they gripped each other by the elbow so as not to wind up on their arses. Impulsive as always, Alex insisted that Vernon come with him to his dealer’s crib a stone’s throw away. The dealer was a sycophant who looked like the school nerd and wrote music using Garageband. He smoked skunk from Holland so potent it gave an instant headache. He was desperate for them to listen to his “latest sounds”. They suffered through a series of synth layers laid down over jittery second-hand beats. Alex was already off his face and listened, spellbound, to this shit and told the dealer that he had been working on hertz, on split-second modulations that, when properly orchestrated, could modify the brain. He was stoked by the idea of synchronising brain waves and the dealer was hanging on his every word. But everyone knew the truth – Alex hadn’t been able to write a song in years. He fixated on “alpha waves” because he couldn’t string three chords together or write a hook worth shit.
It had been dark when they ran into each other on the snowy pavement. There were not many cars and the streets were weirdly white and silent. Vernon had made a joke about some actress twerking her ass on a 3×4-metre billboard. He had said something like “She’s such a fucking skank, I’d rather bone a blow-up doll”, and Alexandre gave a forced laugh. It was obvious that he knew her. Vernon wondered if he had had her. Women liked Alex, he didn’t need to sell records to get laid. A lot of his friends were A-list celebs, the sort of people whose names and faces you know without ever having met them. He stored their phone numbers in his mobile using code names in case it was lost or stolen. The idea of his address book falling into the hands of some random freaked him out. Sometimes, when his phone rang, he would stare at it, bewildered, unable to connect a person to the name on the screen. “S.B.”, for example, could be Sandrine Bonnaire, Stomy Bugsy, Samuel Benchetrit or was it some more complicated code name like Skanky Bitch or Slimy Buttfucker? He could not remember until he listened to the voicemail and it all came back to him: S.B. stood for “Scuzzy Bathroom” because that was where he had spent hours gabbing with Julien Doré. At the time, it had probably seemed brilliant. Like so many things that happen after three in the morning.
“Do you remember Jean-No?” Vernon had asked. Of course Alex remembered. They had gigged together for a bit in Nazi Whores in the early nineties. They hadn’t seen each other for ten years. Jean-No despised Alex and everything he stood for – cerebral cock-rock, middle-class militancy, and above all a staggering success that could not be dismissed as nepotism – it made Jean-No physically sick. They had been a two-man team, worked in the same industry but one had been rewarded with fame and fortune while the other got fuck-all. The parallels were unbearable – taking the piss out of Alex was a hobby that took up a lot of Jean-No’s time. “You know he died?” The colour drained from Alex’s face, overcome. Vernon felt embarrassed by so much heartfelt emotion, but he couldn’t bring himself to say “Don’t look so miserable, the guy hated your guts”. Alex had insisted on dropping him off in a taxi, then coming up to his apartment. Pretty quickly, they were on the same wavelength – a couple of frenzied hamsters scurrying around the same wheel. Curled up on the sofa, Alex felt like an egg. He loved Vernon’s cramped apartment, he could curl into a ball and feel safe. They listened to The Dogs, something neither of them had done for twenty years. Alex had stayed for three days. He was obsessed with what he called his “research” into binaural beats and forced Vernon to listen to various sound waves that were supposed to have a profound impact on the subconscious but which, in practice, failed even to trigger a migraine. Alex had five grams with him when he arrived. They hoovered it up at a leisurely pace, like old hands. From time to time, Vernon nodded off – coke relaxed him and helped him sleep – and Alex had decided to interview himself right there on the sofa. He had an old camcorder with him and three one-hour tapes which he piled next to the television, and every time Vernon regained consciousness, he forced him to watch this preposterous performance – “It’s, like, my last will and testament, man, you get it? I’m gonna leave it with you. That’s how much I trust you.” He was losing it a little by now. Then he would launch back into talking about delta waves and gamma waves, the creative process and the idea of making music that acted like a drug, that would modify neuronal pathways. Vernon felt wretched, Alex kept forcing him to put on headphones to listen to shitty loops.
Vernon went down to the minimart to get supplies – Coke, cigarettes, crisps and whisky – with his rock-star friend’s credit card. “There’s nothing to fucking eat in this place. Which reminds me, what are you working at these days? Do you want me to give you some cash?” Vernon had two months’ rent arrears and was desperately struggling not to make it three because he had heard some urban myth that unless you were three months behind, you couldn’t be evicted. This was how it started. Alexandre had transferred three months’ rent into his account – It’s my pleasure, man, honestly, swear down. And when he left, Alex had insisted: “Call me if you need cash, yeah? I’m pretty loaded, you know . . . Promise you’ll call . . .”
