In Which I Agree to Live with Bruce (partie finale)
I hesitate. I honestly don’t know what I think. I do know, however, that Juning is coming back to take my room on rue Tolbiac and that I’m shit out of luck if I don’t have a new place by then. And I know that having a French roommate will be a big advantage for practicing the language and for meeting people here. And then there’s Bruce, who’s gazing at me with the most innocent look of eager anticipation I’ve ever seen on the face of an oversize thirty-three-year-old man.
— Okay, I say finally, yeah. Yeah, I can do this. This’ll work.
— Super! Bruce exclaims.
He grins and gives me a playful slug on the shoulder.
— It’s gonna be so cool to have an American roommate! he says enthusiastically, as though he were an eight-year-old and I his new pet turtle.
— Yeah, it’ll be cool, I agree.
— Ah, wait! There’s something I forgot to tell you.
There is a stipulation to taking the room: the last two weeks of March, his girlfriend is coming from the Czech Republic to stay with him in Paris. Bruce offers to knock 100€ off the rent that month if I’m willing to play the Spartan monk for fifteen days. Despite having a dreadful sinking feeling that the romantic bedspread will be making a comeback, I agree to a fortnight of room swapping.
With everything settled, we sit down on the couch. I look around the room, trying to make it click that this is actually where I will be living for a while. Bruce looks around as well, as though he too is seeing it for the first time and hasn’t yet quite gotten used to it. Then he says to me, in English:
— It is strange, you know. Ever since I divorce, I feel myself always divorcing everything.
Without knowing what he means, I know exactly what he means. I nod, but he stares at me, expecting more of a response.
— Well, I add, I guess you could say I just divorced my country.
— Yes, my friend, says Bruce. Yes, but now we have each other.
— At least it’s sure to be a better marriage than our last, eh?
We laugh. Then a silence falls between us. Not an uncomfortable one, no, but merely the silence of two men in their thirties resigning themselves to yet another unforeseen and unwanted, but all the same acceptable, new arrangement.
Bruce pops open a couple of 25cl beers and turns on the large television that is the pièce de résistance of the living room, and we watch Italy kick the shit out of France.
Four days later, I move in.