Bye Bye Blondie (16 page)

She took a few deep breaths, hesitating to open it, then poured a shot into a mustard glass and drank half of it off, holding her breath. She hated the taste of whiskey. She was afraid to open the envelope.

IT WAS TIME
, he said, to “pull himself together,” to “come out of it,” to “face reality.” He'd thought hard, he didn't want to ruin his life, he wanted to study. He knew she would understand, and that since his mother was ill, “He couldn't do this to her.” He insisted that it had been hard making this decision, but they couldn't go on seeing each other. It had been painful for him too, especially the first days—again, she'd understand, wouldn't she?

Tiny handwriting, compressed and suddenly cramped, too regular, observing the margins, too correct, too mean, too infuriating. And he hoped she'd understand!

She understood fucking nothing. Above all, how he could have written such a cold letter, so inappropriate, so unexpected? What was she supposed to understand? She felt ashamed, for him as much as for her, as she read the letter. She felt wicked and stupid, an idiot in hell. To have waited so trustingly. To have felt so good with him. To have believed even for a second, to have
imagined it could be happening to her, true love—beautiful, luminous, and without complications. “You poor fool,” she kept telling herself, “that'll teach you about life, you stupid fucking idiot.” She hated herself, in waves of anger, then it turned against him, “Mama's boy, go lick your mama's ass, do whatever she says, stupid, weak fucking coward!” Her head whirled, she was betrayed, humiliated, abandoned, furious, mad with rage . . . and deeply unhappy.

When had he started lying? Had he always known he'd go back home when they were together that summer? Had he been bored secretly, had he regretted running away, had he wanted to go home? Had she been so naive she hadn't realized it at the time? Now she didn't miss him at all—or not the same way. In the time it took her to read that letter, she had armed herself head to foot with scorn. Something inside her had retracted, closed in on itself, and would never be exposed ever again.

These things weren't meant for her: happiness, complicity, a soul mate, love.

“His dear mama, his schoolbooks, being reasonable, not doing anything out of turn . . . stupid, mediocre, mean-spirited fucking little idiot.” She'd have liked to have him in front of her for two minutes. With time to tell him a thing or two. She beat her brains to the bone, she dug deep inside herself for the wounding things she'd say when she saw him again. And for several days she rehearsed in silence the moment when they next bumped into each other.

Next day, at the counter of a café, she'd met Roger again and called to him from the other end of the bar: “You told me not to trust him! Well, know what? You were abso-fucking-lutely right.” She'd had too much to drink. Roger listened patiently to her story and was kind and sympathetic, agreeing with her how appalling it was. He bought her a few beers. Gloria, being well brought up, bought him a few as well. She couldn't get over his being so thoughtful and concerned. That was the good aspect of that terrible time: people were warmer and more attentive than she had expected. He ran a few theories past her.

“It's this government's fault, the socialists, bunch of hypocrites, pretending we're all in it together, rich and poor, brown and white, Jews and Protestants, well forget it. In the end it's just everyone for himself and it never works, their big society. Socialist politicians just want to be able to fuck black girls with a good conscience, believe me . . .”

Then the evening got wilder and more confusing. Roger started a fight, but Gloria couldn't work out why he was grasping the head of this young fair-haired guy under his arm and bashing him. They'd had to run away because the bartender was furious. Perhaps the blond boy worked there, she wasn't sure. Anyway, a bit later she and Roger were standing on the roof of a car, arm in arm, concentrating hard on getting the words of a song by Renaud right: “
Et la blonde du sixième
/
Le hash elle aime
” (“The blond on the sixth floor / Hash is what she's for”). Soon afterward, as far as she could remember, they were in a bedroom, in a hostel for young workers and they were fucking. She found out that night that he talked nonstop during the act. She wasn't used to that, it made her lose concentration. It was quite funny.

In the morning, big hangover, dry mouth, bruised all over. She left before he woke up, not finding him such fun the next day.

