Guys Like Me Read Online Free

you’re on one side or the other. Why had he run into me near Cour du Havre on the occasion of an interview I’d twice postponed, rather than someone else who might not have recognized him? I thought of Marc-André, he might be interested, thinking about Germany. Then I put away his papers, I tried only not to think about him, in other words about me too, and also a few others, guys from my teenage years. The Hauts-de-Seine had changed a hell of a lot, but we were still alive, some of us still kept in touch, they didn’t want to let it all go. In a very short time, you end up forgetting. Sometimes I remembered passionate conversations we’d had, he was there too, we’d been to the movies, they still sometimes had debates after the movie in those days. Was it Marc-André who’d worked for a sound engineer while he was studying? All of us knew already, even at the age of twenty, that the world we came from was in the process of disappearing, but we didn’t think about it most of the time. I put his résumé away in my desk, where I spend a lot of time. Sometimes I bring back work, but most of the time I sit there and do nothing at all, it’s next to the window.

    At the start, Benjamin’s mother and I lived in a two-room apartment, my office was in the bedroom, then, when he was ten, we moved, and I had a room specially for my office, but I didn’t really use it. I’ve forgotten why, anyway. Nowadays, almost every day, I sit down at my desk for a while. When I get home from work, I sit down at my desk for five minutes, trying to relax, or else, in the morning, I often sit there briefly, for no reason. Something’s waiting for me there, but what? As a result, my desk always seems like somebody else is inhabiting it, somebody else who’s exactly like me. Saturday morning is when I read the newspaper. Sometimes, when I feel like it, I write letters. I have a photo of my son and me, he’s thirteen, we’re both in Collioure, I’m in the midst of separating from his mother, I’m trying not to let anything show. The weather is fantastic. I’ve put my laptop in the living room, I don’t use it much. All I did was join a dating site, which I look at when I feel like it. A lot of people do that where I work, not all of them are married. The photograph on my profile is already a bit old, I can’t make up my mind to change it. But in spite of that deception, all I’ve had are some pretty dull dates, women obsessed with their age, in a hurry to rebuild their lives. That’s why I soon stopped putting on a show for most of my dates. I also have photos in the dresser, mainly of Benjamin. For a long time I tried not to look at them during the week, between the weekends, when I was allowed to see him, because they sometimes made me feel really bad. Anaïs asked me to show them to her. All three of us were moved. It was like looking at a life. I keep two of him in my wallet, one when he’s about ten, we were both with his mother, and another taken at the Buttes-Chaumont park last year, he’s with Anaïs and some other guys from the same biology lab, they’re all lying on the grass. I filched it from him one evening when he and Anaïs invited me for dinner. Filched it like a little boy. I stayed there five minutes. Things were going poorly for him too. The country really wasn’t working, you heard people say that more and more often, and I ended up believing it. Sometimes also, when I’m sitting at my desk, memories come to me, there are often good moments waiting for me. Or at other times, I expect the opposite, and I don’t open the door to that room all weekend, in order not to spoil anything.
    I’d enjoyed seeing him again. I hadn’t asked him any questions, and in the end he hadn’t told me much about himself. Maybe there was nothing to say. Things were the way they were. We’d only decided to have a