Vernon Subutex 2

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Vernon Subutex 2 Page 27

by Virginie Despentes


  “Good, good. Just having a quiet beer. I came to hear your set. Apparently you’re on the decks tonight?”

  He feels like saying, if you want to make me happy, introduce me to your friend and tell her to be gentle with me. That might perk him up. But Subutex sits down next to him. A little too close for Loïc’s taste. Then, the thing he dared not hope for happens: Pamela Kant strides over to their table, flashes him a big, sincere smile, like I’ve-no-idea-the-effect-I-have-on-men, and says, “What are you drinking?” as though they’ve known each other for years. She walks away, swaying her hips like a goddess, and Loïc feels like taking his new friend in his arms. Finally, he can see why everyone likes Subutex. With a smile, he says:

  “What about you, Vernon, how are things?”

  But instead of giving a normal response, the guy grabs the back of his neck. The gesture is slow, gentle, Loïc tenses but doesn’t dare pull away. Shit, just as he was starting to relax. Vernon brings their foreheads together, and closes his eyes. It does not last long enough for Loïc to complain, but he is mortified by the whole grotesque situation. Then the feeb pulls away and gives him this look that is sad and loving. Everyone around carries on, they’re used to this guy doing weird shit, no one pays him any mind. Pamela comes back, gingerly carrying three beers, and he gets up to help her. And by way of thanks, she gives him a wink. He hears himself say:

  “Hi, my name’s Loïc.”

  The words just came by themselves. Like an idiot. He’s just introduced himself like a dummy.

  “I know, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “I’m guessing I don’t have a good reputation around here.”

  Every time he opens his mouth he says something stupid, and to make matters worse his voice is quavering. The lights are dimmed. Pamela leans toward him, as though the darkness is forcing her to whisper. Loïc swallows hard and sits there like a lemon.

  “I’ve kept files on everyone,” she murmurs. “The day I open a dungeon, I’ll send you a summons. I’ll make you pay, I’ll give you a spanking for all the dirty thoughts that haunt you.”

  She is insane to say these things to him. Even as a joke. She is flirting with him. Xavier said she only ever talked about boring things. And now here she is coming on to him. He thinks of Lino Ventura, a tough guy, imagines what he would do, and does that. He forces a smile, but his face is so tense that it must be obvious that it makes his cheeks hurt.

  “I don’t take spankings, I give them.”

  He manages to say these words to Pamela Kant, with only a flicker of hesitation, manages to sound casual. He controls his emotions, but inside, a mini-me is dancing and cheering and beating his chest. She smiles and says:

  “Well, I could be wrong. Or maybe you don’t really know yourself.”

  The slut. He is glad he does not have to stand up. She whips her hand through the air, making it clear that in a spanking, it’s all in the wrist action. He does not dare say, I’ll take you down a peg or two, honey, and you won’t talk about spanking me again. He cannot believe that he’s talking to Pamela Kant about sex. And that Noël will never know.

  Subutex plays “Magic Bus” by the Who, and Loïc feels a lump burning in his throat. He loves this track. He would never have imagined Subutex would start his playlist with something like this. Fucking amazing. He’s not just some pathetic loser hanging out in a bar—he’s the guy who made Pamela Kant laugh in a bar where they’re playing good music, at just the right volume, and around him he notices that several people are smoking. He lights a cigarette. It feels so good to be smoking in a bar. This is the first decent night he’s had in ages. When Subutex segues into Eddie Cochran, he thinks, keep doing that, and I’m going to be the one kissing you. As though Vernon is choosing tracks just for him.

  * * *

  And then he dances. Real guys don’t dance, certainly not Loïc. He hates the idea of making an exhibition of himself. When he was young, and when he was on his own, he would pogo a little when he listened to the Meteors or the Vibes. But at gigs he always stood stiff, motionless. You know, dignified. Black guys dance, all right, fine, that’s normal. But not him. Between music and his body there exists an insuperable taboo. But tonight, he is dancing. Most of the lights have been turned off now. He is dancing to Bowie, wailing about being heroes. He still can’t believe it. And he is dancing with Pamela Kant. It wasn’t planned, he didn’t have time to wonder how he would go about it. She moves slowly, as though underwater. She looks up, thrusts her pelvis forward, and stares at him. And, instead of falling over backward or throwing himself at her, he dances. Maybe she put something in his beer. Good thing if she did. The handsome little gayboy is on the dance floor. They know each other. He’s convinced of it. The guy moves like a god. And it doesn’t even bother Loïc that he’s enjoying watching him dance. The bad-tempered dyke who was serving behind the bar earlier has climbed up on a table. He’s not even annoyed. Why shouldn’t she strut her stuff? It’s a pleasure to watch her having a ball. James Brown. “The Payback.” And there he is in the middle of the crowd. Dancing. He has never done this in his life. And fuck knows he listened to his fair share of funk back when everyone was reading Get Busy. Xavier is shaking his booty too. This isn’t his kind of music, you can tell. But he’s connected. The music jolts through their bones, moving their arms, working their hips. His body follows. For hours on end. Off in a corner, lit by a pale green light, Vernon looks out at them, his eyes half closed, an enigmatic smile playing on his lips. He has become a sphinx.

