The 6:41 to Paris

by Jean-Philippe Blondel

  After that, I worked on other friendships. There were colleagues. Christine. Christine’s friends. That was it. Sometimes just as I was falling asleep I would think about Mathieu. I wondered what he was doing. I’d had news of him indirectly. I watched the TV movies he played in. And the feature films, where his tall, slender physique was becoming more and more visible. That was what surprised me more than anything: I had always thought of Mathieu as plump. The guy whose screen career I was vaguely following didn’t look anything like him. Even his voice seemed to have changed. It was deeper.

  Whenever I came out of the movie theater, I felt like calling him—and I never got up the resolve.

  The only consolation in all those years was my family. Christine. The girls. I waited anxiously for the day when Mathieu’s photo would appear in some celebrity magazine with a gorgeous Spanish actress or Ukrainian supermodel on his arm, and the cryptic caption underneath: “Could that little bulge at the waist be the sign of an future joyful event?”

  It never happened.

  First of all because his love affairs never lasted very long. But above all because he never became famous. For a long time he was a familiar face, but in the background. His career would have been completely lackluster had it not been for Today’s Lucky Winners. Today’s Lucky Winners was really a stroke of luck for him. He was well acquainted with the producer of the program, who was looking for an experienced host not too well-known to the general public. They did some screen tests. Bingo. There he was in one of the most popular programs on French television: a pathetic game show, perfect for filling the lonely hours of the unemployed or housewives under fifty, while they wait for the one o’clock news. His sense of humor, his handsome face, his easy way with people: in a few weeks, he walked off with the jackpot. Money was no longer a problem. It was 2004; he was forty years old. His future was all sewn up.

  It was around then that Christine and I got divorced. It was also around then that I stopped buying the TV Guide. I couldn’t stand seeing pictures of Mathieu anymore. I was only too aware of how our paths in life were heading in different directions. We had met at a time when he was merely a rough draft of the person he would later become, while I was at my zenith. He would keep on rising, whereas I had begun to sink gradually. Every time I caught his face in a magazine, those were my thoughts. About failure. About destiny slipping out of your grasp.

  I’m better now.

  And I’m on my way to visit Mathieu today.

  Gulp.

  I’m not proud of myself.

  And I know why.

  He’s the one who got back in touch. I would never have dared. Not because I would have been afraid of disturbing him. But because I was afraid of being humiliated: What if he could hardly remember my name?

  I ran into his mother, just after my divorce. She was shopping at the store. She wanted to buy a new television. She had just lost her husband—I hadn’t heard about it. We spoke for a long time. She invited me over for the following Sunday, a Sunday when I didn’t have the kids. She’d bake a cake. When I left the store that evening, I felt like crying—as much over her solitude as over the way my life was going. I was going to be filling in for my erstwhile best friend. He had dreamed of being in my place; now I was taking his. I was stepping into the shoes of the man he might have been, the lonely man who visits his mother for Sunday tea.

  One day, Mathieu found out. I thought it would make him angry. It was worse than that. He felt pity. And it’s true, basically, that pity was all I deserved—a fortysomething guy taking refuge at the home of his childhood friend’s mother, talking about life, how lame can you get. But I liked going to Maud’s place. Peeling vegetables with her. Doing the sort of daily activities I had never done with my parents. What I liked was that Maud wasn’t judgmental. Even less so nowadays that she’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I look back on those days and really miss them, almost more than any other time in my life. My dinners at Maud’s. My Sundays spent preparing tasty dishes while exchanging thoughts about life, neighbors, children. I miss her.

  Mathieu and I started calling each other because of her. I had just found her in the parking lot of the store, distraught and completely disoriented. I called the doctor. Then her son. I remember Mathieu’s voice on the telephone. And the voice he had as an adolescent. Nothing remotely like the grave, confident timbre he’d created for his TV movies. Nor like the exaggeratedly cheerful self he’d adopted for Today’s Lucky Winners. Truth be told, he wasn’t very lucky that day. He had to rely on me. To ask me a favor. Maybe the first of many. He was beholden to me.

