* * *
The production offices have moved to a new address. The lobby is so vast it could be used as a skating rink. There is something pathetic about the sheer excess, it says much about a man who no longer knows how to assert his existence, whom nothing seems to reassure. His father’s god is Capital. She is a capricious and demanding idol capable of hurling thunderbolts at harvest time, raping virgins, drowning innocents, and ordering her subjects to cut the throats of their own children because she has a sudden thirst for fresh blood. You do not argue with such a deity: you sacrifice everything, without question.
Everything about the company has changed—the name, the address, the scale—but the girl at reception has not changed in ten years. Antoine can never remember her name. She has lost a lot of weight and is wearing a lot more makeup than the last time he saw her. It makes her look old. He has come at a bad time, she cautions him, it is a particularly trying day. He is used to it. For as long as he has known his father, every day has been difficult and demanding. Antoine has time to leaf through several issues of Ecran Total before being allowed to take the private lift that leads directly to the lair of “le grand patron.”
“Antoine? I didn’t realize you were in Paris … Come in … Would you like to have dinner with me this evening? Just the two of us, my little chouchou is away on business.”
“I’m leaving this afternoon, Papa.”
This curious habit he has of calling that bitch of a girlfriend “my little chouchou.” He is clearly on edge. He looks terrible. Antoine is dying to simply say “What did you do, Papa, why is everyone out to get us?”
In the presence of his father, he feels a nostalgia well in his chest, a longing for a closeness that never existed. And yet he has the feeling that something has been lost—a mixture of respect, admiration, and tenderness, an easiness between them. But he does not say what is bothering him, he says: “No, no, I still don’t take sugar, no, no milk, just short and black. New York? Good, everything’s good, better than here, the market is bouncing back … I hear all the gallery owners are leaving the capital because of the taxes … that most of the art business these days takes place outside Paris … I don’t believe it, people have been saying that for years and nothing ever changes … At the moment I’m working mostly with the Germans and the Dutch. It’s insufferable, the way they look down on us since the crash.”
His father is seated, arms folded, buttocks perched in the edge of his Eames chair, listening distractedly, his smile is insincere, the only thing that is genuine is the tension. He scratches the back of his neck, glances out the window, then brusquely gets to his feet and apologizes:
“I’ve got a little problem with one of my colleagues, I need to have a quick chat with her. Just give me five minutes.”
And, as is his habit, he does not close the door separating his office from that of his colleague, the moment he steps through the door, his tone changes, the anger he has briefly been forced to suppress becomes a murderous rage:
“How dare you! I will not tolerate your uncalled-for remarks about my friends. I have politely brought this to your attention on several occasions, so you can’t say you haven’t been warned. Where do you think you are? What do you take me for? Do you think we’re friends? That you can laugh and joke with me? It’s my fault, I suppose. I should have realized the first day you showed up, you lack maturity, you have no idea what is required of you, and to make matters worse, you’re insolent … Who do you think you are? I’ve give this serious consideration and I’ve made my decision: clear out your desk, as soon as you have packed up your belongings I want you out of here, and I don’t want to set eyes on you again.”
He concludes the conversation with a door slam that sets the paintings on the wall trembling and roars over his shoulder:
“Oh, and thanks for forcing me to dismiss you effective immediately! I mean, obviously it’s so convenient to be burdened with your projects as well as my own. So, thank you. You have spent every minute here making my life more difficult, so bravo! Bravo!”
He is spluttering and turning purple. He has always been a coward by nature: all sweetness and light until something snaps. When that happens, whoever he is addressing is made to pay for all the times he did not dare to be honest. But this time, he is absolutely beside himself. Antoine thinks about his little graffiti artist, he would like to be able to tell her: it works! He is convinced that she has good reason to hate his family. Suave and considerate, he says:
“Problems?”
“A dumb bitch. I have to stop giving opportunities to people who are simply not equal to the task. You try to be generous and you end up kicking yourself. All the years I’ve been in this business, and I’ve never become hard-hearted…”
“What happened?”
“She doesn’t have a clue. It’s not enough that she always shows up late—with her, the métro is always breaking down—she comes in here and makes jokes about Sarave—a brilliant man who has given his whole life to French cinema—and, yes, it’s true, he walked out on us, but that doesn’t mean … she parks her fat ass on that chair and calmly insults him, she thinks that he shouldn’t have argued over the new contract … Does she really think we pay her to have an opinion, that bitch?”
The bitch in question opens the door without knocking and interrupts his diatribe. Pretty, dark haired, she addresses the producer bluntly and without ceremony.
“I never said that. I wanted to raise the matter with you because—”
“Get out!”
He is foaming at the mouth. He repeats the words over and over: “Get out!” but only after she has closed the door.
“I am going to destroy her, to obliterate her, that little bitch will never work anywhere again.”
