Right-wing, left-wing, he doesn’t give a fuck. It’s all the same shit. He’s not about to have his balls cut off swearing allegiance to one side or the other. With Facebook, surveillance has been ratcheted up a notch—I noticed you liked So-and-So, why did you repost Whatshisname? He does what he likes. No one pays his rent, so no one gets to call the shots. It doesn’t bother him, getting into arguments with idiots. On the contrary, he gets a kick out of it. On the left, all anyone talks about is how things are “slipping.” He is not slipping: whenever he takes a sidestep it’s because he wants to shit in the flowerbeds. It’s the same with the right and their “I’m politically incorrect.” Bunch of morons. All they want is approbation. The national mantra, on both sides of the fence, is “I’m not looking for a fight.” Loïc is looking. He always has been.
But it has to be said that Loïc hates left-wing assholes just a little more. They exploited people like him, clambered over their backs to get to power and then pissed in their faces and expected them to say thank you. When they hire you, left-wing bosses make you sign the same contracts, accept the same conditions, but they also want you to admire them and get touchy when you talk about overtime. When they have a good job to fill, they do it like everyone else: they hire their kid, their mistress, or their nephew. They pay you minimum wage and squeeze you like a lemon, and you’re expected to be all smiles every morning because they call you by your first name. He doesn’t give a shit whether the boss knows his name, all he cares about is his paycheck. If the number under your name is ten times mine, you can keep your fucking friendly banter.
He is disgusted with the left. All their gold medals from the revolution. Self-proclaimed champions of truth. Not that they’ve won anything in his lifetime. It doesn’t matter: it just makes them more electable. His mother voted Communist all her life. He heard people talk about “The Worker and His Factory.” Like they were a couple whose future was worth fighting for. Like “The Hairdresser and Her Eczema.” Still she went out to vote. She doesn’t bother anymore. She’s got the picture.
Noël is from another generation. He never saw the left triumphant. He lets himself be taken in by different bullshit. But nothing’s changed: it’s still the same bullshit it was twenty years ago, they haven’t changed the stock. The only thing that changes is who controls the feeding trough, mongrels always turn toward the smell of food. Noël will figure it out in his own time. Loïc even misses his old friend’s apartment. They used to watch films about dinosaurs. Noël loved them. If they happened on a documentary about the diplodocus, it was impossible to get him to change channels. In recent times, Loïc would come over to his place with two tubs of Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup. That stuff costs a fucking fortune. They would each sit with a tub in their lap, and there wouldn’t be another word out of them until you heard the spoon scraping the bottom. Before that, they went through a cappuccino phase. They’d put so much powder in the cups their teaspoons would stand up.
To be honest, Noël has been uncomfortable about his sense of humor for a while now. Loïc knew that. Ever the master manipulator, Julien was always stirring up shit between them. He convinced Noël that Loïc was jealous of their friendship. He came between them, the way a girlfriend would. It had been brewing for a couple of weeks. There had been insinuations, a lot of awkwardness. Stuff he and Noël had never experienced before.
The whole thing started with something completely stupid. Loïc should have kept his mouth shut. They were on the internet, looking at pictures of a dozen guys giving the Nazi salute on a train platform, trying to block Caroline Fourest. Julien was obsessed with that dyke. And Loïc had cracked a joke. He couldn’t help himself. It was starting to piss him off, this obsession with the Third Reich. Not that he’s a staunch anti-Nazi, but he was spoiling for a fight. “It makes me laugh, a bunch of French guys giving the Nazi salute. If you really love your country, what do you do? Copy the people who invaded it? What a glorious memory of France—the Germans marching down the Champs-Élysées. I’m not saying that the Americans had much respect for us, but we need to get over the idea that the Huns were our friends. I’m French. I don’t like the Nazi salute. I don’t like Germany. I don’t go around flattering the enemy just because I lost the war.”
