Paris Trance (17 page)

‘You’re always waking me up,’ she whined.

‘You’re always taking the duvet,’ he whined back.

‘You’re always nagging me about the duvet.’

‘You’re always nagging me about leaving drawers and cupboards open.’

‘I nag you about the cupboards and drawers because I’m always hitting my head or knees on them.’

‘I nag you about the duvet because it’s always leaving me in the cold.’

‘Well that just goes to show doesn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘We both like nagging. It’s fun to nag.’

‘You’re right. What’s wrong with nagging?’ said Alex and they both settled back to sleep.

It may have been fun to nag but to be able to do so in several languages seemed, to Alex, an awesome achievement. Any pretensions to sophistication – a comprehensive knowledge of opera, say, or the capacity to discriminate between various recordings of Beethoven’s quartets – were nothing compared with the ability to chat with grocers and taxi- drivers in four or five languages. Sahra didn’t know the first thing about classical music – nor did Alex for that matter, nor Luke (Nicole did) – but her linguistic resourcefulness meant that she had even improved Alex’s hitherto strained relationship with his concierge. A Portuguese whose duties consisted, in the mornings, of looking miserable and, in the afternoons, of hanging out at a miserable bar with other miserable men, he had several times complained to Alex about petty infringements of the building’s non-existent rules. Since Sahra had begun chatting to him in Portuguese (which she did not even count as one of her languages) his behaviour had changed entirely; on one occasion he had even signed for a registered letter and brought it up to Alex later that day.

Alex admired and loved Sahra’s languages but what he loved more than anything were her
habits
: the way she folded her clothes away, the way she still used a pen that her father had given her ten years ago and still wore a hat (fluffy with coloured hoops that looked tartan from a distance) that she had been given for her seventh birthday. He liked to think of her when she was fifty, still wearing the same hat, using the same pen.

Alex was used to drawing up litanies of quirks like this. He was aware, likewise, that he and Sahra had grown close, that their relationship had evolved a pattern and rhythm of its own but the most important, the defining part of its development, was the invisible, unremarkable fact of their friendship.

Sahra was equally unaware of this – for precisely the opposite reason: she could not conceive of her lover
not
being a friend. To Sahra her lover was, above all else, a friend, her best friend. Alex came to realize this only negatively: he found himself thinking of Sahra as a friend rather than lover. They had known each other only a short time, they were in love, but something was missing. The first time they had gone to bed together they had said it would take time to get used to each other. Now they had got used to each other, but getting used to each other also meant getting used to there being something missing between them – and what was missing was so subtle that it was almost impossible to isolate or talk about. It wasn’t Sahra’s fault, it wasn’t Alex’s, but even in their moments of greatest arousal they were still there, still themselves. Sahra had had many lovers: was it always like this for her? Alex knew that it had not always been like this for him. Alex could talk to no one about this: to have talked to Luke would have been to have betrayed Sahra; the only person he could talk to was Sahra and he couldn’t talk to her. How did she feel? Was she feeling the same? He didn’t know. He didn’t know because she did not know how to ask him if he too felt as she did: namely that there wasn’t that perpetual flow of longing between them – that flow which anyone could sense passing between Luke and Nicole.

Who existed in a trance of longing, inhabited a state of constant wanting. Everything had been perfect from the first night they spent together. Neither of them knew why. It had just happened like that. And it continued happening like that.

‘There’s a bun for every burger,’ was the best explanation Nicole could come up with.

‘Where on earth did you pick up that expression?’

‘I heard it somewhere. I forget.’ She went on crunching her salad. Luke – who had finished his salad and loved reminiscing about their first date, their first night together – tried another tack.

‘Don’t you think it’s strange that we didn’t have safe sex that first night?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t you normally?’

‘I don’t normally sleep with people.’

‘How many men have you slept with?’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just a question that is there, waiting to be asked or not asked.’

‘But it’s not not being asked is it? You
are
asking.’

‘So . . . How many?’

‘Three,’ she said, finishing her salad.

‘Three!’ Luke laughed. ‘You’re kidding. Is that including me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wow!’

