The Last Life (27 page)

Settled, five around a little table, we waited for Sami's lead. He had noted the dance between my companions, and glowered at Frédéric. Lahou took his hand, and smoothed it between her own. "Everything okay?"

"Like you fucking care."

"Oh come on, Sami—" I began. The scowling waiter slammed a clean ashtray between us and took our order. He knew us, knew that we ordered little, tipped not at all, and stayed a long time.

"What is this?" Jacquot said, worried but smiling. "The glums meet for coffee?"

"That's us," said Fred, offering cigarettes around. "Bravo. At last we've got a name."

There was a silence. We could all see Lahou's fingers tracing the bones and veins of Sami's hand, back and forth, like soothing a cat.

"How's home?" asked Frédéric. "How're they taking it?"

"Don't be an ass. Didn't tell them."

"What did you do this morning?" Lahou asked.

"Hung out."

"Where?"

"Around." I could not imagine what this meant.

"Outside, though. Right?"

"Maybe."

"I knew it. Your hands are so cold. As cold as if you'd been out all night besides."

"And this afternoon?" asked Frédéric, who had poured the contents of his matchbox onto the table and was arranging the little wooden sticks into geometrical shapes. "What's on?"

"You're not," said Sami, with a narrow-eyed flash at his rival. "You're definitely not on."

"No. I'll be in history class. So I guess you're right."

"Seems like the master needs a laugh," said Jacquot. "A quick round of shoplifting, maybe? Crack a few cars?"

"Shut up."

Our coffees arrived and Sami stared down at his. I felt pity for him.

"We could go to my house," I offered.

"What?" Fred looked at me as though I were insane.

"It's Thursday, right? My mother's out on Thursday afternoons. Guaranteed." This was a recent certainty: she went with my grandmother twice a week to see my grandfather, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"You live up the hill, don't you?" Sami asked.

"She's Little Miss Rich Bitch. Of course she does." Jacquot said this with a smile in my direction, but it made me nervous.

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I've got a test. Sagesses house isn't worth a zero in history." Frédéric started putting the matches, one by one, back in their box. "Who's suspended here, anyway? Just one of us, right?"

"Do you mean it?" Lahou's eyes were wide, her pouting mouth an
o.

"Sure—I mean—I—" I was already worrying, wanting to retract. "My mom will be home by five, so I don't know..."

"That's hours from now."

"A few."

"It'd take a while to get there," said Frédéric. "You guys should think about that."

"Yes, it does, on the bus—" He was trying to help me out of it, and I clung to his buoy. "Maybe it's not such a good idea for today."

Sami checked his watch. "It's not one thirty yet. There's loads of time. A view from the heights, a tour of the house. An educational afternoon."

"Warmer than wandering around outside," said jacquot. "It's nippy."

"Great. Let's go." Sami summoned the waiter, to pay.

"This week it's hard for us to find anywhere private," Lahou whispered to me as we walked out. "I'm really grateful."

Frédéric put his arm around Sami's shoulders in a bluff, artificial gesture. "No stealing, my man," he said, in a silly Corsican accent, as if that would make the comment acceptable. "Don't get our Sagesse here in any trouble."

"Fuck you." Sami twitched out of his friend's grasp. Frédéric drifted away with a vague wave.

The other three were cheerful now, restored at the prospect of an escapade. But I was in a panic. What had I done? What would we find? Did they know about Etienne (how could they not)? Would his nurse turn me in to my parents? Would Fadéla still be there—how embarrassing for everyone—or might she, by the time we arrived, have left? Could Magda, could Fadéla, somehow be bribed into silence? Would my brother find some sly way to reveal to my mother what had occurred? And what would occur? What if Sami or Jacquot decided, overwhelmed by my parents' comparative wealth, to pilfer a trinket, certain that it would never be missed? No, I was thinking like my mother, who counted the silver spoons every time a replacement nurse or babysitter had been to the house.