  That’s how we became friends once again.

  Friends.

  That’s saying a lot.

  Let’s just say that it was saying a lot until recently. We would call each other. He would stop by from time to time. We only talked about his mother and his career. One day he did ask me, however, if it hadn’t been too rough on me, the divorce. In fact, I’d been through it already long before, so I was able to smile and shrug and say, “That’s life.” I don’t know why, but it must have touched him, so he invited me to his place. In Paris. To his apartment. To a party with his Parisian friends.

  It was an honor.

  There I was in that milieu where I didn’t belong, among people who drank too much and laughed very loudly, among tired-but-bubbly wives, and catering staff who walked around with finger food and refills. Mathieu simply introduced me as, “Philippe, a childhood friend.” They all stared at me with a big smile for ten seconds or so and then the conversation would continue, without me. I melted into the décor. It wasn’t hard. I felt like I was in a bad TV movie. I recognized a few faces I’d spotted on the TV screen, but I couldn’t put a name on any of them. The big shots had promised they’d come but at the last minute they called to cancel. Or didn’t call. And Mathieu really didn’t mind at all. What was radiant about Mathieu’s place was Mathieu himself.

  Also radiant that evening was a woman twenty years younger than him, lively and witty. Who worked as an usher at a theater to pay for law school. Totally on top of things. Her name was Astrid. Even at the very heart of the party she was true to herself. She would drift toward Mathieu and then away again, perfectly natural and nonchalant. I envied her. I envied Mathieu, too, of course. They’d been seeing each other for a few months, but she had no illusions. Sooner or later their affair would end, she would get tired of playing the gerontophile or he would find a woman who was more docile.

  At one point the volume went up a notch, and she and I ended up in the huge kitchen. The caterer and his assistants had left, they’d be back in the morning to clean up. It was very late. She found a bunch of black grapes, and began to eat them one by one.

  “You know, Mathieu often speaks of you.”

  “Oh. In flattering terms, I hope.”

  “I wouldn’t know. At the same time, it’s fairly recent. Out of the blue.”

  “Blue moon. As in, once in—that’s how often we’ve seen each other.”

  I tried to change the subject. I got the feeling it was headed in a direction that might prove unpleasant.

  “It’s because I was looking after his mother.”

  “Or his mother was looking after you. Well, that’s how he put it.”

  “Sometimes human relations go both ways.”

  “For a while, people were making fun of you around here. All these people you see here, they’d slap their hands on their thighs whenever they heard one of Mathieu’s stories about Philippe making apple pie with his friend’s mom.”

  “I’m not sure I really want to hear this.”

  “Wait. It’s not as bad as it sounds. And in life, truth is the greatest asset, don’t you think?”

  I imagined getting to my feet with dignity—it wouldn’t be hard, I had drunk only two glasses of champagne. Something had prevented me from drinking more—the fear of making a slip, of feeling nauseous, of making a fool of myself. I imagined walking across the kitchen and through the crowd i
n the living room, picking up my coat, going down the stairs and, whistling, making my way to the Gare de l’Est, where the first trains would soon be departing. I imagined disappearing.

  Yes, I saw myself doing all that, but I am an actor only in my dreams. In reality, I nodded and poured myself a glass of water.

  “Gradually it changed. You became a … what should I call it, yes, a kind of character witness. He refers to you as if you were a character witness.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He’s come in for quite a lot of criticism lately. Let’s just say that he behaved badly with certain individuals. And people began saying that he was forgetting where he was from, that he was getting bigheaded. He had to get things back on an even keel. He was antagonizing everyone. So he did a lot of soul-searching. And you are part of that. You allow him to show that no, he hasn’t changed. That he’s had the same friends for years. That he’s stayed close to his roots. That the things he was being accused of were unjustified.”