It was a banter, a joke, a bit of verbal sparring. And besides, he was tired of their bullshit. Those dumbfuck ultranationalists, most of them incapable of writing a three-line Facebook comment without making forty spelling mistakes. If you love your country so much, either learn the language or don’t write comments. He should have held his tongue. But for a while now, he’d been itching to go head to head with that little prick Julien, with his sanctimonious air like a parish priest. Monsieur more. More intelligent, more enlightened, more confrontational. Loïc had wanted to show Noël that he wasn’t afraid. He has always been like that. Always hated people who throw their weight around. He likes to think the opposite of what he’s being told to think. Put the ball where the goalie is least expecting it. That’s his thing.
What he hadn’t expected was that Noël would slowly get to his feet, tight-lipped with rage, and point to the door. All he had said was “out.” He hadn’t been drunk, he hadn’t been stoned. Five years they had been friends. Loïc had taken the shock with dignity. He had made a grand exit. In the deafening silence. He had affected a half-amused smile that said “I really don’t give a shit and you’re all a bunch of jerkoffs.” But once outside, he was so shaken that he’d had to lean against the wall for support. Noël had humiliated him in front of everyone. Then Loïc had composed himself. Assumed that they would both regret the incident, and the next time there was a Paris Saint-Germain match, they’d be sending each other sarcastic text messages as though nothing had happened. This is another advantage friendships have over relationships—there’s no psychobabble, no postmortems. A friendship can withstand periods of distance, of silence, without crumbling.
But Noël had unfriended him on Facebook and blocked him on Instagram and Twitter, all without a word of explanation. This was how bad it was. This was serious. And there had been no way back. After a few weeks, he had thought: what the hell, I’m screwed anyway, I’ll show them who’s boss. He had trolled them online, on every site he could. He hadn’t used fake profiles. This was open war. He knows Julien. The guy’s a cardboard cutout. He can’t take confrontation. But this revenge is cold comfort compared with the crushing sadness he feels. He misses Noel’s friendship constantly.
There is Xavier … Loïc feels fortunate to have met the guy. He’s reliable. It gives him someone to talk to. When, a few days after putting him in a coma, Loïc had discovered the identity of his victim, he had been mortified. Back in the 1980s, Xavier Fardin had written the screenplay for Ma seule étoile, a minor masterpiece Loïc considers one of the few French “cult films.” As if that were not bad enough, he also discovered that the homeless guy the whole scuffle had been about was Vernon Subutex, the guy who used to run Revolver. Loïc hadn’t recognized him. If he had, he would have told the others, come on, leave him be, let’s move on. Loïc remembered the record shop. When he had first arrived in Paris in the early nineties, he used to go there all the time. It was here that he had been introduced to Rico Maldoror, Patrick Eudeline, Géant Vert, Roland and Schultz of Parabellum, Alain Picon, Tai-Luc, François of Molodoï, and so many others … Subutex had been a decent guy. Open-minded. Girls liked him; there was always a gaggle of them hanging around the record shop. He had even spotted Laurence Romance there once. Loïc also remembers Cécile, a little mod girl, pixie cut, khaki trench coat, who used to sell amphetamines she stole from work. She had a job making up prescriptions for pharmacies. They had once spent the night walking through Paris in fog so thick you couldn’t see six feet in front of your face. She kept coming up with these wild ideas—imagine we’re in London and it’s 1965, and we’re off to the 100 Club to see the Byrds and the Spencer Davis Group … You met up with all sorts of people at Revolver. But around that time, Loïc had t
aken a swerve from punk into hip-hop, like a lot of kids who grew up in the suburbs. He started hanging out at the Fnac Montparnasse.
One night, Loïc had decided to face things head-on. Damn the consequences. He might be a thug, a bad boy, but he wasn’t a bastard and he wasn’t a traitor. He had tracked Xavier down on Facebook and sent him a message. As always when he’s online, he used his real name. Only torturers and traitors need to hide their identity. He had written to Xavier: “I’m the one who put you in a coma, I didn’t realize who you were, and I’m really pissed off I did it.” He had apologized, like a real man. He had been drunk when he wrote it. Sober, he would never have done anything so stupid—imagine the shit he’d be in if the guy turned out to be a dickhead and went straight to the police … But Xavier works in movies. He also asked Xavier whether he knew what had happened to Vernon Subutex. He didn’t want the guy sleeping on the streets. Obviously, bringing him back to Pénélope’s place in Garches might be problematic. Like most girls, she jealously guards her creature comforts. Pénélope likes everything to be neat and tidy, her beauty products, her pots and pans, her magazines. She has her little habits, she doesn’t like things to get in the way, and she doesn’t believe in friendship. Persuading her to allow a complete stranger to sleep on the sofa would have been a nightmare. But he couldn’t bear the thought that Subutex had been abandoned by everyone. Paris is a real shithole. That sort of thing would never happen in the provinces.
