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René told me about the existence of the Metrolope when he was hammered in my hallway and I said René, you’re talking trash. He needed to get a handle on his life because he was freewheeling. I said sit.
Whenever René’s wife phoned me, it was just one long sigh and so I learned to long-sigh back, thinking what a poor bastard René was to have a wife like Bernadette. One that insists on cutting his toenails because they scratch her calves in bed.
René sat down on the sofa and I handed him a whiskey which should have been water.
I said you’re losing it, René, and he went I’m not losing it, my friend. If you’d seen the Metrolope, you’d understand. He said I was blinkered, walked around with stupid diamonds on my socks thinking I’d got what all this shit was about but I’m as blinkered as Torquator Tasso who may well have won the Arc de Triomphe but he had leather cups on his eyes.
René asked me if I wanted to see the Metrolope, and I said, what, now? and he said why not, and I said because I’ve got appointments tomorrow and I don’t think such drivel exists in underground Paris!
He said I’d given in to corporate reality and might consider corporeality as a viable alternative, I said for fuck’s sake and was about to reel off my “at leasts” to run him into the ground, but by the time I’d honed my tongue, he was making boar noises and his eyes were slammed shut.
When René didn’t wake up that night; i.e. dead; I put some posters around Les Tuilleries metro line by the vending machine René described.
I’m meeting up with this woman called Stéphanie Berlier tonight who says she’s seen the Metrolope and her description of the feet fits René’s, but I’m thinking that maybe the Metrolope is a some kind of hellraiser with a scythe, so I’ve chosen a brasserie, not my flat, just in case Stéphanie Berlier keels over and I have another death to deal with.
About Katie Lodge
Katie Lodge is a British teacher/translator based in Lyon, France, where she lives with her two kids. She writes personal essays for Huffington Post UK and Litro Magazine, and is currently working on a short story collection on the themes of belief, rootlessness and the sublime mania of singlemumdom. She is also part of the Found Fiction adventure where stories are hidden in trees and other unexpected places.
