Hunting and Gathering (29 page)

“What the fuck—” He looked at the screen for a few seconds while they burst out laughing. “You're completely trashed, is what you are!”

“Yes . . . ,” they confessed.

 
“Hey,” called Camille as he was leaving the living room, muttering.

“Now what?”

“Aren't you going to show your fiancée how handsome you are today?”

“No. Don't fuck with me.”

“Oh, please,” begged Myriam, “show me, darling.”

“Striptease!” blurted Camille.

“Take it off !” said Myriam.

“Striptease! Striptease! Striptease!” they chanted.

 
Franck shook his head and rolled his eyes. He was trying to adopt an outraged expression, and failing. He was dead tired. All he'd wanted was to collapse on his bed and sleep for a week.

“Striptease! Striptease! Striptease!”

“Okay. You asked for it. Switch off the box and get ready with your little dollar bills, girls.”

 
He put on “Sexual Healing”—at last—and started with his biker's gloves.

 
And when the refrain came along—

—he tore open the last three buttons of his yellow shirt and swung it over his head, swiveling his hips in superb Travolta style.

The girls were tapping their feet and clutching their ribs.

 
All he had left were his trousers. He turned around and slowly slid them down, giving a little thrust of his hips toward one girl, then the other, and when the top of his briefs appeared, a wide elastic band where you could read DIM DIM DIM, he turned toward Camille and winked at her. Just then the song came to an end and he quickly pulled up his pants.

“Okay, this has been fun, but I'm going to bed.”

“Oh . . .”

“What a letdown.”

 
“I'm hungry,” said Camille.

“Me too.”

“Franck, we're hungry.”

“Well, the kitchen is that way, straight ahead, then turn left.”

 
He came back a few minutes later in Philibert's plaid bathrobe.

“Hey? You're not eating?”

“No, never mind. We're going to languish until we die. A Chippendale who keeps his pants on, a chef who doesn't cook—we're really out of luck tonight.”

“Okay,” he sighed, “what do you want? Savory or sweet?”

 
“Mmm, this is good.”

“Is just some pasta, no?” he replied, modestly, in a mock-Italian voice.

“But what did you put in there?”

“Oh, just odds and ends.”

“It's delicious,” Camille reiterated. “And for dessert?”

“
Bananes flambées
. You'll forgive me, ladies, but I'm making do with what's at hand. Anyway, you'll see. I warn you, the rum's not Old Nick from Monoprix!”

“Mmm,” they said again, licking their plates. “What's next?”

“What's next is beddy-byes, and for whoever's interested, my room is thataway, all the way down and on the right.”

 
Instead, they made some herbal tea and smoked a last cigarette while Franck dozed off on the sofa.

“Oh, is he bad or what, our Don Juan with his
healing
, his sexual baaalm,” squealed Camille.

“Yeah, you're right, he is baaad.”

He smiled in his half-comatose state, and put a finger to his lips, to ask them to be quiet.

 
When Camille went into the bathroom, Franck and Myriam were already there. They were too tired for niceties so Camille reached for her toothbrush while Myriam put hers away and wished her a good night.

Franck was leaning over the sink spitting out toothpaste and when he stood up, their eyes met.

“Did she do that for you?”

“Yes.”

“It looks good.”

 
They smiled at each other's reflections and it was a half second that lasted longer than a usual half second.

 
“Can I wear your gray wifebeater?” called Myriam from his room.

 
He was energetically scrubbing his teeth and turned again to the girl in the mirror, dribbling toothpaste all down his chin: “Shreally-dumbutIpweefertoshleeptogewahwizhzhoo.”

“Pardon?” she said, frowning.

He spat out, then said, “I said, it's really dumb but I heard there's sleet tomorrow.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “That is really dumb. It really is.”

Camille turned back to him: “Listen, Franck, I have something important to tell you . . . Yesterday I confessed that I never keep any of my resolutions, but now there is one that I'd like us to make together, and try to respect.”

“You want us to stop drinking?”

