Heatwave Read online

  I got bored. I left the dune and wandered around the campsite for an hour, maybe longer. I moved my lips without speaking. People avoided me. The sound of the speakers was even louder than before. I closed my eyes to drown out the music, which bounced off bodies and tents like light on the dust of the paths. Des-pa-cito… Quiero desnudarte a besos despacito…

  “Hey, Leo, what’re you doing?”

  It was Louis. I was at the pétanque court. All around me, people were kissing, like at the start of an orgy. I thought I was hallucinating, then I remembered: it was “hot blindman’s bluff.” It happened every Saturday. It was written on the schedule at the reception desk. I even thought: Why didn’t I remember that? Why had I walked here, in this state, on a Saturday, in the middle of hot blindman’s bluff?

  “What’re you doing?” Louis repeated. “Do you want to play?”

  People were running. The ones wearing blindfolds had to catch them. If they did, they could kiss them. It was saucy and hilarious. People watched, laughing, as the blind ones stumbled in the dust, smiling vacantly, hands reaching out hopefully for all those denied kisses, and all those desperate losers who let themselves get caught on purpose because no one ever saw them otherwise. Somewhere, the pink bunny yelled: “Olé! Olé! OLÉ!” My head started to boil.

  “What’re you doing?” Louis asked again, louder. Everyone was speaking very loudly.

  The bunny appeared out of nowhere to blindfold me. Des-pa-cito… Quiero desnudarte a besos despacito… I struggled. He insisted, dancing around, and people stopped to laugh. The animal wanted me to play. Maybe he wanted to strangle me, too. He was hurting me. He didn’t blink and he smiled constantly, with that infernal grin drawn on his happy rabbit face. I pushed him away. He fell flat on his face in a cloud of dust. Everyone yelled. Someone shoved me and I fell, too, in front of a waiting pétanque player.

  “This is hot blindman’s bluff, idiot, not wrestling.”

  I ran away.

  “Get out of here!”

  Louis ran after me. “Why the hell did you do that? He didn’t do anything to you!”

  “He attacked me!”

  “He just wanted you to play! You’re crazy!”

  The music pursued us. As soon as we got away from one speaker, we came close to another.

  “Slow down! Why are you walking so fast? You’re on vacation, for fuck’s sake!”

  I kept going until I reached a bench in the sun, far from the pines and the music. My knee was bleeding. I had no car and no bike. I couldn’t leave this place. The roads in the Landes were dangerous; nobody walked. I wanted to see the campsite burn.

  “What’s wrong with you, man?”

  “I can’t stand this music anymore.”

  “Oh, I get it… Nothing’s good enough for Mr. Classical…” He put on a pretentious expression and started humming what was probably the only Vivaldi tune he knew. I thought I was going to hit him. It passed. He stopped humming and leaned against the bench, looking more serious. He made a turban out of his T-shirt. He let a long silence fall and I felt better.

  “So, Leo… I did it. I fucked Zoe.”

  “Ah. Well done.”

  “It was… wow.”

  I got ready to listen. He liked to tell his sad friends how happy he was. It was a pleasure he couldn’t resist. Maybe he didn’t even realize. He stood straight and his whole body became animated so he could tell me all about it, make me uncomfortable, destroy the little desire that remained to me.

  “We went swimming, the two of us… We started touching each other… I was hard as a rock, man!… She said why don’t we get out of the sea and go to her place… I was ready to do it. I wedged my dick to the side in the elastic of my shorts and put my hands over it to cover the bit that was sticking out. She thought it was funny, too, we were both laughing, and that got me excited… After that, I put my T-shirt on and lugged my huge hard-on along all these paths, incognito, in front of kids, old people, maybe even your parents… On the way we talked about boring stuff, on purpose, you know, like we didn’t know what was going to happen. And then we got to her tent and we kissed and lay down… It all happened really fast…”

  He was out of breath from talking. His whole body slowed down. He stared into space, and that smile that had lit up his face gradually faded, his lips curling downward as though his joy were melting in the sun.

