by Jérémie Guez
“I have to find a kid. Never fit in among his own people. Probably rejected because of his sexual orientation. A good kid, but fragile, wound up going out with some real bastards. I know this guy hung around him. Definitely did some things to him.”
“Like?”
“Like fucked-up shit.”
“Poor kid.”
After lunch, the owner serves us up some brandies, and we head back toward Pigalle. Moshe briefs me about the guy we’re going to see.
“I’m warning you right now, he’s no friend of mine. I can’t stand him. But if anyone can help you, it’s him.”
We walk down boulevard de Clichy until Moshe stops in front of a sex shop, as if picking one at random from the legion along the sidewalk. Pushing aside a heavy curtain of ocher fabric, he goes in. I follow. It looks just like all the others inside: weak neon lighting, movies everywhere, booths to the left. There’s a lost-looking kid minding the store: double chin poorly shaved, Star Wars tee, a tiny pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose.
“Adrian here?” Moshe asks.
The kid nods, picks up the phone, mutters something, and hangs up. “You’re good, he’s up top. He’s shooting right now, but you can go up.” He points at a spiral iron staircase way at the back of the room.
I fall in step behind Moshe. I can hear pop music now—1980s shit, complete with revolting synth. The staircase leads to what looks like a small theater with rows of seats and a stage bathed in harsh light. A guy with a camera is sitting up front, barking directions at two tall, exceptionally athletic women fondling each other and kissing to the music. Even from a distance, the show is pathetic. As usual.
“That him?” I ask Moshe.
“Yeah.”
Moshe walks over and calls out to him. “Working hard?”
The man turns around. “Moshe. It’s been a while.”
He turns to the models. “All right, get dressed, girls. Take a break. Be back in fifteen.”
As they prance by us, I realize the girls are in fact guys dressed up with wigs and sequined dresses—pop star look-alikes. One of them has an Adam’s apple twice the size of mine and looks like a popular platinum-blond singer.
Moshe introduces me. “This is Idir. A good friend of mine.”
Adrian extends his hand. I look him right in the eyes. He’s an ash blond with a high forehead, bulging eyes, and a tiny debauched mouth. The kind of guy no girl would want to see entering her subway car late one Saturday night.
“Pleasure,” he says.
I shake his hand. It’s soft through and through.
“Well, I doubt this is a social call. Not that it doesn’t delight me to see you, but I’ve got work,” says Adrian.
“We’d like some information about an actor.”
I take over. “A guy who dabbles now and then, amateur stuff. I think he’s bi. Calls himself Tantalus.”
Adrian looks at me, annoyed. “Look, guys, I make movies, but this isn’t Hollywood here. I pay cash, and nobody’s giving me an invoice. The people who come here, we’re not talking cream of the crop. We make up names for the credits—whatever sounds funniest when we’re editing, that’s all. Sorry, can’t help you. Other producers, guaranteed, they’ll tell you the same thing. You’re wasting your time.”
I walk Moshe back to work and thank him for his help. Back at my place, I make myself more coffee, settle down on the couch, and feel the tears coming, unprovoked. I cry for two hours before it goes away. Flat on my back till evening, just hoping it will pass. The problem with the crying jags is they aren’t just about what happens during. There’s also what happens after. I lose time, I never know how much. In the dark, the veins in my neck ready to explode, I’m huffing like a bull after a charge, sucking my salty tongue.
Around eight, my hands finally stop trembling. My tear ducts dry up. I can do what I have to do.
The apartment building rises from one of those narrow perpendicular streets off boulevard Saint-Germain. I pull out my phone, check Eve’s text message, and punch in the security code. The first door opens. I walk a few yards and run into another, by the concierge’s quarters. I scan the intercom by last name and buzz up.
The elevator is about the size of my kitchen. I reach the sixth floor. Just one door on the landing, cracked open. I freeze on the threshold and push the door slowly open with an elbow, careful not to touch the jamb with my fingers.
The apartment is dimly lit, the foyer huge. I cross on tiptoe. “Eve?”
