Vernon Subutex One

by Virginie Despentes

  “I got evicted this morning. I only had five minutes to pack up and leave. I left my cigarettes behind.”

  She is dubious at first, then changes her mind. Seeing her bus arriving, she takes a pack of cigarettes from her canvas bag and proffers it. She looks into his eyes, Vernon can see that she is moved. She must be easily upset, she’s on the verge of tears.

  “I can’t do much for you, but here . . .”

  “You’re giving me the whole pack? Wow. Now I can chain-smoke. Thanks.”

  Through the window of the bus, she gives him a little wave that means something like don’t worry, it’ll be alright. This compassion devoid of contempt he inspires in her is more devastating to Vernon than if she had called him every name under the sun.

  In less than an hour, he has smoked five cigarettes from the packet. Time is passing with unbearable slowness. Vernon wishes there were somewhere he could stow his bag. If only rail stations still had left-luggage lockers.

  Finally, the library opens. The decor is familiar. He has been here often to borrow graphic novels and D.V.D.s. Back before you could read the papers on the internet, he used to come here to leaf through the broadsheets. He settles himself next to a radiator and opens an issue of Le Monde. He has no intention of reading it. But if he were a woman, he would want to talk to a man who was reading Le Monde, especially one who looked engrossed, the sort of guy who likes to keep informed but is not easily taken in.

  Mentally he thumbs through an imaginary notebook, making up an A–Z list of people who might be able to help him out. He must know someone who has a sofa or a spare room where he can just rock up. It will come back to him.

  He spots a brunette at the next table. Her hair is tied up and she is wearing old-fashioned earrings, gold pendants set with tiny gemstones. She is elegantly dressed, but there is something not quite right about her – she looks dated. She gives the impression of being engrossed in her solitude. A number of medical books lie open in front of her. Perhaps she is suffering from some serious illness. They could come to an arrangement, the two of them. Vernon imagines her, alone in a vast apartment, her children are all grown up, they are probably studying abroad and only come home for Christmas, she loves sex and has a thing for immature men, she has suffered just enough to know that when you find a good man, you do everything you can to hang on to him, but not so much that it has crushed her completely. And maybe she is alone because she is too caught up in her job, or she has just been dumped by some guy who is even richer than she is who fell for a younger model and felt so guilty when he left that he gave her a wad of cash. Grateful to have a man around the house, she would give Vernon a room in her apartment, he would turn it into a music room, furnish it with odds and sods but invest some cash in a serious sound system and sometimes the two of them would sit there and she would gently tease him about his collection of bootlegs but deep down she is glad he has a noble passion. Women love men who love post-punk, it’s just sleazy enough to unnerve them while being completely compatible with a bourgeois lifestyle.

  These thoughts absorb and exhilarate him for a few minutes, then fade. And Vernon remembers all the times, in the Métro, he has seen those people who mingle with the commuters but never leave the platform while he watched from the carriage. At the Arts et Métiers station, on line 11 heading towards Hôtel de Ville, there was the young black guy who always slept on the same bench, his face deformed by the huge cyst on his cheek. He was there for at least two years. Then there was the Rom at République, he had seen her breastfeeding her baby, watched as the little girl learned to walk, later she would sit at her mother’s feet drinking Coca-Cola.

  He does not know yet who will put him up, but he knows he will not tell them the truth, it’s too much of a downer. He’ll come up with something a bit more cheerful. Besides, people like to be lied to. It’s how we are made. “I’m living in Canada these days, I needed to come back to sort out some bureaucratic bullshit and I’m looking for a place to crash for three nights – any chance I can borrow your sofa?” Three nights. More than that is taking advantage. Canada is perfect, the sort of place no-one gives a shit about, so no-one is likely to ask him questions he can’t answer. I drink maple syrup, the Hell’s Angels are as violent as ever, the blow there is dirt cheap and the girls are hot, though it takes a while to get used to the accent.

