Heatwave Read online

  I was in the middle of washing the dishes when Louis appeared behind me. He often seemed to bump into me: strange, at such a large campsite. He said: “It’s funny how we always bump into each other.” He was the only person to seek out my company. I didn’t really care. He helped me take the plates back to the tent and he said hello to my parents. They exchanged a few words about the weather: It’s hot, very hot, but we shouldn’t complain, that’s why we’re here, etc. Then the two of us went to the shack at the beach where they sold fries. Louis wanted to eat. We walked alongside the hole. A dog was sniffing the sand. Seeing this, I wanted to chase it away: I was afraid that it would start digging, unearth the body, and that I’d be caught because of my fingerprints on Oscar’s neck. Then for a moment I was afraid that the dog would never start digging; that I would be left, this summer and all the following summers, eternally trailing Louis as he went to buy fries and talk about sex.

  “I’m not saying I have no chance with Zoe, but it’s not a sure thing, either, so I should keep looking. But I don’t have anyone else… The problem with Tinder, in fact, is that you base your demands on what you think of yourself, if you see what I mean. For example, that girl over there, look… I like her, but I’m sure she wouldn’t like me, so I act as if I don’t like her, either, when the truth is, I’d totally fuck her.”

  He was slumped in his deck chair, almost naked, with his shorts rolled up the tops of his thighs, sweating and panting. A bit like Bubble. His finger angrily swiped girls’ profiles. On Tinder, you were limited to fifty profiles per day. After that, you had to pay. Louis paid. “Well, if I didn’t spend it on this, I’d just spend it on something else. Fuck the capitalists—I’ll buy what I like. It’s my cash, I can do what I want with it!” Spending that money entitled him to all the girls on the application. He swiped them one by one, and with his lack of success came a new weariness in the movement of his finger. His swiping grew more mechanical, and he grew more tolerant. As always, he ended up accepting anyone who would have him.

  “Fuck. That’s it. There aren’t any more.”

  I was only half-listening to him. I was sinking into a sort of trance. The colored patches of the sun umbrellas rippled like blurred reflections, as if someone had thrown a stone at the surface of the scene.

  “Leo, did you hear what I said?”

  “There aren’t any more?” I repeated, eyes closed.

  “No more chicks, right. ‘There is no one around you. Please try later.’ That means I’ve looked at every single profile on this campsite. That sucks, man!”

  But there are people around us, I thought, sunbathing in deck chairs, playing paddleball, swimming in the sea; and a few others, alone, waiting…

  “So what do I do now? Apart from Zoe, I don’t have anyone… Maybe I could broaden the search zone, like a radius of six miles? Shit, but I’m not going all the way to Dax just to get laid…”

  I sensed him slumping more deeply into his deck chair.

  “Never mind. There’s always Zoe. It’s Zoe or nothing. She must be at her yoga thing. I’m going to go.”

  But he didn’t go. He stayed where he was, macerating in the heat.

  “It’s partly my fault, too. Those three photos I chose are crap. I look stupid in them. Why am I going bare-chested when I’m fat? Look at this little fat belly… Why don’t I keep my T-shirt on, like you? Huh? Leo, are you asleep?”

  “What? I don’t know.”

  “I should just jerk off—it’s all the same in the end. It’s true: I get all excited looking at Tinder, but I don’t find anyone, and then I jerk off and everything’s fine. I just nip the desire in the bud. All the same, it’d be shit if I never did it for real… I don’t want to have to pay for prostitutes or do disgusting stuff. I mean, you could end up doing some really seedy shit if you’re desperate, you could kill yourself…”

  Suddenly he stood up and stared around at the other people with a crazed look on his face. “I want to fuck! WHOA!”

  “Shut your mouth,” said the guy selling fries.

  Louis sat down, snickering. He was sweating a lot. His laughter gradually died away and he started drowsing. His phone lay in his hand, emptied of girls to love. I thought about Tinder. I had never even imagined creating a profile. What photos would I use? What smiles? What would I say to people I didn’t know? “Hey, how are you? I make music, what about you? Good weather, huh? I keep my T-shirt on because, well, just because I want to.” I hadn’t ever dared. It would have forced me to talk to girls, though. I felt like I was expected to do it, like the world was searching for the spark of desire deep in my eyes, under my trunks. But in this kind of heat, how could anyone want to get close, to press their skin against someone else’s? Even my own skin was unbearable. Sweat trickled down it and I breathed in the stink to intoxicate myself with disgust and the desire to be alone.

