Anthony and His Cousin Visit Legrand

Anthony and his cousin visit Luc Grandemange to ask about Hacine Bouali and the motorcycle that disappeared after a party. The visit offers no reliable answer about the bike: instead, Luc pressures Anthony to take cocaine, then places a loaded MAC 50 pistol in the cousins’ hands. The scene turns a practical attempt to recover stolen property into a close encounter with drugs, coercion, and lethal possibility, ending in a hurried escape rather than a plan.

The Search for Help

Luc initially asks what the cousins want. The cousin explains the chain of events: the party, Hacine’s arrival, the motorcycle’s disappearance, and their suspicions. Luc reacts to the news with admiration for the audacity of the theft and remarks that Anthony’s father will be furious, but he does not offer a clear solution. When asked to speak to the Bouali family, he distances himself from them. He says he knew some of the cousins while working at L’Escale, recalls that he and Saïd were in prison at the same time, and insists that he barely knew Saïd and had no contact with the younger generation. His account is less a route to the Boualis than a declaration that he now keeps out of other people’s affairs.

The mismatch between the boys’ request and Luc’s response is established in the room itself. While talking, he rummages beneath a coffee table cluttered with videotapes, magazines, food wrappers, and a baby bottle containing curdled milk. The cousins exchange a glance and begin to regret coming. The disorder and their hesitation make the visit feel less like a negotiation with someone who can resolve the theft than an encounter whose direction is slipping out of their control.

Cocaine and Coercion

Luc finds a small metal patch kit and shakes about two grams of lumpy, slightly pink cocaine onto the table. Using an eight of diamonds, he arranges it into three symmetrical lines. The cousin declines and says they are leaving, but Luc refuses to let the visit end on their terms. He insists that Anthony try some, presenting the dog’s participation as an argument: even the dog does it. Luc takes cocaine himself, and the dog, which has only three legs and a blackened stump where the fourth should be, hops over to him. Luc offers it some from a wet finger; it barks and licks the drug, while he chuckles at the spectacle.

The scene’s casualness sharpens its menace. Luc treats the dog’s drug-taking as entertainment, and his insistence on Anthony’s participation turns hospitality into pressure. Anthony is sweating, his chest tight enough that he thinks he might faint. Luc keeps urging him on until Anthony kneels at the table, puts a straw to his right nostril, and inhales hard. Fear gives way to pride at having done it, but the expected transformation does not arrive: apart from irritation in his sinus, he notices no effect. His blinking, sniffing, and tentative smile register an experience that is at once physically real and strangely anticlimactic.

Luc later tells a story about the dog being sat on and left to whimper for hours without anyone getting up to help. The story kills the mood; the dog’s presence no longer functions simply as a comic prop. Anthony’s head feels heavy, and he sees his cousin putting his T-shirt back on. This discomfort precedes Luc’s renewed focus on the motorcycle and marks another shift in the visit: the boys’ wish to leave is now set against a more consequential offer.

The Pistol

After drawing out the suspense, Luc says that if Hacine took the bike, there is only one way to get it back. He goes into the kitchen, fumbles beneath the sink, and returns with a bundle, which he throws badly enough that it hits the floor. Its shape already suggests what it contains. Anthony unwraps old L’Équipe newspaper and finds a MAC 50 pistol wrapped in cloth. Luc says it is loaded, then tells them it is clean and that he is giving it to them.

Anthony’s attention fixes on the weapon’s material presence: its density, the large screws in the grip, its solidity, and its rudimentary construction. He runs a thumb along the grooves in the extractor, and his cousin comes over to touch it too. When the cousin lays it on the coffee table, Anthony regrets not having held it more firmly and wants to feel its weight in his own hand. The appeal is not presented as a considered decision to use the gun; it is an immediate fascination with the possibility embodied by an object that could be held at the end of his arm. Luc’s suggestion connects that possibility to recovering the motorcycle, without explaining what action the boys are supposed to take or what the consequences would be.

Reversal and Escape

The cousins again try to leave. Luc tells them they are not going anywhere, but the scene reverses abruptly when he gags, clutching at his sternum as a burning sensation moves through his esophagus. Anthony watches his pupils widen until they seem like a black, uncrossable lake. The pistol is still on the table between them; Luc leans over and takes it. Holding it with strange indifference, dangling it from his bent wrist between his open thighs, he now orders the boys out. The weapon’s presence changes from an offer made in connection with the stolen bike to an immediate danger in the room, even though Luc does not point it at them.

As Anthony passes, Luc grabs his biceps with a long, thin hand that feels burning hot. Anthony thinks of AIDS, while knowing that skin contact cannot transmit it, and pulls free with a chill at the back of his neck. He and his cousin run out, slam the door, and hurry down the stairs. Outside, the landing air feels cool. Anthony wonders what happened to the man who had sat on the little dog, a question that carries the scene’s unresolved disturbance beyond the door.

The cousins walk home through downtown and Blonds-Champs. The remainder of their high makes the distance seem to disappear, but the heat remains: the town feels heavy, with the smell of melted tar and dry dust as evening approaches. Their departure closes the immediate encounter without recovering the motorcycle or establishing what they will do with Luc’s offer. The visit’s decisive result is instead Anthony’s exposure to a loaded gun and to his own fascination with holding it, alongside a bodily memory of pressure, fear, and escape.