Bye Bye Blondie (19 page)

“We've started packing . . . Oh, I hate moving, so much hassle.”

“That's life, you've got to get on with it. That's how it is.”

Then Gloria slumps into drowsiness as he opens a newspaper.

TUESDAY, IN THE
post office, an old lady is practically lying across an official's desk. He is trying to make her understand that she can't withdraw any cash. He keeps repeating “TOMORROW” loudly and clearly. She's wearing a shabby dressing gown and has very little hair left. She doesn't understand. The official explains, at a loss for what to do, “They don't pay out on Mondays, you've only got forty centimes in your account, come back tomorrow, TOMORROW.” She moves away, the next person takes her place.

In the queue, there's a little kid who's annoying everyone by talking too loudly, while his mother tells him to be quiet in the soft voice of a perpetual victim. Gloria glances at her and finally mutters: “If he doesn't hear his mother saying no when he's four, how's he ever going to listen to girls who say no when he's fifteen?” The woman, who hadn't asked her anything, turns around, at a loss. Taken aback. Visibly, she hasn't understood what Gloria's got against her. A black guy in a pink suit is standing stiffly upright, an idiot with a Walkman is listening to Slayer turned up loud, a fat man with a mustache is staring into nowhere. A woman complains that there's
always
a line at the post office. Gloria, never at a loss for something to say, looks her up and down and retorts: “Perhaps that's because you only come here at busy times, you silly bitch.”

The people all look embarrassed. She's used to it. All day, she has to keep opening her big mouth for the slightest thing. She's beating her own records for aggression. The old woman has come back, still in her tatty dressing gown, and stands behind Gloria in the queue. She stinks of pee to high heaven. It's obvious she's forgotten she came in here five minutes ago. This makes Gloria terribly sad, she is unreasonably touched by everything at the moment. That's even worse to bear, tears of rage and impotence, bitter tears sting her eyes. She stays in the line, breathing too deeply.

Véronique appears, out of breath.

“Oh, I'm so glad you're still here! Eric just called!”

She touches Gloria's arm, she's so excited that she makes little animal noises.

“I spoke to him! Wow, I was like, how fantastic is that! He's very nice, isn't he? I wanted to be sure you had the message. I'm on the way to my dance class.”

Still panting, she gives Gloria a pink Post-it in the shape of a heart, with scraps of tobacco clinging to the sticky bit. Eric's number has been carefully written on it in purple felt pen. Gloria shrugs.

“I've already got his number. But it was so sweet of you, thank you.”

Véronique puts her hand on her arm to calm her, as she would with someone stupid, and explains clearly: “You've got his number and you haven't called him. That's just it, he
wants
you to call him. Well, not that it's an emergency or anything, but . . . ”

“Yes, it was kind of him to leave me the choice whether to call him or not.”

Véronique rolls her eyes, she's flushed with pleasure to have spoken to a TV personality. Gloria still can't get over the effect it has on them all. In her case, it isn't because he's famous that she's been thinking about him nonstop for the three days since he arrived. It's just because she's a fool, and already falling in love. Because she consulted the cards at Véronique's house, read her horoscope in the paper at the Royal. Because she's incorrigible. To her great shame, she's hardly had a thought for Lucas at all. As if a year had passed since their last quarrel. This has never happened to her before, to obliterate someone from her mind so fast. She thanks Véro again and apologizes.

“Look, I'm really sorry, I need to stay with you again tonight. I swear Michel told me they were moving out Monday. But for sure tomorrow. I've got the keys, I've found someone who's going to get my things from Lucas's. Tomorrow, I'll be out of your hair. And next week you must come visit me!”

“Doesn't matter, really, it's my pleasure, truly!”

Véronique goes out, her straw basket with her dance things under her arm. Gloria reassesses: three days to call her, well, he isn't just fooling around. She concentrates on looking sulky and above all resists the urge to dance the polka right there in the post office.

