The 6:41 to Paris by Jean-Philippe Blondel Read Free Book Online Page B

over the place whenever I get undressed—they go springing from my pockets and rollingacross parquet floors, waking everyone in the house. It’s easier now that I’m alone at night. I could never stand the idea of a wallet, that lump in your pocket. It used to drive Christine crazy. I supposethat Jérôme knows how to behave. Or only carries bills. That are ironed. He knows how to get undressed with grace and dignity. Those are two words I’m not too familiar with, grace and dignity. For a while I enjoyed the illusion of self-confidence that comes with the energy of youth, but then it was gone.
    I’m on edge.
    From sensing her sitting there next to me. In fact, I ought to change seats.Pretend to get off at the next station. Except that the train is nonstop from Troyes to Paris. But why do I need to give any explanation? I don’t owe Cécile Duffaut anything. I am nothing to her, she is nothing to me, and that’s all there is to it. So why do I stay? Guilt? A little, I suppose. In hopes that she might speak to me? Pathetic. Laziness?
    I wonder what she remembers. Well, that is,what she would remember if she had recognized me.
    Going for drives in the Peugeot 204. I paid next to nothing for that car. It was white. The same one my parents had when I was a kid. I liked having the gear stick at the wheel. The seats still smelled of leather after all those years. Cécile didn’t have her license yet. We weren’t going anywhere in particular. We were wasting gas. We smoked,with the windows cracked open.
    The Peugeot 204 was my revenge for Mathieu’smotorcycle. As I thought, I saw less of Mathieu after he came back from Germany. And when we got together he would always say how lucky I was to have a car. He had become a regular on the train, the RER, and the Métro; he kept going up to Paris to try his luck. He was having a hard time. Sleeping on friends’ sofas, onmattresses on the floor, sometimes right on the floor. Sleeping out on the street, too, on those occasions when he didn’t manage to sponge off someone. He was losing his cheerful nature. I’m not really sure when things began to change for him. At one point, he almost disappeared from sight, but then when he reappeared he had landed himself a supporting role in a TV movie. But he refused to talk aboutit. Then another long spell of silence. He had plunged into another world. I missed him. Even though I was struggling with my own demons, and the desire to make my own way in life, I missed him. I could have asked his parents for news. I was too proud. When I got my first real contract, at the superstore where I still work, he was the one I wanted to call before anyone else. But to tell him what?To brag about how now I was qualified to sell TVs and VCRs? I didn’t want to hear myself telling him that. Even though I knew that this job was a lifesaver, since I’d given up studying English, and gone back to the town where I was born, and spent months looking for work; even after all the broken promises. No. I figured I’d call him when I found something else.
    After that, I worked on otherfriendships. There were colleagues. Christine. Christine’s friends. That was it.Sometimes just as I was falling asleep I would think about Mathieu. I wondered what he was doing. I’d had news of him indirectly. I watched the TV movies he played in. And the feature films, where his tall, slender physique was becoming more and more visible. That was what surprised me more than anything: I had alwaysthought of Mathieu as plump. The guy whose screen career I was vaguely following didn’t look anything like him. Even his voice seemed to have changed. It was deeper.
    Whenever I came out of the movie theater, I felt like calling him—and I never got up the resolve.
    The only consolation in all those years was my family. Christine. The girls. I waited anxiously for the day when Mathieu’s photo wouldappear in some celebrity magazine with a gorgeous Spanish actress or Ukrainian