“What do you say? Would you like a cup?”
She was looking outside toward the square, now a mist was falling. There was a police van parked by the hammam, the city’s planning to tear down half the block from here to the Gennevilliers métro stop. I’ve heard lots of people around here don’t have their papers in order. They’re always changing apartments, they pass them along hand to hand, and often those hands are holding plastic bags from the cheap Tati stores. Where will the people go then? That’s the kind of question I ask myself nowadays. I investigate little nothings like that, it keeps me occupied. For several years now I’ve been wanting to start taking photos again, but I don’t do it often. I also stopped collecting postcards after my last separation. Why? Is it because I live alone that I feel like looking into that sort of thing? Or maybe because I’m getting old? The waitress brought us our tea, along with an assortment of little cakes, I’d have to thank the Kabyle. He was away that night, one of his young cousins had a bantamweight boxing match, a regular from the Aubervilliers ring, where everybody has a broken nose at least, and the cops come once a month. They know me around here, I told myself, no question about that.
“Here we are, ma’am, help yourself.”
She smiled at me, me or the cakes. I could see so many memories shining in her eyes, just on the brink of tears. I know that feeling myself, but I’ve forgotten it, mostly. Yes, I forgot all that long ago, but I still have my regrets, in the evening, when I come home from work and have nothing to keep me busy. It was ten-thirty by the time we were done. I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I saw her taking out her cellphone as I opened the door in back, she’d been doing that a lot since he disappeared. When I was done I found her waiting outside. She wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be paying for dinner.
There was a guy on the sidewalk down the street from the métro, I saw him every night, he must have been an Arab too. He was walking his dog, smoking a cigarette. Often you’d see him making wild threatening gestures at the people going by, but then when you came up beside him he always said good evening. Roger knew him better than me, they were neighbors back when he lived by the Social Security offices at Quatre-Routes. He’d noticed him getting stranger and stranger, and then one day he didn’t come home. He had a problem with the moon, my pal says. Some sort of score to settle with it. Why not, after all? He started up again as soon as you walked away. It was surprising at first, but not to his dog, who could clearly care less. It stood there the whole time, staring into the appliance store, the Moroccan cyber-café where they sell phone cards for calling abroad, and the bazaar with its pots and pans and bric-à-brac and socks two euros for six pairs, and underwear too, fuchsia and turquoise, and those white Petit-Bateau numbers for the kids, all stacked up in piles. And above all that, there wasn’t a star to be seen.
“You’re cold, aren’t you?”
I thought I saw her shivering a little, but no, it really wasn’t cold. She looked at me when the guy turned down the little street toward the ruined houses and stone-broke families. It’s not a good neighborhood, down that way. I didn’t live around there, but I went by it every day. You can get attached to those things too, you can also get attached to people you don’t even know, you’re alone…
“He’s turned off his cellphone, what the hell is he doing?”
The mist was fogging up her glasses.
“Well, shall I take you home, Pierre? I’ll drop you off, and then I’m going to head home myself.”
I took her arm as we crossed the street, we weren’t in the walk. I tried to find something to say when we pulled up to my building, but I was out of ideas. “See you tomorrow, then?” I got out of the car and bent down beside her, she was taking out her cellphone again. “All right, have a safe trip home.” She nodded, then looked my way.
“I just have to wait for him, Pierre, he’ll come back in the end.”
“Yes, of course he will. See you tomorrow.”
I shut the car door gently and watched her speed off down my street. I climbed up to the fourth floor, we have a wooden staircase in my building. I don’t pay much rent, but we have a wooden staircase all the same. I hear it was built in the thirties. The last time I was part of a couple I lived in a new building, a one-bedroom apartment with all the amenities, and a built-in kitchen. We even had underground parking. But I never felt at home there. The woman’s name was Jacqueline Serradura, and for her it was a kind of triumph to be renting an apartment like that, we had all sorts of differences of that type. Still, we tried, her especially, I think. I just turned out not to be right for her. Or maybe our time was already up, and we just didn’t know it? And there were a bunch of other stupid little things that came between us. We had trouble understanding each other, we really should have tried harder. But as time went by those differences got to me, till I just couldn’t take them anymore. I tried, though. At least I think I did. And then after that, as a way of forgetting it all, I got sick.
II
In this building things are better. There’s that squeaking staircase to remind me of my childhood, and also we all know each other a little. We have a few ordinary couples living quiet lives, and there are also two families with very young children, and on the top floor some students from Mali and poor folks of various nationalities, as well as a student who must be in her thirties and gets a lot of afternoon callers, if you don’t mind my saying. For the past year she’s been wearing a single red lock in the middle of her hair. I always want to pull it whenever I see her. I make her laugh by asking how much she’d charge me just for that? One time she wasn’t in a laughing mood, she explained that all the men who came to her room asked her that very same question. “Is that right?” Yes, or at least they wanted to, even if they didn’t ask. It was even worse when she was a little girl and her mother made her wear pigtails. There’s a lesson in that. I would never have imagined such a thing, to tell the truth. Sometimes she comes by my place to ask for some salt or borrow a cigarette, or just to have a little chat.
“I’m not disturbing you, Pierrounet?”
“Not at all. On the contrary. You’re well?”
“I won’t stay long.”
I don’t even know her real first name, the mailbox only has her family name. She calls herself Jessica. She told me she’d had so many different first names these last few years that she’d ended up forgetting her own. What would she do if she wound up with a psycho on her hands? I’d immediately regretted that question, because a minute after I’d asked it she went on her way. I like hearing her talk. And then the things she tells me make a change from Le Cercle. I gave her a copy of my keys one day when they were coming to read the meters. I’ve never been up to the sixth floor, I suppose that must be why. We all get on well together, it seems to me. The old woman on the second floor’s mind is starting to go, but when she leaves her keys in the lock someone always watches for her and lets her back into the building. I do her shopping on Sundays, she gives me chocolates at Christmas, and on her good days I take her to the market, arm in arm. I lost my mother when I was 42, she was my adoptive mother, that was far too young for my liking, and it still is today.