Bye Bye Blondie (27 page)

Like in a Hitchcock film, except that he's heavy and very real, and her hands feel slippery. She holds firm.

He looks at her, straight in the eye, suspended over the chasm. Without any reproach, fixedly, he's given up on everything. She looks down at her feet, mustn't slip, helps herself by pushing her knees against the wall underneath the window. She pulls with all her strength, her hands threaten to slip along his wrists, but that doesn't make him blink.

His eyes remain fixed on hers, at the time she had other things to think about, but afterward that gaze would haunt her. He doesn't want to die, but he no longer has the strength to fight and get himself back up the slope. He doesn't hate her. He doesn't blame her. He's like a child who's been tortured by his mother. No reproach and no guilt in his gaze. Just a wound. Wounded tenderness. Just the refusal of someone who's been wiped out. Something worse than hate, indifference, or reproach. At that moment, just deeply injured tenderness.

Cautiously, she allows her feet to slide along till they are against the wall, takes the strain on her thighs, leaning back, draws strength up out of her heels, up into her shoulders, and gives another heave. The last one. Eric is now high enough up to get his elbows onto the windowsill and to haul himself up painfully. The first centimeters are agonizingly conquered, seconds last for hours. Then they both collapse heavily back inside the apartment.

They lie there, out of breath on the floor of the sitting room. They're not yet in the grip of terror. It takes a few minutes before they can realize what has happened and feel frightened to death in retrospect.

Gloria looks up at the ceiling, it's slightly cracked in the center. A voice inside says,
Right, everybody out now, it's over, it's finished, that's it
.

She'd like to be able to apologize, but she has apologized so often these last days, she's sworn so many times, held in his arms, sworn she won't do it again. She turns her head sideways, sees him in profile, his eyes are shut, a few tears are running down his cheek. She realizes that he's waiting for her to go, and she stands up slowly.

She sits up, then gets to her legs. The fear has ravaged her whole body, she feels stiffer than after a week's hard training. A deep calm has overtaken her, as usual after a crisis. A frozen despair.

SHE GOES DOWN
into the nearest metro station. Because it's warm, because there are plenty of people, she can sit down without spending any money and nobody will ask her what she's doing. She takes line three, the first train that arrives. A young lad, rather pudgy, circles under his eyes, wearing a hoodie, looking more like a poor dingbat than a hip-hop type, stares insistently at her. She gazes out of the window so as not to meet his eye. She doesn't know where to get off. She has nowhere to go, nowhere, nobody.

This kid keeps on staring at her. He ends up giving Gloria the weird impression that her new life has already come to look for her, making friends in the metro, people more or less as lost as herself. They'll end up hanging around together for a few days, long enough to be separated by the police or someone else, keeping each other company, wandering souls. Getting picked up forcibly when the weather's too cold, being hosed down in some refuge, having their things stolen. Then carrying on again next day. It reminds her vaguely of something, but she's no longer so young, times are different and the “fun and freedom” side of that kind of life doesn't strike her that strongly today.

So the worst has happened and here she is. Right in it. No point fretting now about being on her own, without any money, a homeless person. This is it, she's reached rock bottom.

She remembers that OTH song, “Euthanasie pour les rockers.” But even that doesn't exist. A place where people like her can have an injection to put an end to it all.

Gambetta metro station, three-quarters of an hour later. She gets out. The hooded kid follows her, he still hasn't taken his eyes off her. Going up to her, he addresses her feverishly but confidently, “Love your tits, wanna go to bed with you.”

Gloria stiffens and expects to explode as usual, making a scene and alarming the security people in the metro before getting chucked out like a nutcase. But for once, she remains quite calm: “I haven't got time for this, just fuck off, why don't you.”

From close-up the kid smells of sweat, his skin is awful, his face is covered with spots with white centers. But underneath the acne, his features are actually quite good, and he doesn't look as unpleasant as all that. Off his rocker perhaps, a bit mad, but there are traces of intelligence in his face. He insists: “I just wanted to go to bed with you.”

