Bye Bye Blondie (25 page)

She goes to see Claire, who offers her a little pick-me-up and a good joint. And talks nonstop so that Gloria can't get a word in to complain or ask for help. Claire's embarrassed and annoyed. But quite used to this.

EVERY NIGHT, SHE
waits for Eric to come home. She's stopped drinking. She's full of energy. She's given up drink, cocaine, and weed. She doesn't want to have anything in common with the production people, directors, actors, screenwriters. Taking dope gives them all too easily the impression that they're cool dudes, in their sulfurous lives. Whereas they're a lot of cowards, with reduced neuronal circuits. As if they need to make themselves more stupid. Since they like their dope so much, she decides to leave them to it. No more familiarity. She's noticed in their discussions that she's gotten too relaxed. With the alcohol, the spliffs, the coke. She mustn't let them colonize her, she must keep her distance. Now that it's far too late, she finally thinks of protecting herself.

Eric selects a disc by Funkadelic, she wanders around for a few minutes, makes a pot of tea. She wants to give him time to decompress, but she wants to tell him everything as well.

“Today, what I did was I headbutted this director. You know the one I mean, the kid. We were in the Japanese restaurant. And before we left, I couldn't take it anymore. He stood up, he must have thought I was going to kiss him. I was so furious, I took a deep breath and gave him the headbutt of my life. He fell over backward onto these two posh old women. Like in a film, in fact. Just like that.”

“And the producer, after that?”

“He's stopped answering the phone. It's been days now. I'm not in his good books anymore. Him, Claire, they're not talking to me. I daren't go back. Of course, I've thought about it.”

“You didn't tell me all this before.”

“It was so predictable that this would happen. I'm a bit ashamed, I admit.”

“And now you're depressed.”

“No, I'm going to pull out of the project. I'm going to see if it interests someone else, and if not, I'll get, oh I don't know, some friends to read it.”

“Gloria, you can't take your screenplay back just like that. You signed a contract, you got paid.”

“Yes, I can, it's my story, and just because of €5,000 I'm not . . .”

As she says this, Gloria realizes it's not true. There are some moments like that when
everything teeters on a knife-edge, they stick in your memory, intact forever. The red double curtain in the apartment, blazing with color because of the setting sun, the sound of George Clinton, the croc-skin shoes Eric wears when he's on TV, although you never see his feet. The sachet of Earl Grey tea, the green cups.

It's what she has never been willing to admit, but it's been lying in wait for her, pulling faces, ready to fall on her at this very moment. She's been fired, like a stupid little idiot. From her own story.

She had thought they wouldn't make the film at all, she was ready for that. What she hadn't thought of was that they would make it, but without
her
. She didn't have enough faith in her own screenplay for that. It was a strange feeling, and, above all, what she didn't realize was how strongly you can get attached to something you've made, produced, brought out from inside yourself. It was the first time she'd felt she owned something. And now she was dispossessed. Let them give her back her story and leave it at that.

The first night, she thought she'd be able to get over it. The first week, she made a real effort. Shrugging her shoulders, laughing that, anyway, she's had her €5,000, so let's wait for another check if they make the film, and don't think about it anymore. Give up, move on. Just some words strung together, don't go breaking your heart over that.

To console her that night, Eric says things she thought she'd never hear. Silly, loving things that strike to her soul, breathe softly on the pain, and make it go away. She promises to rediscover her sense of humor and devil-may-care attitude and not throw a tantrum. When he says these sweet things, the pain melts, it's beaten. All that's left is this fantastic love that Eric wraps around her. The way he kisses her collarbone, the hollows of her elbows, under her navel. Gloria delights in it, lying on her back, and she sings in a low voice the words of old songs she thought she'd forgotten.

ONE DAY, LYING
in the bath, reading a magazine, she turns a page and comes across a photo shoot of the company making the film. It feels like being punched in the jaw, takes her breath away. She'd like to be able not to react, to feel less pathetic. She gasps for air. She has the feeling of having awakened old ghosts, presences around her, amplified. Two arms are feeling for her in the dark—two skinny, outstretched arms—wanting to grip her, draw her in.

