The Reader on the 6.27 (11 page)

When the train pulled into the station and the passengers alighted, an outside observer would have had no trouble noticing how Guylain’s listeners stood out from the rest of the commuters. Their faces did not wear that off-putting mask of indifference. They all had the contented look of an infant that has drunk its fill of milk.

22

It was 7 p.m. when Guylain rang Giuseppe’s bell. Exceptionally, the old boy had contacted him at work in the middle of the afternoon. He had phoned Kowalski and asked to speak to Guylain. Suddenly Felix Kowalski’s voice, sounding even angrier than usual, reached Guylain’s ears through his radio headphones. Kowalski didn’t like his staff being disturbed when they were hard at work.

‘Vignolles, telephone.’

Guylain snatched the receiver from Fatso’s outstretched hand, wondering who on earth could be calling him at the plant.

‘Can you come by after work?’

‘Yes, why?’

Giuseppe’s only reply was a brusque, ‘You’ll find out,’ before hanging up. And again that evening, Giuseppe kept Guylain on tenterhooks while they had an aperitif, even though it was obvious that the old boy was bursting to tell him something. He kept rolling his wheelchair backwards and forwards, clumsily grabbing little handfuls of pistachios and peanuts, constantly squirming in his chair. Unable to contain himself any longer, Guylain finally came out with the question he had been burning to ask since his arrival: ‘You haven’t brought me here simply to drink a glass of Moscato, have you, Giuseppe?’

‘I haven’t been sitting here twiddling my thumbs in your absence, you know, kiddo.’ There was a mischievous glint in his eye. He executed a half-turn and invited Guylain to follow the wheelchair into the bedroom, which doubled as his office. The room was in a glorious state of disarray. The rickety desk was buried under piles of documents. The computer and printer had been relegated to the floor to make room. The hospital bed itself had not been spared by the tidal wave and it too was covered in loose sheets of paper. There was a huge map of Paris and the surrounding region with scrawled notes all over it tacked to the wall at wheelchair height. Several circles had been crudely drawn in red felt-tip. In other places, identical rings had been crossed out. Some names of towns were underlined, others deleted. Post-its covered in the illegible, spidery handwriting understandable only to Giuseppe blossomed everywhere in the capital and its suburbs. The map was a mass of deletions, alterations and stuck-on notes. The room resembled a wartime military HQ.

‘What the hell’s this mess, Giuseppe?’

‘Oh, that! You can’t say it happened all by itself. Two whole days to draw up an inventory and another two days to sort and refine the data. It wasn’t easy, but I’m pretty chuffed. I finished this morning.’

‘Finished what, Giuseppe?’

‘Your Julie, of course. Do you or don’t you want to find her? I read the whole thing three times, you know, to be sure not to overlook any clues. Rather thin on the ground, they are. She’s pretty stingy on the detail, your young lady. In the seventy-two files, she doesn’t once mention her surname or even the name of the town where she works. A really accomplished author. But it takes more than that to deter old Giuseppe.’

‘I started with this,’ he went on, placing a piece of paper in Guylain’s hands. ‘We know her name is Julie, that she’s a lavatory attendant, that she’s twenty-eight and that once a year, at the spring equinox, the young lady counts her tiles, which number 14,717. But I particularly noted clues 4, 9 and 11, the most important ones: her toilets are in a shopping centre. This centre has an area of 100,000 square metres and is at least thirty years old, as evidenced by the crack.’

Guylain stared in disbelief at the brief list in front of his eyes. Clues 4, 9 and 11 had been highlighted in green. Giuseppe then explained the methodology he had used to create the huge rainbow-coloured hodgepodge tacked to the wall. He had googled all the major shopping centres in Paris and the surrounding region and come up with a list of eighteen centres, mainly in the inner suburbs. Then he had gone over the details of each one with a fine-tooth comb to find out when they were built, so as to eliminate the most recent. That way he had ruled out Le Millénaire in Aubervilliers, Val d’Europe in Marne-la-Vallée and Carré Sénart in Lieusaint, all three too recent. A second sifting process based on surface area had whittled his list down to eight finalists. And Giuseppe proudly declaimed the names of the lucky winners, pointing to them on the map with a ruler, detailing their pedigrees:

‘O’Parinor in Aulnay, 1974, 90,000 square metres. I know, it’s not 100,000 but I kept it in anyway. Rosny 2, 1973, 106,000 square metres. Créteil Soleil, 1974, 124,000 square metres. Belle Épine in Thiais, 1971, 140,000 square metres. A bit big, but anyway. Évry 2, 1975, bang on 100,000 square metres. Vélizy 2, built in 1972, 98,000 square metres. Parly 2, in Le Chesnay, 1969, 90,000 square metres. Like Aulnay, just under, but why not? And the last one, Les Quatre Temps in La Défense, 1981, 110,000 square metres. They all have a public toilet but I wasn’t able to check whether there’s an attendant. It doesn’t say that anywhere on the website – anyone would think it’s taboo.’

