In Which I Agree to Live with Bruce (deuxième partie)
— Renovations? I ask.
Last year, he explains, a fire gutted the apartment. Indeed, if you lean out the living room window, you can still find scorch marks on the sill. The owner, who inherited the property from his grandmother and who was loath to give it up, let it to Bruce on the cheap in exchange for the repairs.
As Bruce tells me how the apartment was his pet project during the toughest months immediately following his divorce, I take a closer look around the living room. I should add that, even though there’s nothing on the walls and there are no bookshelves to be found here, the furniture and decorations Bruce does have are of a respectably high quality. His long leather couch is top-notch, and the matching entertainment system and coffee table (which doubles as the dining table) are tasteful. Also, Bruce went to the trouble of finding some admirably masculine drapes to hang in the salon.
In the corner of the room is Bruce’s personal oasis sportif: an adjustable workout bench equipped with piles of free weights, a jump rope and a towel hanging from the highest crossbar. Here is where we find the sole book in evidence. Lying open on the bench is Jean Cianti’s classic Le Grand Livre du Culturisme : Cours Complet de Body Building (Catherine de Coataudon-Kerdu, trans.). Offering a regiment of “exercises and techniques in muscular development, posture training, and nutritional advice,” this illustrated guide promises its reader the opportunity to become as buff as Junior European Champion Alessandro Ardenti, the Schwarzeneggeresque fellow pictured mid-flex on its cover. I pick it up and flip through the pages. Selected passages are marked with asterisks or underlined in ballpoint. Bruce smiles a little sheepishly as he takes it from me and slips it to the TV cabinet, muttering something about using it to faire du sport and something else about musculation.
— So this is the room, he says, leading me past the bench.
The bedroom is more than adequate for my needs. In fact, it’s twice the size of the room I left behind in San Francisco. In the corner stands an armoire large enough to store five times the amount of clothes I brought with me in my single suitcase. Unlike many rooms I’ve seen thus far, I can imagine this one being livable.
As I look around, however, I’m suddenly struck by the bedspread. Struck is not the word—embarrassed. I am embarrassed by the bedspread. Here is this big French guy showing me the room he’s renting, and his bedspread, God, his bedspread is dotted with little red hearts and roses on a field of pink. That’s not the bad part. In the center, there seems to be a large stain the color of a smoker’s teeth and of highly dubious origin. Naturally, I pretend that there’s nothing out of the ordinary here, and I remind myself that should I take the room I can always burn the sheets and duvet cover before sleeping in it.
— So how come you’re renting out the big room and not the other smaller one? I ask.
Bruce has already shown me his bedroom. If you blink, you might miss it as you cross through to get to the salle de bains. It is… monastic? spartan? Did they have monks in Sparta? If so, they slept in Bruce’s room.
— This bed, Bruce says absently, that slight sneer returning to his face. I bought it for my wife. She never shut up about it. My back hurts, my back hurts, we need a new bed… So finally I bought it for her. We used it three months before we got divorced. It’s a wonderful bed, very comfortable, very very expensive—over a thousand euros, to use it for just three months! But I just can’t sleep in it now.
Figuring it’s best to drop the matter, I walk back to the living room, take a quick peek again at the kitchen.
— So what do you think? he asks.
To be continued…