37 A NEW FEELING
37
A N EW F EELING
The doorbell rang. Roger, who was in bed, didn’t move a hair. It bothered him that they were ringing so persistently. Whoever it was wanted to wake him. Lazily, he grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand and looked at the time. Eight on the dot. He thought, “You’ll get tired of ringing, twit.” But Hulshoff barked more and more impertinently, and the tension between the doorbell and the dog continued to grow. He was surprised that Barbara hadn’t gotten up either. She must have returned from her work dinner so late that she’d laid down and fallen asleep. He didn’t remember her stopping by and saying, “Night, I’m here.” On the ninth ring, Roger got out of bed in a bad mood. He left his room, moved Hulshoff with his leg, and answered the intercom.
“What’s wrong? Is the building burning down?”
“Surprise!”
“Who is this?”
The receiver was staticky, Hulshoff wasn’t helping, a truck was unloading its cargo for an early morning delivery on the corner of Chappe and Tardieu, and he could barely hear what was being said from the street.
“Roger ... It’s Marcel.”
“Marcel?”
“Your brother, remember?”
“Shit, man. Come on up!”
Roger ran to his room to put on his boxers from the night before and a simple T-shirt. Barbara’s door was closed, so to warn her about the unexpected guest, he entered without knocking. There was no one there. The bed was made impeccably, and Barbara wasn’t hiding in her wardrobe, waiting to pop out and say, “Surprise!” Either she hadn’t slept there, or she’d woken up early and gotten her day started already. There was no trace of her. Not her phone, keys, or even a whiff of her perfume.
“Barbara?” he called out in a half-hearted voice.
She wasn’t in the kitchen either. Or in the bathroom. She’d disappeared.
“Hell, tete , what a welcome,” Marcel said once he was in the apartment.
He’d entered and found Roger drowsy, confused, and wearing boxers with a stretched-out waistband. Next to the giant cactus, they looked like two dunces. The plant was just as prickly as Marcel.
They gave each other two kisses.
“I wasn’t expecting you, Marcel. What are you doing here?”
“I have a room in this apartment, don’t you remember?”
“But just like that, without warning.” He wiped away an eye booger.
“I came from Barcelona. I took the flight before 6:00 a.m., and I thought if Barbara and Roger aren’t home ... I don’t have keys. You have my keys, right?”
“Of course.”
“Who’s this?”
Hulshoff was sniffing Marcel’s pant leg.
“It’s a long story. His name is ... It doesn’t matter. He belongs to the neighbor.”
The Labrador looked at the newcomer with the hope that he would throw him something to chew on. Jasper fed him better.
“She’s a beauty, this dog.”
“It’s a male.”
“And Barbara?”
“She’s a female, yes.”
Marcel laughed. Brothers get each other’s jokes right away. “What? She didn’t want to open the door for me either, huh?”
“She must be sleeping. Don’t talk so loudly.”
“You sleep in different rooms?”
“Sit down, tete , sit down.” Roger was uncomfortable. “I’ll take a shower, and then we’ll go out for a walk.”
“For breakfast, better.”
Marcel fell onto the red sofa. He did it noisily, the way men do once they reach middle age.
“So are you two together or what?”
“I told you to stop yelling.” He put his finger to his lips and looked toward Barbara’s room so his older brother could understand that he couldn’t talk openly at the moment.
“Yes or no?” Marcel persisted in a lower voice.
He doubted what to say. “I’ll tell you soon.”
He literally couldn’t talk about it. Suddenly, Roger didn’t understand what had happened the night before. Where was Barbara?
The shower woke him, but he couldn’t rinse out this new feeling: jealousy.
They went down to rue Véron on foot and sat on the terrace of Chez Richard, which only had three round tables for passersby. The wicker chairs, lined up with their backs against the restaurant window, looked onto a street with little life. Roger greeted the owner, who came out to attend to them with a napkin hanging from his arm.
“I didn’t know you were a morning restaurant too.”
“We can’t miss out on all the tourists that climb up Montmartre in the morning.”
“Or the ones that climb down,” Marcel quipped.
“I thought you only did lunch menus.”
Richard, who stood at the ready, didn’t have time for armchair psychologists. He wanted them to recite their order. Two café au laits, two croissants, and he ran off.
Marcel wandered from one subject to another, as if someone were winding him up. He wanted to know everything about Roger, about the pictures he’d been taking, and in general about Barbara, the landlady who’d been so dull with him and who, from what it seemed, had overcome her sadness with his brother. Suddenly, the lawyer wanted to talk. He told Roger stories about the case he’d won and the hailstorm that’d fallen at the airport in Barcelona just as it was time to board. Then, he realized he hadn’t said the most important thing.
“Did you know Mother had a fall?”
“Mom? No ...”
“A bad one. Like all hell in the street.”
“First I’m hearing of it.”
“She was walking by herself to the butcher’s shop, with her cane, and she tripped on a step and—”
“You saw her?”
