Bye Bye Blondie (24 page)

Gloria wonders how a screenplay can be anything other than filmic. She's heard all this already on the phone. She presumes that if she's been called here, it's because her script really is okay. They must love it. Drowning under these vague compliments, she sinks into a little black armchair and the conversation carries on before slowing down. “I haven't sweated so much over something since I was in school,” Gloria says, concluding it. Luckily, Claire suggests they have a beer, then another. Followed by vodka.

The boss arrives, the little man with the hypocritical smile, the school geek with the timidity of a weasel, the inhibitions of someone who doesn't have the courage to act on his aggressive feelings, but bides his time until he can strike, when, for instance, your back is turned. Gloria gets his number at once. He comes in, holding a screenplay across which he's written BULLSHIT in big red letters. He holds it out to his colleague with a weary expression. “It's just one damn thing after another, call him and tell him no way can I take it.” Gloria keeps quiet and looks somewhere else, sipping her beer. Then he starts to gripe about some “woman who came for a night out with us” and then complained she hadn't enjoyed the evening. Evidently, this isn't done, and he'll never forget this faux pas, sooner or later she'll pay for that. Gloria wonders whether in all this performance something is going on subtly, directed at her—she's not sure about this—or whether the little producer genuinely hasn't noticed her sitting there in the middle of the room, with an appointment to see him.

In the end, he condescends to become aware of her presence and for the first time in her life, Gloria finds herself facing someone who has such power over her that she doesn't listen to her instincts. Which would have told her to drink up her beer, pat him on the shoulder, and say good luck, sort it out, and take herself off home. Not get mixed up with them. Not to ask herself why Claire, sitting beside him, is looking at him as if he's Baby Jesus. The power of power. Not to ask what the silences in this room are hiding, not to hang around. Only, she wants to know if she's going to be paid. It's like when you've sat down to play for money and started winning, and you want to see how far your luck will hold. So she pretends to be interested, simulates politeness, and already she's telling herself off for plastering a smile on top of the nausea she spontaneously feels, as she listens to the siren voices. After the compliments, the little producer is listening to his own voice as he drones on, gets mixed up, contradicts himself, spills out platitudes. Gloria listens to this meaningless speech for so long that it really feels like hard work, then she takes advantage of a pause to ask timidly: “How much?”

The little producer gives a start. That seems to excite him, so after another half hour of platitudes, she plucks up the courage to ask him if he wants to buy her script, and for how much. She's mentioned money. Madness. He goes bright red, he's delighted, he's in a real-life situation, dealing with this girl from
working-class
France, a girl who asks
how much
when she's been told they like her script.

Ah, but it's not so simple, she's told. People don't just buy a screenplay “like that,” it has to be “polished.” Gloria looks around, holds back from making any comment, but doesn't see what the point is of showing off how rich you are if you're going to throw a tantrum at the first request for money. Or perhaps that's just the point? So that she can sense that she'll get some, but first of all she'll have to crawl, that it's within reach but she'll have to do everything they ask her.

Claire passes her a fifth beer, and Gloria asks again: “So when
do
you pay?”

“When we sign the contract.”

“And when do we draw up a contract?”

“Once the screenplay has been perfected and we're convinced it's worth investing in.”

“So until then, I have to work for nothing?”

The little man smiles, that means yes, she's got it. The secretary pops her head around the door and whispers he's wanted on the phone. He gets up and goes off to his office. Gloria doesn't realize this, but at least she's had the good fortune to be in his presence for more than thirty minutes.

THEY'RE SMOKING PIPES
of pure hash on their balcony. She watches the streetwalkers coming and going on the pavement below. Eric is looking up at the moon, where the stars are shining.

“He's a shit, isn't he? Comes on like some captain of industry, I-rule-the-world. Typical left-wing bastard. When he's talking to me, I feel like he's a missionary who'll explain how to pray to God, so my soul can go to heaven.”

