*
Vernon was terrified at the thought of finding himself in a bar with her. Sylvie was shrieking that she had gone to the cops and reported him for misappropriation of funds, robbery and receiving stolen goods. He had no idea whether she was bluffing. It was so out of proportion to the situation that he would not have been surprised if she’d pulled a gun and put a bullet in his head. She was psycho. But very quickly he realised that all she wanted was for him to come home with her. After a scene like that. He made a show of being uncertain, then suggested she go home and wait for him. He had to go back to Lydia’s to apologise and pick up his belongings. Sylvie believed him, but insisted on going with him, she was sorry for what she had done, she wanted to compensate Lydia for the damage. Vernon raised a hand: no, I’d prefer to do this alone. At that point, Sylvie knew he was lying and flew into a new rage. She threw herself at him, lashing out with her fists and seeing him shield himself without hitting back, she sank her teeth into his shoulder. He pushed her off and made a run for it. Sylvie, who was wearing high heels and could not follow him, screamed “Stop him!”, but no-one paid any heed. He ran for so long that he finally collapsed, winded, beside Hoche Métro station.
He had to sit on the pavement for several minutes catching his breath before he could get to his feet. His legs were still trembling. He had come out without a thing, he did not have Lydia’s address. All he had was an iPod in his back pocket, two euros, and Gaëlle’s phone number scribbled on an empty pack of Rizla. He wandered around Pantin, unable to find the building he had just left. He was petrified of running into Sylvie, who was probably still looking for him, but even so he tramped the streets. He knew there was a Vélib docking station at the foot of Lydia’s building. Every morning she would peer out of her window and survey the extent of the damage. “The black kids hate the bikes, I don’t understand why”, because every time she saw someone trying to destroy one of the bicycles, it was a black boy. “Would it even occur to you to try and set fire to a rack of bikes? But there must be some reason why they do it . . .”
Failing to find the street he was looking for, Vernon phoned Gaëlle. He gave his last two euros to a teenager so she would lend him her mobile, she handed it to him, pinning him against the wall so he could not do a runner with it. He was surprised that Gaëlle answered right away and said no problem, and suggested he meet her at a bar on the canal Saint-Martin so they would go back to the apartment together.
*
Vernon crosses the place de la République. A couple of Roma kids are sitting on a mattress propped against the wall of a bank, they look lovesick and anxious, they are not attempting to beg, they are leaning together, talking about something important.
Gaëlle has not changed. Tattoos have invaded her wrists and her neck, but her face has barely changed. Her thing is motorbikes, Hells Angels, anything that involves getting your hands covered in grease. She was just a kid when she first showed up at the record shop, Vernon had never heard the expression “butch”. In the late eighties, it referred to any woman who looked like a truck driver. But Gaëlle was too blonde, too skinny for anyone to think of calling her butch. She didn’t often smile. She used to listen to Crazy Cavan, The Easybeats and David Bowie. She would steal C.D.s by the handful, stuffing them up her jumper, she had seen kids doing it in the film “Christiane F.”, but she had no aptitude for crime beyond a willingness to try. Vernon would lecture her but he could not bring himself to ban her from the shop. She was too like a scared kitten.
Gaëlle calls him my old buddy, puts an arm around his shoulder and introduces him to the barman, sticking her chest out, “See this guy? We fought in ’Nam together.” She does not ask any awkward questions. She knew Alex well. As she talks about him, she painstakingly rips a beer mat to shreds that she stacks into neat piles:
“You know that sooner or later you’re going to get the call ‘Alex is dead’. But it’s still just as painful when it comes. He was the guy I always dreamed of being. Shameless, handsome, talented, furious . . . seeing him onstage in the last few years, he’d stopped doing the wild acrobatics, he was in no fit state . . . but remember him in the early days? He was one of the most beautiful guys I’ve ever seen on a stage. Those last gigs, he’d leave the band alone out front because he needed to go backstage to take something. It was sad. You saw it too, didn’t you? The dead don’t all go the same way. Some fade right away, as if this is what they’ve been waiting for. Others hang around, they visit you in your dreams, they are looking for something . . . Alex wakes me up in the middle of the night – he blames me. He says you didn’t even try to help me. I justify myself – fuck’s sake, I’m too close to going under myself to be able to save anyone else. But it grates on you. It really grates.”
“Did he talk to you about alpha waves?”
“You too?”
“He forced me to spend a whole night listening to them. Gave me tinnitus.”
“He could be a complete pain with that stuff.”
