The Thursday Night Men (6 page)

But despite Yves’s efforts they did not broach the topic that evening. They would learn nothing about Denis Benitez’s forced abstinence, the anxiety he felt at the loss of desire, the specter of impotence. Over the years, every form of sensual enjoyment had deserted him, right down to his dreams, that last refuge of unappeased urgings. Denis placed virility at the top of his list of lost causes.

Nor would they learn anything about how Philippe tried to find Juliette in other women’s beds. None of them smelled like her, none of them knew how to curve her back the way she did so that they could spoon, none of them moaned with pleasure the way she did, discreetly yet so intensely. He had tried to console himself with the first woman who came along, then the second, and with every embrace he had to imagine Juliette’s body in order to bring on his partner’s orgasm and to get there himself, which was proof of a kind that faking it was not solely a female preserve. So while he tried to refrain from indulging in any form of nostalgia and stuck to his resolutions and feigned indifference as he reread his classics, life had lost all its charm ever since his woman had left him.

They had met at a seminar where Philippe had publicly lambasted a biography of Spinoza she had written. Not the least bit intimidated, she had stood up to him with such assurance that he had invited her out to dinner and apologized profusely. In the beginning, he had been disconcerted by this woman who was older, taller, and more experienced than he was. She was at least a head taller than anyone around, four years older than he was, and she had raised her children on her own. She’d lived several lives in one lifetime, so she was not afraid of grappling with life, unlike Philippe, who acted as if he were pure spirit, at a total loss where everyday life was concerned. The more he paid tribute to her nimble mind and her independence, the more he admired her beauty, which had remained intact ever since the days when, to pay for her studies in literature, she had posed for any number of painters and sculptors.
Juliette Strehler, six foot one, one hundred and thirty-nine pounds, her full-size statue is on display at the Smithsonian museum.
That was how he introduced her to his friends, who had never known Philippe Saint-Jean so proud to be seen with a woman on his arm. Today, wrapped in his pride, he was not about to admit that, deep down, missing Juliette was what had motivated him to attend the Thursday meetings. If she had left him for someone else, even a go-go dancer, the sentence would have seemed far less cruel. She had left him because of who he had become: a man who had not a trace of self-doubt, and was only too ready to accept the image of the brilliant intellectual he saw reflected in other people’s eyes. Philippe Saint-Jean took himself for Philippe Saint-Jean, and only Juliette had noticed.

A conversation on sexual frustration failed to materialize, but that wouldn’t alter the response Yves had found to get rid of his frustration, as logically as possible: he would consume, without seducing. Without saying a word. Without even knowing the girl. Without even taking the time to figure out whether he really fancied her. Without running the risk of even the tiniest atom of feeling worming its way in. A married friend had told him,
You know, the advantage of a whore is not so much that she’ll do anything you ask, but that she leaves right away when she’s done.
That same friend, who seemed to know what he was talking about, had left him the number of a certain Kris.

Yves had never been with any prostitutes, and few of his acquaintances had made use of their services. For him it was a practice belonging to another era, and had nothing to do with his milieu or morals. It was not that for Yves there was a moral dimension, no, it was simply a matter of circumstances: he had never needed to pay. And now that he was all of forty, brutally single, eager to avoid any notion of attachment, he had made up his mind to call this Kris woman; he’d had a vague physical description of her. If a stranger like Philippe or Denis had said to him,
I do, from time to time,
Yves would have felt he belonged to the norm, would have been prepared to concede that sooner or later all men take this path. The girl’s number had been languishing in his pocket for over a week, and the need to call her suddenly became imperative. She would come, he would take possession of her body and, once she’d left, he would have done with that good Monsieur Lehaleur once and for all, that exemplary little husband en route for the great family adventure. No Kris, from now on, could ever ask that of him.

Before leaving the bistro, Philippe asked the other two whether they planned on being there the following Thursday. Denis nodded and Yves answered,
Sure thing.
Each of them left with the feeling that their trio would meet again.