She's groaning, but trying not to make too much noise, and follows Eric back to sit down in their living room, unable to concentrate on anything except her project. Either it'll get made, any minute, or it will vanish without a trace. For her, that means a difference of several thousand euros. She forbids herself to get excited, while holding herself like a machine gun, full metal jacket, ready to blast the opposition to smithereens. Eric flips through a few foreign TV stations and stays in front of the set till four in the morning. His show is in a rut, he'd like to find a good idea to suggest for next year. He's patient, casual even.

“He's supposed to be left wing, I thought you'd have some fellow feeling with him.”

“Yeah, sure he's left wing, the prick. He knows he's no Einstein. He feels depressed that he's not cool enough for the circles he runs in, so he wants to get down there with the proles, and he thinks that someone like
me
, being a poor scrounger, will be so thrilled he's deigning to consider my case that I'm going to lick his boots forever and ever, amen. Well, he won't be disappointed when we meet, pathetic, incompetent cocksucker.”

“Can't you just calm down for a couple of minutes?”

“No, dammit, it's war, and you ask me to calm down! Is he giving you bribes behind my back or something?”

“You should be
glad
that you know you've written a good story and found someone to sell it to.”

“Not my style. Don't mistake me for some poor dumb hippie.”

“No chance of that.”

He pulls her to him, they lie down on the couch side by side and watch presenters of every nationality strutting their stuff on TV.

And lo and behold, it's easy, it's magical again, just the two of them. They recover their good mood, find the right words, and their gestures are comforting. She makes a real effort to control herself regarding Amandine. Eric is once more considerate, attentive, and funny. It's a kind of remission, the idyll is back, they want it to seem like convalescence. He advises her to use his lawyer, but they'd had lunch with him, and Gloria thought she'd pass out before they reached the coffee. Too unpleasant, too full of himself, and arrogant. Another guy who took three hours to express a simple idea. She'd rather be cheated than turn to someone like him.

“
YOU KNOW, MY
dear Gloria, if this film doesn't get made, I won't be the one losing sleep over it. It's not me that will wake up in despair tomorrow morning. It doesn't matter to me. Think about it.”

Once more, her instinct tells her that the right thing to do at this point is say, “No, me neither,” get up, take her bottle of beer, and exit.

The little producer sighs, exasperated, then leaves his office. Gloria stays sitting there, looking at her contracts. Claire comes in after a while, drinking coffee from a plastic goblet. She looks drawn.

“Is it true you don't want to sign? We can't start on anything without a contract you know.”

“My lawyer screamed bloody murder when she saw these papers. She told me I shouldn't sign. I don't know what to do. The boss, he just went out and said if it wasn't signed by tomorrow the whole deal's off.”

She'd like Claire to tell her he'd never dare do such a thing, but from her expression she realizes he absolutely would. Someone who takes weekends off from midday Thursday to Tuesday morning is surely capable of canceling plenty of things.

Before she leaves, she picks up a big black felt pen and signs all the documents. Everybody has warned her this is just what not to do.

She's opened a kind of door inside herself. She's got something to lose now, for the first time in many years. Having this screenplay, being dependent on that stupid little man, who says every week that he's going to put it into production, so he'll buy it, and enable her for the first time in her life to earn some serious money. She went into this as if she'd just carried out a stickup, tossing something off in a fortnight that would make her enough to buy a new car. But it's not so simple. For weeks now, he's been stringing her along, calling her in, making her wait outside his office, making her accept all kinds of unpalatable things, swallow covert insults. And yet she keeps going back. Because she
wants
this film to be made. She keeps her smile fixed in place, the first lesson in hypocrisy, never stop smiling at this stupid fucker. She doesn't realize in fact how much it's costing her.