With every outburst of rage, she calls the little producer on his phone. She insults him, screams at him, invents words to call him everything under the sun. He doesn't change his number. He threatens to complain to the police.

She doesn't exist. In his mental universe, she simply doesn't exist and has no right to anything. He's paid her. He's surprised that she got back in touch, exactly as he would be if the two little Chinese girls who sewed his slippers were to ring his doorbell and ask to see how well they fit. A string of people wiped out from his consciousness, appropriation with violence, and the refusal to see that there's someone else at the other end.

He's perfectly at ease in his impunity, genuinely astonished that anyone could question it. His conscience is clear, he's come to an agreement with it, so that he doesn't need to understand. Understand or see.

He sometimes picks up when she phones. He takes a mournful tone to remind her that there are worse things in this world, much worse things, than having her story stolen. She screams in return, screams into his voice mail too: “Liar, filthy liar, I'll never stop bothering you
. . .” She's obsessed. Ever since she was a child, guys like him have been comfortably lounging around on other people's backs, jerking off while they bust someone else's guts. She's obsessed—he'll pay for this, the little she can do to try and ruin his stupid life, whatever it takes, she'll do it. Return to sender, she wants him to feel something of what he's done to her. The terrible contempt for what she is. Return to sender.

WHEN SHE LOSES
control in front of him, which happens more and more often, Eric avoids face-to-face confrontations as long as possible. Then, when it breaks out, he takes it. After every outburst he's there to cheer her up. She's like a boxer on the ropes and he's pouring combative advice in her ears.

“Don't have a nervous breakdown just because this guy behaved like a shit. I feel bad now about having ever taken you to his place. But just don't let it get to you! You're not going to let yourself collapse and stay down over a little setback like that. Come on, where's your pride, your strength, otherwise you'll spend all your life crawling on your knees . . . I don't know what to say . . .”

“It's eating me up. It's like voodoo. I'm trying to get over it—give up my rights and not lose my head—because I can't do a thing about it. But I can't help it. It's driving me mad.”

“Do you think you're going to have to kill him?”

“Are you sick or what? No way. I don't want to have to remember him every day of my life, rotting away in prison for twenty years. No, I'm going to forget him, digest him, eat him, spit him out, shit him on the ground, I'm going to forget this guy. Completely. Utterly.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Could be a lifetime.”

She laughs. Herself, she finds it hard to believe how this has choked her. And then she calms down. Till the next time.

Furious, full of venom. But at the same time caught up by a giant hand looming over her, blocking out the light. One day that hand will grab her.

It's become a ritual, she locks herself in the bathroom, squealing with rage, stifling cries so as not to be overheard. She looks once more like the madwoman in the attic. She stares at herself in the mirror, red-faced, deformed, eyes bright with tears. The calm interval was short, and when it all comes back, it's a hundred times worse than before. She scratches her face, her chest, her stomach, hits herself. Her body has become a map of bruises. She bangs her head, then takes a shower and covers up the wounds.

She'd thought she was over it, she'd thought like a fool that love would save her from everything, but her demons have returned full throttle. And this time they're determined to completely destroy her.

It's worst of all when she's outside. She falls into a rage at the baker's when some old granny looks at her (she thinks) in a funny way, or in the street when a bus driver honks at her for crossing the road just in front of him, or in the post office when some woman or other starts making a fuss in a loud voice. The slightest thing and she's off. Crazy with aggression, she goes right up to people. Because she's tall she can loom over them and shower them with insults. And she reads in their eyes their mixed feelings: panic with a large measure of contempt.

Then, calming down, she swears to herself she won't do it again. But there's some kind of internal short circuit, it's beyond her consciousness. There's a button that gets pressed by the
slightest little frustration, and suddenly she's screaming her head off. She is a spectator, helplessly watching her own destruction. Paris, an electric city, just accentuates her problems, amplifying her madness.