  Emilie! He must be truly messed up not to have thought of her straight off, he knows the way to her place with his eyes closed. The two-room, fifth-floor walk-up behind the gare du Nord that her parents bought her for her twentieth birthday. He remembers awesome parties at her place. And dozens of evenings spent with a particular group of friends, he has danced and drunk and thrown up there, he often got laid in the bathroom, he has had dinner there, smoked weed, listened to the Coasters, to old albums of Siouxsie, to Radio Birdman. Emilie used to be a bass player. She loved L7, Hole, 7 Year Bitch and a lot of the Riot Grrrl shit only girls really get into. On stage she was stiff and scornful, all New York attitude. In real life, she was sweet. Maybe too sweet. Not particularly lucky in love. The slightest thing could make her blush, he found that sexy. She wore thigh-length boots like Diana Rigg in “The Avengers” and when she was on stage, her hips traced languorous, strangely convulsive circles, the bass slung down by her knees, thumbing the strings, head twisted around to catch the drummer’s eye, she looked like a greyhound bitch. She was hot shit. No-one knows why she gave up music after the band split. When she called him, in tears, to tell him Jean-No was dead, he had felt sorry for her. Sorry she was still at the stage of fucking unavailable guys. After the funeral, she called him constantly, wanting to meet up, but Vernon felt too low. He never answered. Emilie had left a bunch of vicious comments on his Facebook page. He never responded. He doesn’t hold it against her, he knows sometimes people go batshit crazy.

  VERNON CLOSES THE BATHROOM DOOR BEHIND HIM. SITTING ramrod straight against the back of the chair, Emilie pinches her lower lip between thumb and forefinger and stares into the distance. Noticing what she is doing, she tugs at the too-tight jumper that rucks up at the back. She has often seen her mother do that same thing with her lip, staring into the middle distance, looking as though she is somewhere else.

  She pours herself a second glass of white wine, she listens to Vernon in the shower. They will have a quick dinner, then she will retire to the bedroom with her iPod and the remains of the bottle, the earlier the better. When she saw him standing in the doorway, she felt a lava flow of rage boiling through her entrails, but despite two years in therapy she is still incapable of saying what she really thinks. She is still pissed off at Vernon, she has imagined this scene dozens of times: one of the group comes to her for help and she spits in his face. Instead, she felt the corners of her mouth tug downwards when he asked if he could stay the night; her expression grew even more gloomy when he tried to talk about Alex to lighten the mood. She does not want to talk about Alex, or to rake up the past. She got out the wine glasses, set out the coasters and filled a bowl with roasted almonds, resentfully, to preserve the tense atmosphere, going through the motions of being hospitable. She made sure that Vernon did not leave glass rings on the Swedish coffee table that cost her six hundred euros in the Sentou sale. Emilie has become fanatical about cleanliness. Time was, she didn’t give a shit. These days she could happily cut someone’s throat for leaving breadcrumbs under the table or traces of lime-scale on the tap. The upside is that she feels an indescribable pleasure when everything is neat and clean.

  Vernon pretended not to notice the tension, he asked “I don’t suppose you could cut my hair? Remember when you used to give all of us haircuts?” But instead of just telling him to fuck off, she said “Tonight, are you sure?” With the second glass of white wine, she mellowed. When he told her he had sold off all his records, she thought back to the apartment where he used to live, a box room at the back of the shop. She felt a sudden wave of empathy. Her anger flipped over. It was not just the effects of the wine, it is somet
hing that often happens. Her peremptory mood melts away and is replaced by its exact opposite.

  Vernon has changed a lot. Everything about him now betrays a vulnerability. But physically, he has got off lightly. Men with beautiful eyes have an advantage. His hair is completely white now, but it is thinning only at the front. He is lucky, he is still thin as a rake. The problem is the teeth. Seeing him flash his yellow smile is slightly disgusting.

  She doesn’t care. It’s not as if she is planning to kiss him. Vernon is not the only one who has changed. Emilie has put on – how much? – twenty kilos in ten years? She has been lying about her weight for so long, she has lost track, as though making up a figure changes the way she looks. At first, she struggled with her weight – diets exercise thalassotherapy massage creams and anti-cellulite treatments that cost a fortune and left her feeling as though she had been put through a crusher. It was worth it, she managed to keep things under control. Then she gave up. Her metabolism, quite obviously, was uncontrollable. These days she hardly recognises herself in the mirror. No matter what she wears, she bulges, there is always one roll of fat that spills out. It is when she goes somewhere where she knows no-one that she really realises how much she has changed. Given the opportunity, people talk to whoever else is standing next to them, they avoid all contact with the fat woman.

