Page 65 of Beautiful Losers

‘Did you sleep with Chloe?’

‘Sabrina’s niece? Why would you think that?’

‘You came, erm, prepared. In the car earlier.’

He smiles. ‘That’s been there since I separatedfrom Helen. Should tell you all you need to know about the state of my love life. Are we done with the interrogation?’

He leans over to kiss my neck.

‘Final question!’

He groans.

‘Do you think it’ll work out?’ I say.

‘Do I think what will work out?’

‘All of it. The pandemic, the world.’

Us.

He pauses. ‘I think so, yes.’

‘Really? With glaciers melting at a record rate and Donald Trump telling Americans to inject themselves with bleach – you’re optimistic about the future of humanity?’

‘Not optimistic, hopeful. There’s a difference. Optimists think everything will be fine without their involvement. Hope is the belief that what we do matters, even if we can’t know how it will matter. Hope requires action. I’m hopeful, for example, that this grilling is nearing its end and I can kiss you know. But I’m not going to wait around for it to happen.’

He puts his hand on my cheek and pulls me into him, kissing me slowly and deeply. Flipping me over onto my back, he kisses my neck and clavicle. You’re so beautiful, he mutters, pulling my t-shirt over my head and cupping my breasts with his mouth. His lips move down my body, kissing my navel, my hip bone. He moves the crotch of my underwear to one side, touching me between my legs. I shudder. He moans. Jesus, Fiadh. His fingers are inside me now, his lips on my neck. He smells so good. I can’t think straight. I haven’t had this in so long. Haven’t wanted anything as badly as I want this. He pulls my underwear off and goes down on me, his tonguemoving expertly around my clitoris. I’m going to come, I say breathlessly, arching my back. Not yet, he smiles, raising his head up. He moves up along the bed, spreading my legs wider, wrapping them around his waist as he pushes into me, his eyes locking with mine, telling me over and over how beautiful I am, how much he’s thought about this, his forehead pressed against mine. I want to ask him how he’s so good at this, how much practice he’s had, what this means, what’s next. But I’m all out of questions.

33

Leonard’s house is a couple of kilometres outside of Cordes, in a hamlet not far from Les Cabannes. He rented the one-bedroom stone cottage from an older couple, who lived next door. Jack and I park the car along the side of the road, where a woman in her seventies is waiting in her slippers with a set of keys.

‘It’s such a shame,’ she says, shaking her head as she opens Leonard’s front door for us. ‘Young people and their pills.’

Jack and I smile at each other. Leonard was fifty-seven. He’d get a kick out of that.

‘At least he was not obese,’ Mme Chave continues. ‘Americans, they do not know how to eat. It is allle fast food. No wonder they start wars all the time. Their brains are starved of nutrients.’

‘Fun fact,’ I say. ‘France has more McDonald’s restaurants than any other European country.’

Mme Chave scowls at me.

‘Well, thanks for letting us in, Mme Chave,’ says Jack. ‘We can take it from here.’

She’s about to demur when Jack disarms her with one of his gargantuan TV smiles. She softens and leaves us to it, firing a final look of disdain in my direction.

The first thing I notice about the cottage is the lack of light. There aren’t many windows and what windows there are, are tiny. The front door opens straight onto the kitchen-diner, a small room with a low, beamed ceiling and an open fireplace fitted with a wood-burning stove. Leaning against the wall opposite a spotless worktop is Leonard’s bicycle, the mud still fresh on the tyres, a hi-vis vest in the panier. In the corner is a battered-looking brown sofa covered in a tie-dye throw, and a coffee table, on which sits a half-eaten plate of crackers and blue cheese, and a glass of milk that’s started to yellow at the top. Leonard’s last supper. I feel sad, not at this dinner for one – I’ve had plenty of those over the years – but at the intimacy of the scene. I don’t know many adults who drink milk. It’s considered weird, not something you’d order in public anyway. But we’re not in public. This is Leonard’s private space and there’s a touching innocence to his choice of beverage.

I pick up a half-smoked joint from an ashtray on the shelf underneath the table. Did Leonard sit here and smoke this before going to bed the other night? Did he wait for the joint to kick in before taking the sleeping pills and the Valium? Or did he take them all at once? Did he go to sleep fearful, waiting for the pounding in his heart to stop and the feeling of dread in his stomach to subside? Or did he drift off peacefully in a medicated haze?

I should be helping Jack pack up Leonard’s things – he’s already started to clear out the fridge, disposing of food past its expiry date – but I want to stay a little longer in Leonard’s world, soak up the parts of him he didn’t let anyone else see. I walk over to the bookcase, a simple plywood structure with four shelves, in the corner of the room. They’re stacked mainly with vinyl – every one of Leonard Cohen’s fourteen albums, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Nick Drake and Lou Reed. There’s a bunch of incense sticks and a child’s drawing – three smiling stick figures holding hands beside an apple tree. On the third shelf is a framed photograph of an attractive woman with Princess Di hair, a little girl aged around six on her knee. They’re sitting on a mushroom-coloured sofa, a floral-print wallpaper in the background. Both are pulling silly faces – the mum crossing her eyes and making fish lips, the girl sticking out her tongue playfully. There’s another photo beside it. A man in a sleeveless checked shirt is standing on a vast stage, clutching a microphone in one hand and fist-bumping the air with the other. There’s a band behind him, their faces out of focus except for one guy on a bass, who looks like he’s having the time of his life. I pick the photo up for a closer look. What the …

‘Jack! Come over here!’

Jack crosses the room, bin bag in hand.

‘What is it?’

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