Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

a race / I filled my car with gas this morning at the BP garage on Boulevard Murat. The 98 unleaded was 1.684 euros per liter; I spent 67 euros / In North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock makes his cameo appearance after the opening credits; the door of a bus closes in front of him, leaving him on the sidewalk.

I remember everything.

In Conan Doyle’s novels, Sherlock Holmes never says “Elementary, my dear Watson” / The pin code for my debit card is 9728 / The card number is 0573 5233 3754 61 / The security code is 793 / Stanley Kubrick’s first film is not Killer’s Kiss but Fear and Desire / In 1990, the referee of the match between Benfica and Olympique Marseille who allowed a handballed goal by Vata was named Marcel van Langenhove. That goal made my father cry / Paraguay’s currency is the guarani / Botswana’s is the pula / My grandfather’s motorcycle was a Kawasaki H1 / At twenty years old, my father drove a French blue Renault 8 Gordini.

I remember everything.

The entry code for my apartment building is 6507B and the code for the elevator is 1321A / My sixth-grade music teacher was named Monsieur Piguet. He made us play the Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” on the recorder / I bought my first two CDs in 1991, when I was in my junior year of high school: Du Vent dans les Plaines, by Noir Désir, and Schubert’s Impromptus on Deutsche Grammophon, performed by Krystian Zimerman / I scored 16 out of 20 in my philosophy baccalaureate. The subject of the dissertation was “Is passion always an obstacle to self-knowledge?” / In my final year of high school, I was in class C3. On Thursdays, we had three hours of coursework in room 207; I sat in the third row next to Stéphane Muratore, and when school was over he would take me home on his Peugeot ST scooter, which struggled up hills.

I remember everything.

Belle du Seigneur is 1,109 pages long in paperback / The music for The Double Life of Véronique was composed by Zbigniew Preisner / When I was a college student, my dorm room number was 308 / on Tuesdays in the cafeteria, they used to serve lasagna / In The Woman Next Door, the character played by Fanny Ardant is named Mathilde Bauchard / I remember the goose bumps I felt listening to “That’s My People”—where NTM sample a Chopin prelude—on my first iPod / I remember where I was on September 11, 2001: In a hotel room, on vacation in Madrid, with an older lover. He was a married chief of police who looked like my father. The Twin Towers collapsed while I was in that sleazy atmosphere / I remember that complicated time, those toxic men that I hated. That period before I realized that you had to love yourself a little bit before you could love anyone else.

I cross the Pont des Invalides, take Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt, and drive down the ramp that leads to the underground parking garage. I walk to Motor Village on the Champs-Élysées traffic circle, where I meet the girls.

“Hello, Alice!”

They are sitting at a table on the terrace of the Fiat Caffé, nibbling Italian appetizers. I sit down with them, order a champagne spritzer, and drink it in practically a single gulp. We laugh as we talk about life, love, gossip, clothes, work. We order a round of pink martinis and toast our friendship. Then we move on and try several different places: the Moonlight, the Thirteenth Floor, the Londonderry. I dance, let men approach me, flirt with me, touch me. I am not sick. I’m sexy as hell.

I am not going to die. I am not going to wither. I am not going to come undone. I am not going to wilt like a flower cut too early. I drink—Bacardi mojito, violet champagne, Bombay gin and tonic…I am not going to end up in a home for the mentally ill, yelling insults at nurse’s aides and staring into space as I slurp applesauce through a straw.

Everything spins around me. I am happily tipsy. Drunk on freedom. Time speeds by. It’s past midnight. I kiss the girls goodbye and walk back to the underground parking garage. Third level belowground. Morgue lighting. Stink of piss. Heels tapping on concrete. Feeling nauseated. Staggering. In a few seconds, my drunkenness is tainted with sadness. I feel pathetic, oppressed. My throat tightens and it all comes rushing to the surface—the image of my brain being assailed by senile plaques, the fear of the great collapse. A weary fluorescent bulb blinks and crackles like a cricket. I take out my car keys, press the button that opens all the doors, and sit crumpled behind the steering wheel. Tears come to my eyes. A sound…there is someone in the back seat! I sit up in shock. The shadow of a face emerges from the darkness.

“Seymour! Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.”

“Good evening, Alice.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was waiting until you were alone. Clouseau called me. I was worried about you.”

“Goddamn it, whatever happened to patient confidentiality?”

“He didn’t have to tell me anything. Your father and I have been living in fear of this moment for the past three months.”

I turn on the ceiling light so I can see him better. He has tears in his eyes too, but he wipes them away with his sleeve and clears his throat.

“It’s your decision, Alice, but I think you need to act quickly on this. That’s what you taught me—never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Take the bull by the horns and don’t let go. That’s why you’re the best cop I know, because you don’t spare yourself, because you are always the first one to enter the fray, because you’re always one step ahead.”

I sniff. “It’s impossible to be one step ahead of Alzheimer’s.”

In the rearview mirror, I see him open a manila