  The hole was still there. It continued existing, with Oscar inside. I imagined myself posing for a photo in front of it, fingers in a V, with a thoughtful expression, the way some people do because they think it makes them better-looking. A lifeguard climbed up the flagpole to change the color of the flag from green to orange because the waves were getting bigger. The Landes is beautiful, people always said. The air is pure, it’s hot, and the ocean is right there. Nobody ever said: The Landes is terrible. It’s the fake peacefulness of the pines, the roar of the waves that you know have killed people, and all that laughter, those cries of pleasure, blended into a single muffled echo, like in those badly lit indoor wave pools full of chlorine and dread.

  Rising from behind the dune, a red dot appeared in the sky. It rose higher—it was a small kite. For a moment I’d thought it was Luce. The bright red of her sarong against the blue sky. I was thinking about her, I admit it. About her pale skin, which clashed with all the rest. She covered up Louis’s words, the noise of the beach. The thought of her made me want to get up.

  THE LIFE OF the campsite went on as usual. Pétanque, water aerobics, ping-pong, children falling off bikes and crying. It was a large campsite; hard to remember faces. It was a large village, with its distant streets and neighborhoods. Nobody was keeping count. If anyone went missing, the assumption was that he must be somewhere else. The days when I hid away on my own, nobody had come to look for me. They weren’t looking for Oscar, either. Nobody cared if he was dead.

  I found Luce by the pool, lying on a plastic sun lounger. She was wearing black sunglasses and drinking Coke. The shade cast a slanting line across her legs. I felt something in my heart. I noticed this because it felt curiously high in my body. Since that morning, everything had been happening lower down, in my stomach: anxiety, cramps, the urge to vomit, etc. Towels were stretched out on two other loungers next to hers; they put me on my guard.

  “You came! How was it with your parents?”

  “It was fine.” I sat at the very end of her lounger, half of my butt hanging over the edge.

  “I’m about to leave. I have to go home. You can come with me, if you want.”

  “Home?”

  “To my parents’ place. They live nearby. I have to do some laundry. Huh, that’s funny, your eyes…”

  I lowered my gaze.

  “Hang on, let me look. It’s like they’ve changed. What color are they? It’s hard to tell.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Kind of gray… with some yellow at the center when you smile. They’re nice.”

  Was she making fun of me? I looked around, on the alert for accomplices, hidden cameras, any explanation for this sudden interest in me. I cleared my throat and blushed in advance.

  “You have brown eyes,” I said, my voice suddenly going all high-pitched like it did when I first hit puberty.

  “Yeah, well observed. They’re pretty boring.”

  I shrugged, like the coward I was. I wished I could say something original to her. The two owners of the towels came back from the snack bar with beers, water streaming down their bare chests.

  “Yann
and Tom,” Luce told me. “This is Leonard. He’s a friend.”

  “Yo.”

  A friend. They checked me out. I almost left, but I knew I couldn’t really.

  “It’s hot, man!”

  “I heard a dog died.”

  “The one that bit a kid?”

  “No, a different one.”

  I felt the blood fill my head. Yann sat next to Luce. He leaned his arm on her shoulder and she let him. He was handsome, self-assured. I instantly recognized that calmly condescending attitude: in a single glance, he had categorized me as one of those beings who was inferior to him in every respect, yet with a fragility that he supposed meant he had to be kind to me, the way you might water a stunted little plant out of pity.

  “I haven’t seen you around. Leonard, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like Leonardo DiCaprio.”

  “Right, yeah.” I tried to smile, but it hurt.

  “Let’s go for a swim…”

  “Not me,” said Luce.

  “Okay then, stay here on your own,” Yann teased, touching her again. “Coming, Leonard?”

  “Not me…” I repeated softly.

  They laughed.

  “Come on!”

  “No, I’m fine, thanks.”

  “You’re sweating like a pig!”