Vernon pretends there’s a problem with his bags, that he slammed the door of the apartment and left his keys inside and that his friend won’t be back until tomorrow . . . Gaëlle is completely chilled, she says, “We’ll sort something out for tonight, you’ll see, back at our place there’s bound to be a spare T-shirt and a razor.” When he tells her he’s only back in Paris to get a new passport and sort out his social security, Gaëlle is sympathetic. Social security? That will take weeks, no point kidding himself it will be sorted quickly. “You know what they do when they’ve got too much work? They toss out a bunch of files. I swear, it’s the fucking truth, a friend of mine who’s a doctor told me. You’re going to be stuck here for a while . . . It’s obvious that you haven’t been living in France in a while, things have seriously changed . . . no, I don’t have a place of my own. Haven’t had for a long while now. Don’t have any social security these days either, but I’m never ill, so I don’t give a shit . . . But you’ll see, the crib I’m staying at is cool. It’s fucking huge, it’s up in the eighth arrondissement. I’m really pleased to be able to help you . . . given all the stuff I stole from Revolver. But there’s to be no shit: you make the smallest cockup at this place and I’ll track you down and smash your teeth. Are we clear on the rules? Don’t make me regret my magnanimity. But, yeah, I’m really glad to be able to help out. Maybe you and me will finally get to fuck, since my girlfriend’s not around at the moment. Only kidding, you’re not in a Kechiche film. She’s twenty years younger than me. She wants to party all the time, you wouldn’t believe how much energy girls have at that age . . . when I was young, being a lesbian was tough. But kids these days, they’ve got a life, they’ve got parties every night, two thousand of them show up shaking their booties, and you can’t imagine how much they fuck, the little sluts: they show up, whip out a harness and a huge RealSkin, and for them, that’s normal. Stuff that took me years to get my head round, they’re into it straight away . . .” She began to get Vernon aroused, pretending not to realise what she was doing, describing the soft detailed texture and the convenience of the newer models of strap-on dildo . . .
Vernon has never really worked out what it was Gaëlle does for a living, she has no fixed address, she never had children, her lifestyle has not changed since she was twenty years old. She looks fifteen years younger than her actual age, she claims it is because she never wears make-up. She was born into a well-heeled family, though she doesn’t appear to have much money – she is as worried by the price of beer as Vernon. But she has the attitude of a princess. “Loser” is not something that exists in her psychology. People like her are artists, bohemians – their lives are profoundly intense. They are never “skint”. They could be signing on for securité sociale, they could be banged up in jail, it doesn’t matter – unless someone rips out their intestines and forces them to suffer like ordinary people, they are above mere financial concerns. Having nothing makes it easy to be frivolous.
Gaëlle takes him to an apartment range
d over three levels with a total floor space close to 300 square metres, it feels like a supermarket, just making the grand tour is exhausting. A terrace runs the length of the top floor. The rooftops of Paris, in an infinite palette of grey, extend as far as the eye can see, the sky does not open up, there are only a few hours of light every day. It is like a lid over the city. The terrace is too high to be able to clearly make out the people below, the eye is drawn to the empty sky and discovers that it is ceaselessly criss-crossed by planes. Vernon shivers with cold. Gaëlle opens a can of beer and the sound of the tab being popped and gas being released immediately reassures him. Gaëlle has a biker’s way of performing even the simplest tasks. She makes them strangely sensual.
“Who would even think of building an apartment this big?”
“A large family. The floor we’re on was staff quarters, the middle floor – well, if a family had four kids, every bedroom would be full, and on the top floor were the reception rooms . . .”
“How much does it rent for, a place like this . . .?”
“You don’t rent, you buy. On a whim, in this case. Given the neighbourhood, you’re talking about three million . . . he was a cash buyer, so he probably got a discount . . . He can afford it. He’s a trader, his girlfriend is studying. They’re both out all the time, you’ll see, the place is chill. One thing: don’t go raiding the fridge, they hate that. If you’re thirsty, if you’re hungry, go downstairs and buy whatever you need.”
“You been living here long?”
“I’ve had the room for a while . . . but I try not to spend too much time here. It’s too tiring. For the first couple of days, it’ll seem like fun, but after that, you’ll see, coming down for your morning coffee and finding a dozen fuckwits in the kitchen who don’t even know what they’re talking about going on and on about the true message of Christ . . . well, it gets old fast. But for a couple of weeks, you can live like a king here.”
“It’s a real lifesaver, you’ve got no idea.”
“All you need to do is spin a set. The master of the house is having a little party tonight. I’ll tell him you’re a D.J.”
