arse, as it appears to be blocking the aisle?” might work (though with someone not too callipygous, you understand).’
‘That’s really interesting,’ Marc declares, reaching for a couple of Post-it notes. ‘What about something along the lines of “I don’t suppose you have change for 800 francs?”’
‘Too absurd.’
‘What about: “What do you say we pretend there’s nothing between us?”’
‘Too pathetic.’
‘What about this one – it’s my favourite: “Do you take it in the mouth, mademoiselle?”’
‘Risky. Nine times out often you’ll go home with a black eye.’
‘Yes, but the tenth almost makes it worth a try, don’t you think?’
‘If you look at it like that, then yes, I suppose. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’
Marc has just lied, for his preferred line when addressing a strange woman is ‘Mademoiselle, may I offer you a glass of lemonade?’
Their table is quite well placed. Joss’s table is just next door. A flotilla of waiters wearing white dinner jackets arrive with the platters of pearl oysters. It is an amusing diversion: one shucks the oysters oneself and there are people shouting:
‘Look, there are two pearls in mine!’
‘Why didn’t I get a pearl?’
‘Look at this one, it’s HUGE, isn’t it?’
‘You should have it mounted as a pendant.’
‘Darling, you are the only pearl in my life!’
It’s like Twelfth Night: Marc can almost see the three wise men wandering through the club, the only thing that’s missing is the smell of frankincense.
Irène de Kazatchok, a British fashion designer of Ukrainian ancestry, is chatting with Fab. Born on 17 June 1962 in Cork (Ireland), her favourite writer is V.S. Naipaul and she loves the Pogues’ first album. At university, she had a lesbian affair with Deirdre Mulrooney, the captain of the women’s rugby XV. Her elder brother is called Mark and he takes Mandrax. She has had two abortions: one in 1980 and one last year.
Fab listens, nodding. They don’t understand each other, but they are getting along famously. In the future, all conversations will be like this. Each of us will speak a different gibberish. Then, perhaps, we will finally be on the same wavelength.
Irène: ‘The clothes must rester stable sur la body parce que if you put les trucs comme ça and it hangs comme ça, c’est affreux, you don’t see the fabric, it’s just too crasseux, you know? Oh my God: look at this pear, elle est gigantic!!’
Fab: ‘Irie, in trance there’s, like, no after-effects, I’m totally in the rhomb, for real. Do you, like, percute l’hypnose mental? I’m like a space-time vector, like a fucking mononuclear biologist. It’s like space and its fly! Can I call you Perle Harbor?’
Irène is wearing a corset of plaited barbed wire over a PVC lingerie combo. The latest trend. Marc is doing his best not to miss a word of this historic conversation, but Loulou interrupts him.
‘So, I hear you’ve taken a job in advertising?’ she interjects. ‘I have to say, I’m really disappointed in you.’
‘The thing is, I don’t have much in the way of imagination: I only started working as a paparazzo to be like Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita and I got a job writing advertising copy to be like Kirk Douglas in The Arrangement.’
‘When in fact you look like an ugly William Hurt.’
‘Thanks for the compliment.’
‘But doesn’t it bother you that you’re contributing to the manipulation of the masses? To the blank generation. To all that shit?’
Multiple choice questions. Loulou has never forgotten May 1968 when she visited the Latin Quarter in her Mini Cooper and discovered multiple orgasms at the Théâtre de l’Odéon. She has regretted her revolutionary spasms ever since. As does Marc, in a way. He would like nothing better than to bring society crashing down. It’s just that he doesn’t know where to start.
‘Since you insist, madame, let me explain my theory: I think that it’s important to get involved in “all that shit” because no one is ever going to change things by staying at home. Instead of swearing at the passing trains, I’d rather hijack planes. Okay, end of theory. In any case, I’ve wound up in a complete disaster area. I feel like an investor ploughing all his money into steel.’
‘Still, I felt you let me down …’
‘Loulou, can I tell you a secret? You’ve put your finger on my greatest ambition: to let people down. I try and let people down as often as possible. It’s the only way to keep them interested. You remember your report cards at school when the teachers wrote “Could do better”?’
‘Oh, please!’
‘Well, that’s my motto. My dream is that all my life people will say “Could do better”. Making people happy gets old very quickly. Making them unhappy is pretty scummy. But systematically, meticulously, letting them down, now that’s success. Letting someone down is an act of love: it fosters loyalty. “How on earth is Marronnier going to let us down us this time?”’
Marc wipes a drop of spit which has just landed on the cheek of his interlocutor.
‘You know,’ he continues, ‘I’m the baby of the family. I like coming second in everything. It’s something I’m pretty good at.’
‘At least you have no illusions about your abilities …’
Marc realises he is wasting his time blethering with this duenna. On her cheek, he notices a wart which she’s painted black to make it look like a beauty spot. Has anyone ever seen a 3D mole? Well, yes, but only a real mole. Loulou Zibeline has unveiled a new concept: the ugly spot.
*
Irène lights her cigarette from the candelabra. Marc turns towards her. He finds her attractive, but the feeling is not mutual: she’s only interested in Fab.
‘But you must agree,’ she is telling him, ‘that la mode, il n’est pas the same en France and in England. Le British people, they love les habits qu’ils sont strange et original, very uncommon, mais les français, they are not interested in le couleur or la délire, don’t you think?’
‘Okay, okay,’ Fab retorts, ‘it’s hardly a techno diva but you’ve still got atomic bombs in a murder stylee and if you get the supersonic babe on the dance floor, I gotta tell you, you don’t fuck with it, you more grooving on, like alpha and theta waves, capito?’
The vast speakers are blasting ‘Sex Machine’. A song recorded before Marc Marronnier was born and one which will probably still have people dancing long after he is dead.
Marc samples the soirée, turning
