he replies, ‘now all I need is a rope with a knot like the cheese: running.’
‘WHAT?? DID YOU SAY SOMETHING??’
Let us not delude ourselves: Marc Marronnier will soon be inebriated. Already the night is upending its hierarchies. Important things seem suddenly trivial and the most insignificant details seem critical. TV programmes, for instance. Suddenly he clings to them. TV programmes, at least, he can depend on. He does not know the meaning of life, he doesn’t know what love is or death is or whether or not God exists, but he can be certain that Wednesday night is ‘Sacrée Soirée’ on TF1. TV programmes never betray you.* This is why Marc despises each ‘new season’, when TV channels systematically rearrange their schedules. Terrifying days of metaphysical doubt!
‘FAB!’
Lise Toubon pounces on Fab as Dracula might on a van from the National (uncontaminated) Blood Transfusion Service.
‘How’s things?’ she asks him.
‘Hypnogogic, in an ionisation phase.’
Fab does not despise the powerful. He recently accepted a commission to spray-paint his tag on the Palais-Royal. But he is embarrassed that people might find out. So even in a techno-stable universe, he would rather that Madame Tubon didn’t hang around indefinitely. This is probably why he uses a hackneyed trick to make her feel uncomfortable: he kisses her only on one cheek, letting her offer the other to the void. The ruse works perfectly and Lise soon drifts away from the table with a nervous grin.
‘I didn’t know you knew her,’ says Marc.
‘Everybody knows Lise!’ declares Irène, who certainly does not know her. ‘Don’t you think she looks scary without make-up?’
Irène is now seriously getting on his nerves. He loathes this tendency among arrivistes to constantly name-drop, pretending to be on first-name terms with every celebrity. ‘Yesterday, Pierre and I were round at Yves’ house and – can you believe this? – his fax wasn’t working.’ ‘The other day, I met Caroline at Inès’ place and we were gossiping about Arielle …’ Implication: there’s no need to mention surnames since we are all intimate friends of the personalities in question. It’s the acme of social-climbing white trash. This gives Marc an idea. Taking advantage of a lull in the performance, he launches into a conversation.
‘Why don’t we all play Name Forgetting?’
Everyone at the table looks at him with eyes like roulette balls at a Monte Carlo casino (the loto is too cheap).
‘It’s really simple,’ Marc goes on. ‘Each of us in turn has to mention a celebrity while pretending to forget his or her name. You’ll see, it’s much funnier than Name Dropping. Let’s start a trend. Right, I’ll start. A couple of nights ago, I was hanging out in the Flore and I saw that girl, you know, the one who was in la Boum … you know who I mean, the one who played the lead, I forget her name …’
‘Sophie Marceau?’ offers Irène.
‘Bravo! But you can’t mention the name at all. Otherwise we’re just back to Name Dropping, and you’re the foremost authority on that. Right, it’s your turn …’
‘Well …’ she thinks, ‘I’m thinking of that gay fashion designer, vous savez, with the short blond hair … he designed for Madonna, voyez-vous? Jean-Paul …’
‘No names, please!’
‘Um … a designer who made a perfume that comes in a tin can … Okay?’
‘I think everyone knows who you’re talking about. Right, now that we all know the rules, let’s play Name Forgetting!’
‘Yo,’ says Fab, ‘forgot the name … I had dinner the other night with these two intergalactic aliens with Russky names … you know, the science fiction twins …’
‘Me,’ Loulou announces, ‘I love dancing in that nightclub, you know, the one owned by that fat red-haired singer who sells nightclubs all over the world … what’s her name again … ?’
‘Shit … it’s on the tip of my tongue,’ says Marc. ‘And that bald guy, what’s his name, the one who has a comb-over who does the eight o’clock news: oh, you know the guy … the one who was insulted live on air by that kleptomaniac actress …’
‘And that plagiarist with the glasses who got fired from the European Bank … and that that guy asset-stripper with the lantern jaw who shelled out money so his football team would win …’
‘Not to mention the guy, you know, the fat man with the goitre … I know you know who I mean, the one who’s always dressed to the nines … You know who I mean – the Turkish guy – I think he’s, like, Prime Minister or something …’
‘Oh, yeah … the one who’s shacked up with thingummy, you know … the little old guy from the Landes who’s always blinking …’
‘Exactly!’
Marc can be proud of himself: to take a table like this from bored stiff to entertainingly flaccid is no mean feat. There’s a good chance that ‘Name Forgetting’ will be doing the rounds all over Paris this winter. Just like WFW (Who’s Fucking Who) launched last winter by Marc Lambron, a brilliant dinner-party writer from Lyon.
The cheerful mood and chronic apathy of these lounge lizards slowly puts to rest Marc Marronnier’s mistrust. Now, his desires are unfocused, his fear of death less acute; in the tinkle of girlish laughter, he might almost mistake this evening for a pleasant dinner party.
* Author’s note: This tirade was written before the advent of mad cow disease.
* Author’s note: Actually, they do.
‘What would you have done if you hadn’t been
a writer?’
‘I would have listened to music.’
Samuel Beckett to André Bernold
Now, everything is fine. Marc Marronnier has hiccups, he is drooling on his polka-dot tie. Joss Dumoulin is spinning the intro to ‘Whole Lotta Love’ by Led Zeppelin. Things are taking a turn.
Over the table floats the scent of underarms. Dinner, according to plan, is getting out of hand. Champagne showers, hats made of ice buckets, bronchial-pneumonia optional. People are dancing on tables. This year, nymphomania will be communal. Torsos shall be bare, lips parted, tongues pointed, faces wet.
Trussed-up girls drink Wild Turkey. Frigid boys gaze at their reflections in frosted glass. The Hardissons are auctioning their baby; Helmut Berger is nodding his head, Tounette de la Palmira stinks of excrement; Guillaume Castel has fallen in love. No one has opened a vein yet.
