Chapter 4 #2
“What do I owe you?” asked Thomas as he stood up.
“Lunch sometime. But if you could get me tickets to the Verdi concert at Garnier at the end of the month, you’d have my eternal gratitude.”
Sylvain walked Thomas to the door of his office and patted his shoulder, repeating that everything would be back to normal soon, if it wasn’t already.
Back on the street, Thomas felt lighter on his feet. To banish the last hint of doubt, he took out his phone and called his ex-girlfriend.
“Thomas?” she asked, surprised.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to bother you, especially if you’re with someone, but I have an important question to ask and it won’t take long.
Did you come to see me in my dressing room after the concert last night?
I can’t figure out if it was part of a nightmare or if it was real.
I’m leaning toward nightmare, even though you seemed real—I mean, I thought you did.
You looked stunning, but what you said was so surreal that I haven’t been sure since I woke up this morning.
Especially since your visit wasn’t even the strangest thing that happened in my surreal day.
But it was part of it, and I just wanted to make sure. You understand?”
There was a long silence, and Thomas wondered if she had hung up on him.
“Sophie?”
“I’m here.” She sighed. “You know what, Thomas? Maybe I made a huge mistake in letting you go. I should have been more patient, because guys as twisted and wonderful as you don’t come along every day. Honestly, I’m still not sure if I should feel relief, or regret.”
Then she hung up.
Thomas realized she hadn’t answered his question. Maybe he hadn’t asked it clearly enough?
As he kept walking, he decided it would be best not to think about any of it anymore. Better to forget his hypnotic day, as Sylvain had called it, and focus on tonight’s concerto.
He took advantage of a few rays of sunshine on the terrace of Les Deux Magots, where he ordered a salad.
When the waiter returned to the kitchen, Thomas went to buy a paper from the newsstand next door.
He then returned to his place and thanked the couple next to him for watching his jacket and bag.
He was enjoying his beer when he heard a sigh behind him.
“Psychiatrists are so full of shit! If your conscience is as weighty as good old Marcel, your thoughts must be heavy indeed. Ego and superego. Absolute nonsense.”
Thomas refused to answer his father. He paid for his lunch and put on his jacket, then picked up his newspaper and casually crossed Boulevard Saint-Germain to get to the taxi stand. He climbed into a ?koda and asked the driver to take him to the Salle Pleyel.
The car was driving down Rue Bonaparte when Raymond appeared in the passenger seat and turned around to talk to Thomas.
“First of all, you and I were never in competition with one another. And second, you never had trouble with authority in school. I should know since I attended all the parent-teacher meetings.”
“No, you didn’t. Mom did,” corrected Thomas under his breath.
“Fair enough, but still—the ‘wounds of childhood’? Let’s just summon the lesions of adolescence while we’re at it!
And the scars of old age too—I know all about that one, from tangible life experience.
My profession was pretty tangible too. When you’re operating on someone, there’s nothing subjective about it.
Either you cut or you don’t, and then you sew them back up, that’s it. ”
Thomas started to hum while he looked out the window, like a child refusing to listen.
“Would you like me to turn on the radio?” The driver looked a bit unnerved.
“No, it’s fine,” Thomas answered. “I prefer silence, thanks.”
“Was that directed at me?” asked his father.
“Who else would it be directed at? Didn’t you hear Sylvain say I hadn’t completed the grieving process? And by the way . . . your criticism of psychiatrists is pathetic.”
“Have you got some kind of psychological problem?” asked the driver, a hint of worry in his voice.
“See what you’ve gotten me into?” Thomas complained to his father.
“I didn’t get you into anything,” protested the driver. “You’re the one talking to me.”
“Who was calling who this morning in your apartment? ‘Dad? Dad?’ I had given you your space so you could get a good night’s sleep. Your mother’s the one who woke you up, not me.”
“She woke me up from a nightmare that I thought was over!”
“We’re pretty close to Pompidou hospital. I can drop you off, if you’d like,” offered the driver. “We’re less than ten minutes away. There’s no traffic.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“If you say so, but you don’t exactly seem well. It’s your call. But no mental breakdowns in my taxi, okay?”
“I’m sorry, I was practicing my lines for a play.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” The driver sighed in relief. “What play? My wife loves the theater.”
“A Father’s Past. A complicated story about a father-son relationship.”
“Go ahead, joke about it,” Raymond cut in. “Mock me all you want. But if you wanted to kill your father, the way psychiatrists always suggest, you missed your chance. I’m already dead.”
“Hilarious.”
“Oh, even better, I love comedy,” said the driver. “I find dramatic plays depressing, but my wife loves them, and I love my wife, so what’s a guy to do? Who’s in the play with you?”
“I don’t have a good answer to that.”
“Is it a one-man show?”
“Sort of, yes.”
After that, Thomas remained silent. His father kept his eyes glued to the road, his arms crossed and a frown on his face.
When the car stopped in front of the Salle Pleyel, the driver turned to Thomas and asked for an autograph as he handed him his change.
His father followed him to the stage door.
“All right, I’ll stay here,” he said. “I’ll keep away from the concert, to avoid distracting you. But you have to agree to listen to me afterward. I really need you. You’re my son. You’re the only person I can count on, and time is running out.”
Thomas felt moved by his father’s distress. He’d never seen such sadness in his father’s eyes before. Raymond was a proud man, the kind to hide his emotions and always insist he was fine. And his son knew better than anyone that Raymond was not fine now.
“All right,” Thomas said. “Meet me here after the concert and we’ll go to my place. This time I’ll listen.”
Raymond wrapped his arms around Thomas, who could feel his father’s tenderness in the gesture. He hesitated for a moment, then returned the hug, which filled him with a feeling of satisfaction that was as strange as it was welcome.
The driver, who was watching from a distance, put his foot on the gas. “That’s actors for you,” he said. “Real pieces of work. Every last one of them.”