And Vernon did. At first, he thought he would sort things out himself, but when he was four months in arrears, he called. Alex bailed him out. No questions. And a few months later, Vernon called again. It was embarrassing, but it was also like being a child again. When his parents were still alive and he knew that – in extremis – he could count on them to dig him out of a hole. There was something of the sheltered childhood in this stopgap solution. And Alex went on bailing him out. He added Vernon’s bank details to his list of regular transfers and in a couple of clicks, he could get him out of a tight spot. Vernon grumbled, he put things off until the last minute. He oscillated between guilt and resentment, between gratitude and relief. Money had become such a non-issue for Alexandre, but it was a very real issue for everyone else. Vernon would send his landlord a cheque, then stock up on cigarettes and food, and jealously stashed away a little in a tin box so he could buy his daily beer. This was how he subsisted.
*
The doorbell rings. Vernon does not answer. It is probably the postman with a registered letter. He never signs for them. He no longer deals with official documents. It crept up on him gradually, this mental paralysis – there are more and more relatively simple tasks to be done which he cannot manage to deal with. He turns down the music and waits. The bell rings again. Now someone is knocking. Vernon is sitting on his bed, hands folded in his lap, he is used to this – he waits for them to go away. But there comes an unusual sound, the grating of the lock, an alert that someone is trying to force entry. He immediately realises what is happening, he grabs his jeans, pulls on a clean jumper. He is tying the laces of a pair of low-rise Doc Martens when the door opens. He feels feverish, the rush he sometimes gets with dodgy speed. Four men step inside and look him up and down. The leader of the group steps forward, “Monsieur, you could have opened the door.” He stares at Vernon, sizing him up. He is wearing an elegant navy-blue scarf knotted around his throat and a pair of glasses with red frames. His grey suit is cut too short. In a toneless voice, he reads from a tablet – yada yada head office in yada yada. The landlord of the aforementioned property hereby serves notice . . .
Ten years, ten years he’s been paying fucking rent. Ten years. More than 90,000 euros. Paid into the pockets of some wanker who has never done a tap of work. The landlord is probably one of those guys who inherited everything and bleats about how much tax he has to pay. In ten years, there has been no work done on the apartment – he had to hassle the landlord to get the boiler fixed. 90,000 euros. Not a single hour’s work, not a single inspection, not a penny spent on repairs. And now they’re turfing him out.
Vernon’s eyes settle on the bailiff’s trousers, just where they bulge at the thighs. Vernon waits while the four men make an inventory of his assets before they leave, which gives him time to take stock of the situation. If he were not blacklisted by every bank he would write them a cheque and send the whole process back to square one. Surely they should be able to come to some arrangement – the one he identified as the locksmith seems like a decent guy. With his thick, grey old-school moustache, he looks like a trade unionist. Vernon hopes he did not damage the lock when he picked it, there is no way to change it. After all, he might need to nip out for five minutes. There is nothing left worth stealing – even a cash-strapped Kosovar would not take the trouble to steal what he calls a computer. The monitor and tower system weigh a ton and date from the Pleistocene era. The bailiff tells him to pack what he needs for the next few days and vacate the premises immediately. No-one says: hey, let’s give the guy a break, come back another time, give him ten days to sort his shit out and see how we go. The two thugs, who have not uttered a word, stand in the middle of the studio flat and advise him – without a trace of anger – to comply.
Vernon scans the room – is there anything he could offer in exchange for a temporary reprieve? He feels the first stirrings of restless anxiety in the opposing camp – the men are worried he will react violently. They are accustomed to histrionics, to wailing. Vernon asks for fifteen minutes, the bailiff heaves a sigh – but he is relieved: the client is not a maniac.
Vernon climbs onto a stool so he can reach the top of the wardrobe and take down the most heavy-duty backpack he owns. As he takes it down, a shower of grey dust balls settles on his shoulders. He sneezes. Some situations are so bizarre we cannot imagine them actually happening. He fills the bag. Headphones, iPod, pair of jeans, Bukowski’s letters, couple of jumpers, boxer shorts, signed photo of Lydia Lunch, passport. Terror prevents all thought. Since he has just found out that Alex is dead, he remembers to rummage in the back of the wardrobe, behind the impeccably organised stacks of Maximum Rock’n’Roll, Mad Movies, Cinéphage, Best and Rock & Folk for the pack of three videocassettes Alexandre recorded on his last visit. He could maybe sell them . . . Then Vernon takes off his Doc Martens and pulls on his favourite boots. He grabs a yellow plastic alarm clock bought in a Chinese market ten years ago, which has served him well. The rucksack is heavy. He leaves the apartment without a word. The bailiff stops him as he reaches the landing; no, there’s no particular storage company he prefers, yes, he will have to collect his belongings within the month, sign here, no problem. Then he trudges down the stairs, still convinced that this is not really happening, that he will be back.