  * * *

  It is late when Xavier comes over and says, “I have to head back, I don’t want to leave the dog on his own all night. If you’re staying, just give me a call when you’re outside the building?”

  “Let’s go together.” In a way, he feels relieved to be dragged away from this madness. His legs are starting to hurt. Tomorrow he will be aching all over. It’s going to be a long day.

  The park gates are closed; they exit through a little door and run home through the rain. Loïc loves the empty streets, the smell of wet tarmac, the orange sodium lights. He is laughing about what just happened to him, “I swear, I never fucking dance. I’m not that kind of guy,” and Xavier says, “Me neither,” and they keep running, not bothering to say any more.

  They crack open a last beer before they go to bed. Loïc noses around in Xavier’s CD collection. It is his turn to play DJ: Gorilla Biscuits, Agnostic Front, Sick of It All. It’s been a long time since he listened to this shit. He hugs Joyeux’s neck—he’s drunk, normally he never touches animals, but it’s late and the poodle seems so cute. Besides, tonight’s the night for doing things he never usually does. He slips into the music. You just have to let something go. It is a strange sensation, as though he has an internal organ he never knew was there and that organ is a valve, and it has just opened. So he sinks into the music.

  Dawn is breaking and Loïc realizes he is crying. He has had too much to drink. He doesn’t remember starting to cry, but when he comes around, he is sobbing. Xavier hauls him up and clumsily takes him in his arms. Loïc hasn’t cried since he was a kid, he cannot even remember the last time it happened. He is not shocked that Xavier is hugging him. He feels no embarrassment. In general, he’s not one for physical contact. One of the things he really likes about Pénélope is that she is not very touchy-feely.

  Loïc and Xavier stand, motionless, leaning against each other. And in his mind, Loïc is hugging Noël, because whatever had happened between them, nothing can erase the years of friendship they shared. The guy is part of his life, part of the things he has loved in his life, and nothing can change that. At the same time, if Noël could see him now, he’d be disgusted, or he’d laugh, but he certainly wouldn’t be happy. Noël doesn’t like the idea of letting yourself go …

  Pamela Kant spiked his drink. But Loïc cannot bring himself to believe that it was to make fun of him. She spent too much time dancing with him for that. It was to make him feel included. If the price to pay is t
his slightly brutal come-down where he is blubbering like a little girl, it was still worth it. He feels ridiculous, but he needed to get it out.

  It is daylight, time to go to work. Second coffee from the new machine that is still frustrating Xavier. Loïc will be late, he sends a text message—delays on the RER. It could easily be true.

  They walk to the métro station together. Xavier needs to take the dog for a morning walk anyway. It’s so cold it feels like February. At the top of the steps, they go their separate ways, “All the best.” And Xavier walks on, trailing his ridiculous poodle on a leash. As he heads toward Line 11, Loïc is thinking he is not really tired, he’ll easily be able to put in a day’s work. He might not be in top form, but he can hang in there.

  It makes a change, being only twenty minutes from work. When he comes to Châtelet, he gets off and wanders through the labyrinthine corridors to his connecting train. He hates this métro station. He feels like a trained rat running to the lab where he works.

  As he turns the corner, he recognizes three figures. They immediately disappear. The tiredness and the strange mood he had been in instantly fade away. He knows he was not dreaming. He recognized Julien, Noël, and Clovis. He slows down. Danger. They’re waiting for him. An ambush. One more strange incident to add to his collection. He turns around, starts to walk faster, and hesitates: leave the station, or take the first train that comes?

  He has a premonition, glances over his shoulder. They are behind him. He runs. Three against one, there’s no point even trying to understand. He flees. At first, his body pumps all the energy he needs, he is electric, then fear fails to sweep him along, he can feel himself slowing. He spent all night dancing; he has no energy left.

  The first blow hits him between the shoulders. He staggers forward, turns around. They have covered their faces. But he recognizes them. He just has time to think how fucking stupid are you there are cameras everywhere you’ll easily be identified he has time to think of the soldier slaughtered by the black guy who said you people will never be safe and he has time to work out which one is Noël, to turn toward him and try to catch his eye under the visor of the baseball cap he has pushed down over his ears. The second blow catches him on the temple, he has time to think that it is the kind of punch you throw when you are trying to kill.

