The Reader on the 6.27 (12 page)

“It’s going to work,” she said, crossing her fingers.

To be honest, all I wanted to do was take to my heels, go home and snuggle under the duvet with a good book. Instead, I did as all the other girls did: I sat down at the first free table I could find and ordered a mint cordial. The first guy who came and sat opposite me told me he was a teacher of something or other. He did nothing but talk about himself, without asking me a single question. When the bell rang seven minutes later, I hadn’t even been able to get a word in. The only two words I’d uttered were hello and goodbye. For seven minutes I’d been sitting opposite a navel. A second guy sat down in the still-warm seat. Then a third. And every seven minutes, the bell rang throughout the bar, like a guillotine coming down. Next. It reminded me of a polite, friendly merry-go-round.
Hello ma’am, goodbye ma’am, thank you ma’am.
A sort of country dance where you have to change partners each time the moron holding the broom handle thumps the floor with it. Despite meeting seven men, I confess I was left feeling hungry, even though I hadn’t come here particularly famished. None of them seemed attractive enough for me to aspire to being carried off on his white steed. When they were OK physically, there was something wrong mentally, and vice versa. Some of them were very nice, like the cultured, interesting young man who had travelled widely but who had a gross, hairy wart on his chin which overshadowed all the rest. During the seven minutes, that’s all I saw, that bulbous growth covered in hideous, thick black hairs. On the form I just wrote “off-putting wart”, before going on to the next. There was this other guy – the third, I think – not bad-looking, very tall, but whose lisp gave his conversation a pathetically funny twist, a conversation in which each “s” was torture for the poor guy. The high point was when he told me his job. I simply couldn’t stop the giggles that I’d managed to stifle from erupting, which put an early end to our date. Staring down into my mint cordial, I took advantage of the two minutes’ respite before the jingling bell to pull myself together. But shit, when you’ve got a lisp, you don’t want to be a “thothial thientitht”! My fifth was called Adrien and he was so uptight that I was convinced he must be autistic. Unlike the first, who hadn’t let me get a word in edgeways, this one sat there silent as the tomb for the four hundred and twenty seconds of our date. Four hundred and twenty seconds during which he writhed on his chair and kneaded his hands as if trying to stop them flying away. When I asked him a question, he turned as red as if he were constipated and straining to have a shit. Constipated types have always made me feel uneasy. And in my job, there’s no shortage. As Aunty always says, “You can expect anything from a constipated person, even nothing. A constipated person is to the toilet as a mute is to singing, and vice versa.” The fourth and sixth were from the same mould. Middle-class, straight-A types and the manners of upwardly mobile executives, the sort who change their shirt and shave twice a day. As for the last one, he had a dick for a brain. His only concern seemed to be to find out whether I was vaginal or clitoral. I told him that my star sign was Pisces with ascendant Aquarius, but sex-wise I wasn’t yet sure where I stood. And I made it clear to that jerk that the day I made up my mind, I certainly wouldn’t be calling on him to check where my orgasm was going to come from. In the end, I found myself with an empty glass and seven appraisals that read like a chamber of horrors. 1: Navel of the world; 2: Off-putting wart; 3: Lisp; 4: Suit; 5: Chronic constipation; 6: Another suit; 7: Sex maniac. I had to go home by taxi because Josy was nowhere near done. After this first round, she had five requests. Five out of seven. Whereas two of my dates wanted to meet me again, the wart and suit number two. I left without replying. The latest Stephen King was waiting by my bed.
’

Guylain remembered with amusement the first time he had skimmed through document number 70. The ten-minute read had been agonizing. A round of Russian roulette, tortured by the possibility that the Prince Charming Julie dreamed of might appear at any moment and steal her heart away. He had reached the end of that entry with a sigh of relief.

24

His head on the pillow, Guylain lay watching Rouget swimming round and round in his bowl. What dream could he be pursuing that kept him going without ever giving up? Perhaps he was chasing himself without realizing it, his head in the slipstream created by his own movement? During the past few days, Guylain had been afraid that he too was pursuing nothing but an illusion. The previous evening, his visit to Belle Épine in Thiais had been unsuccessful. A week of fruitless searching, chasing a phantom. He only believed that Julie was real because of her writing, just as Rouget believed there was an intruder in his bowl from swimming in its wake all day long.