  “It happened too fast… Maybe if we’d taken our time a bit more, chatted first or something… When I realized it was the moment and I couldn’t turn back, I started feeling scared. I thought how important it was, that this was my destiny, I couldn’t fail now. I touched myself under my trunks and felt myself getting softer… So I thought about porn: Zoe kissed me and I thought about the dirtiest stuff I could remember, gangbangs, double penetration, jizz in the face, and all that. I thought about it to get myself hard again, and it worked a bit, but it wasn’t natural… It was a struggle… I moved my ass away from her so she wouldn’t feel that I’d lost my hard-on… I was sweating a lot. Bad sweat, you know… I wanted to leave… I was already thinking that I’d jerk off later and that would be fine… So I wanted to concentrate on making her come, at least, but I couldn’t even manage that… I kept thinking about my dick… I rubbed myself against Zoe like a worm… I was jerking myself off against her thigh… I was kissing her tits, but I wasn’t even enjoying it, I wasn’t looking at them, I was drooling on them, totally lost… After a while my mouth was so dry that it made these horrible sounds when I opened it… So I kept it shut… I kept giving her these little smiles… I was squashing her… I couldn’t even tell how she was doing on her side… We were stuck together, but we weren’t really together at all… We kept trying… After a while, I tried to stroke her under her bathing suit. But I didn’t know how… I’d seen thousands of pussies before, some of them in close-up, but I had no idea what I was doing, I was lost, I didn’t even dare look. I kept getting things mixed up, touching places that didn’t do anything… I wanted to shoot myself… But then she moaned a bit, and that put me back in the zone. I grabbed the condom and put it on like I’d rehearsed. But it fell off… I was concentrating so hard, I must have looked ridiculous… I tried to penetrate her, but I was too rough because I was so scared. My dick bent in two against her belly, it was horrible… I jerked off a bit and kept smiling at her… I thought about porn again: in my head I could hear them yelling in English: Oh yes! Yes! Fuck! And then in the end she said: ‘Don’t worry…’ That finished me. I fell onto my back. She pressed herself against me, all sweet. I stared at the canvas looking sort of angry. I kept touching myself with my fingertips, without even realizing… I wanted to kill people, I swear, I saw myself with a gun, slaughtering everyone in the campsite… But Zoe just fell asleep… She was even snoring… I was hot, I wanted to leave, but I knew that if I moved, she would wake up, and I didn’t want that. So I stayed like that, for a long time… And Leo, you’re going to laugh at me, but I swear I was crying.”

  He closed his eyes and slumped down on the bench. He was breathing more slowly now. I watched the sweat drip from his forehead onto his silver chain, onto his pectoral muscles, onto his Hawaiian shorts and the flip-flops he’d bought at the campsite the first day, grinning like a madman… I remembered that, because that was when we met. His chest rose and fell and the gaps between these jolts grew longer, like a wounded animal as it dies. Then he dozed off. Louis always fell asleep when he was too sad. He would wake up afterward and feel fine, ready to get hurt all over again. I felt some empathy. I wanted to pat his shoulder, say something, do something, but nothing came to mind. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be him all the time, but I couldn’t manage that, either.

  Across from us, a man was folding up his tent. I’d seen him before. He was about forty years old and not very good-looking. One week earlier, he had arrived alone at this camping spot that was too big for one person. He’d filled the space with a table, chairs, and strings of lights. He’d put an antenna in the trunk of
his car so he could watch TV in his tent, which most of the campers thought was trashy. He didn’t use the TV much, though. He spent a lot of time hanging around outside his tent, watching people go past. Women especially. In the mornings he would go running in the forest. Nobody came to sit on his chairs. His strings of lights kept falling down and he kept putting them back up. Now his vacation was over, and we wouldn’t see him again. He would disappear through the archway that he’d appeared through one week before, honking his horn. I watched him, thinking about him and Louis and the others. I let their sadnesses rub against mine. The sunlight blanched all the colors and made the dust shine.

  A bent old woman was dragging a cart along the path. “Coke… Sprite…”

  “Yes!” shouted Louis, suddenly opening his eyes. He jumped to his feet, bought a Red Bull, and sat down again. “Oh well, forget Zoe. Who cares! There’ll be others… So how about you? What’s happening with you-know-who?”

  I felt afraid. But in slow motion, he silently mouthed into the void: Luce.

  “What?”

  “Come on. Did you fuck her?”

  “No!”

  Everything was mixed up. I had a bad feeling. I thought about Luce, it’s true. Everything calmed down when I thought about Luce. Inside my head, I repeated her name—Luce, Luce, Luce—so that no other name would appear.

  “Did you make out, at least? Fuck, you did! You made out with her! Well done, man. Personally, I don’t think she’s all that great-looking, but I get that you like her. So what’re you doing here? Why aren’t you with her?”

  “She’s at her parents’ house,” I said in a low voice, ashamed.

  “When’s she coming back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I knew perfectly well that she would be back in two hours. Or maybe in one hour now, because time had passed.

  “So come on, tell me!”

  “We were in the forest…”

  “Shit, I’m already turned on! I’m such a disgusting bastard.”

  And I felt an iota of pride make its way through me, insinuating its way to the corners of my mouth and stretching it into a smile…

  “No, nothing happened, really. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”

  “Are you serious? You’re telling me this because she’s your bae.”

  “She’s not my ‘bae.’ ”

  “You can be a real pain in the ass sometimes, Leonard. Just loosen up, man!”

  “Stop saying that.”

  I closed my eyes again. I hadn’t found a better solution yet. The colors and sounds of the campsite seeped into the darkness. I knew the songs of the birds in the pines and the crunching whine of golf carts on the gravel paths; they had entered my mind and would not leave, like the smell of chlorine from the municipal swimming pool, early mornings in my childhood, and Oscar’s eyes, blue on white and circled in blood. I calmly placed my hands over my ears. Louis took one of my hands and dropped something into it: a condom.

  “Here. You’ll need it more than me. You’ve still got time before you leave. But watch out—Luce isn’t like you. She’s more… easygoing. She’s a shaitan! She changes her mind all the time. Someone could steal her from you at any moment. In fact, they might be stealing her right now! Right… now!”

  He was trying to make me laugh. He grabbed my shoulder and stared at me seriously, and I felt all his compassion, this vast tide of misplaced compassion.