  * * *

  He is lying on his back, listening to music on headphones. Link Wray, “Rumble.” Heavy, sticky, it feels like a migraine. Vernon has been sleeping in Charles’s place for the past three days. It is hot in the living room, but nothing can shake the feeling of cold pinned to his bones. A tenacious bout of flu wracks his body, his ears are blocked, he is trapped in a bubble of fever. Against his closed eyelids, he can see the figure of Loïc dancing with the others at Rosa Bonheur. In his delirium, Vernon cannot make out his features, only the shape of his body and the colors all around. From time to time, his skin expands and makes contact with the world, a hole the size of a fist opens up in his chest—and suddenly nothing is external to him. He has grown accustomed to this. It would feel strange to go a whole day without hallucinating. He has been sleeping on this broken sofa every night since he caught the flu. The house is an unbelievable hovel. Old mother Véro refuses to throw anything out. Every available surface is piled with boxes, papers, objects she has picked up who knows where. She is a fanatical nurse. She stuffed Vernon full of pills, turning over the boxes to check the expiration date and shrugging, “They say 2004, but I can’t see how a medicine could lose its powers.” She took care of him. He is still pretty out of it, but he is able to get up and around.

  He drags himself from his bed and knocks on the door of Charles’s bedroom. He and Véro do not sleep together. She snores too much, according to Charles. The old man hardly knew Loïc, but he is insisting on coming to the funeral. He grumbles, spits, coughs, and then emerges from his room, fully dressed. Charles would not miss an opportunity to see Sylvie. It is not that she is his type, it goes beyond physical attraction, from the moment she opens her mouth, he hangs on her every word. When she gets angry, he rolls his eyes to heaven and mutters, it’s preposterous, this whole thing is preposterous, enchanted to see her being vulgar.

  Vernon is tired of constantly being surrounded by people. Their desires are stubborn and contradictory, and he has taken on a grotesque importance within the group. But every time he thinks of sneaking off, something holds him back. He talked about it to Charles, and the old man shrugged, don’t worry about it, it’s not like they’re going to spend their whole lives taking care of you. Just be grateful that there’s something happening.

  They stand outside the railings smoking their cigarettes. Olga and Laurent duck through a broken stretch of fence. They do not know Loïc either, he did not come to the park very often. They want to be part of the cortège. A huge crowd is expected at Garges-lès-Gonesse cemetery. The mortal remains of Loïc, savagely murdered in the corridors of the métro, belong to everyone. Olga and Laurent think they are on to a good thing: there will be lots of free food. But Vernon knows that, deep down, they sense that this might be the last time that they will all see each other.

  They walk as far as the Gare du Nord. Olga is terrified of the métro. The flame-haired giant keeps close to Vernon, her shoulder pressed against his. She is angry with him that he did not treat her like his first lady. She is the one who sleeps next to him down by the tracks, not the others. It pisses her off. He allows all the compliments people pay him to go to his head. Vernon needs to realize that when all these dickheads get tired of playing social worker, the only person he will have is her. The others are nice enough people, but they’re tourists, they’re just passing through. She’s had her share of perks from it, obviously. She tells them what she wants the night before and Vernon’s friends bring her bars of Côte d’Or dark chocolate with coconut, a jar of Nutella, or sanitary napkins. These days she only drinks whiskey. She’s built up her own little cellar, which she hides in a niche far from the train tracks—not much chance of anyone stumbling on it when she’s away. She’s done with the rotgut red that played havoc with her esophagus, these days madame puts whiskey in her Pepsi Max. People are happy to do favors for her. But Vernon spends his time trying to make sure everyone gets something out of it. Most of the time he smiles like a halfwit and stares up into the branches of the trees, then suddenly he’ll come over and decide to share her bag of roasted almonds with Zaïa, the schizophrenic who pisses herself. She’s always prowling around, she knows there are easy pickings. She refuses to take her meds, she’s always completely shitfaced, why bother sharing anything with her. She talks to herself all day long, and sometimes you’ll see her screaming “Don’t worry be happy” at parking meters. Olga believes in class solidarity, but she feels annoyed to have to give a bag of roasted almonds to a woman who couldn’t give a fuck. Vernon has started to behave like a leader. The day before yesterday, Émilie and Lydia came by to clear out his tent, because he was going to be staying with Charles for a few days. Olga had panicked. She thought that he wouldn’t be coming back. She insulted the girls. Said that she wanted his duvet. He hadn’t even given orders that Olga should be allowed to divide up his possessions. After everything she’s done for him. Result: the pretty little Hungarian girl who’s only passing through Paris on her way to visit friends in Seville got her hands on his sleeping bag. Just because she’s got a fat ass doesn’t mean that Olga doesn’t feel the cold as much as the rest of them. She feels angry with Vernon that he hasn’t treated her better, but mostly she is terrified that he will disappear. Friendships don’t last long on the streets.