Eric can see this from the outside and he can predict what's going to happen. He doesn't laugh about it anymore because of the seriousness of her outbursts these days. While she doesn't realize it, he can predict hours ahead that she's going to explode and make a huge scene. He sees her boiling up for it, starting to shake, turning on herself. He's tired, tense, anxious the whole time and keeping watch. Even when she's calm for a few days in a row, he's waiting for it to start up again.

THE SUN'S SHINING
. She's wearing some new shoes, fantastic ones, that make her look quite different. Beige, thin straps, high heels but not too high. Gloria looks at her silhouette in the shop windows. She can't recognize herself. She bought these shoes just after getting her second check for the screenplay—because they're shooting the film now. It's fine, nice to be out of doors. People look at her differently, it's the shoes that make all the difference, she looks good in them.

She's forgotten to take her Deroxat pill before leaving the apartment. She has flashes of vertigo, strange ones, nonexistent vertigo. She feels as if she's falling, astonishingly, with the sound of synthetic cymbals clashing. Percussion and zoom, it's not nice at all, she feels sensitive all over. Weird drug. The rest of the time it's been quite good, for the last few weeks she's been taking it, a sort of chemical feeling. It makes her want to talk compulsively, her nerves are both calmed down and alert. A precise, futurist kind of tension. She's been to see a psychiatrist who, according to Eric, has helped Amandine a lot. The sister is now so completely freaked out on antidepressants that she's been to dine with them several times. No hostility or distrust anymore in her attitude, she goes through life openmouthed, looks around at the furniture, smiling vaguely. Gloria feels somehow cheated: you can't feel angry at someone in that state. According to her brother though, this grotesque apathy is an improvement.

The psychiatrist is a young man, charming manner, his office is light and full of reproductions of art. The high window looks out onto a park, his bookshelves go up to the ceiling, bulging with old books. He had listened to her, absentmindedly, looking at his highly polished shoes, and diagnosed “overactive inhibition.” Gloria made him repeat this, with a frown: extra-inhibited? She likes paradoxes but this is beyond anything. The guy was quite sure of himself: “You need a little treatment.” She paid €120, and almost threw the prescription away, not wanting to have anything to do with this medicine.

But the week after that, she'd ended up rolling on the ground in public. She was approaching the Champs-Élysées from Place de la Concorde, going through the gardens, where there are a lot of embassies, plenty of armed police, and old trees in blossom. And like acid reflux, without warning, her fury had stirred again. She called the little producer. “Hello, you bastard, I'm calling to say the future lasts a long time and you'd better drop this film, because if not, I swear to God you'll pay me what you owe me, hear me, you filthy millionaire, or do you have too much coke up your nose that you can't understand what I'm saying? Bad news, you scumbag, I'm going to be your personal Bin Laden till the end of your days. CAN YOU HEAR ME?” Then she had gone on her way, and the silly man had called her back, with the regretful tone of someone who has nothing to be ashamed of. “Gloria, really, I'm
so
sorry it
didn't work out,” as if they had been lovers. That was the point at which she started to scream, there in the sunshine, with the crowds of people passing by, spitting into her phone, which she finally hurled onto the ground, smashing it, yelling bloody murder. Then she'd rolled on the ground. A real crisis. When she was little, she didn't do this kind of thing, but she's certainly made up for it after thirty. On the ground, among the passersby, she lay sobbing with hate and impotence, calling out for vengeance and reparation.

When she got home, she looked for the prescription.

ERIC IS KEEPING
her at arm's length, he's exhausted. You can see it in his face when he's on TV, his features are looking drawn, he's less amiable with his guests. Amandine's threat—“I warn you, don't hurt him”—ridiculously goes round and round in her head, with intolerable clairvoyance. She swears this isn't going to last, she'll turn back into the girl he came looking for back in Nancy, the one who helped him to be happy.