No answer. A light is on in a room somewhere. A bedroom. From the hallway, I see the foot of a bed. A muddled sound of objects clanking, like someone’s searching the place. I do an about-face for the front door and grab a candlestick from a buffet heavy enough to do the job. I feel better about my chances now.
The bedroom. A king-size bed bracketed by shelves full of books. An en suite bath. That’s where the sounds are coming from. In front of a mirror, wearing nothing but a black G-string, Eve is applying her makeup, her ass on display like it’s nothing, like she thinks asses that perfect are a regular sight for guys like me. When she reaches out to grab her mascara from a shelf, the arch of her back makes a long arabesque.
“Sorry, I’m not ready yet,” she says, glancing at me in the mirror.
“I thought—I’ll, uh, just wait outside.” I chuck the candlestick on the bed, hold my hand out right in front of me. It’s trembling.
“You OK?” she asks innocently.
“Yeah. Where are we going tonight?”
“To Hugo’s.”
I don’t even know why I asked her such a stupid question. She comes out in a loose top that stops midthigh, her long brown hair swept back in a big chignon. She’s wearing jeans tight as a second skin and red heels.
“Ready?” I ask.
But she doesn’t seem to want to follow me. Instead, she lies down lubriciously on the bed. “You bring anything?”
Without fanfare, I dismiss the disappointment. Really, Idir, you can dare to dream—but it’ll never happen. I take the drugs out from under my balls, apologize for how ungentlemanly that is, but honestly, I’ve never understood people who walk around with their stash in their coat pocket, like there’s no such thing as stop and frisk.
“Take your pick.”
She sits up and points at the pink powder Tarik gave me. What can I say? My man knows his business. She grabs a DVD off the floor. Contempt. It pains me, but I lay a line out for her on the clamshell, thinking her ass is a sure match for Bardot’s. She snorts the powder up diligently, no straw, just holding one nostril closed. A real pro.
“Not having any?”
I put the drugs away without answering. “We good to go now?”
She gives a capricious little pout. “I’ll call a taxi.”
In the elevator, the light from above brings out a slight bruise on her left cheek. Something she could’ve gotten walking into a door. Once we’re in the taxi, I ask her what it’s from. She could tell me to go fuck myself, but she replies quite naturally, as if I’d asked her for the time.
“A guy I see now and then. He has these weird fits.”
“What do you mean ‘weird’? He gets violent?”
“Not really. He’s not normally violent, but let’s just say he likes violence when…”
“When you fuck,” I finish, not very delicately.
She looks at me sideways. “Right. But why are you interested?”
“I don’t know. I wonder why a girl like you, who could have any boy she wants, gets herself into these kinds of situations.”
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you I could like it?”
“Right on.”
She laughs.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was thinking about the guy—”
“Who? The guy who hit you?”
“Yeah. He likes it when I hurt him too. When I…penetrate him.”
I wonder how far this chick will go. “And?”
“And each time, he starts jabberi
ng about twisted stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like—what was that thing he said last time? Oh, yeah: ‘Make me suffer, condemn me to being…condemn me to suffering…’ Something like that, I can’t even remember. Sick stuff. I was dying laughing.”
The phrase echoes in my head, like I’ve heard it before, somewhere.
“You OK? You look green.”
“I’m fine. Your boyfriend just sounds like one special guy. Oh, and listen, at this party: we’re friends, OK? I’m your dealer, not your financial adviser.”
I spend the rest of the cab ride racking my brain to no avail for what that phrase reminds me of. The taxi drops us in the Seventeenth. I should’ve asked where the party was; would’ve saved me crossing Paris twice. The building is very modern. You can hear the bass from the street. Eve taps in the entrance code. The door opens on a large courtyard; at the back are a few apartments whose patios are separated by wooden partitions. There are twenty or so people, beers in hand, having conversations. Eve says her hellos; I hang back and give them a little wave, a kind of collective greeting. They all look at me, intrigued. She tells them something, but I can’t hear it, and at once they all relax. I think the most observant have guessed from my milk-chocolate dome that I’m not a regular around here. Eve comes back toward me.
