You Changed My Life (14 page)

I look at the summons again and read the job title: “Life auxiliary to a tetraplegic person.” “Life auxiliary”—what does that mean? I remember them talking about the auxiliary verbs “to be” and “to have” at school. Did “life auxiliary” combine the two? Was this about being and having? It was a strange term. Sounded like I was being recruited by a sect. I could already see myself in the lotus position on a bed of nails, meditating on my path and my salvation . . . and tetraplegic? I'd never seen that word. Made me think of Tetris, or tartare, like the meat, or of magic, or logic. But there wasn't any logic to this.

I touch the wooden door again. I need to feel it to believe it. I'm tiny by comparison. You could stack three of me one on top of the other and still pass through it, and at least twenty-five of me side by side! I look up a little and see a tiny button embedded in the stone and a screen a few square inches in size. An intercom trying to go incognito. I press it, hear a click, and then nothing. I press it again. I talk to the wall.

“The listing for the job, the assistant and everything, is this the place?”

“Come in, sir!”

Another click. But the huge door doesn't move. Am I supposed to pass through it or what? I press again.

“Yessssss?”

“You know Casper the Friendly Ghost?”

“Um . . .”

“Well, I'm not him! Come on now, open up!”

Click, click, click. Finally, I get it. Like any self-respecting castle, there's a secret passage . . . and I find it! A human-sized door is barely visible inside the giant one. I step forward, grumbling. Here we go, the interview hasn't even happened yet, and I'm already annoyed. This better not take too long. Whoever the dude in here is, he's going to have to sign my paper in double time!

Whatever was strange outside was strange inside, too. I walked
through the door and into a desert. A hall like this at Beaugrenelle could have been the rec room for the entire project. But here, nothing, nobody. Not one dude to hold up the wall, or roll himself a blunt. The building concierge came out of his office.

“What is this regarding?”

“Uh . . . For the terter . . . the terra . . . For the tar-tarpegic?”

She gives me a threatening look and, without a word, points her finger at the door at the end of the hall.
Ding dong,
another click, but this time the door opens all by itself. I close it behind me. And the hallucination continues. Someone's playing a joke on me, I'm the victim of a hidden camera sketch. Allen Funt is going to step out and slap me on the shoulder.

It suddenly dawns on me that I'm not at the headquarters of some big company, but in a person's private residence . . . The apartment entrance must be 360 square feet. It opens onto
two rooms: on the right, there's a desk where I see a man and a woman, both sitting, probably talking to another candidate, and on the left, a sitting room. Well, I call it a sitting room because there are sofas. There are also tables, dressers, mirrors, paintings, sculptures . . . and even some kids. There are two of them, all nice and clean, the kind I didn't like to share the benches with at school.

A lady passes through with a tray. Some guys are sitting there, uncomfortably, in cheap suits with folders on their laps. As for me, I've got my crinkled envelope in my hands, I'm wearing worn-out jeans and a jacket that's seen better days. I look like a degenerate from the suburbs who just spent a week outdoors. Actually, I hadn't. Yesterday I spent the night at my mother's. I look like I always do, actually. Sloppy, I-don't-care, antisocial.

A blonde comes over to me and invites me to wait with the others. I sit at a huge table. When I put my finger on the wood, a print shows up and then disappears after a few seconds. I look around. As long as I'm here, I might as well do some recon for stuff that could be useful. But I'm quickly let down: no TV, no VHS player, not even a cordless telephone. Maybe over there, in the office? I lean back a little in my chair, wedge my fist under my chin, and start to doze.

Every seven or eight minutes, the blonde reappears and asks the next person to follow her. Each time, the guys look at each other and hesitate, nervous. My stomach is rumbling and I was planning on meeting up with Brahim to eat something, so I interrupt the hello-my-name-is thing and hold my palm up to the indecisive candidates:

“I'll just be a second.”

I beeline for the office, the blonde on my heels, unfold the employment agency paper, and put it down on the desk. However, the blond hesitates to sit down.

“Hi,” I say. “Can you just sign here, please?”

I've learned to be polite, because it saves time. They look like they're afraid of me. Neither the secretary nor the guy sitting next to her bats an eyelash. He doesn't get up to say hello but I'm not surprised by his rudeness: I've already had interviews with condescending types who treat me like a dog. It's routine.

“Relax, it's not a holdup! I just want a signature, there.”

I point to the bottom of the paper. The man smiles, watches me in silence. He's funny with his little silk scarf that matches the pocket on his houndstooth blazer. The girl asks me a question.

“Why do you need a signature?”

“For unemployment.”

I'm blunt, on purpose. It's clear that Missy and me are from different worlds. Finally, the other one speaks.

“I need someone to accompany me everywhere I go, including travel . . . are you interested in traveling?”

“What? Are you looking for a driver?”

