Platform (14 page)

'I almost knocked on your bedroom door that night, New Year's Eve, but in the end I didn't have the nerve. By then, I was convinced that nothing would happen between us; the worst thing was that I couldn't even bring myself to hate you for it. On package tours people talk to each other a lot, but it's a forced camaraderie; they know perfectly well they'll never see each other again. It's very rare for them to have a sexual relationship.'

'You think so?'

'I know so; there have been studies on the subject. It's even true of 18-30 holiday clubs. It's a big problem for them, because that's their whole selling point. Numbers have been falling consistently for ten years now, even though prices are dropping. The only possible explanation is that it's become more or less impossible to have a sexual relationship on holiday. The only destinations making any money are the ones with a large homosexual clientele like Corfu or Ibiza.'

'You're very up on all this . . .' I said, surprised.

'Of course, I work in the tourist industry.' She smiled. 'That's another thing about package tours, people don't talk about their professional lives much. It's a sort of recreational parenthesis, completely focused on what the organisers call the "pleasure of discovery". Tacitly, everyone agrees not to talk about serious subjects like work and sex.'

'Where do you work?' 'Nouvelles Frontieres.'

'So you were there in a professional capacity? To do a report or something like that?'

'No, I really was on holiday. I got a big discount, obviously, but I took it as holiday time. I've been working there for five years and this was the first time I've been away with them.'

As she made a tomato and mozzarella salad, Valerie talked to me about her work. In March 1990, three months before her bac, she started to wonder what she was going to do with her education - and, more generally, with her life. After much effort, her brother had managed to get a place on a geology course at Nancy; he had just got his degree. His career as a geological engineer would probably take him into the mining sector or the oil rigs; either way, he'd be a long way from France. He was keen on travelling. She too was keen on travelling, well, more or less; eventually she decided to take a BTS diploma in tourism. She didn't really think the intellectual commitment necessary for university was in her nature.

It was a mistake and one that she quickly realised. The level of her BTS class seemed extremely low to her, she passed her continuous assessment without the slightest effort and could reasonably have expected to get her diploma without even thinking about it. At the same time, she enrolled in a course which would give her the equivalent of a DEUG university diploma in literature and human sciences. Once she had passed her BTS, she began a masters' in sociology. Here too she was quickly disappointed. It was an interesting field, there must have been discoveries to be made; but the methodologies suggested to them and the theories advanced seemed to her to be ridiculously simplistic: the whole thing smacked of ideology, imprecision and amateurism. She quit her course halfway through the academic year without a qualification and found a job as a travel agent at a branch of Kuoni in Rennes. After a couple of weeks, just as she was about to rent a studio flat, she realised: the trap was sprung; from now on she was in the world of work.

She stayed a year at the Rennes branch of Kuoni, where she proved to be a very good saleswoman. 'It wasn't difficult,' she said, 'All you had to do was get the customers to talk a bit, take an interest in them. It's pretty rare, in fact, people who take an interest in others.' Then the management had offered her a position as assistant tour planner at their head office in Paris. It involved working on concepts for the tours, preparing the itineraries, the excursions, negotiating rates with hoteliers and local contractors. She had proved to be pretty good at this too.

Six months later she replied to a Nouvelles Frontieres ad offering a similar sort of position. It was at that point that her career really took off. They had put her in a team with Jean-Yves Frochot, a young business graduate who basically knew nothing at all about tourism. He took to her immediately, trusted her and although in theory he was her boss, he gave her a lot of room for initiative.

'The good thing about Jean-Yves is that he was ambitious on my behalf? Every time I've needed to negotiate a pay rise or a promotion, he's negotiated it for me. Now, he's Head of Products worldwide - he's responsible for supervising the entire range of Nouvelles Frontieres tours and I'm still his assistant.'

'You must be pretty well paid.'

'Forty thousand francs a month. Well, it's calculated in euros now. A bit more than six thousand euros.'

I looked at Valerie, surprised, 'I wasn't expecting that . . .' I said.

'That's because you've never seen me in a suit.'