SHE PACKS ALL
she can into her bag and hurries not to miss the train. At the station, she looks up at the clock, gets her ticket punched, picks up a newspaper, and as she's waiting to pay for it, recognizes Lucas going past, only a few feet away. She has just enough time to see that he looks drawn, in his brown eyes there's that miserable expression that she has never really noticed but which she knows by heart. In a shamefaced reflex, she turns her back without being sure whether he saw her or not. He goes on his way. She watches him disappear, his habit of stooping a little catches her in the throat suddenly. How can she be failing to regret him, even a little? Or putting it another way, how did she ever imagine she was really in love with him? She picks up her change for the paper and hurries toward her platform. This near miss makes her feel slightly ill at ease. She goes past some soldiers, arms at the ready, part of the government's antiterrorist dispositions. On the train, the places to put your luggage have been closed off for the same reason, with police tape across them. Consequently, people's bags are everywhere, piled up in the corridors.

Gloria finds a seat in a fairly empty carriage, opens her paper, but doesn't read it, gazing out at the landscape and thinking of other things. Her impatience, an undertow of fear, a delicious anticipation, a sensation long forgotten and yet familiar. It's like it was ten years ago, when going somewhere meant freedom, the promise of adventure. She's on the move, after years of immobility, which today seem like death to her. She's traveling toward something, it gives her a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, sharp and intoxicating.

He's waiting for her at the station, at the end of the platform. She recognizes him first and walks head down, thrown off-balance by her bulging bag. Having had to move out quickly, her worldly goods have been reduced drastically in size. She took advantage of that to come with all
that's left: three sweaters, four pairs of trainers, not much else.

Eric rushes forward to meet her with a brilliant smile and reaches for her luggage, “Leave it to me,” and then hugs her, slipping his hand underneath her sweater and up her back. Just like teenagers at the school gate. Gloria would like to savor the moment, but the lightheartedness that had filled her for the last few days has suddenly vanished, to be replaced by the beginnings of panic. She's no longer so sure she wants to go home with him, to see him, to have this physical contact. Perhaps she'd have done better to stay in her bar in peace, with a beer in front of her, chatting to her friends. Anywhere really, except on the verge of this adventure, which is too weird, too strange, too dangerous.

She asks, looking around, “Shall we go and have a beer? There wasn't a trolley on the train, I'm parched.”

But he takes her hand and pulls her along.

“Not here, I hate stations.”

“You're scared there might be a bomb?”

In fact, he's scared of being recognized and approached. She realizes that's the case within a few meters. While she's trying to think of something to say, how to behave, she is suddenly aware that half the people in the station concourse are staring at him. It's a kind of tide, discreet but perceptible, of faces turning toward him. She can feel behind them the tenfold attention of people who are pointing. He's used to it and walks fast without looking left or right. He doesn't allow the slightest eye contact that might let a passerby accost him. It seems to Gloria that all the women they pass, just after they recognize him, shift their gaze toward her and look her up and down with a total lack of sympathy. She's too old to stick out her tongue at them, and if she were to rush up and grab them by the hair and wrestle them to the ground yelling, she'd look like some mad criminal. She contents herself with scratching the back of her neck and pulling funny faces. She feels she's being exhibited, publicly humiliated. So she concentrates on her feet, restricting her field of vision.

As soon as she knew she was coming to Paris, she'd announced it to her pals at the Royal. Their reactions bordered on the insulting: “What does he want? I'd be suspicious if I were you.” “Look out for yourself,” with a hint of pity, or that's how she took it. At the time, it had irritated her. Why were all these people worried for her, just because something unexpected was happening to her? They hadn't shown any concern before, when she'd spent her life riveted to the same bar, telling the same stories and downing liters of beer. So why get alarmed now when she's off to see a bit of the world?
What the hell do they think
, she'd wondered,
that because he's on TV, the greater will be my fall?
If something comes to an end, it's always painful. But that's not a reason to advise people to stay home and not talk to anyone.

