The TV clicked on at six in the morning: these days guests no longer wake up to the sound of the phone ringing, but to France 2 or some other channel from the TV menu. I stretched for a while in the bed, which was so comfortable I had trouble resigning myself to getting up. After belting out a loud yawn to rouse myself, I turned my attention to what was on TV. A woman standing in front of a satellite map streaked with different colours was explaining the weather outside.
“…caused by a depression of unheard dimensions. Atmospheric pressure adjusted to sea level is moving horizontally towards a mass of low pressure somewhere in the Atlantic off the coast of Greenland. What we see here is a mass of freezing-cold air. It has the centre of our area of low pressure surrounded, covering a radius of over two thousand kilometres.”
The camera switched back to the studio and focused on the host, who seemed a bit lost.
“But what does all that mean for the man and woman on the street, Paloma?”
“What does it mean? It means that the snowfall will continue for several days to come. It also means we won’t be able to predict what will happen next. A second mass of low pressure appears to be forming near Canada, and with what we know today, it’s not too early to think it could hit France in a few days. But we’re keeping a close eye on the first mass of low pressure that’s affecting us right now. Laurent, it’s difficult to talk about this storm in rational, scientific terms. There’s just no explaining low pressure on this scale.”
“Paloma, tell us what’s going on in America.”
I got up and raised the volume to listen to the report while I washed up.
“Things aren’t as bad in North America as they are here, Laurent. In Canada, snowfall recorded so far is still under the record levels of 1999. And the authorities are well equipped to handle this type of low-pressure system. Constant snowfall, not volume, is what complicates snow removal. But things are much more chaotic in the United States. Annual municipal budgets for snow removal have been wiped out in two days. Public works departments are too understaffed to cope, and cities don’t have enough equipment. Luckily, the storm has only hit the East Coast. Reinforcements from the Midwest, from Chicago, Indianapolis and Columbus, are on their way to help local authorities. The situation is even more disastrous here in Europe. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and parts of the UK have been completely paralyzed. The death toll is rising by the hour, Laurent. People are stuck in their cars; many have gone missing. Spain and Portugal have not been the hardest hit by the snowfall, but they have suffered the most damage. We’re talking about an unprecedented situation in both countries, and their governments have already declared a state of emergency. It goes without saying that domestic and international flights have been cancelled. Trains are still in operation, but there are significant delays.”
“Thank you, Paloma…”
I turned off the TV. The door opened and Antony barged into the room.
“Dude. T’es prêt?”
“Yeah, give me a minute.”
I slipped on my shoes, not bothering to lace them up.
“I’ll need to come back up after breakfast. You know where the appointment is?”
“Kensington Suite. First floor. There’ll be ten of them or so, so I guess it will be ‘boardroom style.’ OK, you coming?”
“One last thing.”
I bent down to open the minibar. I hesitated for a second, then opted for a small bottle of vodka that I knocked back in two gulps.
“Xavier, shit… even I wouldn’t have the balls!”
“Well, my dear friend,” I replied. “I really need it this morning.”
I cleared my throat, coughed a little, then took the key card from the nightstand and pushed Antony back out of the room. I was hungry.
“Do you have a ritual for when you get to a hotel?”
“A ritual?”
“Things you do to settle in.”
Antony took a bite of bread.
“Non, pas vraiment,” he said, his mouth full. “Except maybe turning on the TV and seeing what channels they have.”
I gulped down a strawberry, barely chewing it.
“You?”
“Usually, yeah.”
“And the problem is…?”
I laughed.
“There is no problem.”
“Xavier, fuck. I know you. You’re asking because something’s up.”
I meant to take a sip of coffee, but Antony put his hand on my cup.
“Xavier, get it off your chest.”
“I usually have a little routine when I walk into the room: I pull back the sheets, open the curtains, turn on all the lights if it’s dark outside, rummage through the closets and look in all the drawers. It’s like I need to get to know my surroundings before I can feel comfortable. But when I checked in here, I sat down to watch a movie right away and didn’t think twice about any of it. Not at all. It completely slipped my mind. And nothing happened.”
“If nothing happened, why are you complaining?”
“I’m not complaining. I just hope it doesn’t mean that I’ve gotten used to living in places that aren’t really me.”
“Are you going to finish your eggs?”
“No, you can have them.”
I pushed my plate across the table.
∷
It was Antony who sold it. Not me. Even though we’ll both get the same commission on the spectacular sale he managed to pull off. I talked a bit, presented some charts, vaguely tried to be convincing, but I really didn’t do much.
At the hotel bar where Antony insisted on celebrating, our phones both beeped at the same time: a message from Pullman, sending us e-tickets for a ferry that evening from Portsmouth to Bilbao, a trip that would take thirty-three hours and forty-five minutes.
“No fucking way.”
I ordered another drink. Antony glared at me.
“We’ve got ten minutes to get our things together. Pullman even called a taxi for us.”
“It won’t take me ten minutes to have another drink. And shit, he really wants us to go to Bilbao… How much do you want to bet the convention’s been cancelled?”