  “Let him be, man. He doesn’t want to swim.”

  “But look at the state of him—he’s melting!”

  “I’m fine… I’d rather stay here.”

  “At least take off your T-shirt…”

  I glanced helplessly at Luce, but she didn’t blink. Tom stood up and winked at me, as if to say: Don’t worry, fragile little boy, my friend can be a prick, but you’ll be fine if you just keep smiling and don’t say anything. Yann kept his arm on Luce’s shoulder. A memory of last night surged back. I’d watched him in his blue trunks, and I’d wanted to let him die.

  “She doesn’t want you to touch her,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  Tom started laughing.

  “What did he say? What did he say?” Yann repeated. He was laughing, too, trying to pick a fight.

  “Nothing,” I said coldly. “Go swim.”

  He slapped me on the face, hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to make me hit him back. Perfectly judged.

  “You need to have fun, Leonard.”

  Tom dragged him toward the pool. Luce stayed where she was, smiling. I was trembling slightly. The tears were pushing up behind my eyes, trying to break them down like doors. Don’t cry, I told myself. There’s nothing to cry about, is there?

  “You were so calm… I’d have hit him.”

  I looked at the campers, all languishing together in the pool, and the fake grass around it, the fake plants, the sun umbrellas, dotted here and there like a 3-D model of the idea of a vacation. The sun, dead overhead, sizzled like a giant lightbulb. I didn’t know what I wanted. I could see myself doing things or doing nothing at all, with the same strange surprise in either case. I heard the water aerobics instructor telling people to move their hips to the rhythm of the music to give themselves a perfect body, a perfect body for this summer that was almost over, a perfect body so they could be loved despite their ugly faces, their peeling skin… Jump rope, go, go, jump rope, go, go… Easy… Take it easy… Position one, two… Position one, two… That’s good… Yeah, that’s good… Something vibrated in my pocket. The same ringtone as last night. Sweat poured down my back like a little waterfall. I took Oscar’s phone from my pocket and, hiding it behind my thigh, turned it off. Luce hadn’t seen or heard anything. Or maybe she just didn’t care. Maybe she didn’t care about anything. She sipped her Coke. She suddenly seemed like another person, like one of them. She didn’t clash anymore. She, too, was rotting by the pool, this filthy pond. I felt an urge to throw her Coke in her face.

  I was sweating too much. I needed to wash myself. Making no attempt to hide what I was doing, I took off my T-shirt for the first time. I had kept it on until then, except in the showers or in my tent, where no one could see me. I was a skinny little runt, my skin marked with tan lines. And maybe with the hands of all the uncles who had slapped me on the back and said: “You need to eat, Leo, you’re wasting away!” There was a weird hollow in my sternum. My ribs and shoulder blades stuck out like a little boy’s. My thin shoulders led to a long, thin neck that looked as if it would snap like a matchstick. Next to the muscular bodies around me, I was pathetic. A product with no value on the market. But I stood up. I put down Oscar’s phone as confidently as if it were mine. I knew that Luce was watching me. I walked over to the pool, head held high, and dived in without pinching my nose. Water flooded my sinuses. I let myself sink toward the bottom. Above me, I saw parts of legs, asses, little feet beating frantically to stay afloat. Filtered through the blue, sunlight and laughter reached me like memories. I could stay there, mouth full of chlorine. One person less at the campsite. No one would notice.

  “MY PARENTS THINK camping is beneath them, but they let me come here in summer. I’ve been camping on my own for the last four years.”

  “You must know everyone, then.”

  “No, it changes every year, even if there are a few people who come back. Will you come back, Leonard?”

  “I don’t know.”

  LUCE’S PARENTS LIVED in the nearest village. We walked there by cutting through the forest. The path was quiet and shaded. The pine needles were soft and didn’t burn my feet. I could still smell the chlorine. I kept my arms away from my body to let the air flow under my armpits. I felt good. I almost forgot about Oscar for a little while. I walked next to Luce and thought about Yann, who had touched her shoulders and who wasn’t there anymore. I thought about Oscar, whom she’d gone to find at his bungalow and who wasn’t there, either. Oscar, whom she’d kissed the night before. I was jealous. So I thought about Oscar again. But you can’t be jealous of Oscar anymore, I told myself, and I stopped thinking about him. I looked at Luce and thought she was pretty. I thought about Oscar, who had probably already walked this path. How could I not think about him? Luce’s sarong brushed my hand. The touch went up my arm, all the way to my heart. It was a different kind of heat from the sun. I preferred this one. I wanted to be hot like that.

