Ninon’s Notebook - Temptation

Ninon's Notebook — Temptation

This story is told in several voices. Ninon recounts what she lives; Fred and Caro recount what they see of her and of themselves. Each chapter bears the name of the one who is speaking. Sometimes the same night is told two or even three times: this is not a mistake, it is the game.

— NINON

I rang the bell even though I already had the code.

It’s stupid. Caro had sent it to me the day before, with the floor, the name on the mailbox, a “see you in a bit,” and a smile on the video call that was a little too wide. I could have gone in. I rang. In Les Herbiers, you don’t walk into people’s houses as if it were already yours.

The sports bag pulled at my shoulder. Towels, because Mom was afraid they wouldn’t have any in Paris, at twenty-four, as if I were going to scout camp. In the other bag, my spiral notebook, the one with slightly warped pages, and the thick binder of past papers for the exam. Dad had tapped it when he set it on the table: “This time, are you sure of yourself?” It wasn’t mean. It was just the third time he’d asked the question in two years.

The door opened before I had time to find a sentence.

Caro. T-shirt, bare feet, hair tied up. She pulled me against her for a second — a clean scent, a little expensive — and said “finally” as if I had just come from the next room, not from the other end of France.

— Did you find it easily?

— Yes. Well, no. The boulevard, at first.

— Everyone gets it wrong. Come in. You’re very pretty.

Behind her, the apartment was too big for what I had calculated. Parquet. Late-afternoon light. Open kitchen. Drawings under a magnet. A dish on the console already, for the keys.

Fred came from the back room. Hi, Ninon. He shook my hand and took the sports bag without asking if it was heavy. I remember his hands more than his face, that day. Polished. Nothing else. A man who carries a bag.

— The room is at the end of the corridor, opposite ours, Caro said. On the courtyard. It’s quieter. Well, quiet for Paris. You can hear the neighbors a bit when they leave the window open, but it’s fine.

I nodded as if I knew what that meant.

I had traveled by train.

Nantes, the hall, people running without looking as if they were. I had put on Théo’s sweatshirt from Angers. I sent him a message: “I’m on the train.” He had replied “ok courage” and a heart, one, the same one for years.

I looked at the Loire without seeing it.

On the tray table, a celebrity magazine bought at the stand after the sandwiches. An actress, a stolen photo, a wedding, a breakup. The same faces as at the Intermarché checkout, only bigger. I turned the pages so that they would turn. A dress. A boat. A caption: they’re no longer hiding. I closed it. I opened it again. It wasn’t to read. It was so I wouldn’t think about a room I had only seen on video, about a couple who smiled too well, about a rent I couldn’t have paid.

I had drawn the whole trip: a woman asleep against the window, a child counting the electric poles, my own hands on my knees, which I could never get right. From Angers onward I had stopped drawing and looked at the Loire without seeing it.

Twenty-four years old, and I was starting everything over. Three years of history at university, a degree in a drawer, a half-finished thesis on some Flemish painter I no longer remember, and then one day in a room at the Louvre, in front of a Vermeer, I had cried for no precise reason, and I had understood that I had taken the wrong door. I had left university. I had worked for a year in a bookshop to pay for the prep course for the exam. It wasn’t a whim, even if at home they had taken time to believe it.

“This time, are you sure of yourself?” Yes, Dad. This time, yes.

Free in exchange for Wednesdays, and sometimes evenings. “It’s not a job, it’s mutual help,” Caro had said on the screen. I had said yes too quickly. The calculation had hurt my stomach: the prep course at the Louvre was expensive, a studio in Paris even more so, and I was no longer of an age to ask my parents to keep paying for a girl who had already made a mistake once.

Montparnasse. The wrong direction, then the right one. Stone, third floor. And me ringing the bell.

My new room for at least a year, three meters by four, at a glance. A brand-new single bed. A window too clean. A wardrobe of which I would use only one door. A desk already too empty, with a lamp.

— You have the toilet right next door, Caro said. Shower whenever you want. You eat with us if you want. You don’t eat with us if you want. We’re not a boarding house.

She smiled.

— The little one is at his grandmother’s tonight. Léo. You’ll see him tomorrow. He’s easy.

Easy. Like an appliance that doesn’t break down. I thought of my brothers. Nothing is easy. I said: okay.

Fred stayed on the threshold.

— Are you hungry?

— No. Thank you.

I was hungry. I didn’t yet know where to put my hands in their kitchen. Thank you, already. Thank you for the bag, thank you for the room, thank you for the free lodging. I heard myself stacking thank-yous the way one stacks plates so they don’t fall.

— The rules, Caro said, tapping the doorframe. There are almost none. You let us know if you’re coming back late. We let you know if we’re coming back late. Wednesday all day is yours, unless we say otherwise. Wi-Fi on the fridge. And… make yourself at home.

I smiled. The smile of good girls.

At home, we close the doors. At home, we don’t write the Wi-Fi on the fridge. At home, “make yourself at home” means: don’t forget that you’re a guest.

— Okay, I said.

Fred set the bag at the foot of the bed.

— If something’s missing, you say so. We’re not mind-readers.

A little irony, in him, very light.

They left me.

I closed the door. Softly. The way one closes the door at home.

I sat on the edge of the bed. The magazine stuck out of the backpack, still open on the dress. I took it out. I set it face down on the desk.

To Mom: Arrived safely. They’re super nice. The room is fine.

To Théo: I’m here.

He called two minutes later. Background sound of a television. What’s she like. What are they like. Fine. Fine. The voice of home in a Paris courtyard is strange: too close, too far.

— I love you.

— Me too.

Afterward, the silence of the apartment. Not quite a silence. A toilet flushing somewhere. Footsteps. The life of a couple who don’t have to whisper for a twenty-four-year-old girl they’ve just installed at the end of their apartment.

I unpacked my bag, put my things away. I lined up the pens, the markers, and my pencils on the desk, took out my computer. My sketchbook. Classes hadn’t started yet. I was a girl waiting to be a student, in a room that wasn’t hers, with a sweatshirt that was too big and a hunger I had denied.

In the evening I heard Caro and Fred in the kitchen. Not the words. The tone. A couple. A real one.

I told myself: I won’t make any noise.

I told myself: I’ll keep this room.

I told myself: tomorrow I’ll say thank you again, and that will be enough.

In the courtyard, a neighbor brought in chairs. I turned off the light. The ceiling was too white. In Les Herbiers the ceiling of my room has a crack I know by heart. Here, nothing to follow with my eyes.

Then someone knocked on the door.

— It’s Fred. We’re eating in five minutes. Caro made too much pasta gratin, you’d be doing us a favor.