A strange intuition: she knows something embarrassing about him. And the father is aware that he has made a mistake in firing her. She is more likely to talk about whatever is bothering him if she leaves than if she is still in his employ. Antoine feels a searing flash jolt through him, something confirmed by his father’s unwarranted hysteria. He fires people all the time. He regularly takes his anger out on those weaker than he is. But this time, his fury is entirely disproportionate to the situation. There is no joy in his threat to have her blacklisted, no pleasure in humiliating someone. Only exhaustion. And perhaps a certain panic. No one would worry about firing such a woman. Antoine trusts his instinct. He glances at his phone, gets to his feet, claims to have a meeting, clumsily hugs his father. “See you very soon.” “Come for dinner, give me a call and come to the house.” They both know that Antoine will not come. He quickly leaves the premises. Standing on the sidewalk, he waits for the woman to clear her desk. His instinct is urging him to follow her.
ANAÏS HAD BEEN EXPECTING it for weeks and, in a sense, it felt as though she had been forced to wear something grubby and could now get rid of it. Dopalet had always been polite to her, respectful to the point of magnanimity, and for a time, he had made her his confidante. Just now, when he had started to scream, it had been like a nightmare. And no one on her floor had intervened to protest—they helped her pack her boxes and promised to promptly send them on; already, they could not bring themselves to look her in the eyes, she was a plague victim. She knew that she was not the first to suffer this fate. Which made it all the more humiliating.
No one had ever dismissed her like that. No one had ever addressed her in that tone. She had been thanked for her services—her contract was not renewed, she would be called into an office and told that they needed to make economies, there would be some mention of the financial crash, or the possibility that a young woman her age might get pregnant, or the curse of the thirty-five-hour week … She had always been let go with a modicum of tact and courtesy. Not that this ever stopped her from being plunged into sheer panic, dreading the idea that she might end up unemployed for six months straight. She has a phobia of any unexplained gaps in her résumé that might make an employer suspicious, it comes from havi
ng been a model pupil, or perhaps from having parents who worked hard and inculcated in her the idea that merit demands constant effort. Her parents own the largest pharmacy in Tours. They had started out with nothing and this was their legacy: she never rests on her laurels, she knows that nothing can be taken for granted, that you cannot always assume that there is still plenty of time to prove yourself. But what, in her early years working, had seemed like a series of enriching experiences—she has been assistant to a food photographer, an intern in an advertising production department, a runner for a fashion house, a props manager in a theater—is beginning to make her résumé look like that of a flighty young woman.
She had hit rock bottom when she met Dopalet. She was writing news copy for a cable TV channel, the news anchor cordially loathed her, and, if she made the slightest mistake, he informed his bosses. She could not take it any longer, having to get up at 5:00 a.m. in order to cobble together stories from the AFP news ticker. The producer had come to meet with someone at the TV channel, had flirted with her over the coffee machine. She had pretended not to know what he was hinting at when he had invited her to lunch to “talk about young, experimental cinema,” a subject about which she knew a great deal. He had taken a liking to her. He had offered her a job, paying a little more than minimum wage. She had created her own role: internet talent scout. It was new to her. Previously, all her posts had been as an intern. On her first few days in the office, she was dazzled by Dopalet. His charisma, his decisiveness, his intuition, his spirit … He valued her. He showered her with compliments about her aptitude for the job, the perspicacity of her thinking, the breadth of her culture … She knew that he was attracted to her, but he never made her feel that he had hired her to be a pretty piece of ass. He had never come on strong. And yet, all too quickly, she had become disillusioned: the guy makes most of his decisions based on the I Ching or the Tarot. If he drew a “Darkening of the Light,” he would cancel a meeting. If he turned over “The Tower,” he fired someone in accounts. “The Chariot” and he would hire a new intern. This was probably how he had made the decision to hire her—midway between pervy fantasies and the luck of the cards. He has no real interest in anything. Disturbingly superficial, he shoehorns the word “culture” into every sentence so he can complain about the movies he is reduced to making and imply that he is working far below his potential. But he would never go to see anything other than box-office blockbusters, never opens a book, never visits an exhibition, has no interest in music, and the sum total of his knowledge of the internet is checking profiles on IMDb. The topics of conversation that most interest him are those that directly concern him. She has never heard him offer an interesting opinion about cinema. He insists on innovative ideas but only respects formulas that have already proved themselves. He finds it difficult to focus on anything for more than two minutes without texting someone, opening a door, or changing the subject—any meeting with him feels like running a marathon. Dopalet needs to make his interlocutor ill at ease. He waxes lyrical about a project he will have forgotten within the hour, makes promises to anyone and everyone, then reneges on them. His only virtue is that he has surrounded himself with talent. But the hierarchy changes from one day to the next—this is the only thing he has in common with Fassbinder: every morning, he likes to make it known who is in and who is out of favor.