Guylain had arranged to meet Yvon at the taxi rank at the top of the avenue. As usual, the security guard wore a beautifully tailored suit and proudly sported a white carnation in his buttonhole. The two men clambered into the taxi booked ten minutes earlier.

‘
Drive on, my good coachman, avoiding jolts and bends.

With your expert handling take us to journey’s end.

Be lively and alert. Advance, for pity’s sake,

And lead this carriage forth, our gold is here at stake.
’

The driver shot them an anxious look in his rear mirror before setting off. It took three red lights before the frown on his forehead disappeared completely.

With his immaculate pencil moustache, the majestic way he held his head and his impeccable dress, Yvon immediately made a strong impression on the fair sex at Magnolia Court. Even Josette, after rapidly depositing her excess lipstick on Guylain’s cheeks, was unable to resist the desire to join the cluster that had formed around the newcomer. When Yvon spoke, between hand-kissings, his resonant bass voice charmed even the most impervious of the ladies:

‘
Ne’er did such a manor in these lands far away

Do me the great honour of having me to stay.
’

‘Oh! Monsieur Grinder, you flatter us,’ breathed Josette Delacôte, choked with joy.

Welcome to the club of maimed surnames
, thought Guylain. As tall Yvon strode regally towards the hall, surrounded by this court already won over to his cause, Guylain followed the procession, smiling, relegated to the role of footman that now seemed to be his. Yvon’s voice boomed through the hall, sending a thrill through the two rows of slumped bodies on either side of the door:

‘
Lord, how great this hall is, so stately and so fine,

No entry is so close to the heavens sublime.

Happy are the tenants that may enjoy the chance

To have so fine a place to finish their last dance.
’

Guylain feared for a moment that this noisy intrusion into the perpetual fog that filled the heads of the residents might cause a stroke or a heart attack. Even if no one contradicted Yvon, Guylain wasn’t convinced that all those poor drooling wretches in their incontinence pads were in a state to appreciate how lucky they were to finish their dance in such beautiful surroundings. After a tour of the upstairs, where some of the bolder residents insisted on showing the new visitor their rooms, Yvon commentated his visit in two succinct lines:

‘
The apartments I’ve found are much like the tenants:

In some, distress abounds, others are quite pleasant.
’

Although the rhyme scheme sometimes required a certain poetic licence that did not always reflect reality, Guylain had to admit that his assessment of the place and its occupants was spot on. Monique gave herself the honour of introducing Yvon to the audience, de-baptising him once by calling him Yvan Gerber and then Johan Gruber, before dubbing him Vernon Pinder, which was the name she finally adopted. Poor Yvon was no longer quite so high and mighty seeing his name mangled by the Delacôte sister. Guylain mounted the podium to read an excerpt from Julie. From the outset, it was apparent that he didn’t have the audience’s attention. Even though they sat silently amid the usual coughs, scraping of chairs and tapping of sticks, they were still unruly in anticipation of Yvon’s performance. Guylain decided to curtail his reading. End of the first half, and now the headline act. The king of the alexandrine pushed away the armchair that Guylain offered him with a theatrical gesture, reminding him of one of the fundamental rules for reciting poetry:

‘
No matter who’s speaking, it is no mystery

One must be upstanding so the air can flow free.
’

So with no script and no other safety net than his phenomenal memory, Yvon Grimbert, alias Vernon Pinder, subjected the ears of the astounded audience to a first blast. Phaedra’s speech declaring her love for Hippolytus, Act II, Scene 5:

‘
Ah, yes for Theseus

I languish and I long, not as the Shades

Have seen him, of a thousand different forms

The fickle lover, and of Pluto’s bride

The would-be ravisher, but faithful, proud

E’en to a slight disdain, with youthful charms . . .
’

One speech ran into the next, as Yvon switched with virtuosity from a ranting Don Diego to an anguished Andromaque, then an impassioned Britannicus to a patriotic Iphigenia. Without taking her eyes off Yvon for a second, Monique asked Guylain what Yvon’s profession was.

