Paris Trance. Geoff Dyer
worry. It’s not often like that.’
‘How long have you been there, at the warehouse, I mean?’
‘Since April, but I was away for the summer. I like it.’
‘Tell me about the guys who work there. I wasn’t sure who was who.’
‘OK, Bernard is the number two, the foreman. He’s French and so is Daniel. He and Matthias—’
‘The German?’
‘Actually he’s Swiss but you wouldn’t know it. Anyway he and Daniel are great friends – that is they’re both great dope smokers. They do a lot of acid as well.’
‘At work?’
‘It has been known. Daniel deals a bit too.’
‘What? Grass?’
‘Mainly. But he’s pretty good for most things if you give him a couple of days’ notice.’
‘How convenient.’
‘It is actually. Then there’s Ahmed who’s Algerian. He’s the guy I see most, out of work. And that’s it. There’s a woman called Marie who comes in occasionally to do secretarial work but you never know when she’s going to show up. Like Didier. The guy whose job you’ve got. He was becoming less and less reliable. Today was the straw that broke the camel’s back, Lazare’s back anyway. He’s been pissed off with him for a while but his not showing today clinched it.’
‘I thought Lazare was pissed off with everybody.’
‘That’s just front. It’s not even that his bark is worse than his bite. He’s all bark, no bite.’
‘So you think I can stay?’ said Luke.
‘Sure. I don’t see why not. Where are you from anyway?’
‘I lived in London for five years.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Brixton.’
‘Me too. On Shakespeare Road.’
‘I was on Saint Matthews Road.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Just off Brixton Water Lane.’
‘I had friends who lived near there. Josephine Avenue.’
‘What number?’
‘I forget. A big shared house. They gave a lot of parties. The people I knew were called Sam and Belinda.’
‘Was it the house with the purple door?’
‘Yes.’
‘I went to a party there.’
‘Were you at the one the police raided?’
‘By mistake?’
‘Yes, exactly. They got the address wrong.’
‘Yes. So we were at the same party. I bet we knew other people too. Did you know, oh what was that guy called? The artist, he had that great name—’
‘Steranko!’
‘Exactly.’
They had known the same people, eaten in the same places, drunk in the same pubs, and now they were drinking in the same bar, in Paris. It felt like an achievement. Luke pointed at Alex’s glass which would soon be empty. ‘D’you want another drink?’
‘Ah, I see. We’re doing it English-style: ordering another drink before we’ve finished the first. Yes. Please.’
As Luke collected his change a guy came in and slapped Alex on the shoulder: an American, in his fifties, drunk. He was with a Spanish woman who was also drunk and a friend who was French. Alex introduced Luke and then began speaking French. Luke sipped his beer, understanding odd words but unable to join in. Then the American – Steve? – started talking at him in English, telling about the private view they’d just come from: paintings of people looking at paintings in a gallery, seen from the paintings’ point of view. Over their shoulders, over the shoulders of the people in the paintings, you could sometimes see some other paintings.
‘Not that you could get anywhere near the paintings,’ said the American. ‘It was far too crowded. Are you an artist?’
‘No,’ Luke smiled. People always assumed he was an artist. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why he felt so little need actually to create anything.
‘You look like an artist.’
‘Thank you. How’s that?’
‘The hair, the clothes . . . What about me? What do I look like?’
‘He looks,’ said another man who had just pushed into the corner, ‘like an overweight homosexual trying to pick up boys half his age.’
‘That is not fair. Do you think I’m overweight?’ Before Luke could reply he said, ‘Have you met Michael?’ Luke smiled and shook hands. ‘Doesn’t he look like an artist, Michael?’
‘He look very nice. Look at that shirt.’
‘You like this shirt? It’s my favourite shirt,’ said Luke.
‘His shirt is a work of art.’
‘It matches his eyes.’
‘He is a work of art.’ There was such a hubbub in the bar now it was necessary to yell things like this to get heard. Michael bought Luke a drink and began talking to someone else before Luke even had a chance to thank him. Alex had given up his stool for the Spanish woman who was actually Peruvian and who spoke neither French, Spanish nor English.
‘As far as I can make out she speaks no language whatsoever,’ Alex said, turning to Luke. ‘How’s your French?’
‘Terrible.’
‘You have to learn.’
‘I know. If only it didn’t require any effort.’ Someone else Alex knew, an English woman, Amanda, had just been to a film. Luke asked her about it and she began summarising the plot. It was as if something were at stake. She had to recount what happened, in exactly the right sequence, omitting nothing, incorporating each twist of the unfollowably complex plot. Once, realizing she had made an error in chronology, she even retraced a couple of minutes of exposition and started over from the point where the mistake had been made. After that hiccup she really got into her stride. There was no stopping her. Luke nodded. Alex was communicating, somehow, with the Peruvian woman and was apparently paying no attention to this scene-by-scene reconstruction of the film. Luke wondered if he could endure any more of it when Amanda’s attention was defected, briefly, by the guy she had been to the cinema with. Alex turned towards Luke again.
‘Quite a summary,’ he said.
‘I hate it when people do that. What makes them want to summarise plots like that?’
Alex shook his head. ‘I like submarine films.’
‘Above Us the Waves, Das Boot?’
‘Exactly.
‘The Hunt for Red October?’
‘No.’
‘Essentially, you’re a Second World War man?’
‘Through and through.’ They slapped hands: allies.
‘The Wolf Pack,’ said Luke.
‘The convoy.’
‘Torpedoes: tubes one and two.’
‘Depth charges.’
‘Periscope depth.’
‘The sea ablaze with oil. Survivors leaping into the blazing sea.’
‘Crash Dive!’
‘Two