  A couple with their little boy passed us coming the other way. The little boy threatened us with a water pistol. He shot me in the head. Luce laughed. The mother grabbed him and gave him a spanking. He cried. The father looked apologetic and they walked away. Luce started laughing again and I laughed, too. There were beads of water on my face; I was like a wet dog. She reached out a hand to wipe the water away. It ended up as a caress—deliberately, I thought. I let her do it. I wanted to touch her, too, but I didn’t know how to go about it. Everything in me started in the gut but withered as it moved toward the outside, falling to pieces by the time it reached my fingertips, which didn’t know how to caress. All the same, I lifted my hand. Something in this forest was pushing me. We were far from the campsite and the music. All it took was one sideways step. I caressed her face. I followed its contours, my hand trembling, and that tremble became the caress itself, descending over her eyes, along her nose, her cheeks, her mouth. Luce didn’t move. Her eyes were closed. Everything I’d never said, I could finally say, without a sound. I wanted to tell her so much. This wasn’t enough. I leaned down to take her in my arms, but she stopped me with a smile and we set off again.

  When we reached her street, Luce asked me to guess which house was hers. I saw one with green shutters and pointed at it—I guessed right. Luce smiled. She took my hand and I thought that she was going to lead me to her bedroom. But she stood in front of the open garage door. “Shit, they’re home.” She let go of my hand.

  Her father appeared. “Hello.”

  “Hello, sir.”

  “Well, this is it!” Luce said, giving me a friendly pat on the back. “This is where I live!”

  “It’s very nice.”

  The father looked at me
like I was a stain, then he went inside. Luce had changed. She was embarrassed. She was actually blushing. It made me love her even more. I wanted to get to know her father, to talk to him and make him like me.

  “Sorry, it’s better if you don’t come in. I’ll be here for a couple of hours. I can meet you at my tent after if you want.”

  “Okay.”

  I hesitated to touch her as I said goodbye. She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then she left and I was alone. Oscar returned, with his smell and his dead eyes.

  ON MY WAY back through the forest, I still had that anxiety in my guts, but it was different now, more bearable. I smiled. I remembered Luce’s face. I remembered her body so close to mine, and her thigh against mine, caressing (without knowing it) Oscar’s phone in the pocket of my trunks. Something wasn’t right. Something was trying to come out of my mouth. I picked up the phone. I threw myself down in the needles at the foot of a pine tree and dug a small hole. The earth was soft. I put the phone inside and filled the hole. Then I stood up. I vomited—some bile and some pool water—and set off, reeling slightly, toward the campsite. It couldn’t be much later than three o’clock. I didn’t know what to do until it was time to leave. Brush my teeth, and then? “So, Leo,” my father would often say, “what are your plans for today?” I never answered. I had no plans. I followed Louis or my dog along paths, and I waited for the hours to pass, for the suns to set one by one until the last night. Nothing had changed.

  I went back to the dune to see the hole. It was already like an old grave. The others around me didn’t know. They brushed past death and the end of vacation as they headed toward the beach. Children unknowingly built castles in memory of Oscar. Sometimes a passerby, walking on the burning sand, would grimace with pain, and it was as if they knew. I would look at them then, seeking contact. But they would start smiling again and walk away. At the top of the dune, everyone skirted around a stroller, abandoned in the sun. Some of them leaned down in terror to look inside and saw to their relief that it was empty. Some of them thought it was my stroller. They imagined I was a careless teenager, letting his little brother get burned. They advised me not to stay where I was, in this terrible heat. I told them I was waiting for someone. It was true. In two hours, Luce would return. I clung to that. It was my only marker in this slow, empty day. I waited. And when I couldn’t stand the waiting any longer, I wanted to scrape away the sand, revealing the hole to the eyes of the world so that it would finally be over and I would be taken away.