‘Or is it Asdic?’
‘I’m not sure. Sweating, unshaven.’
‘Bloodshot eyes. Worried glances at the depthometer.’
‘Well past maximum safety depth.’
‘“Take her deeper!”’
‘“She won’t stand it!”’
‘Creaking. Rivets pinging out like bullets.’
‘Every eye bloodshot and every bloodshot eye fixed on the depthometer.’
‘The hull about to be crushed by the pressure . . .’
Quite suddenly they ran out of steam. The bar had thinned out. People were still arriving, Luke thought, but more people were leaving than were arriving. Alex’s glass was empty. Amanda and Michael were saying goodbye to everyone, including each other. Alex asked Luke if he wanted another drink.
‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘Always yes.’
‘Irrespective of the question?’
‘Almost.’
Alex paid for two more beers and passed one to Luke. ‘It’s a great bar isn’t it?’ he said. ‘In fact it’s the best bar in the world, brackets: indoor category.’
‘What about outdoors?’
‘The San Calisto in Rome. Do you know it?’
‘I’ve never been to Rome.’
‘Me neither,’ conceded Alex. ‘But it’s something we could discuss.’
‘Places we haven’t been?’
‘No. What makes a great bar?’
‘Ah, a bar conversation.’
‘I have pretty strong views on the subject.’
‘And?’
‘All great bars are primarily neighbourhood bars.’
‘Correct.’
‘But they are not exclusively neighbourhood bars.’
‘Also correct.’
‘You don’t want to add anything?’
‘You said it all,’ said Luke, raising his glass.
Luke was back at work again the next day, sore from the previous day’s exertions, relieved to find that things would be far less frantic. This was another benefit of Lazare’s unusual managerial style: by imposing urgent, sometimes non-existent deadlines we often found ourselves with relatively little to do, especially if he was away from the warehouse, meeting clients, pitching for business. Typically we had two maniacally busy days and the other three were easy – which meant we could spend our lunch hours playing football at passage Thiéré. We had been mooting the idea for a while, had even played occasionally, but it was only after Luke began working at the warehouse that football became an established part of our week. Up until then we had spent most of our lunch hours talking about playing.
We took our lunch late and the playground was never crowded. If other guys were around – the Algerians from the workshop on the corner always wanted to play but it was difficult for them to get away for any length of time – we played together, four- or five-a-side. If it was just the five of us from the warehouse we volleyed and headed the ball back and forth, making sure that the ball did not touch the ground, embroidering this basic task – whenever possible – with displays of individual skill: flicking the ball from foot to foot and on to a thigh before heading it to the next person; bringing the ball under control and restoring the flow of play following a mis-kick. We kept count of how many passes and headers we could string together without letting the ball touch the ground. Sometimes we settled into a rhythm that seemed likely to continue indefinitely until one of us fluffed a simple kick and we were back to square one and had to begin the count again. I enjoyed this but it bothered me slightly that the game did not have a satisfactory name. Keepy-uppy, Headers and Volleys: neither was adequate. Alternatively – another game without a name – one of us went in goal while the others crossed and headed or let fly with palm-stinging shots.
After playing, especially if the weather was fine, we were reluctant to return to the warehouse and sat against the graffiti-mottled wall, the sun dazzling our eyes, gulping down water and chewing mouthfuls of bread and tomato, the minutes ticking by until, begrudgingly, like troops returning to the front, we tramped back up Ledru Rollin to work.
If getting a job at the warehouse was Luke’s first stroke of luck it proved also to be his second. Nothing came of the apartment Miles had heard of but, through Matthias, he was put in touch with a photographer who was going to spend a year travelling. He had sub-let his apartment to an American but at the last moment this arrangement had fallen through and he needed to find someone else.
The apartment was on the second floor of a shabby block only fifteen minutes walk from the warehouse, less than ten from where Alex lived. Most of the buildings in the street – and a couple of vans – were the site of turbulent political discourse: ‘Le Pen’ and ‘FN’ had been scribbled on walls, crossed out, rewritten and sprayed over. The building next door had been demolished so the outside walls were patterned with squares of wallpaper: ghost rooms where families had slept and eaten and died.
The apartment itself was small, a studio, but there was little furniture cluttering up the place. The floorboards were stained a pale, woody colour. Some of the photographer’s photographs were on the walls. Black-and-white: street scenes. One showed a crowd of demonstrators confronting police. They were good photographs and the apartment, though small, suited Luke perfectly. He said yes on the spot and paid two months’ rent in advance. The photographer left him the key to his bicycle so that Luke could use that too. Luke bagged up his belongings and dropped off the key to his old apartment with Madame Carachos. He considered abusing her for renting such a dump to him, decided against it, and moved into his new apartment the day after going to look at it.
Now that they were both ‘colleagues’ – as Luke put it – and neighbours, he and Alex saw a great deal of each other. They were both English, both new – or newish – to the city, and both single. With the exception of Miles and the guys at the warehouse, Luke knew almost no one. Alex knew a few people – most of whom had been at the Petit Centre that night – but, together, he and Luke were set to get a far better purchase on the city than either of them could have done alone. Meeting each other marked the beginning of the phase in their lives when all the elusive promise of the city could be realized. They flourished in each other’s company, their intimacy increased as they met more people. Things Alex said in groups were always addressed implicitly to Luke; other people were used as a way of refracting back something Luke intended primarily for Alex.
You know what a downer it is when you meet someone for a drink or dinner and almost the first thing they say is ‘I don’t want a late night’? To Alex, Luke was the embodied opposite of that kind of remark. Evenings with him had a quality of unfettered potential. This was exactly the feeling engendered by the city in which they found themselves and many of the qualities Alex saw in Luke could just as accurately have been attributed to the shared experience of a place and time. Alex also ascribed to his new friend an exalted version of the traits which – in quieter, passive mode – Luke saw in him. Alex used Luke as a kind of probe, an extrapolated mirror of himself. Which meant that from Alex’s perspective Luke was a special person, to be admired, to measure himself against. The difference, I realize now, was that Alex had a theory – an idea – of Luke whereas Luke simply liked his friend, liked being with him. Ultimately this difference would generate another: Luke would never be disappointed by Alex.
There was an additional incentive for playing football at passage Thiéré: the women who each day passed by, carrying books, talking or pushing bicycles. They were on their way back to offices or to lectures at the university after their lunch break, just strolling, or eating ice cream when it was hot. Men walked by too but that was just an accident whereas the girls, we liked to