The server arrived with a whiskey. I threw back half the glass. I winced. I didn’t much like whiskey, but only a drink like this would do in the circumstances: a strong amber that cleansed and burned on its way down.
“If the convention were cancelled, Pullman wouldn’t have paid for a taxi to Portsmouth. That can’t have been cheap in shitty weather like this.”
My phone went off again. A call this time. I answered.
“Xavier Adam.”
“Adam, it’s Pullman.”
I turned towards Antony.
“It’s Pullman. How much do you want to bet?”
“Stop fooling around and talk to him. I want to know why he’s calling.”
“Mr. Pullman, yes, how are you?”
“Good, good. Listen: the taxi company called me. They say they only have one guy willing to drive you to Portsmouth and he wants to leave right now. So get your things at once, he’s waiting for you outside. He’s charging me a fortune so you better not make him wait.”
Pullman hung up before I could say anything. I gave Antony the good news. We went up to our rooms to pack.
Up there, as if to redeem myself, I threw back the bedcovers, opened the curtains and the window, too, turned on the TV and all the lights. I took a few bottles from the minibar and threw them into my suitcase along with the clothes littering the floor. I went through the room a couple of times, opening all the drawers, checking under the bed, in the closets. I hadn’t forgotten anything. Antony came in. I offered him the bottle of vodka I’d put away in my jacket pocket. “Pourquoi pas?” he said, taking it.
“My suitcase is full of them.”
“Mine too.”
/> We handed our keys to the desk clerk, who pointed to the car waiting for us on the other side of the revolving doors and explained that the motorways had been cleared and the snow had turned to a drizzle.
“You’re lucky! Have a safe trip to Portsmouth, gentlemen.”
I thanked him, but I felt like groaning. I was sure the drive would be every bit as awful as the ferry to Bilbao. Luckily Pullman had booked us a cabin. I’d be able to put back a few drinks and get some sleep. I checked the reservation after settling into the back seat of the taxi, which started moving before we’d closed the door.
“We’ll be sharing a bunk, you and me.”
“Quoi? You can’t be serious. Let me take a look at this shit.”
Antony made a grab for my phone, only to realize it wasn’t true. My idea of a joke, just to annoy him. I opened my bag and picked out two small bottles of Dubonnet vermouth. I handed him one.
“Here. To calm you down.”
“Well,” he said, cracking open the bottle. “To the two bunks in our cabin. Cheers!”
“Cheers!”
He threw my phone onto the seat. The taxi driver turned up the radio. It would be a long ride.
But somewhere, between two songs I didn’t know, a reggae number with hip-hop undertones aroused some inner demon: I wanted to cry like a baby. Scary chills popped up all over my body; I was covered in goose bumps and big fat tears rolled down my cheeks. Yeah, I’d made a mess of my life. I turned towards the window to hide my distress from Antony. The rain had turned back into snow. We could barely see the cars coming in the opposite direction, which didn’t stop the driver heading full-speed into the blizzard. My stomach hurt. I leaned my forehead against the frozen window and closed my eyes. It was starting again. I counted to ten…
We arrived at the Portsmouth waterfront in less than two hours. A ferry was leaving for Le Havre, bursting at the seams. For the time being it was just about the only way to get to Paris, other than the Channel Tunnel. Our boat was docked casually to one side. Antony thanked the taxi driver and we headed over to the loading platform. Just as I stepped onto the boat, it crossed my mind that I might die in a storm while crossing the English Channel. Everything was out of my hands: where I went, how I spent my time, what I wanted, right down to when I would die. I was delighted by the prospect. We found our cabin. I dropped my bags onto the bottom berth.
Xavier
Journal entry XXVIII
Feeling alienated from the rest of the world. Also, a need to examine the existence I keep doubting. Often, I close a book or turn off the TV and think: that’s it, that’s exactly it. And I have no one to talk to about any of this. Other than that weird guy who visits me in my dreams.
“Hollywood,” he told me when I asked his name. Who calls their kid Hollywood? “My parents,” he replied. He asked if we were in my dream or his. It’s my hotel room, so it must be my dream. Then I woke up.
Reality is harnessed through language. I read or heard that somewhere. And it seems disarmingly obvious. If I don’t put my inability to live into words, it will never be harnessed. This is how a child learns to name things, to appropriate them. I spend long periods thinking and struggling a bit and it seems I like it, this state of unhealthy melancholy. And then there are the dreams.
Hollywood
I was sweeping the paved footpath between the gravestones when I noticed that the beans I’d planted only a couple of days before had already started to sprout. All of a sudden, I felt lost, as if I were a stranger to everything around me. I could see the thin green stalks poking through the ground before the grave of Joseph-Elzéar Masson, who died in 1934, and the sun setting in the distance, and the pink clouds resting on the horizon. I saw it all, but none of it, or almost none of it, felt familiar. The feeling lasted a few seconds, a minute at most, and I recovered just as quickly. I thought: beans, what a funny idea! Anyway… I went back to sweeping the path. I brushed away a few stones and moved on.