Most of the time Philippe Saint-Jean got around on foot, living as if he were a surveyor of Paris, a solitary wanderer. His activity allowed him the time, and he put his hours in the street to good use. Besides, owning a car would have been counter-rational, anything but ecological, and downright vulgar. His itineraries might include a detour by way of a park, a church, the banks of the Seine or, like today, a secondhand bookstore. Every time he came to the Bastille quartier he would stop by the dusty shelves of a little shop on the Rue Saint-Antoine and await a chance encounter with a title, a forgotten author, or an irresistible foxed binding. His curiosity and patience had allowed him to unearth unusual little volumes which he would read straight through and mention in the course of his conversations. He leafed through a hardback with a gold and red binding that he had found in a tub of loose books, and it had just enough patina to entice him:
With the Bathwater. A Little Linguistic Misadventure,
by a certain Édouard Gilet. For five euros, this could be the day’s acquisition and his little bedtime treat.

He crossed the Place Bastille, headed toward Nation, then stopped, intrigued by a cluster of people outside a luxurious café next to the Opéra; a movie camera on rails, technicians waving their walkie-talkies, projectors, extras seated in front of fluorescent cocktails and, in the middle of all the hustle, an actress’s stand-in.

“What are they filming?” asked a voice in the crowd.

“A perfume commercial.”

Like many people, Philippe liked to linger in the presence of heavy cinema equipment, hoping to see a familiar face, a director whose work he particularly liked. At the word “commercial” he left the crowd of onlookers, acknowledging his total lack of interest in what some people considered an art form—in his opinion, advertising was the worst avatar of mercantile sublimation. But then he saw the figure everyone was waiting for, draped in an immaculate white which emphasized the golden brown sheen of her skin. The young woman took her seat with a professional ease, aware of how radiant she was, but just blasé enough to discourage any bores. Utterly surprised, Philippe recognized the girl’s face and tried to remember her name, something like Mira or Mina, an affected little mewing sound which suited her perfectly.
Mia!
shouted someone, to get the model’s attention; she granted a smile. Philippe had met her a year earlier during a society dinner organized by a media mogul who bragged that he had
friends in every sector—
Philippe had found his expression execrable, but he’d gone along anyway. During the dinner he had tried in vain to attract the girl’s attention with a great many abstract witticisms. As for Mia, who was used to being the center of everything, she thought this intellectual guy was verbose and pedantic, since he hadn’t shown the slightest sign of curiosity about
her.

It was strange to see her again, here in this cocoon of light and celebrity, so distant. First came a sideways tracking, then she made a knowing gesture, tossing a splash of perfume into the air the way you splash your champagne into the face of an insolent lout. Then she left the café at a run, followed by an agile swoop of the camera which would allow you to see, in the background, the Colonne de Juillet on the square. Philippe would have already been on his way, but something kept him there, in the way of any simple curious bystander fascinated by luxury and pomp—which he wasn’t. He would have liked to go up to this Mia person for no other reason than to see if she remembered him the way he had remembered her.

During the sixth take she noticed him at last. Holding the train of her dress, she gave a faint smile, narrowed her eyes, and made a great effort to remember: he reminded her of someone, but who? She waved to an assistant to let Philippe come into the field of the camera.

“You remember? A dinner at Jean-Louis’s. A big duplex on the Quai Voltaire.”

“ . . . The philosopher?”

“Yes.”

“Incredible, what a coincidence! Just last week I was shooting in Johannesburg and that evening I switched on TV5 Monde in my hotel room, you know, the international French channel, and there you were! You were talking about your book . . . Something with ‘mirror’ in the title . . . ”

The rebroadcast of a news program where he had tried to promote his essay on collective memory. Mia had seen him and, what’s more, halfway around the planet. They exchanged a few pleasantries; he found the absurd situation amusing, while she was being assailed by the makeup girl in the middle of an audience, watching their encounter as if it were part of the script. Neither one of them experienced even the slightest twinge of the thrilling symptoms two individuals feel when under the spell of mutual attraction: their hearts did not beat faster, nor did their pupils dilate, nor were there hot flashes or a rush of adrenaline, and, in spite of everything, without knowing why, neither one of them wanted to put an end to their meeting.

