‘Yeah, yeah, that’s the star system for you. I’ll let you in on my secret: talent. Well? Don’t I get a laugh? Since I’ve been famous it’s mad how people always laugh at my jokes. Go on, go with the flow.’
‘Ha, ha, ha,’ Marc forces a laugh, ‘what a wit! Well, it’s been real, but can you point me to the nymphomaniacs?’
‘What’s the hurry, you old Reuben! Baroness, how aaaaaaare you?’
Joss Dumoulin kisses the Baroness Truffaldine greedily like a starving man devouring a slice of fresh bread, when in fact she looks like a slab of butter someone has stuck a pair of trifocals into. Then he turns back to Marc:
‘Get yourself a drink, you old bastard, I’ll be right over. And don’t worry about nymphos, the place is full of them. I just have to greet my six hundred nymphomaniac friends. Like Marguerite here! Oh my God, Marguerite, you look like such a nympho!’
There he goes, mispronouncing the name of Marjorie Lawrence, a fashion model famous in the fifties and ever since the fifties. Marc kisses her hand ceremoniously (with just a hint of urbane gerontophilia). Twisting people’s names seems to be one of Joss’s favourite sports. With most people, DJs are as sympathetic as the nervous system of the same name: it’s fight or flight.
Marc does as he is told and heads for the bar. It’s time to armour himself.
Hey – one important detail, he’s stopped frowning.
‘Two Lobotomies over ice, please.’
He is accustomed to ordering drinks in pairs, especially when they’re free. It gives him an excuse for not shaking hands with people.
While preserving the turn-of-the-century rococo style of the toilets, the architects have turned this vast hall into a high-tech neo-brutalist extravaganza which their Nippon backers will surely appreciate. Spread over two enormous floors is a toilet at least thirty yards in diameter. The ground floor, with its circular gallery dotted with small tables, represents the toilet seat. Below it is the dance floor set out with tables for dinner. Between the two, dominating the space, is the glass DJ booth, which looks like a giant soap bubble linked to the dance floor by two white water-slides. The place gives Marc the unpleasant sensation of being trapped in a Piranesi engraving.
For the moment, there aren’t many people. ‘A good sign,’ he thinks, ‘any party with crowds of people jostling outside and no one inside is off to a good start.’
‘Hey, Marc, getting warmed up?’ asks Joss who has joined him at the upstairs bar.
‘I like to get to a club early, just to build myself up.’
Feeling guilty, Marc offers Joss one of the drinks.
‘Thanks, I don’t drink. I’ve much better things to do. Come on, I’ll show you something.’
Marc follows him into a back room where Joss produces a Waldorf Astoria matchbox.
‘Listen, Joss, if you think you’re going to impress me with that … I’ve got an ashtray and a bathrobe from the Pierre at home …’
‘Just wait, darling …’
Joss opens the cardboard drawer. The box is filled with white capsules.
‘Euphoria. Pop one of these babies and you’ll become what you truly are. Each capsule contains the equivalent of six tabs of E. Go on, help yourself, from what I hear you can’t get anything in Paris these days.’
Marc doesn’t even have time to protest before Joss slips a tab into his pocket. Then he disappears towards the door, yelling out names as he goes. The lunatic actually likes him. But it’s wasted on Marc: he’s scared shitless of stuff like this. Usually, people take drugs because they’re cowards. With Marc, it’s cowardice that stops him taking them.
After all that, he’s still none the wiser. He still doesn’t know where the nymphos are.
Instinctively he fingers the pill in his jacket pocket: it might come in useful. The cocktail is already going to his head. The doctor distinctly told him not to drink on an empty stomach. But Marc loves feeling that first drink slip into his empty stomach. In fact, he wonders which is eroding his gut faster, the booze or the aspirin. The disease or the cure.
The music has moved on to a remix featuring the voice of Saddam Hussein and some syntho-rai. The screens are showing images of the war in Yugoslavia. Joss Dumoulin mixes it all up: that’s his job.
Marc thinks maybe he would have liked to have been a DJ; after all, it’s a good way of being a musician without having to play an instrument. Of creating something without having to have any talent. It’s a pretty good gig.
Slowly, the club, unlike the glasses, begins to fill. Marc, propping up the bar, watches the parade of guests. The major-domos relieve them of their coats in exchange for a cloakroom ticket. A famous arms dealer enters, a beautiful Houri on each arm. Which is the wife and which the daughter? Difficult to tell. The two mulattos have had themselves lifted more than once. Their sexy outfits are like them: borrowed. Every clique is represented: the Left Bank, the Right Bank, the Ile St-Louis, the northern slopes, the southern plains and the central valley of the seizième arrondissement, the quai Conti, the place des Vosges, a couple of flashy foreigners from the Ritz and the avenue Junot (75018), Kensington, the Piazza Navona, Riverside Drive …
The party swells its sails. Each new arrival represents a universe, each can be used later as ammunition, as an ingredient in Joss’s diabolic recipe. It’s as if he wanted to distil the earth itself into a single place, reduce the planet to a single night. A Jivaro party. Marc is on hand to witness the birth of the party live. There is no difference between clubbing and life itself: they are born in the same way, grow and decline in the same way. And when they die, you have to sort out the mess, pick up the overturned chairs and give everything a good sweep – those bastards, they’ve wrecked the place.
This type of tangent may perhaps be explained by the fact that Marc is currently finishing his second cocktail.
It has become almost impossible to impress the consummate dandy Marc Marronnier. He looks almost pitiful, alone at the bar, desperately pleading for a glance from the beautiful girls descending the staircase. Aficionados of body piercing set the metal detectors howling. Marc has arrived at the end of the night without making a Journey. He takes out a block of Post-it notes and jots down this last phrase so he can forget it.
He watches Joss Dumoulin flirting and orders a third sponsored drink. He wonders what has become of the idols of his youth. It’s true he didn’t know Jim Morrison: for him, his idols were Yves Adrien, Patrick Eudeline, Alain Pacadis. You have the role models the times bestow on you. Some of them are dead; for the others, it’s worse: we’ve forgotten them.
This time, Marc is no longer paying any attention to what is going on around him. He is feverishly writing on his yellow Post-its:
I’ve Forgotten
I’ve forgotten the eighties, the decade in which I turned twenty and thus that in which I became acquainted with my own mortality.
I’ve forgotten the title of the only novel by Guillaume Serp (who died of an overdose shortly after it was published).
I’ve