Outside, the light was too bright, it hurt her eyes. She stopped to drink a black coffee. There was a lump in her throat. She'd never sleep with Eric again. Never again curl up alongside someone believing so hard that they loved each other to distraction. It wasn't even a decision. She just knew, and unlike most of the ideas you get when you're a teenager, it was true. It hurt so
badly that she couldn't even cry.

THAT NIGHT, AFTER
Véronique is in bed, Gloria spends a good fifteen minutes trying to unfold the sofa bed, without success. She gives up and decides not to bother. “For all the sleep I'd get anyway,” she tells herself as she paces around the bookshelves, hands in her pockets, head to one side, trying to read the titles. Then she tries the medicine cabinet, finds nothing but a little cough syrup containing codeine, and finishes off the bottle. Sometimes it helps her sleep. Inside her head there is a confusion of things, she's too tired to put any order to the thoughts, memories, and pangs of anguish going on there. She feels as though she's riding an old-fashioned Mobylette the wrong way up a motorway, trying to avoid trucks and cars coming at her, thirty-five tonners speeding toward her, like in a Mario Kart game, rolling her over, knocking her out, then sending her flying into the wilderness. In this chaos, it's hard to distinguish what really hurts, the old episodes from her adolescence or thinking about her parents, both dead now, and vanished with them is all that time of her life. She's inexorably cut off from it. She knows that Eric is an orphan too, she read it somewhere. Does he get sad every Christmas like she does? She wants to call Lucas, she hasn't lost the reflex yet of counting on him when she's had too much to take. Just yesterday, he was still her partner, her other half. Gloria would like to extinguish all these thoughts, lie down, drowse off, and be able to leave herself behind.

Poking around among Véronique's things she finds a CD compilation of Janis Joplin. Joplin, astride a huge motorbike, is laughing as she looks straight at the camera.

Gloria puts on the CD very low and crouches between the speakers. She tries to concentrate on the music, wiping everything else out. Filling her head with sound.

How many times, in how many different situations, has she retreated into herself just like now? She has been listening to Janis Joplin since she was a kid. Accompanied by her, as if by a big sister.

In the early 1980s a girl who worked in the market, older than Gloria, orange hair, shabby leather jacket, class act, told her that Janis Joplin was the leader of all lost girls. She'd advised Gloria to make her a personal patron saint, whenever she was unhappy in love, or when she was looking for dope and couldn't find it, or when she had nowhere to sleep and was sick of being in the street, or if she wanted a job. In fact, on any occasion, she should make a little altar to Janis, the urban goddess, light candles to her and make her offerings such as a nice big spliff, a can of Kronenbourg, a pretty garter belt, whatever you like, depending on your mood.

Gloria had met this girl at a party after a concert by the Stranglers and KaS Product at the Pulsation Jazz Festival. She'd taken two packets of Mercalm, antiseasickness pills that were supposed to give you a high, but had just sent her off to sleep, sitting down, with her head on the table. When she came out of it she chatted with the people still at the party. She had never known whether the older girl was nuts or just kidding. She never met her again to find out. But at any rate, she liked the idea, and often in her life she had built little altars so that good ole Janis, patron saint of wild girls who've gone over the top, would come to her aid. She had bought a secondhand Joplin vinyl LP, chosen because of the sleeve by Crumb, and had left it lying about in full view so that she looked like a rock buff. And by pretending, Gloria ended up being genuinely touched and then supported by those tracks.

Day breaks and Véronique's alarm goes off. Gloria curls up on the sofa pretending to be
asleep, she aches all over as if she'd spent the night fighting. When the apartment's empty again, she gets up—black coffee, cold shower—then lies down in front of the TV, watching kids' shows. She can't concentrate on anything. The emptiness is like a white flash, within reach, imminent.

For the first time in two decades she feels like talking to Eric. She has hated him with such intensity until now that it has never occurred to her. He'd written, apart from the famous letter about returning to the straight and narrow, perhaps three times in twenty years. Flattering her ego perhaps, vaguely, but disgusting in fact.
Stupid twat, I don't want anything to do with you. You think just because you're famous, I'm going to care about what's been happening to you?
She had told herself he was writing to her because he liked being the kind of a guy “who doesn't deny his past.” Or out of guilt. Or because he simply got off on it.
Well nothing doing, buster
. Every time she got one of these letters it had surprised her, only slightly interested her, and she'd forgotten about it within ten minutes.
It's over, the past, nothing to do with me, finito
. He was a useless prick and she'd been taken for a ride, end of story. She wasn't going to spend all day thinking about it.