It had taken Xavier two hours to reply: “Take your apology and shove it up your ass. You really think I’m going to talk to a guy who goes around with a gang beating up the homeless?” It was a good opening salvo, incisive and succinct. But an hour later he had not been able to stop himself ruining the effect by adding: “We’ll run into each other again. Don’t you worry.” Loïc felt like replying: I knocked you out once, snowflake, I can knock you out again. But he had not apologized only to pick a fight now.
What he liked was that both of Xavier’s messages had been short. On the internet, anything longer than three sentences and you’re splitting hairs. That was the great thing about Twitter. He had let Xavier stew for a while, then sent another message: “Message received. Deserved. But if we do run into each other, I’m buying the beer.” Xavier had waited a whole week before accepting. “Okay. I’ll polish my baseball bat.”
They had met up outside the Mistral on the place du Châtelet. Loïc had not known what to expect. They could have kicked off with a principled fistfight down by the river for old times’ sake, but they were too old for that shit. Xavier had mumbled a couple of insults, put the subject behind them, and they had settled themselves at the bar. Loïc had tried Maradona’s “la pelota no se mancha” philosophy, but Xavier did not pick up on it. He had explained things: Julien’s fantasies of seizing power by attacking the country via its asshole—the poor. How he swept people along. And how he had ended up, with his friends, getting into a scrap with a crazy homeless bitch. Xavier had laughed. “Has to be said, you made a mistake picking on Olga. She’s not scared of anything, let me tell you.” By the third beer, the ice had been broken. Xavier was telling him how it had been impossible to write a second film. How he was sick to death of French cinema. Loïc had smiled and said, “You don’t have to tell me, I only have to see a Renault in a movie and I know I’m about to be bored shitless.” They understood each other on various subjects without having to explain too much. The gypsy dancers who had just performed at the Théâtre de la Ville poured in to get something to eat from the bar. They had danced the flamenco with a couple of the Arab waiters and, behind the bar, the French owner smiled for the first time that night, and the whole place went wild. Good-natured, but electric. Loïc realized that he felt relieved to be with someone who could watch two ragheads and three gypsies kicking their heels up in a bar without feeling the need to invoke Saint Louis of France. Xavier had nothing to prove. This was something they agreed on: if they felt like making remarks about kikes or ragheads, they did. But it was not like they felt obligated: they could talk about other things too. And that felt good. They had wound up at four o’ clock in the morning, propping up one of the sphinxes in the fountain on the place du Châtelet, chugging Bavaria 8.6. They knew they were in for a hell of a hangover, but they were engaged in a passionate conversation about which they would remember almost nothing the following morning, other than a vague, persistent feeling that they had been on the same wavelength. Loïc had spilled his guts about Noël’s betrayal. Xavier had talked about his coma.
“I nearly kicked the bucket. When I came to, I realized that if they told me I only had six days to live, I wouldn’t have had a flying fuck what to do. Okay, I’d like to spend it with my daughter. But what would I do with her? What’s important? I hadn’t the faintest fucking idea. That really unsettled me. Because that’s the one thing you’ve got to know, don’t you think?”