  Her apartment has changed too. She registered the surprise on Vernon’s face when he came in. The surprise and the disappointment. There are no concert posters. She used to have them plastered all over the walls of the living room, the bedroom; the kitchen was reserved for photos of handsome young men. Fugazi, Joy Division, Die Trottel, Dezerter . . . have given way to a framed photograph of Frida Kahlo and a Caravaggio print. The walls are painted white. As in the homes of all the adults that she knows. She has become the person her parents wanted her to grow up to be. She took an M.B.A., she works in facilities, she traded in her mohawk for a sensible bob. She buys her clothes from Zara when she can find something to fit her. She is obsessed with olive oil, green tea, she has a subscription to Télérama and in the office she and her colleagues talk about recipes. She has done everything her parents wanted her to do. Except have a child, which means that everything else does not count. At family gatherings, she is a reproach. All her efforts have been for nothing.

  *

  The water in the shower continues to hum. Emilie part-opens the enormous rucksack Vernon showed up with. He does not have a sponge bag. Only a razor. As he headed for the shower, he claimed that real men don’t travel with sponge bags. She knows for a fact he has not arrived from Canada. Is he homeless? It does not sound like him. Vernon is a placid guy who does just enough to keep himself out of trouble, not some raving lunatic who would let things get to the point where he is chucked out on the street. A bad break-up, maybe? But Vernon has too many friends to wind up with a girl he has not seen in so long. There is something iffy, something he obviously does not want to talk about.

  Subutex has always been an easy-going kind of guy, standing behind the counter of his record shop with a permanent half-smile. A joker – not a loudmouth, but someone with a quick wit. Someone who could find the funny side of any subject and milk it, a talented wordsmith. In a world of boys desperately competing in a pissing contest, Vernon always seemed quietly confident, like he didn’t need to show off to prove that he was someone. He had a single quality, he was a record dealer. Not as cool as being a guitarist, but still higher up the pecking order than the average arsehole. Vernon broke girls’ hearts. When he first met them, he lavished them with compliments, put them on a magnificent pedestal seven metres high and then someone else caught his eye and he left them there, starved of sweet nothings and admiring glances.

  Emilie was just one of the guys in the band. When she climbed into the truck, she was lugging her amp. She was proud of how well she could hold her drink, she was funny, she had a great record collection and she wasn’t afraid to go completely wild onstage. She felt like part of the gang. Then the band had split. The record shop had closed. They had all made new lives for themselves. And her friends had forgotten to call her. When they met up for a beer before a concert, when they went to a movie together, when they organised a dinner party, when they celebrated something, she was left out. Then those same friends started to seem embarrassed when she wanted to go backstage after a gig. It was an embarrassment she knew all too well – but one that had never been directed at her. An attitude reserved for a sycophantic hanger-on you don’t know how to get rid of. And when she managed to get herself invited to dinner with them, she noticed that her voice no longer carried as far. No-one seemed to hear her. It was not hostility. To be hostile, they would first have had to notice her presence. When she mentioned it to Jean-No, he told her she was paranoid, that she always had to be the centre of attention, that she had never got over the band splitting up. He was not completely wrong. Sébastien, the lead guitarist, had decided to break up the band the day some guy from Virgin offered them a contract. Out of a sense of integrity. Even though Sébastien was the only one of them who worked for a major label. But as far as he was concerned, that was the whole point: he didn’t want being in a band to become just like being at work. No compromise, no career path. Just music and integrity. All he wanted was something to do in the evenings after work that made him feel like a bit of a radical. So, no T.V. appearances, no booking agents, nothing that seemed too professional. He wanted it to be something raw, something between mates, a tour bus that was a G7 van with the seats ripped out with catering that was mostly tabbouleh. Like most well-behaved middle-class kids who want to come on like rebels, Sébastien had a thing for purity. He had a flash little recording studio on the rue Galande that his parents bought him. He spent most of his energy analysing everyone around them so he could point out that, ultimately, they were sell-outs, backstabbers, phonies and con artists. It had always bothered Sébastien, having a girl in the group. It fucked up the whole feel. Punk should be a man’s sport. Twenty years later, when they run into each other, she sees a guy who has held up well, professionally, for a hardcore purist. These days he presents some culture show on cable T.V., the station managers love him – he gives them a dose of macho radicalism without the risks associated with a real radical.

