Read Online The Front Seat Passenger by Pascal Garnier - Free Book Online

herself an office for five thousand a month, and she claims money for Léo from me! And it was me who paid for dinner!’
    Fabien was happy to have his friend back in his dressing gown, hair all over the place, embroiled in his marital and money problems. He felt at home again. Had he not made that arrangement with Martine, he would happily have spent the day playing Lego with Gilles.
     
    The Celtic was open again. Fabien stopped off there just long enough to have coffee at the counter. Loulou was back at the spothe would occupy for eleven months, hanging like an umbrella from the bar. He shook Fabien’s hand like an old friend and the
patron
was obliged to do the same. Perfectly at ease, he exchanged a few words about the holidays and sun, and concluded, as he was paying, with his father’s magic formula, ‘When you got to go, you got to go.’ The sensation of being exactly where he ought to be made him euphoric. He skipped up the stairs at 45 Rue Charlot.
    Martine welcomed him with a wan smile. She showed him round the apartment and he pretended he was seeing it for the first time. The furniture was back in its original configuration. All that remained of his incursion was the now faded hyacinth, on the floor by the bin. She offered him a coffee that they drank in the kitchen, not knowing quite what to say to each other. They let desire flower inside them like a sort of inevitability, and just before he was about to explode, she dragged him into the bedroom. They wrestled in the murky watery light that filtered through the drawn curtains, their clothes binding them like seaweed. The same desperate frenzy he’d felt the first time returned with full force, maybe with even more intensity. The faces of Sylvie, then Martial, then Madeleine, then others from even longer ago, lit up in his brain like Chinese lanterns, so that he felt as if he were taking part in a morbid kind of gangbang, wading through blood, sperm and tears. He must always go further, thrust deeper into the entrails of the bodies which were opening in front of him like Soutine’s carcasses or perhaps Bacon’s. It was making him breathless; there was no end to it; he would never get out of the labyrinth of intestines, never …
    *
    All the water from the shower was not enough to make him clean. His hands were impregnated with an indelible odour of rotting fish. Martine was smoking, curled up on the sitting-room sofa.
    ‘Did I hurt you?’
    ‘A little.’
    He sat down beside her. Her cigarette tasted stale.
    ‘You should push the sofa back, put the two armchairs either side – that would be better.’
    ‘Funny you should say that. One day someone got in here while I was out. They arranged the furniture as you suggest, and left a hyacinth in a pot on the kitchen table.’
    ‘Was anything taken?’
    ‘No, just some leftover ratatouille and half a bottle of wine. They even did the dishes.’
    ‘Strange.’
    ‘Are you off?’
    ‘Yes, I have a meeting at eight o’clock.’
    ‘Ah. When will you be back?’
    ‘I don’t know. I’ll ring.’
    Once out on the street he felt revived. He wanted to kiss the cars, the trees, the passers-by like someone who has just escaped from terrible danger. He promised himself never to darken the door of number 45 ever again.
     
    During the days that followed, Fabien was completely wrapped up in Léo. Fanchon had left him with them while she went on a business trip. He found the presence of the child reassuring. Léo warmed his heart like sunshine in winter. He took himeverywhere with him, made up stories for him, gave him his bath, prepared home-made soup for him. The child had become his talisman, his lucky charm. Gilles found it a bit over the top. And it started to get on his nerves.
    ‘No, Fabien, no! You’re spoiling him. And I’m his father, not you.’
    He couldn’t help himself. For if his days were illuminated by the innocence of childhood, every night he was brought face to face with his inner depths