“I’ve got my iPod. I don’t suppose you’ve got a Mac you could lend me? If I’m going to prepare a playlist it would make things easier . . . and I’d need to get online, I have to contact the friend whose flat I accidentally locked my bags in.”
When he thinks about writing to Lydia to explain that he couldn’t find his way back to her apartment, the memory of the scene that took place this morning makes his throat tighten and he feels his blood freeze.
THE MUSIC IS SICK! THIS GUY’S A GENIUS. ALWAYS TRUST GAËLLE. When they first saw him, everyone thought who is this ageing freak, then he hooks up his iPod – the man’s a fucking God – it’s like holy water in your ears. The Klipsch speakers are pumping out Rod Stewart – this guy is fucking crazy, he’ll play anything, but it works. He’s the Nadia Comăneci of the playlist. After tonight, he’s going to be Kiko’s D.J. in residence. Red Bull and fat rails of coke, clusters of girls start to show up. They’re tipsy, slutty, up for it – just the way we like them after dark. Some dickwad throws up over the pot plants. Kiko grabs the guy’s shoulder and spits in his ear “Get the fuck out of my house, go on, fuck off”, the guy is mumbling something but Kiko shoves him towards the door, he’s not listening. He hates losers who can’t hold their drink. A diaphanous blonde, all skin and bones, is tottering on a pair of freakish heels. She looks like she’s walking on a tightrope. Her shoulder blades stick out, he feels the urge to shatter a bone. Neurons fried. For a second he considers clambering over the terrace rail and throwing himself off. Just for the buzzkill. This morning when he got up, Kiko said to himself: tonight I’m gonna be chilled. He needs to rest, eat Japanese, catch a movie, sleep it off. He’d forgotten he was having a party at his place – he could have cancelled, but that would have taken more effort than letting things ride. Claudia shows up. She’s in Paris doing a cover for Vogue. He likes being surrounded by people who are successful at what they do. They radiate positive energy. She’s brought some of her girlfriends from the photo shoot. Supermodels are “so” last decade. Has beens. There are a dime-a-dozen. Disposable. Even a dog can snag a catwalk model and get her into bed. He finds this thought amusing and immediately tweets it. He’s in a twitter war with Jé, who’s in Shanghai – what time is it there, what is he doing posting at this hour: “I’m studying the green of my vomit”, with twitpic evidence. Sick. Who knows what the fuck he’s doing over there. Other than making himself sick. Ever since the last Bond movie, Kiko’s been planning to go to Shanghai. Not for work – he wants to have time to get out of the hotel. Get a feel for the city. But he doesn’t have the time. Story of his life. You spend your time working your arse off to earn serious cash, but to spend it you need some sort of work–life balance. And in his line of work, there’s no such thing. His job is speed. People outside the business don’t understand. They think he analyses companies, but he’s a sprinter. He reacts in a hundredth of a second, moves at the speed of the technology. Black holes. A stock market crash lasts a second and a half. Generating billions in profits. Or losses. And it’s all down to you. It’s hyper-instability. No time to touch ground, he’s attuned to the wavelengths of algorithmic trading. He responds to an underground rhythm ordinary mortals cannot hear. Makes pivotal decisions at the speed of sound. We’re talking billions, we’re talking nanoseconds. He is constantly alert, an exceptional warrior. Britney Spears, “Work Bitch”. Subutex is his bro, the guy can read his thoughts, he knows what to spin to get people dancing. Gym workout music.