“Let’s get something to drink.”
We enter the living room through wide-open sliding glass doors. The music’s turned all the way up. I follow her to the kitchen, dodging en route a young girl wiggling around by her lonesome. Towering over the bar are stockpiled bottles and plastic cups. As Eve pours herself vodka, I ask, “What’d you tell the people outside?”
“About you? That you were my dealer. Like you asked. What are you having?”
“I’ll have a Jack.”
She pours, pointing a finger at the soda bottles on the table. “What with? Coke?”
“Straight up,” I say, taking the cup from her hand.
We toast. I take a gulp, eyes riveted on the living room, which has become an improvised dance floor where cute girls in short dresses are swaying their hips. Eve asks me if I like what I see.
I smile. “Between friends? I’m too old for that.”
“But do you like it, Idir?” This little girl already knows everything about the sexual hang-ups of men in general—and I’m no exception.
“Yeah, they’re pretty.”
Just then, a boy comes up and starts talking to Eve. Tall, skinny guy, poorly shaven, with a lock of hair falling over his eyes. He seems happy to see her. She feels obliged to introduce us.
“Hugo, our host. Idir, a friend.”
“Pleasure,” he says.
He seems sincere. Eve must’ve filled him in. I don’t feel like having the two of them underfoot all night just because I’m playing pharmacist.
“Can I offer you a line?”
Eve and the skinny douchebag break out in huge smiles, a display of affection I’m not used to, at least not when it’s directed at me. Tarik, you lucky bastard, people must love you.
Hugo drags us upstairs. We go into his room; there’s a poster for Pierrot le fou on his wall. Damn, what is it with all these kids and Godard? I turn my back on him, let them snort their shit while staring at Belmondo, his face painted blue. Hugo gets up and declares it’s good stuff. He asks if I can score some more easy. I toss him the bag, which he catches midflight, and then I leave the room before I’m overwhelmed by the desire to punch him. I go downstairs to mingle with the other guests. I figure hanging around the bar is a good way of making sure I talk to everyone. So I pour myself another Jack Daniel’s and settle in by the bottles, watching the girls dance, like some sad old loser.
A guy who looks like a high school football player straight out of some American TV show bumps into me. He’s already pretty tipsy and has to steady himself on the bar for a moment to stay upright. I take no notice. He grabs a beer, uncaps it with his lighter, and takes a long swallow. When he goes by me again, I can’t help myself: I stick my foot out. He trips over it and all six feet of him hit the floor. The beer he just grabbed goes rolling away, pouring out its contents. Quick as he went down, he’s back on his feet, eyes wide and alert, as if the fall sobered him up. Furious, he points a finger at me, and shouts, “Fuck you do that for?”
I look at him evenly and, without raising my voice, say, “I didn’t do anything, man. You’re the one who’s drunk and can’t stand up straight.”
He pulls his fist back, but his friends pop up out of nowhere and surround him. They move him away, trying to calm him down. Never punch the drug dealer. He’s still struggling and shouting insults at me, wild with rage. Just then, Eve shows up. I didn’t know she’d watched the whole scene. I give her a smile.
“Drop it,” she says.
“Oh, I wasn’t about to get all worked up.” I eye her lips a little too intently. I don’t think she’d care if I eyed her intently all night. As long as I was the one with the drugs.
“Ignore him. I told you the guy was weird.”
I look at her, smiling. “So he’s Tantalus?”
She gives me a weird look. “What? No, he’s the guy I told you about on the way over.”
I should drink more often. Sometimes connections get made without my even realizing. I’d call it genius if it hadn’t taken me so long. Which makes me a dumb fuck instead. I forget that I’ve been to college, am capable of logical reasoning, can do something besides this shitty job where I’m paid under the table.
“‘Condemned to thirst forever’—is that what you said to me in the taxi?” I ask her, taking a firm grip on her arm.
“Yeah—I mean, I don’t remember. Something like that.”
Tantalus. Torment. I must look like a visionary right now, or a crank. Thank you, Dad, for keeping me from spending my days in the streets and forcing me to go to class. What a dumb fuck I was. Why couldn’t the guy who’d taken Thibaut to the club also be one of his friends?