I was certain that the bus driver spied on us in his rearview mirror, memorizing our faces, the dark-skinned faces especially, of teenagers who should not have been riding the bus up the hill at that hour of the afternoon. What cause, I imagined him to be thinking, did brown-skinned youth dressed
like that
have to be riding up the hill at any time? There was nothing there, I imagined him saying later, cap in hand before the sergeant at the police station, for them. And what if, I thought as we got off the bus and the three of them, so unpresentable, jeered and josded each other and proceeded, like oblivious goslings in my anxious wake, along the broad avenue and into my quiet street, where there were no sidewalks and we fanned down the middle of the asphalt, what if my mother's car had broken down, or my grandmother had felt ill, or the visit had been made earlier in the day; what if I opened the door to find the two women at tea, the bevelled silver service between them on the coffee table? What if, what if...

But to my relief, my mother's car was not in the drive. I made the others wait, and went to check the garage.

"Wow," Jacquot, after prancing around the front garden, sniffing at the mimosa in mock delight, planted his feet wide on the gravel and threw back his head. "This is quite a pile. Can't wait to see inside."

"Jacquot—" Lahou frowned.

"Will you marry me, my dainty cabbage? Will you, my doe?" He made a great show of kissing the back of my neck, under the collar. His spitty lips left cold snail tracks on my skin.

"Gross. You're gross."

"Jacquot—" Sami, this time. The other boy sprang like a dog to heel.

I stood on the doorstep, fumbling for my key. I did not want to find it. I pictured myself turning to this trio with my pockets inside out: "I'm so sorry—I've lost my key—we can't—" But it slipped into my palm, and instead I began, "You guys. I just want to say, you know, um, I've got a brother, and he—do you know about my brother?"

Jacquot mimed a spastic.

"Jacquot!" Lahou shook her head in disgust. She smiled at me. "It's okay, yeah."

"Well, and he's got a nurse, too, and she'll probably be around, so—well, if you guys come in quietly, I'll check it out. I don't want to scare her or anything."

"Sure." Lahou was nodding earnestly. "Whatever you need to do."

Sami grunted. Jacquot put a finger to his lips.

"Stop being such a dickhead," Lahou said to him. "Or get lost."

The front door, weightily resistant to my touch, creaked as it opened. The air inside was still and quiet. With a modicum of scuffling, the three followed me into the marble hall. Jacquot tiptoed across to the sculpted Venus on her pedestal, and kissed her exaggeratedly on the lips, his hand rubbing her stone crotch. He mimed ecstasy. I indicated that they should stay put, and strode into the living room, where silence hung, a drapery, over everything but the mildly complaining radiator along the wall. The blinds over the French windows were half down, their midday position, to keep the red oriental from fading. I wandered into the dining room, and through the swing door to the kitchen, where the oven clock blinked green at me, insistent, showing the wrong time.

"Hello?" I called softly. The nurse's rooms were beyond, and no sound came through her door. "Etienne? Magda? It's me." I waited. I knocked gently.

"Everyone's out," I said, in an almost normal voice, not quite believing the house was ours. "Magda must have taken Etienne somewhere. Out, you know."

"It's nippy, out," said Jacquot. "Hope they bundled up."

I led them into the living room. Lahou flopped down in an armchair, her schoolbag at her feet.

"It's gorgeous here," she breathed. "I love it."

"Wouldn't we all?" said Sami. He roamed along the walls, his fingers skittering in their spidery way, not touching anything. He landed at the window. "Can I?" he asked, uncharacteristically polite, pointing at the blind.

"Sure."

Jacquot whistled as the garden came into view, its gentle manicured slope.

"We can go outside," I said. "The view is from the garden or upstairs, not here."

I unlocked the doors and walked them to the place from which the port, the town, a snatch of sea were visible. The water glittered between the trees. It reminded me, all of a sudden, of America. "It's nothing compared to the hotel. That's where the view is really beautiful."

"Views are for old people," Jacquot sneered. "You don't have a pool."

"At the hotel."

"I think Frédéric's got a pool."

"I don't think so. They're by the beach."

"Have you been?"

I had, but lied, shaking my head.

"Well, then."

I didn't persist. I was starting to relax. It was almost two thirty and if Magda and Etienne came home I would simply say we'd been let out early. It would be fine. "Want something to drink'"

"You got whisky?"

"Orangina or Coke. Christ, Jacquot, you just don't know when to stop."

Sami remained in the garden when we headed for the kitchen.