Guylain was impressed with his old friend’s efficiency. He examined the little red dots which, if you joined them together, formed a magnificent ellipse from Aulnay in the north-east to Nanterre in the west, skirting south round the capital. Only Évry sat outside this imaginary curve and remained isolated at the bottom of the map. When Guylain ventured to suggest that Julie might well work in a centre in the provinces, Giuseppe was incensed.

‘Your memory stick, it wasn’t on the Paris–Bordeaux or the Paris–Lyon intercity train that you found it; it was on the commuter train, so it looks to me as if there’s a strong chance that your Julie isn’t cleaning loos anywhere but near Paris! And if I were you, I’d start looking in O’Parinor and Rosny 2 – they’re the closest.’

They spent the rest of the evening in front of an Italian TV dinner concocted by Giuseppe. On leaving his friend, Guylain promised he’d keep him up to date with his progress. He went home with the precious list tucked carefully away in his jacket pocket. And while Rouget VI wolfed down the flakes floating on the surface of his bowl, Guylain read to him the names of the eight centres upon which all his hopes were pinned: the eight stations of the cross.

23

Guylain spent the first half of the week checking out the shopping centres. As soon as he clocked off, he rushed away from the Zerstor, tore off his overalls and left the works without even showering, and ran for the train, bus or first suburban connection that came along, depending on that day’s target. Monday, O’Parinor at Aulnay. Tuesday, Rosny 2. Wednesday, Créteil Soleil. And the previous evening, La Défense – all mirages that vanished one by one. Each night, curious and impatient, Giuseppe inquired about Guylain’s progress.

‘Well?’

‘Well nothing.’ And each time he would explain wearily that yes, there were toilets, yes, there was a lavatory attendant but no one who even remotely resembled a nondescript twenty-eight-year-old woman. At Aulnay, he came across a sour-tempered old bag, at Rosny, a skinny guy with a moustache, at La Défense, a cheerful woman from the Ivory Coast wearing a multicoloured boubou, and finally, a girl with a shaven head covered in piercings. Giuseppe was even more crestfallen than he was.

‘It’s not possible,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘that’s the only place she can be.’ Guylain would reply that tomorrow was another day, then hang up and slump on his bed.

That morning, the old-man-in-slippers-and-pyjamas-under-his-raincoat greeted Guylain effusively. Balthus was back. A Balthus who was wearing himself out trying to water the roots of his favourite plane tree. ‘You were right,’ said his elated master, tapping Guylain on the shoulder as he drew level. ‘My Balthus is back to his old self. Just look at him.’ Guylain nodded, glancing warily at the mutt whose hindquarters were sagging and still trailing a little. That’s what death is like, he thought. The bitch was sometimes content to send out little barbs and then return to other occupations. But he was certain that it wouldn’t be long before she came back to finish off the job. In the meantime, Guylain reckoned that Balthus’s return augured well for the day. Once again, reading extracts from Julie’s diary on the train restored his optimism.

‘I shouldn’t boast about it but I did it, I screwed over the 10 a.m. lard-arse. And when I say screwed, I mean well and truly. It was easy. I roped in my friend Josy, who agreed to be my accomplice at once. I didn’t ask much of Josy, just to give me fifteen minutes of her time. I know that my favourite shampoo girl would have given me a whole day of her holiday to knock that oaf off his pedestal. It was auntologism number 3 that inspired me:
In the toilets, power belongs to the person who has the paper
.

