Platform Read Free Page B

contact with artists, gallery owners, and the editors of obscure reviews —obscure, at least, to me. These telephone calls keep her happy, because her passion for contemporary art is real. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not actively hostile to it —I am not an advocate of craft, nor of a return to figurative painting. Rather, I maintain the disinterested attitude appropriate to an accounts manager. Questions of aesthetics and politics are not my thing. It's not up to me to invent or adopt new attitudes or new affinities with the world —I gave up all that at the same time I developed a stoop and my face started to tend toward melancholy. I've attended many exhibitions, openings, many performances that remain unforgettable. My conclusion, henceforth, is that art cannot change lives. At least not mine.

    I had informed Marie-Jeanne of my bereavement; she greeted me sympathetically, she even put her hand on my shoulder. My request to take some time off seemed completely natural to her. "You need to take stock, Michel," she reckoned. "You need to turn inward." I tried to visualize the movement she was suggesting, and I concluded that she was probably right. "Cecilia will put the provisional budget to bed," she went on. "I'll talk to her about it." What precisely was she alluding to, and who was this Cecilia? Glancing around me, I noticed the design for a poster and I remembered. Cecilia was a fat redhead who was always gorging herself on chocolate bars and who'd been in the department for two months: a temp, an intern maybe, someone pretty insignificant at any rate. And it was true that before my father's death I had been working on a provisional budget for the exhibition "Hands Up, You Rascals!" due to open in Bourg-la-Reine in January. It consisted of photographs of police brutality taken with a telephoto lens in Yvelines; but we weren't talking documentary here, more a process of the theatricalization of space, replete with nods to various cop shows featuring the Los Angeles Police Department. The artist had favored a fun * approach rather than the social critique you'd expect. An interesting project, all in all, not too expensive or too complicated. Even a moron like Cecilia was capable of finalizing the provisional budget.
    Usually, when I left the office, I'd take in a peepshow. It set me back fifty francs, maybe seventy if I was slow to ejaculate. Watching pussy in motion cleared my head. The contradictory trends of contemporary video art, balancing the conservation of national heritage with support for living creativity . . . all of that quickly evaporated before the facile magic of a moving pussy. I gently emptied my testicles. At the same moment, Cecilia was stuffing herself with chocolate cake in a patisserie near the ministry; our motives were much the same.
    Very occasionally, I took a private room at five hundred francs. This happened if my dick wasn't feeling too good, when it seemed to me to resemble a useless, demanding little appendage that smelled like cheese. Then I needed a girl to take it in her hands, to go into raptures, however faked, over its vigor, the richness of its semen. Be that as it may, I was always home before seven-thirty. I'd start with Questions pour un champion, which I had set my VCR to record. I would go on to the national news. The mad cow disease crisis was of little interest to me; mostly I survived on Mousline instant mashed potatoes with cheese. Then the evening would continue. I wasn't unhappy, I had 128 channels. At about two in the morning, I'd finish with Turkish musicals.
    A number of days went by like this, relatively peacefully, before I received another phone call from Captain Chaumont. Things had progressed significantly—they had found the alleged killer. Actually, it was even more than an allegation, for in fact the man had confessed. They were going to stage a reenactment in a couple of days. Did I want to be present? Oh yes, I said, yes.
    Marie-Jeanne congratulated