Guys Like Me by Dominique Fabre

also have to buy a scooter if I had another disappointment in love. That evening, I spent quite a lot of time on the computer, bicycle websites, I didn’t know which one to choose. I went back to the dating website after a while, she was online, which shocked me. I could have called her and asked her why? Friends, strangers like you. Life, often, finds it hard to be like us. I had his wife and daughter in my eyes that night. It was two in the morning, I went and took a shower. I barely recognized my face, who had I been before? It wouldn’t do me any harm to spend the evening at home the following day. I was exhausted. Worry lines that make you look like a thinker were one thing, but why those crow’s feet at the corners of the eyes and those first brown patches on the backs of my hands, yes, why?

    â€œWell,” Marc-André said. “I didn’t know it was here. Did you remember?”
    I wasn’t sure. Jean lived in one of the few places in La Garenne-Colombes that hadn’t yet changed, which meant it looked pretty decrepit. If you turned around, you couldn’t recognize the neighborhood at all, from there to Place de Belgique. We looked at each other and smiled. Jean had called me again the previous evening, this invitation seemed to be really important to him. I didn’t know what to expect. I was pleased to be going there, there are hundreds of pointless evenings in a life, this one though was different, plus to be going back to La Garenne-Colombes, which had been part of me since my teenage years. The first things I saw, entering his apartment, were the second-hand furniture and the linoleum in the kitchen, as if nothing had changed since our childhood. He had his weary look, he’d just taken a shower, that’s the impression I had. He shook our hands really firmly, like one of those salesmen who want to impress you and strike the fear of God into you without showing it.
    He couldn’t stop thanking us, how nice of us to come, and it would have become embarrassing if we’d kept saying no, what was embarrassing was that we hadn’t yet had anything to drink. It was the end of April now. He lived on the ground floor facing the courtyard. He couldn’t stay there, it was a short-term lease. Through the half-open window a cat came and looked at us, and although he was carrying the ice tray he couldn’t stop himself from approaching the cat.
    â€œHe’s been coming to see me every day since I’ve been living here.”
    The three of us sat down, he took the stool. He looked at us, drinking the pastis.
    â€œHow long have you been living here?”
    He looked as if he was counting before answering. Nearly six months. It had belonged to his uncle. Did we remember him? He sometimes came to the lodge in Asnières, don’t you remember? I saw Marco make an effort to remember, but no, he didn’t, even though he too spent more and more time remembering, trying and sometimes really remembering things. We said no. I thought it might be best to quickly change the subject, but he was already launched. He’d been through three and a half years of hell. It was his family that had supported him in the last year, he hadn’t wanted to go on welfare, it was thanks to them that he’d rented this apartment.
    â€œIt’s not bad here, anyway,” we told him. He wanted to show us everything. We all went out into the inner courtyard, there were two children’s bikes and a little orange tent, which belonged to the kids opposite. He’d never had children. He told us that even more slowly, actually there were a lot of things he hadn’t had in this life. Once or twice, that evening, I laughed very loudly, I wasn’t really laughing at him, because when it came down to it he was like me, except that our lives weren’t similar anymore. We went back into the room, he poured us some more pastis. He’d put small plates inside larger