But now that she's here, holding hands with him, trying to keep up with him, she understands their awkward expressions, she sees what they meant, the people who advised her not to go. This story is too unbalanced, she is totally needy, and he needs nothing. It freaks her out to be some kind of whim on his part. A two-euro fairy tale, the fatal mistake that she's going to regret. Happiness doesn't just fall on your head like that, out of the blue, without your having asked for it, deserved it, discovered it. Why didn't she think of this before? Instead of jumping on the train the very next day, prize candidate for disaster.

Eric holds the taxi door open long enough for her to slip into the backseat. As soon as they're in, his phone goes off, imitating an old-fashioned telephone. He apologizes, says he has to answer it. His voice changes when he's talking work, more authoritarian, sharper, his replies
are rapid, edgy, and irritable. Gloria watches Paris go past the windows. Eric's hand feels for hers. A few rays of sunshine, the first of the year, light up the scene as if by magic. The Parisian women are engaged in a ferocious competition, shoes with built-up heels, colored trousers with tops and jackets to match, pretty handbags with motifs. Four rappers are waiting at the lights, black giants dressed in white and pale pink, like gigantic Haribo Chamallows. They're laughing and joking, look like they're in slow motion. They cross the road, followed by two Japanese guys with a head-to-foot rockabilly look, mirror Ray-Bans and gelled hair.
This is super sexy
, Gloria thinks appreciatively. As she looks at these people, she forgets to worry or regret she's come. She's suddenly grabbed by the rhythm of Paris all around them, the noise, the bustle, the clamor.

A woman sitting on the pavement, clutching a baby, rocking to-and-fro, holding out her hand, chanting something. There are people driving tiny Smart cars, caricatures of the year 2000 like they'd imagined it back in the 1970s. A delivery boy on a scooter overtakes them without indicating, the taxi driver hoots at him. A woman veiled from head to foot comes face to face with a black girl in a miniskirt. A little dark man, well past forty, black high-top Converse and Diesel jeans, turns around to look at first one then the other, and goes on his way, laughing to himself.

“And yet seen from Beijing, we're all Europeans,” says Gloria, almost to herself. She opens her eyes wide, happy to be there, feels full of energy and comfortable. Another homeless man, this one is lying full-length on the pavement. He's not begging, he's fast asleep. She has a sudden dizzy spell: How long would it take someone like her, with no family, to end up like that? As long as she stays in Nancy, the risk is lower because whatever she says about it, there's always someone who will take her in. But here, without a credit card, a checkbook—she's been banned from having a bank account since she was eighteen, with an occasional fortnight's grace every year—it could happen in a couple of days. The element of risk puts her on the alert, it's electric, not entirely unpleasant. She snaps out of a kind of reverie. Her mood has swung around too fast and too much, she's wearing herself out without any help.

She asks Eric as he ends his call, “Your father, when did he die? How did he die?”

“With my mother, a car crash, they hit someone head-on one night. I thought you knew.”

“No, I just knew you'd lost your parents like me. But didn't your mother have cancer?”

“Yeah, but she'd got better, when she died it was three years later. I'd just taken some university exams.”

“I'm sorry. And your sister? Does she live in Paris?”

“Yes. We don't see each other much though. She's married this complete prick.”

“What does she do?”

“She's got three kids. Work you mean? She doesn't need to, the guy has shitloads of dough.”

“Pity not to see your sister. When my parents died, I'd have been glad all the same to have a brother or sister.”

“You're right, I should go and see her someday. You have no idea how much she
hates
you. And you'd scare her jerk of a husband to death, that would be fun . . .”

His phone rings again. Gloria tugs on her bra straps, which have slipped down. Her own parents had died within two years of each other, leukemia and a heart attack, when she was around twenty. Another unfair blow of fate that she couldn't share with anyone, because all the people she knew still had their parents and couldn't understand.
How strange it felt to have no ties to the world. Only a few of her friends whose parents had divorced could imagine something of what it felt like. She often thinks of her parents, she wishes she could have known them better once she'd grown up. At the same time, she hasn't done anything that would make them proud of her. Eric is trying to finish his conversation. She feels she's about to cry and decides to change the subject.