  The day after Loïc’s death, the feds had come to the park, rounded up the homeless, and taken them in for questioning. A handful of the illegal immigrants managed to slip away unnoticed, but that still meant they were packed into the police station cells like sardines. Olga had asked in a loud voice how much it was costing the government to persecute them. Wouldn’t it have been quicker and easier to find them somewhere to live?
At first, Olga managed to stay calm while she was being held for questioning, but in the end, she freaked out and started screaming and insulting the police. They screamed back that she was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but she had still been among the first to be released. Madness always pays off. The police knew perfectly well that none of them had had anything to do with the murder—the whole thing had been caught on CCTV. Hauling them in was just their way of saying that they were done turning a blind eye to what went on in the Buttes-Chaumont. Some guy gets himself killed in Châtelet by a couple of ex-friends, but the homeless are the ones who have to move on. That’s the rule: you don’t let the homeless congregate in any one place for too long. Everyone’s terrified that they’ll find a loudmouth spokesperson to lead them to the nearest supermarket—looting, pillaging, demonstrating. The day the destitute start attacking shops and businesses, the army will have to roll out the tanks. There are so many people begging on the streets now. So the police stop them from assembling.

  Laurent would have preferred to take the métro to the Gare du Nord. It was fat Olga who insisted on walking. She’s claustrophobic. She freaks out if she has to get on a train, she spent all day yesterday ranting about it, wondering whether she would even go to the funeral, bending Laurent’s ear until eventually he told her to fuck off. “Listen, Garges-lès-Gonesse is too far to walk, so either you take the train or you stay here, and either way just shut the fuck up about it.” Olga never goes down into the métro stations, not even in winter, not even when it is raining. He just hopes she doesn’t go nuts once they’re on the RER. Once she starts, she’s out of control. And today is not the day. This guy, Loïc, always looked down his nose at Laurent. But even so, he was killed in action, the poor bastard. A young guy, with a girlfriend, and a job. Such a fucking waste. He just hopes that Olga doesn’t go and ruin the funeral. She has been a lot calmer recently. She’s in love with Vernon. She’s got no chance: there’s always a gaggle of pretty girls hanging around Subutex, fresh pussy just begging to satisfy his every whim. So even blind drunk on a night so pitch-dark he didn’t know what he was doing—there’s no chance he would wind up between fat Olga’s thighs. And now he’s going to leave them. She’s scared. And not just a little. Laurent feels sad too. Sometimes he finds Vernon irritating, the guy thinks the whole park revolves around him and puts on airs like a mad poet. But they’ve had a good time, all of them. Laurent has never seen the like: crowds of people showing up every day, making deliveries. No need to go begging. Large coins and small banknotes falling out of every wallet, and so many meal vouchers you’d think they were printing them at home … Generosity to the point of diarrhea. So much kindness and attention that, at first, Laurent was wary, but he quickly got used to middle-class creature comforts. The only thing that stuck in his throat was the feeling of being a tourist attraction. He always believed that he could connect with ordinary people. That the only difference between him and them was that he couldn’t bear to be kept on a leash. Spending so much time with those on the inside has taught him that the only thing they feel for him is pity. No one now can tell that he’s a handsome man. Even five years ago, he might have seduced some of the girls who flutter around Vernon. His teeth have rotted now. His face has changed. Even his jokes don’t have the same impact. People have to strain to hear what he is saying. He is not senile. They don’t seek him out, they put up with him. He is tolerated. Even Olga is more popular than he is. Sylvie remembered her birthday and made her a triple-chocolate cake. No one has even asked when he was born. The night of her birthday, he had been horrible to Olga, so furious was he to see her so happy. “You think when winter comes your bourgeois friend will offer you a little corner by the fireside? I don’t think so, you’re too old and ugly, you wouldn’t match the curtains.” It has been a cold, rainy summer. He’s feeling low. He will head down south. It’s something he has been thinking about for a long time now, but he keeps putting it off. He knows Paris like the back of his hand, and he has his little ways. He may not have a house, but this place is his home. But this time, it’s decided. He needs a change of scene, a little sunshine. He will tell everyone after the funeral. These good people will surely chip in to buy him a ticket. Because these days, not paying your train fare is treated as a crime more serious than breaking into a kindergarten to rape the toddlers. It’s ironic, when you think about it: he and Olga are taking the RER to go to the funeral of a guy they didn’t know, when so many of their friends are dead and they didn’t even find out what day they were buried.

 

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