“Yes, the scraped knee and the wrist sprain. The wounds. The worst thing is that it’s lowered her spirits.”
“Stop it. Is she scared?”
“Above all else, now she’s got it in her head that if another one of these falls happens, she’s done for.”
“She didn’t tell me anything. It’s weird ...”
“But have you called her?”
“Every week.”
“Roger.”
“Every ten days. Or fifteen, it doesn’t matter. We’ve been really busy here.”
“I can imagine.” Marcel laughed through his nose.
Roger caught the implication. “No, man, no. With the snowfall and all that, I mean. You should have seen it. It was impressive. In any case, Mom could have told me.”
“You know how she is. She keeps it all to herself.”
“That’s very Bazin of her.”
“Absolutely. But fucking call her, man. It’s not hard to give her a little call once a week.”
“Have you come to scold me or—”
“No. I’m just worried about your half of the inheritance.”
“Me? She’ll give me double what she’s giving you. You’re getting nothing, and I’m getting double nothing.”
They laughed happily. Roger, finishing the last crumb of his croissant, got up with a jolt.
“I’m going inside to pee.”
He acted as if he was going to the bathroom. He looked from one side to the other to see if Laurence was around. He wanted to see her that morning.
“In the back, up the stairs.” Richard gave him the directions and turned on the light in the hallway.
Everything in the hallway was falling apart, dark. Roger had to walk carefully to avoid knocking into a bucket in the middle of the path, a trap for customers.
“Does she come in for work later?”
“Who?”
“The girl ...”
“Laurence? Ha!”
The blunt laugh confused Roger. “Is she out today?”
“She doesn’t work here anymore. She’s something, that one.”
“Oh no? Has something happened to her?”
Richard got closer to confide in him.
“She was a weird one, that girl. She had a lot of problems. Did you notice how she was always a sourpuss?”
“She left?”
“By force.”
“You fired her?” He was surprised. “But why?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. I don’t even want to say it. Forty years in the kitchen, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I swear, I’d never seen anything like it.”
Roger waited for the restaurant owner to continue, with his hands in his pockets. Fearing Richard wouldn’t tell him on his own, he prompted him to. “But what’d she do?”
It didn’t matter that the establishment was empty. Richard got even closer to him.
“She spit in a customer’s dish.”
“Sorry?”
“I saw it in person.”
Roger couldn’t believe it. “But why?”
But Richard hadn’t even asked Laurence for her reasoning. He hadn’t wanted an explanation, and he told her to remove her apron and get out of there. Without compensation, negotiation, or unemployment ... to the street!
Roger returned to his table, drying his hands on his pants. He couldn’t find any paper towels.
“What’s up with you?” Marcel asked.
“Me?” He didn’t know what his brother was referring to.
“The photos. Did you come to Paris to take pictures or to fuck?”
“Are they mutually exclusive?”
Marcel the comedian became serious. “No one told you?”
“You’re such a dumbass, tete .”
After laughing, Marcel persisted, “The photographs, I was saying. How is it? Have you made it worth it?”
Roger rubbed his chin. “It’s going ... I’m making the most of my scholarship, I think. In fact—” He was dying to tell his brother, but at the same time he didn’t want to tell anyone. “I’m preparing something. It’s a project. I don’t want to say it out loud. It’s a secret.”
“Now you’re the big artist.”
“It’s not like that. I met a woman at a party in the Canal Saint-Martin. A party for the publisher Barbara works for. We went together, actually, and Barbara introduced me to her. She told me she was a gallery owner or that she had contacts, and I don’t know. At the end of the party, she told me that if I ever wanted to show her my postcards, she’d happily look at them.”
“Postcards.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Contemptuously, yes.”
“Let’s just chalk it up to a social joke. A little overboard, the woman. Maybe, yes. In this environment and in Paris ... Everyone at that party shit gold. But I’ve been showing her things over email. She’s seen pictures, and she’s interested in doing something together. Something different, and the project, if it turns out well, would be awesome.”
“And it’s a secret?”
“I don’t want Barbara to know. Not until she sees it.”
“But I’m tete , I’m your brother ...”
“I’d prefer not to talk about it. You know how I am.”
“Like our mother, yes. Stubborn as mules, both of you. Not even a hint, Roger?”
“A hint wouldn’t help.”
“Try me.”
“Fine.” He thought about it. “I’ll say it in one word: ‘bike.’”
“‘Bike’?” Marcel acted as though he was thinking about it for a while. “I’ve got it. The Tour de France.”
“Cold. I’m not going to tell you any more.”
With the circumlocutions of a lawyer, brotherly blackmail, jokey arguments, Marcel tried everything but couldn’t manage to get any other information. Roger’s lips were sealed.
“What about you?” Roger asked, changing the subject. “Why’d you come back to Paris like this, without saying anything?”
“I’ve got good news. I’m coming to pick up my things. I’m leaving. They’re sending me to London.”
“To London? For three months?”