She frowns, indicating bewilderment: “Hey kid, didn't you hear me the first time? I'm a girl, not an animal, and I said something. What don't you understand about fuck off?”

She speaks quite close to him, she's gabbling a bit but not getting really angry. Too tired. Or perhaps her demons are having a rest, thinking they've put in some overtime today—now that she's alone and feels like crying.

The kid looks at her then mutters that she's a nutcase before moving off, talking to himself, hands in his pockets. She smiles and follows him with her eyes, wretched waif, and now she really is alone and in the dark. The demon of anger has left her, having drunk its fill, and is off in search of more exciting prey.

The cafés in Place Gambetta are all off-putting modern places. Gloria doesn't have the strength to go any farther, she just goes into the first bar she finds. She orders a beer at the counter, then goes downstairs to phone Michel.

She wants to tell someone that she's out on the street and unhappy. She's relieved when he answers in person.

“I'm not bothering you, am I? I'm in this bar, hardly any money left.”

“Say, Gloria, great to hear from you. It's been a while.”

“I'm not in a good place. I don't want to ruin your evening.”

“Oh, so am I. So don't worry about disturbing my mental state. I'm back in the shit. She's left me. She's gone to her mother in London. And I'm back in Nancy.”

“What?”

“She got fed up. Well, actually, she met someone else.
She didn't tell me, I found out. On the pretext I was doing heroin again—come on, it was just three or four shots!
You
can understand how pissed off I was getting, I needed a bit to make something happen, you know. Next day, she gave the landlord notice on the apartment, packed her bags, ran back to mama, and next thing I know she's engaged to some square. Rock was fun for a few minutes, but she couldn't take too much of it.”

“And you're not heartbroken.”

“Yeah, yeah I am.”

“You don't sound it to me.”

“You want the truth? When she said, ‘Game over, take your stuff and get out of here,' I thought I'd die, that she was the love of my life, I wanted to have a kid with her . . . And then once I was on the train, instead of crying my eyes out, I felt relieved, I have to admit it. I don't want to live in Lyon, don't want a job, don't want to be a daddy, and my fiancée was starting to get on my ass. So I should really be quite grateful to her. But that's enough about me, what about you?”

“Shit, I'm really sad for you. But it's lovely to hear your voice. Something tells me we'll soon be seeing each other back at the Royal.”

“Have you been having scenes with your man again? Punched him in the face?”

“No, in the balls and really, really badly like I usually do, but this time, I absolutely thought I was more in love than usual. Well, that's life, my life anyway, that's the way it is.”

“Gloria, don't be stupid. Go and see the guy, tell him you love him and stay with him. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it: he and you are meant for each other.”

She's standing up at the phone. Behind her people come and go to the washrooms, there's the regular sound of the swing door which bangs a few times before closing. She can see the big phone directories, yellow and white, fat, torn, with writing all over them, they date back to the last century. The telephone's an old-fashioned coin-op one. The light's yellow. Listening to Michel telling her she and Eric are a sensational couple has a weird effect. He carries on.

“Listen, I know when you saw me with Vanessa you realized right away it wasn't going to work. I could see from your face. I didn't want to hear that, but I knew what you were thinking. But with you it isn't the same. You've got to go through with it, change your life course, do you see what I mean? At our age, we have to take the right fork in the road.”

“Oh, stop making me feel bad by going on about it. It's over, it's too late. I'm outside, he doesn't want me anymore, don't know how to tell you.”

“So you'll wait another twenty years before you guys get it together again?” Michel's voice is super calm.

Gloria sighs: “Don't exaggerate—are you cross with me . . .?”

“No, but I'd like to get inside your head and let off a few rockets in there.”

She goes back upstairs, feels in her pockets to check she has enough to pay. Some jerk at the end of the counter begins to stare at her. Gloria turns her head and looks determinedly in the other direction.

The guy, far from being discouraged, comes over to her. Very tall and extremely ugly. That doesn't prevent him trying to pick her up.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“No.”