SHE DOESN'T REGRET
it right away, on the contrary. For several weeks she's regularly congratulated, invited, made much of. They sign her first check, she's sorry she's not back in Nancy now, to be able to roll into the Royal yelling, arms in the air, fist clenched, “Here I am folks, let's celebrate and drink to the producers.” Eric shares her excitement, genuinely. But the sum of money means nothing to him. Five thousand euros, that's pretty much peanuts for him. She calls Michel but, as usual, it's Vanessa who answers and you have to put up with her for ten minutes before she passes it over to her man. Yes, he's glad for her. But Gloria doesn't dare show as much enthusiasm as she'd like. They haven't seen each other for months, he sounds
washed-out, no doubt high on dope since this morning, doesn't seem to be paying much attention, he's probably reading his emails while he chats. In the end, Gloria tells him her story, pretending it makes a good anecdote. And Michel congratulates her, kindly, but without seeming that involved.

When she arrives at the offices now, the secretary jokes with her, people offer her the odd joint or a glass of bubbly. She's the coming thing, the surprise hit, she's written the screenplay of the month, the thing the boss is currently keen on. He calls her in every five minutes, gives her some demo tapes to choose the good one, the best. He listens to her opinion, he finds her impressive, spot on. She isn't fooled, she's not going to amuse him for long.

What she underestimates, dangerously, and what Eric can't guess, is that by spending hours retyping a line of dialogue here, a description there, reediting the scene from the hospital or the location of a party, adding depth to one character or another, this screenplay, taken on as a lark in the first two weeks, has become transformed into something else. She's becoming attached to her baby. But it's just a mass of words printed on paper, nothing more. She goes back to it regularly, goes plunging back into those past days, looking for more material. It waltzes inside her flesh, she feels off-kilter. She's feeding this screenplay with herself, she's stripping herself bare in it. Without realizing, without knowing that it counts, she spends all her time absorbed in this and doesn't protect herself from anything.

One day the producer wants her to come and meet this director, “just to see.”

“I don't need to see,” Gloria tells him. “He's a total zero, it's common knowledge, there's no need to go and have a meal with him. I'm not going to change my mind about his lousy films by watching him chew his lunch.”

“You
are
going to go along, he
loves
your story, he wants to meet you, and I want him to make this film.”

“So where do I come in?”

“You have to finish writing the screenplay with him.”

“But the screenplay
is
all finished. We're NOT going to introduce aliens with big boobs, that wouldn't fit with the story, I'm sorry. That clueless director with his tiny prick will just mess up my script. If he were any good at making movies, we'd all know about it. But no, a string of flops. Is he someone's son or something?”

“I really don't see . . .”

“He's not
even
anyone's son, and this is the third film he's going to be allowed to ruin? Do you think I'm an idiot?”

“But I make the decisions around here.”

“Yeah, but it's my work.”

“And it's my money.”

She pretends not to have heard. A little voice inside is telling her,
See, you are an idiot, joke's over.
She pretends not to have heard, because of what she should reply. She carries on, calmly and brutally loquacious.

“I turn up here, you tell me this kid's read the screenplay, without anyone telling me—I think I should point out I'm not the cleaning lady, I'm the woman who
wrote
the fucking screenplay. So if this loser says he'd like to ‘cut out a couple of clichés,' you'd be happy to pass that on to me. That's either stupid or it's mean, either way it's not surprising if it really makes me mad.”

“Listen, your story's fine, but the public's getting a bit blasé about reality shows now,
you need to put it into the hands of a pro.”

She simply swallows her wrath this time, while fixing him with a glare.

The little producer hates it when she throws a tantrum. He likes to humiliate her, make her wait around, make his shitty little observations. He likes the idea of putting her into a harness with this young director on her back, just for the fun of seeing her struggle and get beaten. But he doesn't like her losing her temper in his office.

Gloria looks out of the window as she listens to him. His dry little voice goes up a couple of notches when he's crossed. He's acting as if he knows how to keep his cool, but he's getting antsy on his soft leather couch. What she'd really like to do is bite his ears off. His delicate shell-like ears. She'd like to grab his head, hold it in both hands, and bite the ears off. But she stays calm, says nothing. All she's suppressing is festering away in the pit of her stomach, turning her whole life moldy. And it's herself that she's learning to hate the most.