'You have a suit?'

'There's not much point, I do almost all my work by phone. But, if I need to, yes, I can wear a suit. I even have a pair of suspenders. We can try them out some time, if you like.'

It was then, somewhat incredulously, that I realised that I was going to see Valerie again, and that we would probably be happy together. It was so unexpected, this joy, that I wanted to cry; I had to change the subject.

'What's he like, Jean-Yves?'

'Normal. Married, two kids. He works a lot, he takes work home at weekends. I suppose he's a typical young executive, pretty intelligent, pretty ambitious; but he's nice, not at all fucked up. I get along well with him.'

'I don't know why, but I'm glad you're rich. It's not important, really, but it makes me happy.'

'It's true I'm successful, I have a good salary; but I pay 40 per cent tax and my rent is ten thousand francs a month. I'm not so sure I've done all that well: if my results fall off, they wouldn't think twice about firing me; it's happened before. If I had shares, then yes, I really would be rich. In the beginning, Nouvelles Frontieres was just a discount flight agency. If they've become the biggest tour operator in France, it's thanks to the concepts and the value-for-money of the tours; to a large extent to our work, Jean-Yves's and mine. In ten years, the value of the company has increased twenty-fold; since Jacques Maillot still holds a 30 per cent share, I can honestly say that he's grown rich because of me.'

'Have you ever met him?'

'Several times; I don't like him. On the face of it, he's a stupid trendy Catholic populist, with his multi-coloured ties and his mopeds; but deep down he's a ruthless, hypocritical bastard. Jean-Yves had a call from a head-hunter before Christmas; he's probably met up with him by now to find out more. I promised I'd call him when I got back.'

'Well call him then, it's important.'

'Yes . . .' she seemed a bit doubtful, the mention of Jacques Maillot had depressed her. 'My life is important too. Actually, I feel like making love again.'

'I don't know if I'll be able to get it up straight away.'

'Then go down on me. It'll do me good.'

She got up, took off her panties and settled herself on the sofa. I knelt in front of her, parted her lips and started to lick her clitoris gently. 'Harder . . .' she murmured. I slipped a finger into her arse, pressed my face to her and kissed the nub, massaging it with my lips. 'Oh, yes. . .' she said. I increased the force of my kisses. Suddenly, without my expecting it, she came, her whole body shuddering violently.

'Come here to me . . .' I sat on the sofa. She snuggled against me, laying her head on my thighs. 'When I asked you what Thai women have that we don't, you didn't really answer; you just showed me that interview with the director of the marriage bureau.'

'What he said was true: a lot of men are afraid of modern women, because all they want is a nice little wife to look after the house and take care of the kids. That sort of thing hasn't disappeared really, it's just that in the West it's become impossible to express such a desire; that's why they marry Asian girls.'

'Okay . . .' She thought for a moment. 'But you're not like that; I can tell that it doesn't bother you at all that I have a high-powered job, a large salary; I don't get the impression that that scares you at all. But still you went off to the massage parlours and you didn't even try to pick me up. That's what I don't understand. What have the girls over there got? Do they really make love better than we do?'

Her voice had changed slightly on these last words; I was rather touched and it took me a minute before I could answer. 'Valerie,' I said at last, 'I have never met anyone ■who makes love as well as you; what I've felt since last night is almost unbelievable.' I said nothing for a moment before adding: 'You can't possibly understand, but you're an exception. It's very rare now to find a woman who feels pleasure and who wants to give pleasure. On the whole, seducing a woman you don't know, fucking her, has become a source of irritations and problems. When you think of all the tedious conversations you have to put up with to get a girl into bed, only to find out that she's a second-rate lover who bores you to fuck with her problems, goes on at you about her exes - incidentally giving you the impression that you're not exactly up to scratch - and with whom you absolutely must spend the rest of the night at the very least, it's easy to see why men might prefer to save themselves the trouble by paying a small fee. As soon as they're a bit older or a bit more experienced, men prefer to steer clear of love; they find it easier just to go and. find a whore. Actually, not a Western whore, they're not worth the effort, they're real human debris, and in any case, most of the year the men haven't got time, they've got too much work. So, most of them do nothing; and some of them, from time to time, treat themselves to a little sex tourism. And that's the best possible scenario: at least there's still a little human contact in going to visit a whore. There're also all those guys who find it easier just to jerk off on the internet or watching porn films. As soon as your cock has shot its little load, you're perfectly happy.'