“So you don't want to chat.”

“No.”

“So tell me what's the matter.”

“I've just beaten up my boyfriend. I left him on the ground, drenched in blood. I didn't feel like cleaning up right away, so I came out for a drink.”

She thinks she's doing quite well, cheerful in the midst of her tragedy. The guy rolls his eyes and moves off. So it even worked. She drinks off her glass to her own health.

Two hands land on her shoulders and Gloria finds herself facing the café owner, who could have been a rugby forward, a giant, and not nice about it. “Outside, you. We don't want you making a scene here.” She doesn't have time or a chance to justify herself, or to shout that this isn't fair. She's out on the pavement, stumbling to regain her balance and not fall on her face. She manages to stagger upright a few paces farther on, near a bench on which is sitting none other than the kid from the metro, the one who wanted to sleep with her. He looks at her, pulling a face. Gloria shakes her head.

“Don't look at me like that. I didn't do a thing. Did you see how that guy pushed me out?”

He agrees with his chin, and gives his big smile again.

“Pity they didn't have any tar and feathers. Were you nasty to them or something? You can't help it, eh?”

She looks at the bar, incredulously, then at the kid who holds out his can of 8.6, good of him really. She drinks a mouthful, sits on the back of the bench, and looks sideways at him. She's heard people say how sometimes, when you've reached rock bottom, you see God or an angel, an apparition in the sky, some kind of life-changing meeting, i.e., when other people have bad things happen, something like a miracle occurs. But when she's down on her luck, providence sends her a useless spotty teenager who's obsessed with sex. Gloria scratches her neck and looks up at the sky.

She says, “You can see the stars for once. Usually in Paris, can't see a thing.”

“Can you lend me one or two euros? I'm thirsty.”

“Same here. Come to the corner shop with me.”

The kid gets up.

“Haven't you got a home to go to, lady?”

“No, I did something stupid, I got kicked out.”

“You must be a real pain in the neck if everyone kicks you out. Can you pay for a hotel room for us afterward?”

“Oh, give it a rest, Lost Boy.”

The corner shop's run by a Moroccan, it's narrow and poorly lit. She wants classic beer but the kid wants 8.6 and argues about it.

“It does my head in faster.”

“Exactly, it does my head in, that's why I don't want it.”

The shop owner's not listening, his eyes are riveted to the TV screen, watching a football match.

They sit on a bench on the rue des Pyrénées. Gloria kicks her foot into empty space.

She says, “I can't believe this, that I'm here.”

“Cry if you like, won't bother me.”

“Very kind, I'm sure.”

Then they have nothing to say to each other. On the other side of the road, a very beautiful Chinese girl, slender figure, leather coat, and steel-capped Docs, is striding up the street. They follow her with their eyes in silence. The streetlamps shed an orange light, it's cold. A big white car glides silently past like a dolphin. A van slows down alongside them. Two men get out and are changing the billboard in the bus shelter. She watches them at work, more for something to do than out of curiosity.

When they leave, she reads the title of a film on a dark blue background,
Bye Bye Blondie
in big white letters. In the foreground there's this daffy girl with jet-black hair. Pretty: small nose, pouting lips, high cheekbones—a total airhead. Behind her, in the background, her boyfriend, with a silly haircut: a trashy sort of male bimbo, but cute as well. Sexy. And of no interest.

Gloria goes nearer and looks at the poster more closely. With her fingertips, she explores the holed lining of her coat. She's expecting to go into shock and have violent convulsions, but no, nothing.

At the top of the poster, under the title, they've written:
WHEN LOVE IS THE CRAZIEST THING . . .

She murmurs, almost amused, “So they couldn't think of anything more stupid than that. How can anyone be so pathetic . . .?” The kid looks at the poster. He gets out a Posca marker from his pocket and scrawls in big letters under the title,
UP YOURS
, and bursts out laughing, screwing up his nose and shrugging his shoulders.