Bye Bye Blondie (11 page)

Eric grabbed her hand firmly. “I live around the corner, come on.” And since she was hesitating: “Want to get clobbered and blamed for everything in the bar? Hurry!”

She consented, struck by his common sense.

He did indeed live about two streets away from Place Carnot. In the entrance hall, she started to wonder what the hell she was doing there. Wide wooden stairs smelling of furniture polish, silence. Gloria was spitting like a cat, it was too quiet and peaceful, arrogance and opulence, too much for her to bear. Everything that as a teenager she feared: order and prosperity.

She stopped on the stairs, exactly like a mule that refuses to budge.

“Look, never mind, I don't want to come in. Your parents will be there.”

“We won't see them. Don't worry, I'm not going to introduce you to them right now,
mademoiselle vanishing act.”

Gloria shook her head, obstinately.

“Don't make me laugh. Just leave me here for five minutes. I'll go home, I'll get away with it.”

Eric sighed, and sat down beside her on the stairs.

“You're pushing it. You're lucky, you know, every time I see you, you're trying to beat someone up, and that really turns me on.”

“It turns you on?”

“Yeah. Makes me really want to fuck you. Already before, it was quite strong, but now, seeing you . . .”

“Oh really?” Gloria asked, impressed by such certainty. She felt her reluctance melting. All the reluctance of the last few weeks. He put his hand over hers.

“See, frankly, you look a bit crappy in that punkette gear. But since it's you, I like it. Any other girl, looking like that, I'd feel like vomiting. But you, well, you turn me on. I don't know why. You just turn me on. Coming?”

She rolled her eyes up to heaven, like a saint ready for sacrifice. Then she stood up. Dusted off her behind and asked, “Is it a long way up, to your place?”

“Yes, but we don't have to take the stairs.”

They went up in the elevator, and when they were in front of a huge door, a door so imposing that it could have been a dentist's office, he rang the bell. The door was opened by someone Gloria thought might be his sister. Very beautiful, youngish, but sad-looking. He greeted her and she signaled to them silently, in complicity, indicating they should tiptoe along to the right. The apartment seemed as big as a hypermarket. They went up a flight of stairs, then along a narrow corridor with gray carpeting and high ceilings. His bedroom, on the top floor right, was spacious, with several windows. Gloria understood better now why he so much wanted her to go back home with him. He explained that since he'd spent that week in the hospital, his status had completely changed—he was regarded as seriously ill now. And that wasn't bad at all, because everyone tried to be really nice to him, concerned. It was cool.

Hi-fi speakers, record collection, tape recorder, TV, video games, consoles, model airplanes. Gloria was both touched and appalled that he wasn't ashamed to let her in to see all this.

He had some good weed, she'd slumped onto his bed and dropped off to sleep. He'd woken her not long after, carrying a load of chocolate cakes. He rolled another spliff. They watched
Mad Max
. She had almost nodded off against his shoulder, it felt nice. They were getting used to each other. He kissed her on the lips, his tongue was delicate and nervous. She regretted coming here.

Then things moved fast and in a couple of seconds her clothes were off and he was on top of her and fucking her. With great enthusiasm. They were both aroused by what had happened earlier. Having managed to escape so successfully, Gloria consented to return his passion, feeling for his skin with her mouth, scratching his back as if to mark out the territory. She didn't take her eyes off
him, his eyes were half-shut, concentrating, he was plowing into her as if his life depended on it. She would have preferred to go gently, more slowly, but she'd noticed that it wasn't worth even trying to say that to a boy his age, not the first time anyway. They both fell asleep immediately.

In the morning, he fetched them two bowls of black coffee, a demi-baguette, and a pot of Nutella. She almost fainted with gratitude. A whole pot of Nutella, hardly started! “No one else is home.” They listened to the Meteors, then the Cramps, then “Surfin' Bird,” at top volume in this bedroom belonging to a well-behaved little boy. They howled as they jumped on the bed. He kept putting his arms around her and hugging her too tightly. “I'm so glad I found you again, Gloria, I missed you.” She liked him to say that. And she felt it was resurfacing fast, the pleasure she felt at being with him. This time with nobody watching them.