"Probably better if we don't smoke inside, right?" he offered. I was touched by his thoughtfulness. He whispered something to Lahou.

"WC?" Jacquot asked. I directed him to the flowery powder room in the corridor, and hoped he wouldn't piss on the floor. I made a mental note to check that the seat was down after he was through.

Lahou helped me put glasses, and little bottles of Coke, on a tray. My mother always bought the individual size so that the soda, half empty, wouldn't go flat. I made sure to take the mustard glasses, so it wouldn't matter if they got broken.

"We need something to eat," I said. "What do you feel like? Chocolate? Bread and jam?"

"Doesn't matter," said Lahou. "I'm not really hungry."

"But we didn't eat at lunch."

She waved, vaguely, as if this were commonplace.

"I feel really odd if I miss a meal," I confided. "Excited, kind of lightheaded, but like I might pass out. You know?"

"Huh."

I rummaged in the cupboard for jam. "There's some Nutella here too."

"Sagesse—"

I stopped. "What?"

"I know this seems bizarre, but what I said to you in the cafe?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I just wondered, you know, if Sami and I could—if there was somewhere we could go to be private. Just for a little while." She was embarrassed, twirling a lock of her hair in her finger. This was the first moment it dawned on me (I had wondered what would occur; now I knew) that Sami and Lahou were hoping to have sex in my parents' house in the middle of the afternoon. I settled the tray on the counter, fussed with the glasses, didn't look at her.

"I don't know—I mean, I'm not sure it's, uh, cool, exactly."

"It's not like we'd make a mess or anything. I mean, you must have a spare bedroom, in a house this big?"

"Of course we do. But—"

"You don't know what it's like, Sagesse."

I thought of Thibaud, and the abandoned villa gardens by the fort, with the singing branches and stars overhead and the dewy dirt beneath. "I do too."

"You can't. Because you wouldn't say no if you knew."

"It seems wrong, here. You know?"

"How come?"

"I don't know." We faced each other in the kitchen. "Plus I'll have to hang out with Jacquot, right? No thanks."

"Sami will have spoken to him. He won't bug you, I promise. Aren't we friends?"

"Sure, but—"

"Do this for me, okay? Just say yes?"

"All right."

Lahou jumped a little, and kissed me on both cheeks. She smelled of vanilla. "We'll do something for you. I'll pay you back. Thank you so much."

"Promise you won't turn back the bedspread."

"Promise."

"And you'll put a towel down, or something. I'll give you a towel."

"Whatever."

"I guess it'll be okay."

"It'll be fine. I promise. You know you can trust me."

"Not Sami, though."

"He'll do what I tell him. He's a lamb."

I picked up the tray and headed for the door.

"One other thing?"

"Yeah?"

"Would it be okay if I took a shower first?"

"A shower?"

"To get clean."

"I guess so." I put the tray down again.

"You could just show me where to go, and then Sami could come up in, like, a few minutes."

There seemed little point in protesting; Lahou had clearly planned it all, on the bus, or in the café even, as soon as the invitation had sprung from my mouth. "Come on, then."

Upstairs on the first floor all the doors along the corridor were shut, a sign that Fadéla had cleaned each room.

"That's my room," I pointed. "And that's Etienne's. Don't go down the end. That's my parents'." I spoke in a whisper because I was conscious of colluding in something very wrong, and I didn't want even the walls to know it. "You can go in there." I pointed at the door to the room lately occupied by my grandfather; the irony was not lost on me. I took a plush purple towel from the linen closet, beach-sized. It wouldn't show hairs or spots, I figured, and it was considered mine, at least in the summer.

"Here's the bathroom."

"What's that way?" Lahou looked to the other end of the hall.

"Another bedroom. My dad's study. I don't even go in unless I'm asked. Promise you won't?"

"Of course not. Nice bathroom." She bounced across to the mirror above the sink and bared her teeth at herself. "I'd love to live here."

"Yeah. I'm the only one who uses this one, so don't worry about making a mess or anything."

"Thanks. Really."

I shut the door on her. All the doors were shut. I went back downstairs to take the drinks and snacks to the boys.

Sami and Jacquot were in the living room, Jacquot bent over the stereo.