Technically, the trap was easy to set. I opened up the paper dispenser, removed the roll that was inside, sellotaped a single sheet to the edge and closed the lid, taking care to allow the sheet of toilet paper to poke through the slit – the reassuring evidence that there was a roll of paper inside. The classic schoolboy prank. Practically – and that’s where Josy came in – I had to make sure that the 10 a.m. lard-arse got caught in the trap and not an innocent passing customer. So all Josy had to do was occupy the gentleman’s favourite cubicle and wait, mobile phone in hand, for me to text her alerting her to the bastard’s arrival. On the dot of ten, his heavy footsteps echoed on the stairs. Light beige suit, green tie and a brown shirt. I beeped Josiane, who came out with her head down, having taken care to flush so as not to arouse suspicion. I don’t think old fatty even realized that a woman had just come out of the men’s toilets, so preoccupied was he with preparing to deposit his disgusting morning catch. Josy stuck around to watch what happened next. I’ll spare you the details, but judging from the noises we heard coming from number 8, it sounded as though he was letting rip as never before. The silence that followed was all the more hilarious. I thought I even heard a slight crackling of the toilet paper as it came away from the sellotape holding it in place. Less than two minutes later, the 10 a.m. lard-arse came out, his face purple, his shirt half tucked into his trousers, his jacket more crumpled than a two-week-old lettuce. He crossed my realm with the slow gait of a penguin crossing an ice floe. And for the first time, I caught the look on his face. It was the look of someone in shock, someone who had just seen pride spattered with his own shit. As he walked past, I jerked my head at the saucer and indulged in a ‘Service, thank you’. The 10 a.m. lard-arse didn’t put anything in it. Besides, he wasn’t in a state to put anything anywhere. But the sight Josy and I were treated to as he attempted to go up my stairs with his shit-covered buttocks clenched will forever be one of the best tips I’ve ever received.
’

Surprised at first, Guylain greeted the applause that broke out in the compartment with a smile. The young woman’s revenge had delighted the audience. He had to force himself to put the picture of a Kowalski, scarlet with shame, out of his mind, so as to concentrate on the next excerpt:

‘Speed dating. The phrase itself sounds inoffensive, but it scares me. Josy knows it does, but she’d been on and on at me for days over our morning coffee and croissants before I finally agreed to sign up with her for this “date with love”, as she calls it. For discerning singles only, for an entrance fee of twenty euros with one complimentary drink, said the flyer. I don’t know why I said I would. Maybe Josy’s unshakeable enthusiasm. Or that little girl deep inside me who’s still waiting for her Prince Charming and makes me toss a coin in the fountain from time to time.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” she said.

“Meeting an arsehole who’s only come to get laid, who treats the whole thing like a cattle market?”

“So? You’re smart enough to clock him and tell him to go and have a wank like a poor lonesome cowboy.”

Josy’s always very forthright. What bothers me about the expression “speed dating” is mainly the word speed. It sounds like a quickie. I don’t like that wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am attitude. Of course, Josy and I were immediately accepted, given our backgrounds. Single, young, not too bad-looking based on current beauty criteria which favour curves over the emaciated forms of the anorexic models who have graced the fashion pages for years. On the job front, I had to cheat a bit, of course. I wasn’t going to write “Profession: lavatory attendant”. That would attract every weirdo on the planet and put off all the others. Lab assistant. Again, that was Josy’s idea.

“A lab assistant cleans tiles from dawn till dusk too,” she assured me. “It’s just that in your case, it’s loos and in hers it’s tiled work surfaces, but at the end of the day it boils down to the same thing.”

Seven dates, each lasting seven minutes – that’s what you get with speed dating. There are rules. You mustn’t exchange personal contact details, for example (no chance of me doing that anyway). After each seven-minute date, you have to give a confidential appraisal of your date and say whether you want to see them again or not.

Josy waited for me at the shopping centre exit. The ceremony – I don’t know what else to call it – was due to start at 8.30 p.m. That didn’t leave me the time to go home, so I got changed at work. I had to redo my make-up several times. First I put on too much eye-shadow and not enough lipstick. Then I overdid the gloss, but didn’t apply enough mascara. Each time, I contemplated the painted tart in the mirror gazing back at me with annoyance. Result, I ended up wiping it all off with lashings of make-up remover and made do with a spritz of Lolita Lempicka in the hollow of my throat. Clothes-wise I’d decided that my Lee Coopers, ballerina pumps and the little white heather-effect blouse bought at the sales would do fine. For the finishing touch, a silk scarf knotted casually round my neck was supposed to make me look relaxed, which I wasn’t at all – far from it. The last time I felt so nervous was at my oral exams for the baccalaureate. Josy, on the other hand, had pulled out all the stops. Figure-hugging dress, hair extensions, heels and Chanel N° 5. A sexy, modern Cinderella. At the door, they checked our IDs and gave us a voucher for a free drink. Josy and I wished each other good luck.