I took the bus home. Dusk was deepening into night: blinds had been drawn, so you couldn’t see inside townhouses or apartments anymore. Street lights flooded the pavement with an orange hue, and the sky was growing darker and darker; you could almost see the saturation as blue turned into black. I had a sudden craving for ice cream, so I got off the bus and walked to the dairy parlour close to home. I ordered a vanilla cone dipped in milk chocolate, which I savoured slowly as I baby-stepped my way home. I wasn’t in a hurry, even though it was hot out. I’ve always liked feeling hot.
I barely had time to open the apartment door before Saké pushed me right back out.
“You’re coming with me.”
“What? Wait…”
I resisted: I wanted to at least get changed. My clothes were dusty and there was sand in my shoes.
“Hurry up,” she said. “The auditions are in less than an hour.”
I wanted to ask her: auditions for what? But instead I ran to my room to change. I’d have time to squeeze some info out of her once we were out of the apartment. Saké was already losing patience.
“Chop chop, Holly.”
“Coming!” I yelled from my room.
She was standing on the landing with her hand on the knob, ready to close the door. I went out half-naked. I tried to put my shirt on as I was going out the door, but I got my head stuck in one of the sleeves. I was literally in a tight spot. Saké sighed.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
She helped me put my shirt on properly. We ran down the five flights of stairs to the street. Once on the sidewalk, I started grilling her.
“So, where are we going exactly?”
“I told you: auditions. In less than an hour. We have to hurry, I don’t want to miss the show.”
“Auditions for what?”
“You’ll see.”
“What the fuck, Saké… Just tell me!”
“If I tell you, you’ll just run out on me and go home.”
I pretended to turn around and leave; Saké grabbed me by the arm.
“Hollywood, you’re coming with me!”
Resistance was futile, I knew it. We turned the corner as a bus was passing by. Saké started running, still clutching my arm. The bus stopped and waited for us. We walked all the way to the back and sat down, even though the bus was empty.
“Is this for one of your hair show things?” I asked.
“No. I told them about you and they’re interested, but they said they wouldn’t be holding more casting sessions before the summer. I mean… before June. I’ll get back to you later on that.”
She stayed quiet for a few minutes before she went on: “Now, you have to promise you’ll at least give it a try.”
“How can I promise when I don’t know where you’re dragging me off to?”
“Oh come on, say yes. Do it for me.”
“I suck at acting, Saké. You want me to promise to make a fool of myself in public.”
“It’s not for a play. You really think they’d be holding auditions at 11 p.m.?”
“How should I know? I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
Saké turned to look out the window.
A couple of stops further, she started giggling.
“What kind of underwear do you have on tonight? Briefs? Boxers?”
“Er… Why do you want to know?”
She got up.
“No reason. Come on: this is our stop.”
The bus let us off. To our right, a massive parking lot engulfed a tiny mall, a bowling alley, a bar and an exotic grocery store. Saké led me across the lot to the bar. We stopped on the nearly empty terrace. It said on the poster that the auditions were at 11 p.m., but not what they were for. I understood straight away.
“No. No way. No way. You’re crazy, Saké!”
“Oh come on, it’ll be fun! Plus you’ll love the song I
picked out for you.”
“What? You put a number together?”
She burst out laughing.
“Not a number, no. I went through your stuff and brought a CD from your collection. All you have to do is dance. Improvise. It’ll be fun!”
“What did you pick?”
“I didn’t look very long. I just took one of the CDs on your bedside table.”
“Which one?”
Saké pulled up a chair and sank into it. She opened her bag and took her cigarettes out, bringing one to her lips before handing me the pack. I said no.
“Come on, tell me which one you picked.”
She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply before fishing the CD out of her bag. She put it on the table.
“You’re absolutely nuts if you think I’m gonna dance naked to Leonard Cohen!”
“But you can’t say no. This album is the bomb!”
“I know it’s great. But what in the world were you thinking? Nobody in their right mind would dance naked to Leonard Cohen. Not in a bar, anyway. Especially not a gay bar.”
“OK, granted, the first few songs may not be appropriate, but I’m sure you’ll do just fine with the one I picked.”
For the moment, the music debate prevented me from seeing how absurd the whole thing was. I asked Saké what song she chose.
“I’m Your Man. It’s totally hot. I can picture you slowly taking off your clothes to the song, piece by piece. The man’s voice is so sexy. Plus it’s the perfect song. I mean, I don’t know him much—Leonard Cohen’s your thing—you know I don’t usually listen to that kind of stuff. But ever since you made me listen to this CD, don’t ask me why, I’m sort of obsessed with it. It somehow got inside my head, as if it was urging me to do something with it. So I thought about it long and hard. And earlier this week, I came to eat at that Chinese place next door and saw the audition poster, and it suddenly dawned on me: I knew I had to make you dance naked to I’m Your Man. It felt like this was precisely what the song had wanted all along.”
“Fuck, Saké. You are batshit crazy…”
Listening for Jupiter Page 3
