Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [43]
“Your friend is right.”
I recognize the man who just spoke. It’s Dumont. I turn around. He goes on: “Marco explained the situation to you.” “There’s nothing to explain.” “My wife.” “She can do what she wants.” “She has always done whatever she wants. Except leave me.” “I think that has changed.” I turn back around toward Marco, who’s blocking my way. “Move, I’ve got to go.” He doesn’t budge. “Marco, let me through!” He closes his eyes and seems to be murmuring an apology. Then I feel a kind of shock. Something violent on my skull. And then nothingness.
I wake up. It’s dark. I’m cold. A smell is irritating my nostrils. A sticky smell. My head’s exploding. My eyes hurt. Hand on my skull. My hair is glued down by blood. Where am I? I try to get up. I retch. I vomit. I spit. I cough. I stagger forward a couple of steps. I collapse. The pain makes me scream. I’ll make it. I get up again. The walls are freezing. Concrete stairs. The cellar. Crawling. I vomit again. Bile and blood. At last the hallway. At last I’m outside. Air. Goddamn air’s going straight to my head. For the first time in my life I like the Paris air. The keys to Sophie’s car in my pocket. Valerie must still be at the station.
[He is alone onstage. He falls and gets up again.]
HIM: [shouting] Wait for me, I'm coming!
Night is falling. The car. The keys. Start. Can’t see a thing. Blood and tears blur my vision. Rub my face with the sleeve of my sweater. Everything is blurry. Drive.
Hard to sit up straight. Drive. Light. Red? Green? Doesn’t matter. Retching again. Nothing else to vomit but bitter bile. And that blood flowing from my skull. The wound has opened again. I really feel bad. Arriving in the middle of nowhere. Can’t recognize anything. Ah yes! The avenue of the station. Can’t hold the wheel anymore. Trembling.
HIM: [shouting] Wait for me, I'm here!
The car’s on the sidewalk. I try to get out. Take a step. Fall on my knees.
HIM: [shouting] I'm here …
A breath. A strange sensation. Cold taking hold of me. A tear flows, then nothing. That’s how I die. On a dirty sidewalk, while Valerie is waiting for me.
[He collapses on the ground. We hear a cry offstage.]
[Curtain.]
CHRISTMAS
BY CHRISTOPHE MERCIER
Pigalle
Translated by Nicole Ball
Faith has been broken
Tears must be cried
Let’s do some living
After we die
—Keith Richards/Mick Jagger
There are better places than a restaurant in the 9th arrondissement to be spending Christmas Eve, that’s for sure. Even though I’ve been a regular there and a pal of the owner—the successive owners—for the last twenty years, for as long as I’ve lived in the neighborhood.
Actually, Chez Léon is not exactly near my home, but going there gives me a reason to walk a bit. Well, it’s not that far, really … I live on rue de la Grange Batelière—a well-read client, there are some, told me that George Sand had lived there as a child, I think—and Chez Léon is at the corner of rue Richer and rue de Trévise, almost across from the Folies Bergère, where busloads of American and Japanese tourists in search of “Gay Paree” pour out every summer. It makes for a 200-yard walk and allows me to get cigarillos at the café-tabac on the corner of Richer-Montmartre. That café is run by a couple, both tattooed and particularly unpleasant, but fun to watch. And watching people is what I do for a living.
Because I’m a private detective. A “private eye,” as they say in American novels. But there’s nothing glamorous about my life: I don’t have a fedora and I don’t wear a trench