“ . . . The director is asking for me.”

Philippe would have liked to get her phone number without having to ask for it, and Mia wanted to leave room for the possibility of a future meeting without having to take the initiative. Both of them had long ago left behind that stage of polite awkwardness where one feels obliged to stay in touch without really wanting to.

And yet the moment seemed to go on and on.

“I travel a lot, but I come back to Paris regularly,” she said, looking for something to write her number with.

“I never leave Paris,” he answered, producing a card where only his email address was printed.

Philippe shook Mia’s hand, surprised he hadn’t had to hold out his cheek, then left the scene, and its audience, to head down the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine with the Place de la Nation in his sights. Six–forty p.m., a Thursday.

The classroom, with all its windows open, was already filled with a hundred contemplative men: these were its last days before demolition. An administrative decision had finally been implemented, coming as a surprise to all the hierarchy: the west wing of the building would be demolished in order to build a sports complex. The guidance counselor opened the meeting to inform all those present: they were going to have to find new premises by next week. All kinds of ideas were put forward until the security chief of a small private museum with a projection room offered to host the upcoming meetings. A few weeks, maybe more, would go by before anyone would ask him for an explanation. Everyone voted for this solution.

Denis Benitez and Yves Lehaleur saw Philippe Saint-Jean come in just before the doors closed. Yves whispered the address for the next meeting to him while a fellow charged up to the podium.

“I’ve been coming for a few weeks and I’m not sure this is really the right place for what I have to say, but I haven’t found anywhere else. If this seems off subject to you or inappropriate in any way, I’m asking you to excuse me in advance. I imagine that most of the people here live on their own, which is not the case for me. My life is the kind everyone aspires to, where love is shared.”

Philippe had already stopped listening, as he was still troubled by his meeting with the inconceivable Mia, there in the spotlights, dressed in platinum, surrounded by a crowd chanting her name. Nothing fascinating—simply unreal, a cinematic moment. From this experience, Philippe could have drawn the preface to a book on the imaginary world of money, and yet despite his position as a sociologist he had been the involuntary actor in the film.

“First I have to tell you something about Émilie. She starts the day with a smile and goes off to sleep saying something funny. Émilie loves life, life loves her, and I don’t know if the word even means anything anymore these days: I think she is happy.”

Philippe Saint-Jean had his doubts about just how fascinating someone like Mia could be. Her impeccable beauty had not moved him today any more than it had the first time. When he got home from that wasted evening of a dinner, Juliette had asked him,
Is she as beautiful in real life as in the photos?
And he had launched into a long speech about the only true beauty, which is unconscious. To be sure, she had plenty of assets, but none of them would hold up to two hours of non-conversation with a spoilt child who was convinced her life was far more thrilling than that of ordinary mortals. In response to Juliette’s question Philippe had said,
The girl is a monster of symmetry, but that in no way constitutes beauty; what is
beauty? You are.

“And yet there’s a cloud on the horizon. Émilie and I don’t love each other at the same rhythm. It’s not so much a difference in intensity as in style. I am passionate; Émilie is pensive. I anticipate the moments that lie ahead; she enjoys the present moment. I call her ten times a day; she thinks that words become drained through repetition. I like knowing everything she is doing; Émilie never asks me a thing. I want to get to know all her friends; she encourages me to party with my own crowd. I use
never
and
always
all the time; she thinks there’s no such thing as an absolute. As the months go by I have begun to wonder if so much disparity is not a sign of something deeper. Won’t these differences crystallize over time and creep into our relationship until they begin to contradict everything that brought us together? I was well aware that I was creating the problem just by formulating it, but instead of feeling reassured by Émilie’s trust in me, which favors the right to be different, and which knows how to make things relative the way they should be, I began listening for the sour notes, even causing them sometimes in order to prove my conclusions. I reproached her for not being as attentive as I am, for never losing her self-control no matter what, for never letting go. I started getting impatient, irritable, unfair, more and more often. Until one morning when I overdid it and Émilie stopped believing in our future together. You will tell me I got what I deserved . . . ”