Guys like me

149 Pages·2015·1.33 MB·English

by  Curtis

Dominique Fabre

Translated by
Howard Curtis
new vessel press
new york
GUYS LIKE ME
!

www.newvesselpress.com
First published in French in 2007 as Les types comme moi
Copyright © 2007 Librairie Arthème Fayard
Translation Copyright © 2015 New Vessel Press
This work, published as part of a program providing publication
assistance, received financial support from the French Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the
United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).
French Voices Logo designed by Serge Bloch.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper,
magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may
be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fabre, Dominique
[Les types comme moi English]
Guys Like Me/ Dominique Fabre; translation by Howard Curtis.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-939931-15-3
Library of Congress Control Number 2014946429
I. France -- Fiction

1
His eyes were blue, from where I was. He looked
tired. He looked as if he’d been waiting there for a long
time, although that was impossible. Neither of us could
have known in advance which way we’d be going that day.
I’m a mature man, I’m fifty-four, but in some respects I’ll
never be mature enough. For example, the way I some-
times get scared when I meet someone. Mostly you just
run into people, and it doesn’t lead to anything. Actu-
ally, our lives are full of things that lead to other things,
and it’s hard to believe that in this case it hadn’t led to
anything in all those years. But he looked familiar, from
where I was. From where I was, it might still have been
possible, somehow, to turn around and walk away, even
though obviously I would never have turned around and
walked away of my own accord. But a car might have
started, in which case I’d have had to get out of the way,
or I might have looked the other way and not seen his
reflection in a shop window. I’d have reacted by saying to
myself what does that guy want with me? And I’d prob-
ably have ignored him, I’d probably have forgotten him.
His face looked drawn, but his hair wasn’t gray. I’ve al-
most lost my hair. Sometimes I run my hand through it,
and there’s nothing there. My ex-wife used to laugh when
I did that, and I don’t think I took it well. I don’t like
taking a wrong turn, but it’d be right to say that when we
met again we’d both taken a wrong turn. Maybe our lives,
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Guys Like Me
too: lots of wrong turns placed end to end, you can never
reconstruct the whole journey.
• • •
His clothes were almost as all-purpose as mine. He’d been
wearing them longer than I had. His shoes were polished,
in spite of the wear and tear. At that moment, he’d already
resumed his place in my life, and I in his. But had we ever
really been friends? He was carrying a computer case, and
of course I could never have imagined how important it
was in his life. It was a long time since he’d last had his
own things, in his life, and he kept all those papers in his
case, in an ashamed kind of way. He was pretending too.
He’d always pretended, I told myself later, remembering
things from long ago. But I wasn’t so sure of that in the
days that followed. His eyes were blue, and he was car-
rying that fake case. By the time we were pushing thirty,
his good times were already behind him, as far as I knew.
He’d already had a beautiful wife, a beautiful apartment,
and we’d stopped seeing each other except from time to
time, although I often felt like calling him. I didn’t know
why he was where he was. He didn’t tell me, he was long
past explaining things. Try to find out what happened,
and you never get the answers you want. Try to figure
out how the earth turns, how people live and die, notice
the changes on the streets, and there’s too much missing,
when you get down to it. How are you doing? Neither
of us said things like that, things like, how many years
has it been? What have you been doing with yourself all
this time? He didn’t have time for things like that, with
his case in his hand. All he said was hey, I thought it was
you.
“Me too. It is Jean, isn’t it?”
“Yes, don’t you recognize me?”
“Yes, yes, of course I do.”
8
Dominique Fabre
We shook hands, didn’t say any more, just carried on
walking together. We were in the area near the station,
where I almost never go, not since I moved. But for no
particular reason, I sometimes make a detour and go back
there, stay an hour, without talking to anyone.
• • •

He didn’t live in the neighborhood anymore either. There
was a time when he hadn’t lived anywhere in particular, to
be honest. A day here, three nights there, even sometimes
in hotels that didn’t have names, only street numbers, sur-
rounded by recent Eastern European immigrants and the
customary Arab, he was a bit old for that. We walked back
up the street, without meaning to we found ourselves go-
ing in the same direction, the two of us. We sat down in
a café on Rue d’Amsterdam, pretty much halfway along
the street. A place where for a long time now, maybe for-
ever, people have been crossing diagonally to gain a few
seconds, on this side of the street, on the way toward one
of the side entrances to the train station, near the big
post office. It was because of his case that I realized. How
could a guy like that get to this point? I’m not the only
one to ask myself that question, not that he talked much
about it. His hands also seemed as if they came from an-
other time. It’s crazy, but that’s how it is. We were at the
back of the café, where it was dimly lit. Above the bar
were posters advertising special offers, the week’s happy-
hour cocktails. That kind of thing shows me I’m from an-
other time really. I’ll never be able to manage. Every time
that idea comes into my head, I get scared, I don’t know
what to do to get rid of that feeling. Although sometimes,
I like it. They didn’t have happy hours in the bars we used
to go to together in the old days. There was a time when
I often went to England for my work, and there too, I
noticed it, time must have passed everywhere, often in
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Guys Like Me
the same way. In the light of the booth, his face looked
drawn. He was carrying a shadow with him, along with all
the rest, the lines, the deep marks left by our lives. Which
of us was the first to ask what the other wanted to drink?
I can’t remember. I’d really like to remember everything, I
might be able to trace the crack he’d slipped through, the
crack through which he left again, even if I couldn’t help
him. I like helping people, though, in life. I’m not a good
Samaritan, or a bad one, it’s the way I was born, period.
How can I explain it?
He didn’t talk at first. He looked as if he needed rest. He
also seemed to be contemplating something, a kind of
map of his life, a whole bunch of forks in the road, our
encounter being one path, or a kind of crossroads. I don’t
know how to talk about these things. We don’t like to say
these things. But we see them in the faces of the people
we meet. The fact is, nothing about these things changes
with time. For years, they’ve been giving tents to poor
people so that they don’t die of cold during the night. But
we weren’t in winter anymore, so why did I think of that
when I saw him? He was clasping his case to his chest,
sitting on the imitation leather banquette. He’d insisted
on my taking the banquette, as if that was still one of the
generous gifts he could afford. But I played a stupid game
with him, without even being aware of it, and said I had
to go take a leak. He nodded slowly, with a big, cracked
smile, and finally took his place on the banquette. When
I came back upstairs, I saw him sitting there with his case
clasped tightly to his chest. A steel cannabis leaf in the
colors of the Jamaican flag was hanging from the zipper,
and later I saw a whole bunch of guys like him and me
with cannabis leaves in the colors of the Jamaican flag,
but not all of them were down on their luck. I sometimes
feel like telling jokes, like with him. He was waiting for
me to say something, as if he really wanted me to take
10