“No.”

“Smoking?”

“No.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“I'd like you to stop playing this little game with me.”

“What game?”

“You know what I mean . . . Your sexual schedule, all your heavy little hints. I, uh, I don't want to lose you, I don't want us to fall out. I want us to get along, here, now . . . so that this will be a place . . . Well, you know what I mean, a place where all three of us can feel good. Calm, no complicated involvement. I . . . You . . . We . . . we're not going anywhere, the two of us, I hope you realize that, right? That is, I mean, we . . . Of course we could sleep together, but then what? The two of us, I mean it's a recipe for disaster and, well, it would be a pity to spoil everything, don't you think . . .”

 
He'd been thrown for a loop and it took him a few seconds before he caught on.

“Hey, what are you talking about? I never said I wanted to sleep with you! And even if I did, there's no way! You're way too skinny! What makes you think a guy would even want to touch you! Go play with yourself, sister, while you're at it! You're out of your fucking mind!”

“You see I was right to warn you? You see how clearheaded I am? It could never work between us. I try to explain things to you as tactfully as possible and you have nothing to offer in exchange but your little shit-faced hostility, your stupidity, bad faith and meanness. Thank God you'll never touch me! Thank God! As if I could ever want your disgusting meaty paws and your chewed-up nails on my skin! Keep them for your waitresses!”

She gripped the door handle: “Okay, I blew it. I should have kept my fucking mouth shut. I'm an idiot. And I'm not usually like this. Not at all. I'm usually the kind to hold my breath, and leave on tiptoe as soon as I can smell trouble.”

He was sitting on the edge of the bathtub.

“Yes, that's what I would normally do . . . But just now, like an idiot, I forced myself to say something because—”

He raised his head.

“Because why?”

“Because . . . I told you, I think it's important for this apartment to remain a nice, peaceful place. I'm going to be twenty-seven and for the first time in my life I'm living somewhere where I feel good, where I'm happy to come home in the evening, and even if I haven't been here very long, okay, and even with all the mean things you've just thrown in my face, I'm still here, trampling on my pride so that I won't risk losing it . . . Do you understand what I'm trying to say or is it just a load of bullshit as far as you're concerned?”

Franck didn't reply.

“Okay, then, I'm fucking off, I mean, I'm going to sleep.”

He couldn't help smiling. “I'm sorry, Camille. I just seem to screw everything up when I'm around you.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Why is that?”

“Good question. Okay, then: bury the hatchet?”

“Go ahead. I'm already digging.”

“Great. So, what about that kiss, then?”

“No. Sleep with you, maybe, but kiss you on the cheek, no way. To start with, it would be much too hard.”

“You're a fool.”

 
He took a moment to get up; he hunched over, looked at his toes for a long time, his hands, his nails, switched off the light and then took Myriam, distractedly, pushing her head down on the pillow so Camille wouldn't hear.

50

EVEN though the conversation had cost her a great deal; even though she had got undressed that night barely touching her own body and with greater mistrust for it than ever, helpless and discouraged by all those bones sticking out in the most essentially feminine places—knees, hips, shoulders; and even though she had taken a while to fall asleep as she counted all her defects, Camille was not sorry they had had the conversation. Already the next morning, from the way he moved, and joked around, and behaved attentively without making a big deal of it, and selfishly without even realizing it, she understood that her message had gotten through.

Myriam's presence in her life made things easier, and even if Franck still treated her in an offhand way, he slept out more often and came home more relaxed.

 
Sometimes Camille missed their cheerful little banter. What a dork I am, she thought, it was fun . . . But such moments of weakness never lasted very long. She had experienced enough in life to know the exact price of serenity: exorbitant. And anyway, where did things really stand between them? Where did sincerity leave off and the game begin? She was peacefully ruminating on the subject, sitting alone in front of a half-defrosted gratin, when something caught her eye on the windowsill.

It was the portrait he'd made of her the other day.

A fresh lettuce heart had been placed at the opening to the snail shell.

