Free The 6:41 to Paris by Jean-Philippe Blondel

well-filled. He often looked downcast. He had an identity only by virtue of association. He was “Philippe Leduc’s friend”. He wasjust a stand-in, and girls showed any interest in him only because of his closeness to the boy they really coveted.
    What a magnificent role reversal.
    I didn’t really follow Mathieu’s career; I kept up with the programs on television, but I don’t think I ever saw a single film or series he played in. The insipid nature of the article annoyed me. I was just about to put the magazine down whenI noticed the mole he had just above his wrist. I don’t know why, but it affected me. I smiled. I smiled at the man in the photograph. That day, too, at the hairdresser’s, I remembered the sidewalk café opposite the train station.
    We didn’t really know what to talk about. Mathieu Coché wasn’t very chatty. I was really surprised, too, when I found out he’d become an actor. The way I saw it, actorshad to be extroverts, had to feel easy around people. Performers who were well-integrated and experienced in giving interviews.
    I was seething with hatred that day. With no end in sight. It had overwhelmed me on the return journey. I had emerged from the sort of hazy state I’d been in mostof the night. I was only vaguely aware of getting off the train in Dover, showing my passport, and boardinganother train. But suddenly in Paris, when I left the Gare du Nord, there was a wolfhound in my body. If Leduc had been there in front of me, I would have torn him to shreds.
    I felt just the same—nothing had changed—when I got off the train in Troyes. Then suddenly there was Mathieu Coché. The guy’s best friend. It was too much. But at the same time I knew I had no reason to blame Mathieu. Besides,he was being considerate. He asked me, awkwardly, had it not gone well. I just said, “You don’t want to know,” and he nodded. He let a few minutes go by. The waiters were bustling around us. With their black and gold striped waistcoats, they looked like wasps.
    I saw wasps. All around me. Their mandibles slicing up pieces of my flesh with a precise cruelty. My arms. My cheeks. My tongue. My eyes.
    I had a sudden abrupt reaction, and almost knocked over the table. Mathieu Coché was startled. He touched my hand.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing. I thought there was an insect.”
    “If you want to talk, or have a drink, or simply see someone, you can call me. I’ll be here all summer.”
    I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him. What was he thinking, really? Was he trying to hit on me? Was this histhing, to console the ex-girlfriends of his pal the heartbreaker? Or was it nothing? Simply nothing? Politeness? Kindness in the presence of someone who’sin pain? I never found out. I never called him, either.
    He raised his hand to ask for the check, and the watch he was wearing slipped an inch or so down his arm. That’s when I saw the mole, just above his wrist.
    All of a sudden, I emergedfrom my hatred.
    I caught a glimpse of what was hidden deep inside Mathieu Coché.
    His eyes, shoulders, forearms, neck—everything was seeping with absence. With emptiness.
    The possibility, suddenly, of another life, with Mathieu Coché, was dizzying. Even today, it still is. Even here, now, on this early-morning train. Even here in these SNCF toilets that could use a good cleaning.
    Someone justtried the handle. Once. Twice.
    I don’t know how long I’ve been in here.
    I’m out of my mind.
    I have to get out of here. And back to my seat. The trip is already half over. It will go quickly now. Everything goes so fast anyway. Everything goes so fast, but twenty-seven years later, it is all still there.

“Excuse me.”
    “No problem.”

She brushed past me.
    Just the slightest contact, that brushing motion, bringing back impressions, colors, dark green, deep blue, undergrowth. Did I ever go walking in the forest with Cécile? If I did, I don’t remember. And yet there’s a lot I do remember. Some