Heading South by Dany Laferrière Read Free Book Online Page A

I’ve always been interested in cooking, but for some reason my aunt has never wanted to teach me.”
    â€œBut music is a lot like cooking, isn’t it, Jude? Oddly enough.”
    His eyes light up.
    â€œMaybe that’s it!” he exclaims. “I like talking to you . . . I don’t even know your name . . .”
    â€œFanfan.”
    â€œI didn’t sleep all night, Fanfan. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that woman. I felt like I was caught in a funnel. And now I don’t know whether I was dreaming or wide awake.”
    â€œYou must be tired. I’ll leave now so you can get some rest.”
    â€œBut you came all this way . . .”
    â€œI just came to tell you that Denz would like you to drop by some time.”
    His face lights up.
    â€œI’d like to meet him. He’s been my idol for such a long time. He does cool arrangements,” he says with a feeble smile. “It’s just that my aunt is sick. I have to look after her.”
    He takes up his guitar and begins to play one of his tunes, then puts the instrument back on the table.
    â€œShe said she’ll come back to get me at seven o’clock, about, but I’m sure she’ll be back before that. If only I knew for sure what she wanted from me. My head hurts, like someone’s been sticking long, thin needles right through my skull . . . You’ll come back? We could talk some more. I feel a connection between us . . .”
    â€œYes, I’ll come back another time,” I say, heading for the door.
    As I’m about to go through it I turn and see him already stretched out on his iron cot. On his back, arms crossed over his chest and his mouth sagging open. Exhausted.
    Outside, the strong smell of garbage goes right to the back of my throat. I didn’t get a good look at the quarter on my way here, so I decide to walk around a bit, taking a different route back. Just after I turn my second corner I see a new Mercedes parked under a tree. It’s her! He was right. She shoots me a cold glance, as though she’s never seen me before. She has the shut-down look of a bird of prey on the point of making its fatal swoop. Fatal, that is, for the rabbit. The minute I reach the car it begins to roll slowly down to the house of the young musician whose talent the critics have unanimously declared to be the hope of our generation.

One Good Deed
    CHARLIE QUIT SCHOOL during second term for one very simple reason: he was too beautiful to spend the whole day cooped up in a classroom. Women had been after him for a long time. He was still a virgin when his geography teacher offered him a ride home and then took him to her house instead. Since then, Charlie realized he could get anything he wanted out of women. So what was the use of staying in school when real life was bustling out on the street? The sweet, ripe fruit of the tree of good and evil was dangling inches from his outstretched hand. And Charlie had a good appetite. All the girls adored him except one: his sister, who, curiously, was not particularly gifted by nature. Every time she bragged that she was Charlie’s sister, someone would always say: “But how is that possible!” After that, she changed tactics. Now she says: “Charlie may have looks, but I have intelligence.” But she might as well save her breath. Sometimes I think it best to just say nothing and give in to your fate. Charlie is beautiful, that’s all there is to it. There are those who reveal themselves to be beautiful only after you’ve looked at them for a certain length of time, and others who, as they say, have beautiful souls. At the risk of repeating myself, Charlie is beautiful, by which I mean that whenever he enters a room, heads turn: women look at him with an avidity bordering on dementia (they literally devour him with their eyes), and men with a certain pique. A truly beautiful man is rarer than you might think. At first it was