Anaïs was supposed to unearth talent from “outside the box.” She quickly realized what this entailed: finding “the best” YouTube channels (translation: “channels with a million plus subscribers”) and persuading them to “pitch a project” (translation: “write for free”) that he found “high concept” (translation: “demonstrably commercial but shot by unpaid amateurs”). She thought she had understood the brief and had acted accordingly, but on the rare occasions she had managed to drag kids into the office, they had never sufficiently impressed the producer. Dopalet constantly parroted the line “I don’t want people I run into at the César Awards every year,” yet he could not bear to be dragged from the “old boys’ network” he claimed to disdain. In his own world, he was a major player. He expected anyone working on the internet to fall over themselves with gratitude at the prospect of being “discovered.” But the adolescent stars of YouTube have an inflated sense of themselves and don’t give a flying fuck about the silver screen—the clash of egos did not go well.
For some time now, Anaïs has been feeling that she was in the hot seat. He is no longer dazzled by her. He is no longer counting on her to bring him an online Stanley Kubrick who can shoot a twenty-first-century A Clockwork Orange for three euros fifty.
She walks down toward Tuileries métro station. There was a brief sunny spell, but already the sky is clouding over and it looks like it’ll rain any minute now. It feels like autumn in Paris. Anaïs takes the steps down into the métro station, surrounded by tourists speaking languages she does not recognize. In the corridor, a violinist is playing a piece by Kreisler. She slows. She studied the piece as a girl. She never managed to play it without murdering it. Her parents insisted that she study music, and her sister played piano. But Anaïs had chosen the violin and had no talent for the instrument.
She has no desire to let her parents know what had just happened. It would only upset them. They were thrilled when she got this job. They had been disappointed when she and Kevin split. They had spent seven years together. Everyone around them was waiting for the patter of tiny feet. They had assumed they had lots of time.
On the platform, she has a searing memory of what it felt like being with him. When she walked next to him. She felt complete. They were a single, solitary unit. When she comes back to reality, she feels off-balance. Since he left she bumps into things, breaks things. It is all down to this feeling. The glacial emptiness beside her. She cannot call him to tell him what has happened. This is an idea she must get used to. For some time, he has been sending her text messages, like: “Search for the light deep in your heart, I wish you every happiness in the world.” And silly stuff. But mostly the kind of messages you get from a guy who’s moved on. When you send things like that to the girl who was the love of your life, it means: I don’t really care what happens to you. He contacts her to salve his conscience, so he can tell himself he is a good guy. She replies: “Fuck off, Noddy, you’re bothering me,” and it takes her a week to get over it. Now when he sends her text messages, he adds a:)—something he learned from his new girlfriend. Anaïs would never do such a thing. Emojis. Jesus fuck.
He left her for someone else. He never cheated on her. He told her the moment he met her. He had seemed preoccupied, he was busy framing a photograph, struggling with the clips of the Habitat frame, she had said, “Are you worried about something?” he had said, “There’s something going on between me and Karine.” At first Anaïs had thought it was a joke.
They had not watched Game of Thrones that night. They had sat, sobbing, on the sofa. She had woken up the next morning convinced that she had been mistaken. This could not be happening to them. He packed his bags that week. The new girl works in politics. With the UMP. It’s impossible. Everything about the situation is impossible, and still it keeps happening. They are not together anymore.
Anaïs opens the playlist on her phone, scrolls down to Neil Young, and listens to “Big Time.” She knows it makes her cry. She wants to cry. How can she forget how they were together, the promises they made each other. For years they had been twin planets in the same orbit, and overnight, gravity had shifted—they had gone their separate ways. Anaïs knew that even if he were to come back tomorrow, he would not be the man she had trustingly loved for so many years. That love is dead. She is like an exile who dreams of her home country yet, when she can finally return, finds it unrecognizable: nothing is as she remembered it.
They had believed that their relationship was special. All lovers do. Their relationship was different. The one that could withstand anything. She had kept the apartment. The red and white checked oilcloth he had laid to protect
the kitchen countertops is so worn that it is now white. She does not touch it. The freezer is still full of frozen vegetables he bought in bulk—he watched his waistline. She knows everything about him. She misses everything about him. She cannot believe that he does not miss their life together as much as she does. When life was fun—having dinner in the pizzeria across the street, going to the movies on Sundays, going to bed early and sitting up reading, bickering over whose turn it was to get up and make a hot drink. They were happy, for fuck’s sake. Why could Kevin not have honored that?
She has seen pictures of his new girlfriend online, in her huge apartment in the eighth arrondissement. A Haussmann building, high ceilings, impeccably furnished. Afghans thrown over the sofa, everything exquisitely tasteful. Anaïs surveys her own place. The IKEA shelves, the stained, rickety white table they never had the money to replace. They didn’t give a damn about bourgeois comforts. And yet. You’re nouveau riche now, Kevin. Had he always dreamed of a double living room, crown moldings, French doors, and chic restaurants? Had he simply pretended to despise these things because they were beyond his means, or has he changed? She wondered whether he still drank Ricoré with warm milk for breakfast, or whether he drinks coffee like his new girlfriend.
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