‘Alexandrophile,’ he replied without batting an eyelid.

‘Alexandrophile,’ repeated the old lady softly, her eyes shining with admiration.

Guylain made himself scarce before the end of the session, leaving his friend in the care of the Delacôte sisters who had invited Yvon to have lunch with them. By way of acceptance, the thespian came out with a verse of his own composition:

‘
Never would I dream that this fortune could be mine

To share in such feasting in company so fine.
’

Less than ten minutes later, Guylain emerged from the taxi and dived into the station. Évry 2, its 100,000 square metres and its public toilet awaited him.

25

The suburban railway was deserted early on a Saturday afternoon. Shaken about by the train, Guylain spent the journey time thinking about Julie. What would he do if he actually found her?

‘Hello, umm . . . er, my name’s Guylain Vignolles, I’m thirty-six years old and I wanted to meet you.’ He could not allow himself the luxury of ruining the one chance he might have of making the young woman’s acquaintance by stuttering idiotically. There was an alternative solution which was to write a few ardent words in her visitors’ book. That might work but it was also taking the risk of seeing his declaration sandwiched between ‘Your loos are shit hot!’ and ‘Toilets nice and clean but the flush is a bit stiff’. The train pulled into the station, jolting Guylain out of his reverie.

Guylain turned up his collar as he came out of the station. There was a chill in the air despite the big, bright sun shining in the sky. The openwork cylindrical metal tower enclosing a big moving red ball with the shopping centre’s name on it towered above the rooftops, beckoning him, like a lighthouse sitting on the town. Évry 2 was less than five minutes’ walk away. As soon as he was through the sliding doors, Guylain slowed down, abandoning the brisk pace that had brought him to this point. He felt the urge to spin out this moment and delay the confrontation with the reality against which all his hopes risked being dashed once again.

He strolled idly up the central mall, oblivious of the crowds milling around him. He pictured Julie walking down this same mall first thing in the morning, alone, her footsteps echoing through the vast, empty cathedral. He was at that point in his musings when, above the faint buzz of the horde and the background music blaring out of the loudspeakers suspended from the ceiling, he made out the sound of a waterfall. Close by, a majestic fountain was spewing out its water in continuous heavy jets through the mouths of a group of four marble silurids at its centre. The voice of reason immediately tempered his mounting elation, reminding him that in any self-respecting shopping centre there was a fountain, as there was a children’s merry-go-round, a waffle-seller and a central escalator. But he cocked a snook at Miss Killjoy and allowed his heart to skip a beat. The fountain was at the intersection of three main malls, just as Julie had described. Right or left? A woman with a little girl trotted off to the right, the mother entreating the child to hold on, they were almost there. Guylain followed them. As he passed the fountain, he flung into the water of dubious limpidity a nice fat two-euro coin, to ward off bad luck. Less than thirty metres further on, the characteristic toilets sign glowed brightly. Miss Killjoy once again burst into his mind to try and dampen his excitement. Yes, he knew. It just indicated where the toilets were and didn’t spell out ‘Welcome to Julie, the lavatory attendant’s place’. All the same, so far, everything had been exactly as described. A staircase with around fifteen steps led down to the lower ground floor. The place was tiled from floor to ceiling. 14,717, wagered Guylain, crossing his fingers. To the right of the entrance was the camping table. A few magazines with half their pages torn out were scattered on it. A handful of small change lay in the china saucer. The chair next to the table was empty. A jacket was slung over the back of it.

She appeared as he was making for the men’s section. She was coming out of one of the cubicles, a floor cloth and mop in her pink-gloved hands. He was able to watch her at his leisure as she hurried over to the cupboard to put away her equipment. On the short side, well-padded, she had a face that, in her youth, had probably broken more than one heart. Her attractive ash-grey hair was scraped back into a tight bun. Guylain shot one last look at this woman on whom his illusions had been dashed before slipping into cubicle number 8. He sank down onto the seat which he would have sworn had received the buttocks of the 10 a.m. lard-arse not long before, and held his head in his hands. He had so believed that this was the one. He could have cried with disappointment.