Bye Bye Blondie (22 page)

Continuing to smile right and left, imperturbably, he links fingers with her, and winks his complicity. At this kind of evening gathering, he's an icon—a TV presenter. By comparison, the people back at the Royal in Nancy were quite restrained in their enthusiasm. A big red-faced man, sweating like a pig, virtually throws himself on Eric with a yelp, giving him a bear hug. Probably someone he hardly knows: the more effusive the demonstration, the weaker the connection. Gloria, of whom no one is taking any notice, leaves them and moves over to the buffet. A man in tails has been hired to serve and she asks him for a glass of champagne, which she downs in one gulp. Then holds out her glass, with a tight smile, doing the same again, turning her back on the rest of the company. Only after her third glass does she step aside, lean against the wall, and take a look around. If anyone had come up to her at that very minute, she could perfectly well have scratched their eyes out.

A woman in a pink ensemble that doesn't suit her has planted herself at the buffet, cornering a younger woman: “I just don't have the time, between my Reiki classes and tennis lessons, and I'm learning Hebrew as well.”

“You're learning Hebrew?”

“Yes, you see I want to be able to read the Bible.”

This is delivered in a very serious and considered tone. The younger woman, evidently lost, replies in surprise, “But it's been translated into French, you know!”

The older woman looks shocked. It's hard to show off to someone as dumb as this.

Gloria feels stifled, she has palpitations, she has a sense she's choking and is angry with herself for it. She wishes she could just laugh at this kind of idiocy among the rich, she'd like to get used to it, be able to treat it lightly, not give a damn. She'd like to be trivial-minded, get excited over some fancy top, put her hair in a chignon, take a lot of care with her eye shadow. Then act like everyone else: fake it, enthusiastically.

She looks around for Eric. The crowd in this huge room is very mixed, but at a glance she can tell it's a hetero gathering. The girls are young, ravishing, and numerous. As for the men, this evening, they haven't been selected for their looks.

Eric spots her and crosses the room toward her, but gets waylaid en route by a tall gangling man with spectacles, wearing a beautiful designer suit—wasted on his ungainly body. Finally he gets away and joins her at the buffet. Sympathetically, she offers him her half-full glass and he drains it off.

“I thought he'd never let me go. He hates our show, and he had to tell me in detail everything he dislikes about it, but it's classic—he knows more about the damn show than I do.”

“The less they like it, the more they obsess over it, I've noticed.”

Eric smiles. “You must be getting acclimated. I've never seen you look so relaxed on a night out.”

“Yeah, it's cool. Shall we go home?”

She likes this precise moment when they're alone, a little apart from the others, and can talk about everyone else. He's amused by everything she says.

When it's like this, just the two of them, of course she thinks about the time when she won't be able to make him laugh, when he won't stay all evening at her side, and she feels her heart contract, and every fiber of her being begs that this won't happen. That it won't be like the shit that usually happens.

A woman approaches them, a little spliff in hand, wafting a strong scent of pot around her. She has perfected the look of a classy tart: perched on sublime high heels, wearing a torn figure-hugging T-shirt signed DOLCE & GABBANA, very long hair, shiny and blond. Killer class, but with a sense of humor. She looks tough and hard, but as she comes up to them she's all smiles. Eric whispers, “She's a friend, a real one, not in quotes.” He rarely says anything nice about the people they meet at soirees. Gloria pays attention and holds out her hand, keeping a wary eye on this lady, abandoning for a couple of seconds her usual psychotic reactions. She's looking protectively at Eric, more maternal than sexy. And then, wow, sensational event, she actually turns to Gloria after greeting the famous man, and does the unlikely thing of talking to her when they've been introduced.

“So you're the lucky girl. I've heard lots about you.”

A nice husky voice, just a touch of vulgarity, enough to give it some edge. Gloria mutters back: “Only nice things, I hope?”

“Of course. It's unheard of, meeting him several times with the same woman . . .”

Because she really wants to be aggressive, and the champagne has also removed her inhibitions, Gloria looks at both of them and asks without any particular animosity, “You two've slept together, haven't you?”

