It’s strange to be back among people, traffic, noise, after the hush of the building. Disorientating, too, because I still don’t really know where I am, how all the roads around here connect to one another. I check the map on my phone quickly, so as not to burn too much more data. The café where I’m meeting this Theo guy turns out to be all the way across town on the other side of the river so I decide to take the Metro, even though it means I’ll have to break another of the notes I nicked from Ben.
It feels like the further I move away from the apartment the easier I can breathe. It’s like a part of me has smelled freedom and never wants to go back inside that place, even though I know I have to.
I walk along cobbled streets, past crowded pavement cafés with wicker chairs, people chatting over wine and cigarettes. I pass an old wooden windmill erupting from behind a hedge and wonder what on earth that’s doing in the middle of the city, in someone’s garden. Hurrying down a long flight of stone steps I have to climb around a guy sleeping in a fort of soggy-looking cardboard boxes; I drop a couple of euros into his paper cup. A little way on I cut through a couple of smart-looking squares that look almost identical, except in the middle of one there are these old guys playing some kind of boules and in the other a merry-go-round with a candy-striped top, kids clinging onto model horses and leaping fish.
When I get to the more crowded streets around the Metro stop there’s an odd, tense feeling, like something’s about to happen. It’s like a scent in the air—and I have a good nose for trouble. Lo and behold, I spot three police vans parked in a side street. I glimpse them sitting inside wearing helmets, stab vests. On instinct, I keep my head down.
I follow the stream of people underground. I get stuck in the turnstile because I forget to take the little paper ticket out; I don’t know how to unlatch the doors on the train when it arrives so a guy has to help me before it pulls away without me. All of it makes me feel like a clueless tourist, which I hate: clueless is dangerous, it makes you vulnerable.
As I stand in the crowded, smelly, too-warm crush of bodies on the train I get the feeling I’m being watched. I glance around: a cluster of teenagers hanging from the rails, looking like they’ve stepped out of a nineties skate park; a young woman in a leather jacket; a few elderly women with tiny dogs and grocery trollies; a group of bizarrely dressed people with ski goggles on their heads and bandannas round their necks, one of them carrying a painted sign. But nothing obviously suspicious and when we get to the next stop a man playing an accordion steps on, blocking half the carriage from view.
Up out of the Metro the quickest way seems to be through a park, the Jardin du Luxembourg. In the park the light is purple, shifting, not quite dark. On the path leaves crunch under my feet where they haven’t been swept into huge glowing orange pyramids; the branches of the trees are nearly bare. There’s an empty bandstand, a shuttered café, chairs stacked in piles. Again I have that feeling of being watched, followed: certain I can feel someone’s gaze on me. But every time I turn back no figure stands out.
Then I see him. Ben. He flashes right by me, jogging alongside another guy. What the hell? He must have seen me: why didn’t he stop?
“Ben!” I shout, quickening my step, “Ben!” But he doesn’t look back. I start to jog. I can just about make him out, disappearing into the dim light. Shit. I’m lots of things but I’m not a runner. “Hey, Ben! For fuck’s sake!” He doesn’t turn around, though several other runners glance at me as they pass. Finally I’m just behind him, breathing hard. I reach out, touch his shoulder. He turns around.
I take a step backward. It isn’t Ben. His face is totally wrong: eyes too close together, weak chin. I see Ben’s raised eyebrow, clear as if he really were standing in front of me. You mistook me for that guy?
“Qu’est-ce que tu veux?” the stranger asks, looking irritated, then: “What do you want?”
I can’t answer, partly because I can’t breathe and talk at once but mainly because I’m so confused. He makes a little “crazy” gesture to his mate as they jog off.
Of course it wasn’t Ben. As I watch him move away, I can see everything’s wrong—he runs clumsily, his arms loose and awkward. There’s never been anything awkward about Ben. I’m left with the same feeling I had when he ran by me. It was like seeing a ghost.
The Café Belle Epoque has a kind of festive look to it, glimmering red and gold, light spilling onto the pavement. The tables outside are crowded with people chatting and laughing and the windows are steamy with condensation from all the bodies crowded around tables inside. Round the corner, where they haven’t turned on the heat-lamps, there’s one guy on his own hunched over a laptop; somehow I just know this is him.
“Theo?” I feel like I’m on a Tinder date, if I bothered going on those anymore and it wasn’t all catfishers and arseholes.
He glances up with a scowl. Dark hair long overdue a cut and the beginnings of a beard. He looks like a pirate who’s decided to dress in ordinary clothes: a woolen sweater, frayed at the neckline, under a big jacket.
“Theo?” I ask again. “We texted, about Benjamin Daniels—I’m Jess?”
He gives a curt nod. I pull out the little metal chair opposite him. It sticks to my hand with cold.
“Mind if I smoke?” I think the question’s rhetorical, he’s already pulled out a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds. Everything about him is crumpled.
“Sure, I’ll have one thanks.” I can’t afford a smoking habit but I’m feeling jittery enough to need one—even if he didn’t actually offer.
He spends the next thirty seconds struggling to light his cigarette with a crappy lighter, muttering under his breath: “Fuck’s sake” and “Come on, you bastard.” I think I detect a slight accent as he does.
“You’re from East London?” I ask, thinking that maybe if I ingratiate myself he’ll be more willing to help. “Whereabouts?”
He raises a dark eyebrow, doesn’t answer. Finally, the lighter works and the cigarettes are lit. He draws on his like an asthmatic on an inhaler, then sits back and looks at me. He’s tall, uncomfortable-looking in the little chair: one long leg crossed over the other knee at the ankle. He’s kind of attractive, if you like your men rough around the edges. But I’m not sure I do—and I’m shocked at myself for even thinking about it, in the circumstances.