Guys Like Me by Dominique Fabre Page B

still cobblestones on the road to Asnières.
    â€œHe’s always late, he gets into arguments, he has a nasty temper.”
    We didn’t say anything more after that. Marco dropped me off outside my building. I didn’t have any messages on the answering machine. I drank a large glass of water. I took a couple of aspirin because of all the pastis, I should have been more careful. If I’d dared I would have called Benjamin, but it was far too late. So I went to bed.
    I hadn’t heard much from Marie lately. We were a little angry with each other, especially her, I think. How have you lived all these years, why don’t you go back to your wife? She blamed me for not telling her these things, it was the first time in a very long time that I’d been asked that question, I hadn’t been able to answer her immediately. She drove in the nail: it’s as if you haven’t gotten over her, is that it? We were at her place, in Brochant, we’d actually had a nice evening. We were still trying to please each other, and perhaps to love each other, it was a gift when it came down to it, for a guy like me, but it was that thing about not getting over my wife that set me off. Why had her saying that gotten me so riled up?
    â€œShe’s the mother of my son, we haven’t spoken for about five years, I don’t even see her, and you’re saying I’m still not over her?”
    â€œYes,” Marie had stood up, “that’s exactly what I’m saying, it’s what I see right now, look at yourself, you can’t even talk about her calmly.”
    The blood drained from my temples, I’ve rarely felt that, in my life. But I tried to stay.
    â€œNever talk to me like that again,” I said.
    She must have sensed that she’d said too much all at once, and she wanted me to stay, I’m sorry. You have nothing to apologize for, and since I couldn’t sleep, after a while I left and caught a taxi. She didn’t try to stop me. There were still a lot of people on the square, people around the movie theater, customers from the Brasserie Wepler, and opposite, a long line of people on the sidewalk waiting to buy cigarettes from the little tobacco shop. I waited at the taxi stand until I’d calmed down. It was one o’clock in the morning, maybe that was why. I called Marie. She wasn’t completely asleep yet.
    â€œI was hoping you’d call me, are you angry with me?”
    â€œNo, I’m fine.”
    Marie said nothing.
    â€œIt’s good that you didn’t sulk for long.”

    It had been strange, that meal at his place. His place? On the other side of the avenue in La Garenne-Colombes, there were still big glass buildings for banks and insurance companies, with lots of square feet of unused office space, but it would come, with time. On his side of the street, that last block of old houses and apartments where he lived, it had been almost fifty years, shit, I told myself, half a century, since you’d started seeing high-rises going up, and it wasn’t finished yet. It would probably never be finished. When I lived in Gennevilliers with Benjamin’s mother, I’d watched an apartment building being demolished, the weather was glorious that day. I’ve never forgotten it. We’d all watched open-mouthed under the blue sky: how had we been able to live where there was nothing left to remind you? The building where I spent my childhood has been repainted several times, it’s been years since I last went back there. In his apartment, he had only the basics, a sofa bed, two stools in the kitchen, plus a TV set, there was always at least a TV set everywhere you went. I told Marie about it, how this guy who’d been a good friend had invited us over for dinner. We must have been his first guests in a long time. And in spite of all these differences, he was still in some way a guy like me, there was so much in our lives that came