Eric whistles, impressed. If he's embarrassed, he hides it very well.

“Well spotted,
before
, yes, quite often. But no one ever guessed.”

He exchanges a smile with the lady, who confirms this with a movement of her head, amused. She takes a good look at Gloria. She must have the same sense of humor as Eric because she seems to like the direct approach. She passes her joint across to Gloria, who makes the mistake of taking a long pull on it before blowing it away to her right. It goes straight to the top of her skull, and she loses a frightening number of neurons right away. She has to put her hand out to the wall, as inside her brain is turning somersaults. And at this very moment Amandine, Eric's sister, chooses to come over to join their little group. He points them out to each other.

“You've already met, I think.”

A little too much bravado and apparent ease to be entirely sincere. They shake hands. Gloria concentrates on keeping her mouth shut, she's so high and feeling weird. Her eyes are goggling, it's impossible to hold the gaze of the woman now scrutinizing her.

She's beautiful. Well, on the surface. Tall, dark, with regular and symmetrical features. A tilted chin, elegant, chic, upper class. Thin straps, a black dress that's both discreet and remarkable. She holds herself leaning slightly back, a slim body, slow gestures, full of confidence. She then determinedly turns her back on Gloria. Banished to limbo, Gloria couldn't care less. She notes that brother and sister don't look alike physically, but they both have the same air of amused arrogance. Eric whispers, “I'll be back,” before accompanying Amandine away. The lady with the spliff doesn't move off at once to talk to important people.
She introduces herself, she's called Claire.

Gloria warns her: “I'm so high I don't know whether I'm coming or going.”

“Me too. Nice though, don't you think?”

“No, just peculiar.”

A well-known actress goes past, considered to be good, but she's very disappointing: all the charisma of a coffee table. Erect and well-dressed, but seething with rancor and frustration. Everyone in this room is hooked on appearances, because only the facade is on their side: beauty, wealth, recognition. But the inner secrets are screaming another message underneath these shells: vanity, loneliness, miserable ambition . . .

They're a gang of whisperers, dropping hints, nothing is ever said out straight or direct. They nudge and wink, lie, conceal, spin. These people are weighed down by their secrets, more than in other milieus, hence the feeling of imminent danger, as if a volcano were bubbling beneath their feet. Fear and shame are gurgling inside them, but they walk head held high, convinced of their own importance.

“So, have you known Eric a long time?”

The lady in the very expensive shoes rouses her from her dream. She is certainly charming, with her upturned nose, her amused smile, her lively brown eyes, her delicate hands, and her air of being a cheeky little girl, which lights up her mature woman's face.

Gloria manages to say, “Since we were in our teens. But I'm too stoned to talk about it.”

“A little pick-me-up, then?”

Gloria can't see Eric. She follows Claire into the kitchen, where a whole lot of people are gathered, having a little pick-me-up with straws up their noses. Once they've let themselves go, lost their inhibitions, they look even more ghastly. Claire is joking with a young independent film producer, left wing, prematurely bald. She sets her lines up alongside his on the same silver tray. Her wrist makes delicate movements, she's asking him questions about a project, will he be shooting this summer, and his answer takes forever. He's as depressing as a rainy fortnight. A throwback to the eighties, false candor, totally artificial. Quite sexy with it, if you like men who aren't too bright. Cheaply dressed, tending to go red in the face, can't hold his drink, innocently making his pitch, like a fluffy little chicken opening its beak, asking for its share. Convinced he's got an absolute right to it all. Gloria leans over and takes a long hard snort, “Thanks, that's so cool,” and feels terrific. If you don't take it often, the effect is immediate and beneficial.

Okay, too bad, it doesn't matter really, all these squares. She wants to lose her prejudices. She reasons with herself, she's stoned, contented, and quite lucid.
Just try not to get worked up, go with the flow. You've never seen this kind of stuff before, stop being so annoying. Go out on the balcony, admire the view, have a laugh with Eric, stop being on your guard the whole time.