  When Chevaucher le Dragon split, no other group had called to suggest she might take over from someone. This was something Emilie had not expected. She was a good bassist, she never doubted her talent. She put her bass guitar in its case and moved on to other things. She had not drifted away from her old friends. She had been sidelined. It’s not the same thing. Jean-No was the only one who still hung out with her. Hardly surprising, since he fucked her anytime he got the chance. In the beginning, it felt like an affair that never quite ends because there is too much passion. Later, it became more like an addiction. When you’re no longer taking the drug for the pleasure, but simply to relieve the withdrawal symptoms. He had had his first child. With someone else. Emilie was friends with the other woman. She had been one of the first to find out that she was pregnant, she had had to say congratulations and keep smiling. The second time, she only found out months after the kid was born. When she found the baby’s dummy in his carrier bag. Emilie has become the girl without a boyfriend on her arm, the girl who has been politely dumped and always shows up to work parties on her own, the sort who has lots of girlfriends because she is such a loser she is not remotely threatening. What’s done is done, she can’t relive her youth, and this is how she has spent it, waiting for some arsehole to phone or not, to lie to his wife so he can pop round and see her, make her his bit on the side and all the while she has been unable to break out of this vicious circle, to move on, she does not know what to do with the sadness she feels. Why are certain people determined to fuck up their lives while for others it seems so easy to do things the way they are supposed to be done? The truth is, when it was not him making her suffer, it was someone else.

  When Jean-No died, she desperately needed to
talk to someone. The fact that she was the bit on the side didn’t change anything – this was the guy she had been sleeping with for more than ten years. She had turned to Vernon, among others. But he never phoned her back. As though they barely knew each other, as though she was being a pain, pestering him with phone calls when Jean-No died. He can die on the streets as far as she is concerned, she’s over it, she wants nothing more to do with him. Now it’s his turn.

  *

  He emerges from the shower, she pulls out a chair and lays a terry towel on the floor to collect the hair clippings, but as soon as she begins combing, she has to bite her lip to stop herself from crying. The bitter rage has suddenly subsided and been replaced by a terrible sadness she was not expecting. When she was a little girl, she used to cut her grandfather’s hair, every Sunday while he watched “Le Petit Rapporteur” and her mother would roll her eyes to heaven, “She’s got him wrapped around her little finger”. Standing behind the chair, she would have to stretch her arms high to reach the three little hairs that fell over his collar. His skin of a mature man, the fine hairs sprinkled with grey and a certain scent. She touches the crown of Vernon’s skull with her fingertips, gently urging him to tilt his head forward. She gathers the straggling locks, trims the ends, tries to give his hair volume, but there is not much she can do, other than to get rid of the thin wisps of hair spilling like rats’ tails down his back. She is overwhelmed by a tenderness that has nothing to do with desire, nor something one might feel for a child. It is the tenderness of an adult woman yielding before another person’s fragility. She fights back tears. It is something she has only recently learned to do. In the first two years she was suffering from depression, she would blub at the slightest thing, the will to hold back her tears completely deserted her: just as other people’s legs give out under them, her tears would flow like a form of incontinence. Then, after the summer, her willpower returned. One morning she got up and managed to decide not to cry. It did not change the sadness she felt, but she no longer needed to touch up her make-up in the lift because she had spent her whole journey on the Métro sobbing for no reason. She wept so much that the salt from her tears had damaged the delicate skin under her eyes. The damage was irreversible.