‘Why you laugh?’

‘Because,’ he tittered, ‘it’s so few.’

‘And how many women have you slept with?’

‘More than three.’ Her face went blank with hurt. He put his arm around her, laughing still. He kissed her cheek, her ear.

‘Why you laugh?’

‘Because . . . Well, I mean. How did you learn so much about sex?’

‘I didn’t learn anything. You think it’s like exams? You think you passed lots of exams?’

‘No. It’s lovely. You’re lovely.’

‘So how many?’

‘How many what?’

‘How many exams you have passed?’ Her English deteriorated quickly when she became angry.

‘Oh I don’t know.’

‘Many?’

‘Not that many,’ said Luke. ‘But more than three!’

Her eyes blazed with anger. She pushed him away, walked to the bathroom and shut the door quietly: a tacit slam. Luke tried the door: it was unlocked.

‘Get out!’ She raised her fist and, for a moment, Luke was sure she was going to hit him. Instead she focused her rage on the toilet seat. She gripped it with both hands and – whether accidentally or deliberately was impossible to tell – tore it free of the bowl and threw it out of the door.

‘That was the most bizarre display of temper I have ever seen,’ said Luke. He went out to retrieve the toilet seat. When he came back she was sitting on the cold porcelain, knickers around her ankles, crying.

‘Interesting. You’re one of those women who can cry and piss at the same time.’

‘I’m not pissing. And I’m not crying. I’m sort of cry-laughing.’

‘I brought you a present,’ he said, handing her the toilet seat. She stood up and he slid it beneath her.

‘Let me feel you piss,’ he said, putting his hand between her legs.

‘No!’

‘Listen, the reason I find it funny that you’ve only slept with three people is, well, because I’ve never met anyone sexier than you.’

‘So it’s not just about passing exams. You get grades as well.’

‘Nine out of ten.’

‘Only nine?’

‘You only get ten if I can feel you piss.’ He touched her.

‘I’m still angry.’

‘Piss through my fingers.’

‘I can’t.’

He kissed her cheek. Then pressed his mouth against her ear, shaping once again the words they had never said aloud to each other. Aloud, he said, ‘You really do have a temper.’

‘I hit my brother over the head with my uncle’s trumpet once.’

‘Why?’

‘It was the only thing within reach.’

‘I meant why’d you hit him?’

‘He stole my sweets and wouldn’t give them back.’

‘Not like me. I didn’t have a brother to steal my sweets. Or a sister. So I gorged myself on sweets all day long.’

They kissed. She moved her hands under the sleeves of his T-shirt. He pulled her dress up so that he could see her stomach, her pubic hair.

‘I can’t see you. I want to see you piss.’

‘How?’

‘In the bath.’ They undressed. Nicole stood with one foot on each side of the bath and lowered herself down, using her hands for support. His prick reached up towards her.

‘Now.’

‘I’m trying,’ she laughed. ‘It’s too ridiculous.’

‘Doesn’t it turn you on?’

‘Hmm. I don’t know.’ He raised his hips so that his prick was touching her. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘If you do that I can’t. I have to concentrate.’ She shut her eyes. A few drips sprang from her, on to his prick and stomach.

‘More.’ There was another pulse of urine and then she was flooding over him. He pushed up and into her. Her balance was precarious. Luke’s back and shoulders began burning with the strain of keeping himself arched up like this and it was only by concentrating on that pain that he could stop himself coming and then he could hold back no longer. His arms gave way. Nicole collapsed on to him. He fell back into the tepid wash of piss at the bottom of the bath. In the space of a few seconds urine had reverted to its customary lavatorial character.

‘I didn’t come,’ said Nicole, clambering off him. ‘And now I don’t think I want to.’

‘Perhaps we should have a bath,’ he said.