“A little more than a driver . . .”

“Well, what's a little more than a driver?”

“Someone to accompany me. A life auxiliary. It should be written on your paper, isn't it?”

The weirdness continues. I have no idea what he's talking about. I'm sitting here across from a man in his forties, who is clearly loaded, surrounded by an army of assistants in skirts, I imagine the kids I saw in the sitting room are his and that he
has a beautiful little wife, too. Why would he need somebody to hold his hand when he travels? In fact, I still don't see the problem and I don't want to stick around to find out. But I took the trouble to come here, used up all of my brainpower to get into the place, and I'm not leaving without that signature.

“Look, I already accompany my mother to go grocery shopping . . . so come on, sign there, please?”

The secretary sighs, but he doesn't. He looks like he's having more and more fun and takes his time. You'd think this was
The Godfather
when the big boss explains the way things are to the younger bosses wanting to take his place. He speaks calmly, almost fatherly, and with endless patience. “Listen, son . . .” That's it . . . the guy living in this palace is a godfather. Don Vito Corleone is sitting there, across from me, explaining things to me calmly, teaching me a lesson. All that's missing is the plate of noodles and the red-checkered napkin around his neck.

“I have a problem: I can't move by myself outside of this chair. Actually, I can't do anything by myself. But as you can see, I'm surrounded by help. I just need a strong boy like you to take me wherever I want to go. It pays well and offers separate accommodations in the building.”

I hesitate . . . but not for long.

“Honestly, I have a driver's license, but I don't know anything about how to . . . The only thing I've driven up until now is a moped with a pizza strapped onto it. So why don't you sign the paper for me and see about all of that with those others waiting in the sitting room. I don't think I'm the right person for you.”

“You're not interested in the apartment?”

He touches a soft spot. He sees a vagabond, a little Arab who's never taken out a lease in a neighborhood like this one, a young guy without the slightest ambition, a lost cause. And still, he doesn't know I've done time . . . Don Corleone has a heart. He doesn't have any arms or legs anymore; that doesn't bother me. But heart, I don't have any, not for other people and not for myself. I don't see myself like others see me. I'm perfectly happy with the way things are. I understood I'd never have it all, no matter what I did, so I gave up trying. A bank clerk adores his quartz watch, an American tourist loves his video camera, a teacher cherishes his Renault 5 car, a doctor lives for his suburban home . . . When they get robbed, they're so scared they practically hand you the keys to the safe instead of defending themselves! I don't want to live for any of that. Life's just a giant rip-off. I don't have any possessions, nothing matters to me.

“I'm not going to sign your paper. Let's give it a try. If you like it, you stay.”

Only this guy didn't live for anything, either. He'd already lost everything. He could still buy himself everything, obviously, except for the most important thing: freedom. He still smiles. I feel something strange building inside me. Something new. Something that stops me in my tracks. Right there. That shuts me up. I'm astonished, there, that's it. I'm twenty-four years old, I've already seen everything, understood everything, seriously don't care about anything, and for the first time in my life, I'm astonished. Come on, what can I lose by helping him out? One or two days, long enough to understand what I have to do . . .

I stayed for ten years. There were departures, returns, periods of doubt, too, when I was neither here nor there, but in all, I stayed ten years. And there was every reason for it to go wrong between Count Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and me. He came from a long line of aristocrats, and my parents had nothing; he'd gotten the best education available, and me, I quit school in ninth grade; he talked like Victor Hugo, but I got straight to the point. He was trapped inside his own body, whereas I moved mine all over the place without thinking. Doctors, nurses, nurse's assistants, everyone around him looked down on me. For them, who'd made careers out of devoting themselves to others, I was a freeloader, a thief, a troublemaker for sure. I had crept my way into this helpless man's life like a wolf in a sheep's pen. I had the fangs. I couldn't bring good to the table, not a chance. All the warning signs were there. It could only go wrong.

Ten years. Crazy, right?

The accommodation suited me fine. You could get to it by one
of two ways: either from Pozzo's apartment by passing through the garden or from the building's parking garage. So I was independent. I could come and go—go, mostly—without being seen. Smooth white walls, a small shower, a kitchenette, a window onto the garden, a good mattress and box spring: I wasn't asking for anything more. I wasn't asking for anything more because I wasn't planning to stay.

When handing me the key, the secretary warned me, “Mr. Pozzo di Borgo has also decided to give another candidate a chance. For the moment, you have use of the studio. But if you leave, please be kind enough to leave him the place as you found it.”

“Right, I'll be kind enough . . .”

That blonde's gonna have to learn to talk to me with a different tone of voice, or we're not going to get along.

“Rendez-vous tomorrow morning downstairs at eight o'clock for the bath.”

She's already gone down two floors when I react. I yell over the bannister.

“Bath? What bath? Hey! I'm no nurse!”