That afternoon, she trails along to the Royal. Jérémy greets her with a shout.

“Hey, you're a star! Everyone was expecting you last night.”

Michel is already sitting there. With his pretty bitch of a girlfriend. Gloria reflects that it's odd to be so in love and already in the bar by two o'clock. Then she deduces from it that their pretense of being a happy couple is coming apart. She's willing to take a bet: in a couple of weeks that girl will be gone.

Vanessa has always looked at Gloria with that slightly amazed contempt of girls who divide the world into two categories: those who make an effort and the others. Boxing in the second category, Gloria has never actually been worried by this lack of sympathy. But today the deal's completely changed.

“Where the heck were
you
last night?”

She hasn't even had time to sit down, kiss people, take off her coat. The other girl, beside herself with excitement, is talking to her as if they are old friends.

“You missed it all! Eric was so disappointed. We had a fab evening, such a pity you weren't there!”

Sneaking a glance at Michel, taking a deep breath, and looking puzzled, Gloria rubs hard at her eyes with the flat of her hand, hoping that after this reality will seem plausible. But Vanessa slides along the seat toward her, coming on full strength and with a big smile.

“I didn't know you knew Eric Muyr! Wow, that's fantastic! Michel had never told me.”

Her voice is embarrassingly eager. Gloria is paralyzed with shame for Michel, who's acting like he's not taking much notice, but his face is livid and fixed in an awkward smile. She forces herself to reply with a pretense of friendliness.

“Oh, you know, when I used to know him he was just a snotty teenager—it was in the olden days . . . like people say, that doesn't make us feel any younger.”

She's secretly praying Vanessa will gather she doesn't want to talk to her. Certainly not in this girly, best-friends way.

She's shocked, actually. For one thing, that anyone can be so half-witted as to be
impressed by someone on TV, and for another that Vanessa has completely changed her manner toward her so shamelessly. She could at least have had the hypocrisy to approach her more discreetly, make a little attempt at being friendly first . . . Well, Gloria certainly prefers people who are manipulative to those who make fools of themselves. She scrutinizes Michel's expression for anything that confirms her intuition: he's going to detach himself, this girl is too much, he's going to send her back to her mother.

Instead of that, however, Vanessa, now acting like her best friend, leans over and announces proudly, “Guess what! Michel and I are going to move away. I wanted to be the first to tell you. We're going to live in Lyon! You'll come and see us, won't you?”

Gloria freezes her face, so as to show nothing at all of what she feels, and turns toward Michel, who explains, more quietly, “She's got family there. She can get a job in journalism. Me too.”

“You too? What? The Lyon press? They have papers there? They have restaurants, not newspapers, wake up!”

“Yeah, they
do
have newspapers, I'll be able to write stuff . . . It'll be interesting. A change of scene, a change of life, you'll see.”

Gloria swallows, her smile is almost pained.

“Well, that's fantastic, congratulations! And good luck!”

Beside herself with excitement, Vanessa jumps up. “Let's celebrate! Champagne anyone?”

Michel raises his eyebrows in surprise. Gloria shakes her head. “I prefer beer, if it's all the same to you.”

Taking advantage while the bimbo goes to bother Jérémy at the bar, Michel tries to sugar the pill.

“I'm in love. I've never done this, gone off with a girl to settle somewhere. I want to try things I've never done.”

“You couldn't just take up surfing? Like everyone else?”

“Do you want to take over my apartment?”

“Ah! First good news of the day.”

“I don't want to move my stuff right away, maybe in three months. Just so's to not be bothered, not have to rush and so on. If you want to stay there while I'm away that could be fixed. Then if you wanted to take it over, you know, for good.”