They made love all day, sometimes on the carpeted floor like youngsters. She was finally getting used to him, wriggling, rubbing up against him, laughing with content. Since saying, “I didn't know how much I wanted it,” they had had time to warm up. She came, almost inadvertently, which didn't happen often. In fact, never with a guy. On her own, yes, anytime she wanted. But not with someone else. It hadn't bothered her before. She was a girl, she wasn't going to fuss, she wanted to please the boy, and was quite content if that made him happy. So it had taken her by surprise, and even disconcerted her a little now, to find that with him she could come. Just like the first time she'd masturbated, she knew what it would feel like, she wasn't born yesterday. But she was puzzled that it was happening. At fifteen, she had imagined she would be frigid all her life. Which hadn't surprised her then, there were so few things she got right. But Eric was feline, he undulated over her, worked on her to possess her, whatever the cost, to the far end of the end of something she didn't yet know she could be. When they began again, she understood. It was almost frightening, another thing about him that would count for a lot with her. His tongue was diabolically competent. As often with her lovers, she'd learned in a day to appreciate what only the day before seemed a fault. As for him, he was like a kid at Christmas with a new toy, he wanted to play all day long.

His parents were back home, but they didn't come to his room. She'd had enough now, cloistered in his pad, it felt like being held in a luxurious aquarium. “Come on, we'll go out.” He disappeared to nick some cash from somewhere in the house and in ten minutes was back with five hundred francs.

“Where did you get that?”

“It was lying about.”

Later his mother would give him hell, discovering he'd pinched money from the household budget.

Outside in the street it was getting dark. Eric had taken Gloria by the hand, and she felt uncomfortable. Afraid of meeting anyone she knew. She wasn't quite ready to acknowledge him. Too precious, too new, too teddy-boyish, too blond, too delicate, too
everything
. Now she was ill at ease. She was beginning to plan how to get rid of him and go join her usual friends. Then they'd bumped into Victor, and the two boys had got on fine. They'd gone over the bust-up of the day before and began to reenact it live, going mad with excitement, miming the actions, inventing extra twists. Gloria, feeling left out, chewed her lips, thinking about the flagrant injustice of male solidarity. Always ready to be best pals, just like that, whereas if she wanted to get three little sentences out of them and a bit of consideration, she was obliged to move mountains of motivation. Seeing how easily Eric fit in, she began to relax a little though, and was more willing to let him hold her hand. That evening, the three of them went to some practice
rooms—the basement of a warehouse for fitted kitchens, fixed up for them by the father of one of the gang—to watch a band rehearsing. They'd bought several six-packs of beer. They sat in a corner, the band was doing a Joy Division cover. For Gloria, this kind of place, the atmosphere—deafening drum kit, electric guitar, amplifiers on full blast—felt like being a trout returning to its river. Wraparound sound, for once she was exactly where she wanted to be.

During a break, everyone shook hands all around and, standing with Roger, she told the drummer about what had happened the night before. She could hear Eric somewhere behind her asking if he could have a go on the guitar, and she stiffened with shame for him. She thought it was being a total twat to ask to play instruments when you didn't know how. She could have done with a spade to dig a hole right there and jump inside and never come out.

When she heard him start to play, she remembered just in time to look cool with it. He played better than anyone she'd ever heard, holding the guitar the right way, low down. She listened, arms folded, unimpressed girl, just lending an ear. Inside she was thinking,
Wow, I hadn't got you down as this good
. He wanted her to sleep at his place again, but when she called home to tell them she was staying with a girlfriend, her mother had answered icily that that very friend had been ringing the house all evening. “You should have warned her, my girl.”

Eric bought her a last glass at the bar by the bus stop. She tried not to be too enthusiastic, she thought she'd noticed that it put boys off if girls seemed too keen right away. But really she wanted to climb all over him, touch him, slip her hands under his sweater, make little loving sounds, kiss the back of his neck, stroke his back, and for want of being able to give way to her feelings, she started acting like the girlfriend from hell, finishing off her shandy while giving him the benefit of her theories.