Jérémy is pestering Marcia to cut his hair right now. Kiko can’t stand the guy anymore. He used to be funny and charming. Used to be his best bro. These days, he’s pathetic. They’ve known each other since they were kids. But Jérémy never realises when he’s not wanted. He outstays his welcome. He’s broke, his father cut off his allowance when he found out how much he was putting up his nose. Kiko managed to get himself fired from the board of directors, it had to be done. He trashed the C.E.O.’s office, just picked up a chair and started swinging. At the time it made them all laugh. But afterwards, well . . . It was pretty loserish behaviour. You’ve gotta be able to draw the line. Keep the wild and wasted shtick for the night-time. Daytime, you have to keep your nose clean and not make waves. The guy pisses him off. Ever since last summer when Jérémy insisted on coming to Calvi on the Rocks. Turned up without a fucking cent. Leeching off everyone. Embarrassing. Kiko had made it clear that there were ten of them staying in the house and it wasn’t exactly an Olympic pool either. But he showed up anyway. No respect. This is one thing Kiko cannot abide. If you can’t handle your drugs, go into rehab. For years, they were inseparable, they agreed on everything. But it’s over now. Jérémy has lost his touch. These days, he is part of the crowd Kiko dismisses as roadkill – he is not about to feel guilty for being a killer. He knows not everyone is as lucky as he is. Always hustling, always on the move. Most of the people he knows are already past it. It’s a long game, a tough game. They shoot horses don’t they, Kiko would be the last man standing on the dance floor. For Jérémy, it’s game over. His father won’t let him fall through the cracks, but he’s finished. His brain probably looks like a wrinkled Chinese pot sticker. Fried and cold. He won’t climb back into the ring. Kiko is hacked off to see him drooling over Marcia – Marcia still makes him horny. Jesus fuck she makes him horny! Past her prime and not really his type. But she owns it. It’s something about the way she moves, she fucks with every breath. She reeks of sex. A real woman is one of the guys. He types this into Twitter and jabs “send”. He’s leaning over a bridge above a motorway. The tweets keep coming, Boule2Kriss is on this crazy riff about the “human Barbie”, some girl who’s had surgery so she could look like a doll. He’s coming out with some sleazy porn shit. Depeche Mode – this Vernon guy is a genius. You never know what the next segue will be, but he’s spinning a blinding set. He’s got B.P.M. burned on
to his cortex. The party cranks up another gear, you can feel it, it’s buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. Janet Jackson, “All Nite”. There’s a lot of sucky-fucky going on in the corners, it’s cosmic and it’s crass, just the way he likes it. Chicks can be dry when they’re blitzed on gutter glitter, so mind those foreskins, boys. He tweets this. Too bad for the guys who’ve been cut and whose pricks can’t feel anything. He could have any girl in this room tonight. That’s why they’re here, just seeing the size of the apartment gets them wet and they’re gagging to suck off any guy who can afford it. He can see everything. He is a surface, attentive and alert. It’s the yayo, but it’s not just that – his mind is a single, giant interchange. Like downtown Tokyo. Information courses through him; he classifies. He spends all day simultaneously watching eight monitors while barking orders down the phone. He is multiple. Through training, his brain works a hundred times faster than that of some bumbling C.E.O. The average bank manager is like some guy scaling a mountain on the back of a donkey while he is riding a rocket – three times round the world every day, and his giant strides don’t just take him round the world from market to market, they take him to its core – sifting information, finding points that match, connecting them. Transmitter–receiver. Inter-galactic sorting office. Plugged into world time. In a Sicilian village or an Indian megalopolis, in the frozen tundra or the Amazon rainforest, everywhere functions on Market time. Our advantage is speed, ubiquity is our gift. The meteor moves too fast for anyone to alter its trajectory, it’s all about intuition. Kiko can sense time, he is the big hand on the watch. In global time. He is the swiftest, the strongest. It’s nothing to do with the drugs. He is in control. A quick bump first thing in the morning and he’s off and running, no more hits until he takes a break at two p.m. – his first line. He is in control, during the day he takes only what he needs to keep riding the gnarly wave. He never spins out. He is an exceptional surfer. He’s worth this apartment, he’s worth all those honeys shaking their asses in the living room, he’s worth the drugs. He’s worth the Berlutis. He’s a fucking wolf. His concentric part is rising – anyone would give anything to be in his shoes. Shit! A Trentemøller remix of Presley – at this precise moment, it’s the perfect piece of mixology. It’s savage, the babes love it, they can swivel their hips. This guy is a genius. Kiko loves him. They are kindred spirits: in his business, Kiko is a virtuoso – he rides the comet, the comet is his own body. He hears the blood pumping in his temples, the sound of his blood, throbbing, throbbing, it’s good. Powerful. Even the people who pretend to be modest do it because they’re bitter, because they can’t be like him. If they don’t get to taste the soup, they try to spit in it, but if someone passed them the bowl they’d change their tune. No-one likes a loser. He nearly tossed that old bastard Vernon out on his arse – it’s one of his pet hates, when people bring someone round who has no business setting foot in his place. He nearly lost his rag when Gaëlle showed up with this fucking tramp, with his piss-poor excuse about not having his gear – he had to lend the guy a T-shirt. Kiko