  I poured myself some strong booze. Over ice. I swirled the ice cubes in the glass. None of this came as a surprise. What did astonish me, however, was that I didn’t feel more offended. I was past all that. I shrugged.

  “I’m sorry if this comes as a blow,” she said.

  “I’m past feeling any blows. I’m already on the ground.”

  “I like you a lot, you know.”

  “Do you need a character witness as well?”

  I looked up at her from under my brows. For a moment she didn’t know what to say, then she burst out laughing.

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “With what?”

  “With what I’ve just told you.”

  “Nothing at all. He’s taking advantage of the situation. So am I. It’s not exactly as if I’m swamped with invitations. And then when I get home and go into work I can always casually mention the fact that I spent an evening with Mathieu Coché. Everyone finds their misplaced vanity where they can.”

  “I don’t know why I spoke to you about truth just now. You don’t need any lessons from me.”

  “On the other hand, I would like a refill.”

  On we went like that, in the kitchen, just the two of us. Words whizzing by. Minutes, too. This hadn’t happened to me in a long time. I think we confided in each other the way people rarely confide in each other. We knew perfectly well that we would never meet again. That one of us was bound to be exiting Mathieu’s life before long. I was prepared to go away again, the way I had come. But in the end she was the one who slammed the door—which meant that I got to stay on and put up with Mathieu ranting and raving against women. Particularly younger women. Before we left the kitchen, early that morning, after the party, we exchanged phone numbers. To be used only in case of an urgent need to confide—which meant never. I still have her number on me, in my wallet. It has become a sort of talisman. I could call her now and tell her about Cécile. About Mathieu. About the nagging reluctance I feel going to see Mathieu.

  Dear God, what am I doing on this train?

  Next to Cécile.

  Who suddenly stands up.

  And brushes past my knees.

  “Sorry.”

  “No problem.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Of course.”

  I’m in the toilet, checking my face in the mirror. My cheeks are red. I am being ridiculous. Why is my heart pounding as if it’s about to burst? Because I just exchanged two polite but awkward phrases with a fellow passenger on the train? Because I brushed against the knee of a man who is neither young nor old, who has a paunch and an incipient bald patch? It’s nothing to get in such a state about. Because … just take a look. Take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Look at me.

  You’re a hundred times better than he is.

  Only a faint touch of makeup. Your skin, still glowing thanks to a simple night cream. Your eyes, with just a hint of liner. You’re a walking advertisement for the products you sell: you’re radiant, in spite of the years creeping up on you. And your hair. You even have trouble taming your hair, it still grows wild, with a lateblooming vitality.

  You’re a hundred times better than he is.

  Men. There are those who look at you during meetings. And those who like your efficiency and relative discretion. Some of them would like to know what you’re hiding behind that calm veneer. Others tremble when your decisions are final. There are those who, on public transport, take a good look at you and compare you with the woman they will go home to when they come to their stop. Some of them will sigh because of the comparison. Others would like to go up to you but don’t dare, because, though you’d never know it, there’s a side to you that’s intimidating.

  Then there is Luc, of course. Months, years of struggle just to keep his attention, to feel his growing admiration, to ward off all those women who thought they could come and unravel the close-knit family unit you’ve been creating. So different from the one you grew up in. So far removed, mentally, that you almost never tell your parents about your everyday life anymore. Because they wouldn’t understand; they can’t even begin to picture it.

  I hope that Valentine is proud of her mom. Prouder in any case than I’ve ever been of my mother. Every time I go back to see my parents, I feel like I’m slipping back down the social and material ladder I’ve been climbing so cautiously yet tenaciously. The minute I get to the station, I’m back in my childhood hand-me-downs: my voice trembles, my gestures are clumsy, and I feel annoyed. Profoundly annoyed, and it makes me wonder why, oh dear Lord, why do I inflict these visits on myself twice a month?

  And with him, now, it’s the same thing.

