50 Reasons to Say Goodbye by Nick Alexander Read Free Book Online Page A

have filled the space.
    The music has crept up decibel by decibel to fill the air, and Yves’ pure-alcohol-but-tastes-like-orange-juice punch has melted the taut edges around people’s mouths into laughter and smiles.
    I’m standing, swaying to the music – some eighties disco stuff remixed to sound happening – and Yves, our host, my French teacher, arrives, towing him behind, laying him eagerly at my feet.
    â€œMark, meet Pierre, my oldest school friend.” With this he winks at me and grooves into the midst of the dancers.
    Pierre is good looking, in fact good looking enough that normally I would blush and clam up, but lubricated by a mixture of rum, gin, vodka, martini and orange juice I slip easily, and with pleasure, into the set-up. “Bonsoir,” I say.
    He’s small, maybe one metre seventy, dark Mediterranean skin, with spiky gelled-to-look-wild hair, a small goatee beard, big smile, white teeth, big silver hoops in each ear. He’s wearing a fluorescent green shirt and frayed jeans.
    â€œSo you’re Yves’ Rosbeef student,” he grins. His accent is thick, slightly camp, very Niçois, filled withlaughter or mockery, I’m not sure which.
    I smile. “And you’ve known Yves for hundreds of years then,” I say.
    He nods. “My oldest froggy friend.” He steps in closer to me. “The first person I ever met in France.”
    â€œI thought you were French,” I say.
    He laughs. “No, Greek.” He winks at me. “And you know what they say about the Greeks.” A jiving blond woman bashes into his back, throws him against me – I catch him. When we separate, a mischievous, diabolical grin spreads across his face.
    â€œSo why did you and Yves never get it together?” he asks. “If you’re as wonderful as he says you are?”
    Yves is passing behind me carrying drinks to some new arrivals.
    â€œBe careful how you answer,” Yves says. “Your life may just depend on it.”
    â€œBecause he’s an arsehole,” I reply.
    Pierre smiles and whisks a drink from Yves’ hand as he passes. “You see,” he tells him, “I told you we’d get on fine, we already have something in common. We both think you’re an arsehole.”
    Yves laughs and boogies away with the drinks.
    More people arrive, until all the rooms of his apartment are filled.
    Pierre and I alternate between dancing (he dances well) and chatting (he’s funny, witty, irreverent).
    He tells me about his job, he works as a Minitel host.
    Minitel is an exception Française, a sort of black and white, character only terminal dished out by France telecom since the sixties. It’s a kind of pre-Internet with its main difference being that connection to services, similar to Internet sites, is billed per minute by France telecom at, depending on what your doing, more or lessexorbitant rates.
    Pierre explains that he works on a Minitel dating server, the prehistoric equivalent of the Internet chat room. He’s paid to look at people’s CVs, work out what they’re hoping to find, and then connect to the server pretending to be Mr (or Mrs) Right.
    This explains to me why whenever I’ve tried the services, I have never managed to get a real date. It also explains why people here have such terrifying Minitel bills at the end of the month.
    Pierre tells me that earlier this week he got confused while talking to a recently divorced school-teacher on one server, and a leather-clad gay masochist slave on another. The poor schoolteacher disconnected when Jennifer – the recently bereaved thirty-year-old woman he had been pretending to be – suddenly offered to tie him to the bedposts, put pegs on his nipples and stick a cucumber up his arse.
    â€œThe slave boy on the other hand didn’t seem to mind at all when I asked him if he had ever thought of remarrying,” Pierre laughs.
    â€œI never