  “Don’t worry, you can see her again after vacation, anyway. You can add her on Facebook.”

  “Coke… Sprite…”

  The woman walked past again. Had she already gone all the way around the campsite? Or was it a different woman?

  “Would little Oscar please come to the reception desk right now. His mom is waiting for him so she can go home—and probably give him a good hiding!”

  There was a burst of laughter and the microphone went dead. I jumped to my feet.

  “Little Oscar,” Louis repeated, laughing. “God, how embarrassing.”

  “I’m going.”

  “Damn right! Go for it! Give her your sad little smile—that drives ’em crazy. And don’t end up like me, eh? Stay hard. Long and hard like Excalibur.”

  I WANDERED OVER to the reception, where I bumped into Claire, who was coming out of the office. She looked furious—so different from this morning.

  “Oh, it’s you. Are you here because you heard the announcement?”

  I shook my head and took a step back, but she wouldn’t let me go.

  “Have you seen Oscar?”

  “Not since yesterday.”

  “Were you with him on the beach?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you go swimming?”

  “He did.”

  She came closer. “Beyond the authorized area?”

  “I don’t know… Maybe.”

  “Do you know what a riptide is?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why didn’t you stop him?”

  “I don’t know… I’m sorry…”

  My lip started quivering. I suddenly glimpsed the possibility that Oscar had not been strangled but drowned, swept away by treacherous currents. They would search for him in the sea, not in the sand, and they would leave me in peace, unpunished, far from Claire. Her body eclipsed the sun. Every time she moved, beams of light hit me.

  “If you know anything, you have to tell me.”

  “Of course.”

  “Why did you come to see me earlier? You were acting really weird.”

  “I was hot… I was just passing…”

  Claire examined my face. I let my head spin from the heat. That way, she wouldn’t suspect the truth. She wouldn’t see me as just a lost, fragile little boy.

  “They’re going to call the SNSM.”

  “Okay,” I said without understanding.

  “Give me your number. And if you hear anything, call me.”

  We exchanged numbers. I didn’t have anything with me, so she wrote down hers on a piece of paper, which I shoved into my pocket, where Oscar’s phone had been before. She gave me one last look and I thought about my lies. She put her hand on my shoulder. Her nails dug into my skin.

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Oscar.”

  “What?”

  “Leonard.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Sorry. I just don’t feel too good.” I pulled myself free from her grip. “I’m hot. And you’re making me feel worse. You’re confusing me. I didn’t even know your son. Leave me alone.”

  FOR HOURS, I had been the only one worrying. Nobody had given him a thought, not even his mother. She’d stayed where she was, waiting for him. But the worry was growing now. It would spread through the paths until everyone knew about it. I was scared. I despised myself. I had never been so close to confessing, yet I hadn’t done it. I could run away. They might never find me. The sand must have erased my fingerprints. I heard car trunks slamming shut. It was five o’clock, a good time to leave. I could say goodbye to Luce and Louis and just abandon all the rest, like a fire that hasn’t been put out properly. I’d wasted enough time.

  I went back to our camping spot. My parents still hadn’t taken down their tent. That annoyed me. I went into mine to pack my things. Everything was neat and tidy, like a dead man’s apartment. How long had I been gone? My clothes were folded in a corner. My electronics were up off the ground so they wouldn’t get sand on them. The roll of toilet paper was still hidden behind my pillow. I wondered if I would ever feel like doing that kind of thing again. Sometimes, at night, it was the only way I could get to sleep: wrist moving silently, feet tensed so they wouldn’t move the canvas, I would think about all those girls I’d seen who hadn’t seen me. And even though I was completely alone, I would blush. Sleep would take me afterward and I’d wake up with no memory of having slept. That was all over now. Farewell, tent, I thought: I’m packing up my stuff and going home and I will never go camping again in my life.

  �
��What are you up to, Leonard?”

  “Packing.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re leaving soon, aren’t we?”

  “No.”

  I went outside and I saw them smiling, as if at good news.

  “We’ve decided not to leave until tomorrow morning.”

  “My meeting was put back to Tuesday.”

  “Are you happy?”

  “He’s not happy…”

  “Let him speak.”

  “Leonard?”

  I sat down. I nodded and tried to smile. My father was about to say something else, but my mother made a movement with her hand to stop him. She looked at me over her book. I recognized that look, a look that I often only felt, the kind of look she would give me during family meals when someone said something that might hurt me and she would examine me in silence, anxiously monitoring my expression for any reaction. I felt her gaze pierce me softly, passing beyond mirages to grasp the truth in my eyes, and perhaps Oscar’s face, which survived somewhere within me.

  “Anyway, you need to take Bubble for a walk,” said my father. “The poor dog’s dying over there.”

  My mother turned away. She looked around for the dog. “Where is he?”

  “Bubble!” shouted Alma. She was standing there, next to me; I hadn’t felt her hand on mine. “We have to find him.”

  “I’ll go,” I said abruptly.

  And I left. Alma ran after me.

  “WHAT DO YOU do, Leonard, when you’re not with us?”

  “I don’t know… I walk, I see people.”