She tells herself to get a grip, listening to a Tupac track—“Come with me / Hail Mary nigga, run quick see / What do we have here now”—on loud in the next room. She dances on the spot a bit, imagines she's boxing with all these frauds, like a raging Minnie Tyson.
Wham
,
bam
at their heads, everyone. Claire takes out a pouch and starts to roll another joint.

“The key is to take it in turns.”

Gloria's starting to warm to her, this decadent bourgeois woman. The penniless producer goes off in search of his girlfriend, who'll be getting jealous, he tells them with a little self-satisfied giggle. Gloria, afraid that Claire might move off too, with her grass and coke, grits her teeth and launches into a hurried monologue.

“You know Eric well, do you? Have you known him long? I hadn't seen him for twenty years, it feels really weird to be here, you can't imagine.”

The other woman listens to her attentively and passes her the joint. Nobody has ever acted so considerately in the months that Gloria's been here in Paris. And it matters to her more than her pride will let her admit. To compensate, and considerably helped by the generous lines of coke her new friend lays out every ten minutes, she puts on a real show for her, telling her a mass of things about herself, more or less fascinating or indiscreet.

Finally, Eric reappears, apologizing: “I was with Amandine, trying to cheer her up. Okay, shall we go?”

For once he's the one who wants to leave first. Gloria thanks Claire, a bit too loudly, but the other woman seems to take it well. On the way to the door, they meet the sister. She takes advantage of Eric promising some actor he'll call him during the week to grab Gloria's wrist, look her in the eye, and snarl quietly: “I warn you, this time if you hurt him, I'll kill you, understand?”

Buoyed up by all the coke, Gloria whispers in her ear with a smile: “Taken over your mama's job, have you? So if we stay together, you'll lock him up again? Family tradition?”

The two of them shoot murderous glances at each other, briefly and inconspicuously.

A TAXI'S WAITING
downstairs. Eric has a contract with some company or other. Inside the car, it smells of unhygienic old man. Gloria opens the window and gets told off at once: the heater's on. She immediately explains to the driver, “I have to open it or I'll be sick, I'm pregnant, second month, terrible sickness.”

The man grumbles but lets it pass. Eric hasn't been following their exchange, usually her tricks make him smile, but he's sunk in thought. Gloria keeps quiet for two minutes, her brain racing with the coke, then scratches her nose and asks, “Your sister, was she moody like that before?”

“And
you're
asking
me
that?”

“Well, she doesn't like me, come on. At least it's out in the open. But I couldn't really care less. About her. I find I'm easygoing . . .”

“Do you realize how high you are? You could be sitting next to the minister of the interior and the editor of
Le Figaro
and you'd be laughing your head off . . .”

“Your pal Claire, on the other hand, she likes me. Dunno why, but she's fascinated by everything I tell her, or it makes her laugh. It's not complicated chatting with her. Do you think it's a trick so she can sleep with you?”

“It would be a very roundabout trick, but why not? Was I dreaming or were you telling her about our past, how we met?”

“How we met, how we broke up. Or, sorry, how you dumped me and broke my heart, how I went through hell on earth, etc. Well, I had plenty of time, you'd vanished for an hour at least. She introduced me to the guy whose place it was, the producer. Know him? A phony, that guy, and she works for him?”

“She has for ages. She develops projects for him.”

“Why isn't she the boss? Anyone can see he's clueless. Whereas her, I really like. She told me I ought to write up our story, she said it'd make a super film. And the little producer, he was the same, all over me, he was nodding away, ‘Yeah, yeah, could be, could be.' You could put him on the rear dash of the car, he'd nod his head off.”

“He's bulletproof, he only makes blockbusters, has for years. For him there's no crisis. What crisis? On the contrary, there are just people who want to be entertained. He makes the kind of films the kids keep going back to see seven times. Not to hurt your feelings, but I don't see how the story would interest him. Not enough Chinese psychopaths bursting in and smashing everything up.”

“You haven't heard my new version. I do kickboxing all the way through.”

“Still, good idea, though, to write the story. If you feel you can. It
is
a good idea, isn't it?”