had glared at Gaëlle but she shot him that look that always gets to him, the look of an old hand knows what she’s doing. And she was right. The guy is sick. He may not have looked like much standing in the living room in the cold light of day, but bent over his playlists right now, the look almost works. He hardly moves – tough guys don’t dance – but he’s at one with the music. The fucker does a 180-degree swerve into music that’s hot and kitsch, and it works. Kiko glances at the track on iTunes, Candi Staton “I’d rather be an old man’s sweetheart” how the fuck did he have the balls to spin this now? Exactly the right tune, just the thing to get the babes warmed up despite the coke. Top night, never met a guy like this. How did a guy like you end up poor, how come you’re still a filthy bum. The guy probably grew up eating peanuts off paper plates, a life fuelled by frozen crêpes and meat pumped full of antibiotics. The cultural habits of the poor make Kiko want to puke. He imagines being reduced to such a life – over-salted food public transport taking home less than €5,000 a month and buying clothes in a shopping mall. Taking commercial flights and having to wait around in airports sitting on hard seats with nothing to drink no newspapers being treated like shit and having to travel in steerage, being a second-class scumbag, knees jammed against your chin, neighbour’s elbows digging into your ribs. Screwing ageing cellulite-riddled meat. Finishing the working week and having to do the housework and the shopping. Checking the prices of things to see if you can afford them. Kiko couldn’t live like that, he would rob a bank, put a bullet in his head, he would find a solution. He would not put up with it. The fact that they do means that they deserve it. Guys like him could not live like that. What have the rich got that the poor have not? They’re not content with what they’re given. Guys like him never act like slaves. He stands on his own two feet, come what may – he would rather die on his feet than kneel. People who allow themselves to be subjugated deserve to be subjugated. This is war. He is a mercenary. When you fall on the front lines, you don’t run crying to someone. You’re here to fight. Three days ago when Kerviel was asked in an interview on telly “Did you realise what you were doing when you were speculating on commodities?” – the kind of bullshit question that comes from a guy who doesn’t realise that that’s the job – Kiko fell about laughing. Do you really think we have time to inspect our own arsehole to check whether it’s clean. Who is the strongest. The fastest. That’s the only question. As soon as you know the answer, you go for it. You’ve got guys bellyaching about the markets, they bring Kerviel on and they want him to say it was all his fault. Why don’t you ask the real questions: who sells these shows? They are the masters of the universe. Ask yourself what Google is doing instead of bleating that you don’t understand the industry. Twelve trains late, gentlemen. Who comes up with the algorithms, that’s the only important question. The little people worry about the rise of the far right. That won’t change the markets. Whether it’s the far right or any-one else, the markets will barely notice. There is no going back. These people are still living in the ’30s. Kiko is connected to the universal flux, the pure source of power, money may thrash, it shies, it rears but Kiko stays in the saddle. Would anyone think to ask a bomber pilot to examine his conscience? People are still worrying about threats to education and social security. Retards. Do the unemployed need to read in their free time? The old world is done and dusted. Why bother educating people who are surplus to the job market? The next time the peoples of Europe are called upon, it will be for war. You don’t need to learn about literature and maths to fight. Now there’s somthing that could kick-start the economy. A war. But well-read welfare scroungers – honestly, what a ridiculous notion. People think that on the trading floor we give a shit about protest movements – do they really believe that it makes a trader’s heart bleed to see a bunch of guys without the cash to buy bread? Life’s always been like this. It’s hard. It’s war. When Kerviel crashes and burns, no-one rushes to defend him. When it comes to Kiko’s turn – he will face it alone. He is a mercenary, he knows he can count on no-one. In a war you have to win. To survive. To have the proper tools. The right algorithm. The rest is poetry. Empty promises. Of course there is the thrill. Yo, shitwank, you think I don’t get a hard-on for a bonus trailing five zeros? If he walked over to Subutex and said, you know today I added hundreds of thousands of euros to my capital, he’d know that made him hard, right? He’s got a full-on robot chubby. He is a bull in the ring, he fights. He sees people who’ve retired at forty. Palaces, big cars and high-class hookers, they move to countries where no-one gives a shit about human rights, where people are progressive, where they don’t hassle you for income tax. He’s never seen one of them with tears in his eye because little black bamboula hasn’t got enough to eat. Try doing what I do, you’ll see. I hedge, I speculate, I double, I anticipate, I short. Always on the alert. Bad news for the people of France: the party’s over. Move along, there’s nothing to see here. We’ve sold off the fridg
es the laptops and now we’re restocking to fuck off and sell elsewhere. And you’ll do what? Apart from whingeing, what are you going to do? Kill each other? Good idea. We’ve got arms to trade. His countrymen are dumb, ungrateful, arrogant arseholes. They take to the streets shouting bullshit slogans and thinking they’re all that. They’re nothing. Up where we are, we don’t even hear. Not a whisper reaches our ears. It’s all done and dusted. It’s over. Wave your little pamphlets. We can’t even hear you.
Vernon Subutex One Page 17