Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Who You Think I Am

So anyway, because I couldn’t follow Joe directly, I sent Chris, KissChris, a friend request. He was the perfect contact because he’d recently moved into Joe’s apartment, although only intermittently. They’d met about ten years earlier in the editorial department of Le Parisien , where they both worked, Chris as a photographer, Joe as an intern, they were about twenty-five at the time. I got the impression they did a lot of partying together for two or three years before having a bust-up over work, a girl, some weed, or money. And then, at the time I’m talking about, they’d just reconnected through some other guy who patched things up between them. Chris was struggling, every now and then he’d get some minor reportage, a photo for a scummy magazine, but he mostly lived on benefits. Meanwhile Joe was happily unemployed and about to move into his family’s holiday house in Lacanau, near Arcachon— a dreamy place where I had, where I still have, wonderful memories: time passes, the memories remain, as cemeteries say. Because there were good times with Joe. A few. Maybe there are good times with everyone. There can be. His parents inherited a fortune from a childless cousin, money wasn’t a problem for him anymore. He vaguely made music— nothing serious— but his mother was keen for him, aged forty, to maintain some semblance of work: so he was the caretaker and the gardener and the plumber and the electrician. Or so to speak, because

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