“What’s his name?”
“Who?” she asks.
“The guy I just messed with.”
“Julien.”
“He do drugs?”
“Does he ever,” she replies, with a smile that tells me that if he were a blue-collar boy, she’d call him a junkie.
“Perfect. Go see him. Tell him I want a word. Say I’m ready to give him a little pick-me-up as an apology.”
She stares at me, eyes wide open.
“Stop staring at me like that. C’mon now, please?”
She obeys. I knock off the rest of my glass and follow her out on the patio. I look around for her. She’s holding Julien’s hand in a corner of the yard. I walk over to them and extend my hand. “Try this again? I’m Idir.”
He looks me over warily without replying or taking my hand. I figure it’s time for the pills to come out. I don’t know what the fuck they are, but he pops two like they’re candy before I can even ask if he wants any.
“Keep the rest, if you want. I’m sorry about earlier. It was an accident.” Discreetly, I signal Eve to clear off and leave us alone. She gets it and goes. He watches her walk off, eyeing the sway of her hips.
“You fuck her already?” he asks, just like that.
“Nope.”
I know guys like him. He wants me to turn the question around so he can say he fucked her, give me all the details of what he did to her, tell me she was screaming with pleasure and begging for more. Guys like him make me want to puke. Instead, I say, “I’m headed out. This party’s too tame for me.”
“Where to?”
I can feel him on the hook. “Score something. I’m all out.”
A spark lights up in his eye. “Any way you could get some for me?”
“Depends. You got cash?”
“Not on me.”
“Sorry, man, I don’t do credit.”
“Can’t you get it delivered here? While I go hit up an ATM?”
I shake my head. “My guy won’t deliver to a place he d
oesn’t know, especially with tons of people around.”
He nods like he understands. I make ready to leave. That’s how you win at this game.
“Hey!”
“What?”
“We can wait at my place, if you want. Think he’ll go for that?”
“You live alone?”
Outside. We get in his car, a metallic-gray Mini. For ten minutes, give or take, we cross a deserted city, shitty electro music turned all the way up, without exchanging a word. He’s too high to talk, staring at the road in front of him, eyes wide open. He’s starting to scare me. We reach a carriage entrance a stone’s throw from the Champs-Élysées; he pops the door with the beep of an opener. We park at the rear of the building’s inner courtyard. He gets out of the car, lets out a mumbled, “Over here,” keeps on mumbling to himself. I shouldn’t have given this fuckwit all those pills.
He doesn’t bother switching on the light, and I follow him up the stairs in the dark. He takes the steps quickly; I lose him and flatten myself against the wall to keep going, for fear of a nasty surprise. On the landing he finally hits the lights. His hand’s trembling; he drops his keys. Not a good sign. We enter the apartment. He tosses his coat on the floor and looks at me, white saliva flecking the corners of his mouth.
“You call him now?”
“All right. What’s your pleasure?” I pull out my phone.
He sounds like a kid writing Santa a letter. “Uh, two grams of—”
“You know what? I call him, he drops by with whatever he has left, and you take your pick, OK?”
He nods. “OK.”
I dial Cherif. He’s the guy I trust the most. Or maybe he’s the one I’m most comfortable getting in trouble with. He doesn’t pick up and it goes to voice mail. I leave him a message with the address, asking him to get back to me as soon as he can. I turn back to Julien. He’s staring with glazed eyes at Paris gleaming through the casement windows. I look around for something heavy. I find a big ivory ashtray on the mantle. All things in moderation. If I hit him too hard and break it over his head, there’s a good chance I’ll kill him right off the bat.
“Julien?” I call out so he’ll turn around and give me a profile. That way, I won’t whack him at the base of his skull. For once, I get it just right. He pivots around, chin out, so all I have to do is tap his jaw with a quick flick of my wrist. The weight of the ashtray does the rest. He collapses on the cream-white carpet, the trickle of blood from his mouth barely ruining the perfection of the scene.