In November Luke received a letter from the photographer saying that he was obliged to return to the city, would have to move back into his apartment ‘sooner than anticipated’. The letter was phrased like this in order to suggest that their arrangement had been vague, flexible, even though the photographer had been adamant about renting his place for a year. In different circumstances Luke would have refused to budge. As it was it made little difference because he and Nicole were spending almost every night together, usually at her place which was bigger, nicer. Luke wrote back to the photographer and claimed that he was being severely inconvenienced. He’d counted on being there a year, he said, had even spent money on having the bike repaired. The photographer phoned and offered to let him off three weeks’ rent. And Luke could keep the bike, he said.

‘Actually,’ said Luke, ‘there is one other thing I would like, if that’s OK.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A print of one of your photographs. The one of the demonstration.’

‘You like that picture?’

‘I love it,’ said Luke.

‘I’m flattered,’ said the photographer.

‘When did you take it, by the way?’

‘I can’t remember exactly. But I’d only been in Bucharest a day—’

‘Bucharest?’

‘I’d just got in and this demonstration blew up and I shot off a whole roll of film. There were a couple of good shots but that one on the wall was far and away the best. Anyway, I can get you a copy no problem,’ said the photographer

‘That would be great,’ said Luke. ‘Thank you.’ He hung up and called Nicole. ‘You know that picture?’ he said. ‘The Belgrade one.’

‘Yes.’

‘It was taken in Bucharest.’

‘No!’

‘I just spoke to the photographer.’

‘I did go to Bucharest once.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Ten.’

‘It’s funny isn’t it, how we persuaded ourselves that it was you?’

‘Perhaps it is me. A Romanian me. There might be several of me.’

‘There could never be another you,’ sang Luke.

A few days later he moved into her apartment. Luke’s only concern about this change in circumstances was that he now had little or no chance of protecting his property. Nicole had a knack of filling her apartment and life with things that delighted Luke – love someone, love their possessions had become something of a motto for him – and there were times when Luke would see her spectacle-case (i.e. her wallet) or her red string shopping bag, or one of her hats or shoes lying on the floor of her apartment and be so overcome with love for her that he felt like weeping. They were
her
things. Everything she touched became suffused with her personality. Nicole herself was aware of this capacity she had to lay claim to objects.

‘I only need to have something for two minutes and it’s completely mine,’ she said to Luke as they unpacked his few belongings.

‘You mean it’s completely broken. Broken or lost.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Robust objects become fragile. Immovable objects disappear.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘It is actually. What about my sunglasses that you borrowed two days ago?’

‘I haven’t broken them.’

‘No. And the reason for that is that you lost them before you had a chance to break them.’

‘They’re not lost. I just mislaid them.’

‘No, you
lost
them. Mislaid means you know where they are but you can’t put your finger on them.’

‘Exactly. I’ve mislaid them somewhere in the city.’

The days grew shorter. It became cold. As promised, the photographer mailed a print of the picture of the demonstration which they framed and put on the wall. Nicole was finishing her studies and had begun applying for jobs. With Christmas deadlines looming the warehouse became busier than it had been for months. Lazare was under a lot of pressure and therefore happy. Luke and Alex worked late. The flu season started. Nicole stayed in bed for three days, coughing constantly. At night the sheets became so drenched and cold with her sweat that they had to get up and change them. Luke resigned himself to catching Nicole’s flu and as soon as she felt well enough to get up he began to feel lousy. He still felt bad when he felt better. Alex avoided flu but went down with a cold that, at any other time of year, would have passed for flu. Sahra remained healthy which was fortunate because there was a sudden rush of well-paid interpreting jobs. Christmas decorations went up on rue de la Roquette. A series of power cuts left the quartier in freezing darkness. It was too cold to play football. Sealed in against the weather, cafés became intolerably smoky – even more intolerably smoky than they were the rest of the time. Lazare decided to throw an impromptu – and somewhat premature – Christmas party. We all had to come, he said, and in the unlikely event of any of us having girlfriends or wives they should ‘get drunk at my expense too’. Nicole, Sahra and Sally came and were all shocked by Lazare – shocked, that is, by how charming he was. In the presence of women his belligerence was transformed into equally extravagant courtesy. Luke’s friend Miles came too, and some other pals of Lazare’s. Everyone got drunk and danced and went away happy and those of us who worked there came back the next day, hung over, and cleaned everything up.