She sat back down and stabbed the tines of her fork into her cold zucchini with a goofy smile.

51

CAMILLE and Franck went together to buy a high-performance washing machine, and split the bill. Franck was delighted when the salesman retorted, “But Madame is absolutely right,” and he proceeded to call her darling all through the rest of the demonstration.

 
“The advantage of these combo appliances,” declaimed the salesman, “two-in-one, so to speak, is that you economize on space. We know only too well how it is for young couples trying to set up house these days.”

“Shall we tell him that we're a threesome in an apartment of four thousand square feet?” murmured Camille, touching his arm.

“Darling, please,” Franck replied, annoyed, “let me hear what the man has to say, all right?”

 
She insisted he hook it up before Philibert got back, “otherwise he'll be too stressed out,” and she spent an entire afternoon cleaning a small room next to the kitchen which must have been called the “laundry room” once upon a time . . .

 
She discovered piles and piles of sheets, embroidered dishcloths, tablecloths, aprons and napkins in honeycomb weave. Old pieces of hardened soap and products that were all dried out and shriveled inside lovely boxes: salt crystals, linseed oil, whiting, alcohol for pipe cleaning, Saint-Wandrille wax, Rémy starch, all soft to the touch like puzzle pieces made of velvet . . . An impressive collection of brushes of every size and bristle, a feather duster as lovely as a parasol, a box-wood grip for shaping gloves, and a sort of braided wicker racket for beating carpets.

Painstakingly she lined up all the treasures and committed them to a large sketchbook.

She'd decided to draw everything, so as to have something to offer Philibert the day he had to move out.

 
Every time she started tidying up somewhere, she inevitably ended up sitting cross-legged, immersed in huge hatboxes filled with letters and photos, and she spent hours on end with handsome mustachioed men in uniform, great ladies who had just stepped out of a painting by Renoir, and little boys dressed like little girls, right hand on a rocking horse at the age of five, on a hoop at the age of seven, and on a Bible at the age of twelve, shoulders turned slightly to show off the fine armband from their first communion, now that they were touched by grace.

Yes, she loved that place, and it was not unusual for her to glance at her watch and start suddenly: already time to gallop along the corridors of the métro, arrive at work and be told off by Super Josy pointing smugly at her watch. Bah.

 
“Where are you off to?”

“Work, I'm already way late.”

“Put on your coat, it's freezing.”

“Yes, Father. By the way—”

“What?”

“Philou's due back tomorrow.”

“Oh?”

“I'm taking the evening off. Will you be here?”

“I don't know.”

“Right.”

“Put a scarf on at—”

The door had already slammed.

 
Make up your mind, he frowned. When I try to hit on her, it's all wrong; when I tell her to dress warmly, she makes fun of me. She's killing me, that girl . . .

New year, same chores. Same incredibly heavy waxing machines, same vacuum cleaners forever jammed, same numbered buckets (“no more drama, girls!”), same bitterly hard-won products, same blocked sinks, same adorable Mamadou, same tired co-workers, same hyper Jojo. Nothing had changed.

 
Although she was in better shape, Camille had less enthusiasm. She'd left her stones at the door, had begun to work again, with a watchful eye on the daylight hours, and she no longer saw any reason to live life backwards. Morning was the time she was most productive, and how could she work in the morning when she never got to bed before two or three, exhausted by a job that was as physical as it was debilitating?

 
Her hands tingled, her brain was spilling over: Philibert was coming back, Franck was bearable, and the appeal of the apartment remained undeniable. She had an idea brewing in her head. A sort of fresco—no, not a fresco, the word was too pompous. An evocation, yes, that's it, an evocation. A chronicle, an imaginary biography of the place where she lived. There was so much material, there were so many memories. Not just objects. Not just photos but a mood. An atmosphere. Murmurings, a few lingering heartbeats. These volumes, oil canvases, arrogant moldings, porcelain light switches, exposed wires, metallic bedpans, little poultice jars, custom-made shoe trees, and all these faded, yellowed labels.