  I’m back in my twenty-year-old skin. As if molting season were imminent, lurking in some corner of my native town or on the train, just waiting for me to lower my guard in order to attack. I remember Lucile, who used to work for me a few years ago. She was a tall, slim, attractive girl. One day she showed me photographs of her adolescent self. They used to call her Piglet or Butterball. She clenched her teeth while I looked at the shapeless mass of flesh in the photographs, and tried to discern the features of the woman she would become. She murmured that they were still inside her, Butterball and Piglet. She had to fight them off, every single day, all it took was a moment’s inattention, if someone shoved past her in the Métro, or she took a little too long getting her credit card out of her wallet, and Butterball and Piglet would swoop down on her again. Chubby. Fat. Ugly. Useless.

  As she was talking, I saw myself again, at the lycée and then afterward. I even think that that very evening, while talking to Lucile, I felt the shadow of Philippe Leduc brush over me. His insolence. His cruelty.

  Philippe Leduc. Now there’s someone who must have spent hours admiring himself in the mirror. Or maybe not. But in other people’s eyes, yes. The supporting roles, only too happy to send his reflection back to him. But now. Look at you. The roles have been reversed. You shouldn’t apologize for bumping into him. He is nothing to you. Nothing.

  Today, he would be ready to eat out of your palm.

  Today, he wouldn’t dare treat you in an offhand manner.

  I remember the party we went to together, of course—but I simply cannot recall the name of the boy who was throwing the party. Surely something like Arnaud or Christophe, those were the trendy names. His father was a doctor, that much I do remember. The mother worked with charities. They had money. Their house was on the edge of town. With a huge garden, and trees, and just beyond, fields stretching as far as the hills. It’s all changed now. Houses have sprung up all around, the farms have been sold off, the town is spreading, bringing its supermarkets, its boulangeries that are not boulangeries, even warehouses that call themselves stores but which sell junk and knickknacks, everything for less than five euros. That house must be stuck in the middle of four other recent constructions, with the parents of the boy who invited us huddled inside. They’ll end their lives trapped in a forest of shopping malls and parkin
g lots.

  I’m surprised at how spiteful I’m feeling.

  I didn’t think I’d be so bitter. There’s no reason to be bitter nowadays. I have more money than the parents of Arnaud or Christophe will ever have—and I’m nowhere near the age of physical decline.

  Maybe it was envy?

  Yes.

  After all, money meant self-confidence. So did good looks. I had neither. I was doing my best to become a shadow, a prompter at a theater—someone whose face you rarely see but who makes herself indispensable. I was thinking that sweetness and discretion would make me indispensable—to someone. To a boy. For a brief while I believed that boy might be Philippe Leduc. I clung to him, trying to keep myself light as air. And I went flying, with the first puff of wind.

  The basement was turned into a disco, and between the rows of spotlights and the strobe, reality was garish and disjointed. For a while I watched people dancing, but the nearby loudspeakers were deafening, so I went upstairs. On the ground floor groups of students were lounging around and acting detached and cynical, as if they were rehearsing their roles as the next Jacques Dutronc or Bryan Ferry. Some of them had crowded around a table to play poker and drink liquor. Others were taking pictures of themselves, over and over, in the half-light of the living room. The French doors were open. I went outside for some air. Down at the end of the garden, you could hardly hear a thing. I liked walking in the grass. To feel it swishing against my shoes. A sweet feeling.

  There were stars. It was easy to feel enchanted. I stared at a point on the horizon. He was standing in a corner over on my left, beneath the chestnut tree. I saw him only at the last minute. I was about to move away and, then I figured no, why should I. I had as much right to be there as he did. I murmured “Good evening.” He smiled. We stood there for a while without speaking, but then suddenly that patch of garden felt crowded. We had to start talking, otherwise we’d seem ridiculous. I was looking for something to say. Something a bit less cheesy than, “I’ve always loved gardens in moonlight,” or “When I was little, my father used to tell me the names of all the stars.” Especially since it wasn’t true. My father never gazed at stars either with me or on his own. And he didn’t really contribute to my education. So I decided to be frank. And provocative, in a good-natured way.