On the stairs, he meets the concierge. She has always had a soft spot for him. He’s the perfect tenant, single, always takes the trouble to talk to her about the terrible racket from the street work outside, about the weather, sometimes a little joke – a little harmless flirtation that charms this woman of sixty or so. She asks if everything is alright – she does not realise that a locksmith has been up to his apartment. He cannot find the words or the courage to explain. She is not surprised to see him carrying such a hefty rucksack, she has seen him on his way to the post office dozens of times. Suddenly he becomes aware of the shame he feels at his situation. The last time he was expelled was from the lycée. He had shown up to class off his face on acid with his friend Pierrot who would later hang himself from a bridge one Sunday morning at dawn – they had been sent straight to the directeur, who immediately expelled them. This flash of memory reminds him of the kitchen in the house where he grew up. His parents died young. Though he is not sure they would have helped him out. They were pretty puritanical. They worried about keeping him on the strait and narrow, they had never approved of his obsession with rock music. They had wanted him to join the civil service. They always said that he would never make it as a shopkeeper. As it turned out, they were right.
Out on the street, the thought of the things he should have taken but had left behind triggers a rockfall in his chest. With his fingertips, he brushes the official documents in his back pocket. His trembling hands refuse to do his bidding. He needs to sit down, to find a tranquil place where he can think, to work out how to sort things out. A thousand euros. It’s a lot of money, but you never know. He is not going to lose his personal belongings – and there are more things of value to him than he thought. The wristwatch that Jean-No gave him. The test-pressing of Les Thugs’ first album that he had salvaged back when the label manager of Gougnaf Mouvement slept on his floor for a while. The Motörhead flask that Eve brought him back from a trip to London. An original print of a Jello Biafra photograph taken by Carole in New York. And the signed Hubert Selby.
The threat of eviction had been hanging over him for so long that he had ended up believing that it was nothing but an air-raid siren in a war he was always going to win. If Alexandre was still alive, Vernon would know what to do: he would go down to his apartment building and move heaven and earth to find him. He would not have felt embarrassed in the least – his old mate would have been happy to bail him out. After all, that was Vernon’s role, he gave Alex’s money legitimacy.
If only he had got off his arse and tracked down Alexandre instead of sending polite emails from time to time and waiting for him to show his face. If Vernon had been a freeloader and moved in with Alex, things would have been very different. They would have been doing drugs together, chilling at his place, and Alex would never have gone to take a bath in some shitty hotel. They would have been listening to Led Zep live in Japan instead.
Skint city is a place Vernon knows of old. Cinemas, clothes shops, brasseries, art galleries – there aren’t many places where you can sit in the warm without having to shell out. That just leaves railway stations, Métro stations, libraries, churches and the few park benches that have not been ripped out to stop people like him sitting there for free. Rail stations and churches have no central heating, the thought of hopping the Métro with a large rucksack is depressing. He trudges up the avenue des Gobelins towards the place d’Italie. He is lucky: though it has been raining for the past few days, today the streets are bathed in weak sunshine. If he had hung on for another month, it would officially have been winter.
He tries to cheer himself up, ogling girls in the street. Back in the d
ay, a single ray of sunshine would have girls pouring into the streets in their skimpiest skirts just to celebrate. These days, they are less likely to wear skirts, more likely to wear trainers and their make-up is more discreet. He sees a lot of forty-something women trying their best, wearing clothes bought in the sales, outfits that looked good on the rail, cheap suits they thought were good copies of designer gear only to discover, as soon as they put them on, the only thing that shows is their age. And the girls, the girls are as pretty as ever although they don’t scrub up as well. It has to be said that the eighties retro look does them no favours.
On Thursdays, the library does not open until two o’clock. Vernon is already sick and tired of tramping the streets. He walks up the avenue de Choisy and sits in a bus shelter. He had thought about going to the park, but the rucksack is too heavy. He sits down next to a woman in her forties who looks vaguely like Jean-Jacques Goldman. Between her feet is a large canvas bag full of hippie food. Everything about her exudes intelligence, affluence, gravity and pretentiousness. The woman is deliberately avoiding making eye contact, but the first bus that comes is not hers. She takes a cigarette from her jacket pocket, he tries to start up a conversation, he knows she will think he is a dickhead, but he needs to exchange a few words with someone.
“Isn’t it a bit ironic? I mean, eating organic and still smoking?”
“Maybe. But then again, I’m entitled to do what I like, yeah?”
“I don’t suppose I could cadge one? A cigarette?”
She turns away and sighs, as though he has been bugging her for the past three hours. She needs to get over herself, Vernon thinks, she’s not exactly a babe and she’s a bit long in the tooth, I bet she can go shopping without being whistled at every five minutes. Vernon persists, he smiles and gestures to the rucksack.
Vernon Subutex One Page 3