‘But it’s quite something, isn’t it, that street? God!’
His face became earnest, his eyebrows wavered; she noticed his black jacket, well cut, and the thin cotton scarf wrapped several times around his throat, mentally clocked the time and energy he must have put into assembling this look. Again she had the strange, unwelcome sense that behind it all, scarf, handsomeness, jacket, there was nothing: shadows in the sunshine day.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, all those ads in phone booths, those little doorways – video parlours.’ His eyes bulged at her, and she suspected him. ‘It’s pretty depressing, isn’t it?’
Leela thought of Baudelaire’s consumptive girlfriend; she was still there, but today she lived up a narrow staircase, and had to fuck businessmen and be videoed while she did it, a piece of paper with ‘virgin, just arrived’ written on it in the doorway below.
She had an intense urge to get away from Greg.
‘I’ve got to – excuse me.’ She smiled and walked towards Nina and Tessa, who were laughing and drinking across the room in his line of sight.
‘Hm, he’s lovely, who’s that?’ Tessa enquired.
‘Some guy, he’s living with Jim Davis.’
‘He’s cute,’ Nina said. ‘Listen, my brother’s coming here for a visit in a few days. Are you free on Sunday? We were maybe going to go out for lunch.’
‘That sounds great,’ Leela said.
Nina lowered her voice. ‘Hey, what’s happening with that man you met?’
‘Simon? I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him in a bit.’
Before the end of the evening, Leela, now much drunker, sought out Greg again. His eyes flashed alarm when she approached, but she talked to him for ten minutes, discovered that they had grown up not far away from each other – though he must have had a genteel, quite English set of parents, and, she thought, a minor public school education – and discussed with him his interest in amateur theatre. Like her, he felt he didn’t see enough plays. There was Shakespeare in the twentieth somewhere that week. She gave him her telephone number.
‘I’ll call you,’ he said, his eyes frightened.
She went home inebriated and truculent, and stayed up too late.
In the morning, the day was clear and mild, and the flat was filling with water. Her green television bobbed on clean water; sun spilled into the room and refracted from small waves; water rose towards her platform bed. She sat up, slid down the ladder, and dipped in a toe. It was warm. She sighed, slid in, swam to the kitchen, out of the front door, down the corridor, and out of a window. Paris was submerged. The sun shone. She swam towards the top of the Tour Saint Jacques. Prostitutes from the rue Saint-Denis swam past, and a bus driver. She knew she was dreaming, but felt she was about to find out something important; she tried to stay in the dream even as she woke. Rain was beating on the heavy glass window; her fingers were chilled and slow.
That night, she couldn’t sleep. Disoriented, she walked to the kitchen, got water, turned down the blast of the heater, wondered, and silently enquired of her surroundings, like the white-glaring kitchen tiles, What do you want from me?
She turned on the television: nothing; turned it off, sat exhausted on the floor cushion. The space was snug around her, a small cabin in a large ship.
She got up and put on a cassette, the first of two in a neat cover printed: ‘Le Nouvel Italien sans peine’.
Paolo was telephoning Marco.
Marco non è a casa.
‘Marco non è a casa,’ repeated Leela joyously, freed from embarrassment. It was three in the morning; the world was closed for business.
‘Who’s calling?’ the woman who had answered asked.
Sono Paolo.
Ciao Paolo. Sono Francesca.
‘Ciao Francesca!’ Leela repeated with Paolo.
Marco was not at home, but Francesca would tell him that Paolo had called. He would be back later; he had gone out. How long was Paolo in Milan?
Leela rewound the dialogue. Though she had moved on to other lessons, she remained attached to the simplicity, perhaps the stupidity of this one, which constituted its sweetness. How transparent they were, Francesca and Paolo! Francesca in a householderly way withheld her identity until she’d verified Paolo’s. The two of them shared their Dantesque names without chuckling over the fact; and Marco, ineffable, slightly mysterious, yet obviously lovable and loved, Marco was not at home.
She spent the next five minutes replaying in her head the conversation she, after a pause of hesitation, had had with Simon’s answering machine two days earlier. At the start of the week, he had telephoned, said that ‘the other night’ had been fun, asked what she was doing at the weekend, and said he had to go to Dijon for work but would be back on Friday. ‘Maybe we can do something?’
Why had his apparent diffidence not rung true?
‘Yeah, sure, I’m around,’ she’d said quickly.
‘Great, give me a call.’
She’d called on Friday afternoon and left a message; it was now Saturday night, and she hadn’t heard from him. Perhaps he’d stayed in Dijon for the weekend? Perhaps he had friends there? Perhaps he’d met someone, or he wasn’t interested. But he’d said – he’d asked her. But his tone of voice –
She didn’t want to think about this, and would think about it for hours tonight while time failed to unspool under the fluorescent light. She searched for a cigarette and found one with a baggy fold. She lit it at the cooker and began to smoke without pleasure. The tape whirred and clicked. She pressed play.
‘Premier dialogue. Un appel de téléphone.’
Pronto.
Buongiorno. E possibile di parlare con Marco, per favore?
Marco non è a casa.
The next day at twelve thirty she came out of the métro at Saint-Paul. The carrousel was still and the day cold, the light sharp. Nina arrived, rosy and pleased, with a tall blond young man who smiled. He said hi to Leela and performed the cheek-kissing with her and Kate, who arrived a minute later. They went to the café nearby that Nina liked.
Leela enquired about the quiche of the day.
The waiter looked down at her hand. ‘Don’t forget to buy your ticket, Mademoiselle,’ he said.
Leela glanced down at the writing on her left hand and grinned. ‘I have to buy a train ticket. I’m going home to London for Christmas.’
The world of the café opened out; indistinct but loud, she heard the conversations of others, and felt the daylight filtering through and reflecting from the large plate glass windows. Nina’s brother smiled at her.
He carried on moving his mouth in sleep, Simon, as though saying unknown words to absent people. It amused Leela, and alarmed her, a moment of what might almost have been intimacy. She’d woken a few minutes earlier, beginning to be conscious that sleep was still near. From the skylight the grey morning flooded in. She sidestepped the accumulation of encouraging things