“See, if you play guitar, it's not
quite
so bad you being an upper-class snob, because being a guitarist trumps being a snob. See what I mean?”

“Are you that kind of girl? Groupie? Chases around after bands?”

“You bet! Drives me crazy when a guy can really play. Like you, if you saw a girl with super-sexy fishnet stockings, that'd turn you on, wouldn't it?”

“Yeah, all right, I get that.”

“So okay, explain to me how it's less stupid to get horny when you see a girl's stockings than to get wet when you hear a guitar solo.”

“Getting you wet isn't the point of the guitar solo . . .”

“Oh really, that's what you think, is it?”

She caught the last bus, the twenty-one, eight o'clock, one that would take her straight home. Night had fallen during the journey, and she watched the streets she knew by heart as they went past. It was the first time a boy had been mad about her and at the same time impressed her this much. As a rule she attracted stupid assholes.

IN JUNE
1986 she read in
Best
that Bérurier Noir would be playing at Saint-Etienne with OTH. Eric had suggested they go see them. They were meeting every day now, one way or another. That they were meant for each other was beyond discussion for both of them. They weren't old enough yet to realize that the future lasts a long time, and sooner or later things get complicated.

That evening, he'd gone home to fetch a rucksack and
“some stuff” while she waited for him down in the street, a bottle of Kronenbourg in her hand. She'd wanted to show him how easy it would be to steal a Renault 5, but she got confused trying to hot-wire it, and in the end they'd taken the train, since Eric had enough on him to pay for both their tickets. Less exciting, but more reliable. It was a night train, hours and hours in an empty carriage. They fell on each other and to their great regret, nobody caught them at it.

She was used to coming every time with him now. She was convinced, like a good little Catholic at heart, that this was because she was in love. The future would tell her otherwise about orgasms, it was more complicated than yes or no.

In Lyon they trailed around the station and met a guy from Longwy, easily spotted by his red Mohawk, who was going to the same concert and could take them by car. Eric had a knack for getting on with people, he wasn't afraid of linking up with them, cracking jokes. Gloria was happy enough to go by road, but this guy drove in his own special way, and it was a miracle they didn't have a head-on crash. He stopped at every gas station. She had a feeling of freedom, possibilities, intoxication. It was fun to look at the other people in their cars and be glad she wasn't living their lives. She wasn't that little girl being driven around without any choice, or that wife sitting alongside the hubby in the driver's seat, or that secretary on her way to a course. She didn't have to be someone normal. In the 1980s dyeing your hair green still caused a sensation. For lots of people it meant the unknown, danger, being part of something special, like knowing a secret.

In the car, they prepared for the evening by listening to
Macadam Massacre
at full volume, yelling along with it: “
Adonowonabébé adonowanabébémalo
.” Speed, the motorway, a new friend, the bass beat banging out. This music, which she'd been listening to all the time for the last few years, had two contradictory effects: a fantastic sense of relief, a loss of repression, and yet, at the same time, it also conjured up deep anguish. Without resolving it, it spoke to her about
that
: being locked up, terrorized, being in the dark.

They completely lost their way and by the time they got to the concert, OTH had already started their gig. They were singing “Euthanasie pour les rockers”: “
Tu finiras clodo, finiras clodo
/
Je finirai riche, et mon vieux chien aura sa niche
/
Heureusement y aura l'euthanasie pour les vieux rockers
/
Euthanasie pour les vieux rockers”
(“You'll end up on the streets, you'll end up on the streets / I'll make a pile of dough, my old dog will lie low / Old rockers, put 'em to sleep / Old rockers, put 'em to sleep!”). The concert was in a great hangar out in the middle of nowhere. Losers, pariahs, junkies, good-for-nothings, all quite happy to meet up in the same place. There was some sort of confrontation with a gang of skins, but Gloria was so out of it she couldn't really remember afterward what had happened.