Since then, when Loïc finishes an early shift, he goes up to the park to sink a beer with Xavier. He’s always hanging out up there. He still hasn’t recovered from the beating Loïc gave him. Not that he complains. But he’s a bit touched in the head. He has this thing about Subutex. It’s weird, seeing them all together, full-on Flower Power. They listen to Zarma music on crazy expensive headphones, sometimes when Loïc shows up, he thinks it’s all an elaborate gag. It makes him uncomfortable. Usually he and Xavier sneak off for a drink in the bar next to the town hall. When he asks what he’s doing hanging out with a bunch of hippies, Xavier shrugs. “I was at rock bottom. People tell themselves ‘I don’t give a shit what people think about me,’ but we carry their judgment inside us, the hard thing is ripping it out of your chest. And when I saw Vernon do it, I felt free. I stopped telling myself stories in which I had to be the hero. I gave up on the idea of winning. It doesn’t haunt me anymore. I think I’ve really changed.” At which point, Loïc changes the subject. They’ve discovered they’re both fans of Vince Taylor, it’s not like bonding over Maradona, but at least it’s something.
Today, he finishes work, takes his schedule for the week, and heads straight over to Xavier, who suggests he swing by because his wife is away. Loïc has never met Marie-Ange, but from what he’s heard, she sounds like an ice queen. He wouldn’t put up with a girlfriend like that.
Pénélope is a good girl. He can’t complain. But she’s no beauty. You don’t puff your chest out when she’s on your arm. She doesn’t make much effort to please him. Not that she’s an embarrassment either. But she’s not the kind of woman who primps herself, puts on nail polish, gets all dolled up, and spends her day buying matching accessories at Zara, or doing something new with her hair to look more feminine. She’s not girlie, she doesn’t give a damn. She’s a girl from the suburbs, perfectly capable of dressing like a guy and not understanding why that pisses him off. At least she’s skinny, so there’s that. She doesn’t talk shit when she’s in public, doesn’t go around telling random strangers her life story, and she’s got a decent sense of humor. She’s happy for him to stay in Paris some nights. When she has the apartment to herself she invites her girlfriends over for sleepovers.
* * *
Standing in the kitchen with his ridiculous little dog at his heels, Xavier is trying to work the new coffee machine:
“The one I used to have was perfect. It was eight years old, but it worked flawlessly. I was the one who cleaned and descaled it, I took care of it. There was a minor short-circuit with the on/off button, but I just left it switched on all the time, and it was fine. Then we had a power cut, and when I started it up again, I pressed the button too hard and it stuck. It couldn’t be fixed, can you believe that? I took it around to all the local repair shops—fifty euros minimum. The thing only cost seventy when it was new. Marie-Ange’s mother bought us a new one without even asking. It bothers me, throwing out things that could still work. Drives me crazy. I can’t do it, I can’t live in a world where things are designed to become obsolete as quickly as possible.”
“Just drink ins
tant coffee. Stand your ground.”
“Do you mind if we stop by Rosa Bonheur tonight? Subutex is on the decks. Pamela Kant will be there.”
“I was about to say, yes, actually, I do mind, but if Pamela Kant is going to be there, get dressed and let’s get a move on.”
Until now, Loïc has been unlucky—she has never been in the park when he dropped by. It sickens him that he can’t send Noël a text message to say he’s having a drink with Pamela Kant. She was one of their great fantasies. Because she had legs that went on forever and she was so good at pretending she really liked it. Shit, Noël would be insanely jealous if he knew …
“I figured that might be the deciding factor,” Xavier laughs. “But like I said before: off-screen, she’s anything but a slut.”
“You never know. Just imagine that, in a moment of madness, she decides tonight’s the night she gives everyone a blow job.”
FROM THE DISTANCE COMES THE SOUND of cheers and honking horns of a wedding at the town hall. The only way to get to the train tracks is via a steep embankment, clinging to the boulders strewn here and there. The grass is bare here, it is the least frequented area of the park. Someone has spray-painted their tag on a tree trunk. Reaching the bottom, the Hyena walks past the piles of timber, mattresses, railings, chairs, and broken toys. She finds Vernon sprawled on a burgundy-colored sofa bed set into gravel. Seeing her approach, Vernon jerks his chin toward a small white rodent with the body of a rat, but with a bushy squirrel’s tail as white as its body.
“What do you think it is, that thing?”
“Looks to me like two animals that were never designed to meet but did the nasty together.”
“It’s weird. It’s been there since this morning.”
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