'I see . . .' she said after a long silence. 'I see what you're saying. And you don't think that men or women are capable of changing?'

'I don't think we can go back to the way things were, no. What will probably happen is that women will become much more like men. For the moment, they're still very hung up on romance; whereas at heart, men don't give a shit about romance, they just want to fuck. Seduction only appeals to a few guys who haven't got particularly exciting jobs and nothing else of interest in their lives. As women attach more importance to their professional lives and personal projects, they'll find it easier to pay for sex too; and they'll turn to sex tourism. It's possible for women to adapt to male values; they sometimes find it difficult, but they can do it; history has proved it.'

'So, all in all, things are in a bad way.'

'A very bad way . . .' I agreed solemnly.

'So, we were lucky.'

'I was lucky to meet you, yes.'

'Me too . . .' she said, looking me in the eyes. 'I was lucky too. The men I know are a disaster, not one of them believes in love; so they give you this big spiel about friendship, affection, a whole load of stuff that doesn't commit them to anything. I've got to the point where I can't stand the word 'friendship' any more, it makes me physically sick. Or there's the other lot, the ones who get married, who get hitched as early as possible and think about nothing but their careers afterwards. You obviously weren't one of those; but I also immediately sensed that you would never talk to me about friendship, that you would never be that vulgar. From the very beginning I hoped we would sleep together, that something important would happen; but it was possible that nothing would happen, in fact it was more than likely.' She stopped and sighed in irritation. 'Okay . . .' she said wearily 'I'd probably better go and call Jean-Yves.'

I went into the bedroom to get dressed while she was on the phone. 'Yeah, the holiday was great . . .' I heard her say. A little later she yelled: 'How much? . . .' When I came back into the room she was holding the receiver looking thoughtful; she had not yet dressed.

'Jean-Yves met the guy from the recruitment agency,' she said. 'They've offered him a hundred and twenty thousand francs a month. They're prepared to take me as well; according to him, they're prepared to go as high as eighty thousand. He has a meeting tomorrow to discuss the job.'

'Where would you be working?' 'It's with the leisure division of the Aurore group.' 'Is it a big company?'

'Too right it is; it's the biggest hotel chain in the world.'

Chapter 2

Being able to understand a customer's behaviour in order to categorise him more effectively, offering him the right product at the right time, but above all persuading him that the product he is offered is adapted to his needs: that is what all

companies dream of.

Jean-Louis Barma,
What Companies Dream Of

Jean-Yves woke at five in the morning, looked over at his wife who was still sleeping. They had spent a terrible weekend with his parents - his wife couldn't stand the countryside. Nicolas, his ten-year-old son, loathed the Loiret too, as he couldn't bring his computer there; and he didn't like his grandparents, he thought they smelled. It was true that his father was slipping, increasingly, it seemed he was unable to look after himself, scarcely interested in anything apart from his rabbits. The only tolerable aspect of these weekends was his daughter, Angelique: at three, she was still capable of going into raptures over cows or chickens; but she was teething at the moment and had spent the greater part of the nights crying and whimpering. Once they got back, after three hours stuck in traffic jams, Audrey had decided to go out with some friends. He had heated up something from the freezer while he watched some mediocre American film about an autistic serial killer - it was apparently based on a true story. The man had been the first mentally ill person to be executed in the state of Nebraska for more than sixty years. His son hadn't wanted any dinner, he had immediately launched himself into a game of Total Annihilation - or maybe it was Mortal Kombat II, he got them mixed up. From time to time, he went into his daughter's room to try and quieten her howls. She fell asleep around one o'clock; Audrey still wasn't home.