“For a year. Right now. An office on Fleet Street, the kind with three hundred lawyers and a mother superior, needs someone with my profile. Four languages; no family ties; able to travel; dominates the mergers of companies, complicated trades, and international issues. So I’m going.”
“Bravo. London is even better than Paris.”
“The bad news is that from here on out, you have to pay for the room on rue Chappe if you want it.”
“Naturally.” The next words came from deep inside Roger. “Between me and you, if I stay, I hope she doesn’t charge me.”
“You’re fucking her to save on rent?”
“No, dammit. It’s not like that. You think everyone is like you?”
“What do you mean?” Marcel asked, acting offended, but also like he enjoyed whatever image his brother had of him.
“I’ll explain it to you. The other day, Barbara said she’d like for me to stay with her. To live. She didn’t say it like that, outright, but it was understood.”
“And? What do you think?”
Roger’s grimace revealed it. “Today, exactly today, is not the day to talk about it.”
“But how old is Barbara? Isn’t she much older than you?”
“Stop it. Not that much. She’s eight years older.”
“Eight years older? And you’re considering it?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Have you thought about the fact that when you’re fifty-nine, she’ll be sixty-seven?”
“Marcel, dude. First of all, you’ll be in your sixties before anyone else. Second, no one can guarantee they’ll be home for dinner tomorrow. Thousands of things can happen between now and then. Third of all, with this kind of old-fashioned attitude, I don’t think you’ll win many cases. Not here, or in London, or anywhere. And fourth—”
“Now, what’s this sad face you’re wearing?”
“Look, I’ll tell you. I met Barbara’s grandmother, and if at eighty, Barbara has the same eyes and vitality that woman has, I’d love to be with her.”
“Roger, you’re starting to worry me. Let’s see if you go after the grandmother next.”
“Oh, Marcel, you’re a pig. You make the same jokes you made when you were twenty.”
“Hey, it’s your problem. I’m just warning you of the dangers of life, as your lawyer.”
Right as they stopped jabbing at one another, Richard came to take away their plates and mugs. Marcel left a ten-euro bill on the table, and they headed back home. On the way, at around rue des Trois Frères, Roger received a text on his phone.
Where are you?
It was short. Barbara was asking where he was. She. The one who’d gone out for a work dinner and hadn’t come back. Roger didn’t know if he should respond, or what he should respond with. He heard Marcel chattering away like a twit, yapping and yapping, but he couldn’t follow what he was saying. Not anymore. As they got closer to the corner near the house, Roger could feel that Barbara was upstairs and guessed she’d want to talk, but he didn’t know where the conversation would take them. Barbara, who, from all appearances, couldn’t stand men, all of a sudden ... Maybe she’d reveal that she spent the night with the editor from Norway, or Denmark, or Sweden, or wherever he was from, whom she’d gone to dinner with. He couldn’t wait to answer her message. But with what?
“Shut up for a second, please. Look, one thing, Marcel.” They stopped in the middle of the street. “You can’t come up. I need to talk to Barbara. Alone. Something happened last night, and if you come up now, it’ll be ... I’m asking one thing. One day, I’ll tell you. But I’m asking you to take a walk. Go wherever you want. See the painters in the square. I don’t know.”
“What do I say to them? Make me a charcoal caricature?”
“It’s not funny. I’m asking you, please. Don’t come back until it’s time for lunch.”
Marcel looked at his watch. “Walk for two hours? At least they eat lunch early here.”
“Please, tete .”
His brother understood that, whatever it was, he’d be in the way, and so he listened to Roger.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll come back after lunch. I’ll call a friend from the office.”
“Thanks.”
Roger kissed him on the cheek and turned around. He took out his phone and responded to the message as he went up the stairs.
I’m coming.
Just as short. And noncommittal. Informative.
He went up to the fifth floor without taking any steps for granted. He could only imagine what version of Barbara he’d find. Sorry and on the defensive, chatty and sincere, or not too much of anything. Maybe she’d act like nothing had happened. And if she didn’t bring up the subject, what should he do? Should he let it go, scratch the itch, or swallow the bitter pill and live to see another day? He put the key in the door with trepidation.
“Hey, it’s me,” he said, in a neutral-sounding voice.
He made sure not to slam the door when he closed it. Barbara was sitting on the red couch, motionless. Her back was facing him.
“Hello.”
It sounded like she’d been napping. Roger didn’t do any of what he thought he’d do. He saw she was weak and walked to her, kneeling on the floor. Her hand was wet. She’d been crying. Her swollen eyes and red nose gave it away. It didn’t seem like she was trying to hide it, either.
“Hey, what happened?” It came out of him in a paternal tone. “Tell me as much as you want. I didn’t see you this morning, and ... I won’t judge you, Barbara. I’m not one to do that.”
She took her time. She collected herself to say a handful of things. She wasn’t the type of woman to unleash storms. She removed her hand from under Roger’s and put it on top of his. She breathed deeply, trying to find the words.
“I had to go see Mamie Margaux.” A tear was sliding down her cheek. “I had to tell her the bad news.”
“What happened?”
“Jasper died.”