Pretty Things

by Virginie Despentes

  She takes a blank piece of paper. Writes Jacques at the top, his phone number next to it, then writes, Journalist for all kinds of media, knows a Jérôme, up to speed about the concert, slept with.

  The telephone rings again.

  HE DOESN’T TAKE his eyes off Pauline. He must think that he’ll impress her with his death stare. She doesn’t react. He came to tell her that she has to abandon her plan, he had prepared an argument, but now he says nothing. That’s his problem, she senses his weakness: he second-guesses too much, leaves an opportunity for his worst emotions to surface. And she knows what’s holding him back in the first place. Because she suspects what will persuade him, she offers, “Coffee?”

  And gets up to make it. He watches her, she has her back to him. She unscrews the top of the coffee maker, bangs the filter directly into the trash can to empty the old grounds, then rinses it under the water, cleaning it with her finger.

  The same gestures. Which recall other mornings after all-nighters when he went there to have coffee, and the afternoons when he stopped by for a quick cup, and the starts of nights and the ends of meals. The countless times he saw her do just that. Familiar silhouette, he likes to watch it move. Intact shreds of a lost being, obsolete traces that he finds bewitching.

  After that painful night, he only feels resigned. What was done doesn’t provoke any conflict in him. It immerses him in an intense calm that he never knew before, distances him and pacifies him. A dignified sadness, without severity, he no longer feels anything but the sweetness of things, he reaps only memory’s charms.

  Her sister is crazy. As if she’s carrying out a ritual whose secret only she knows. She communicates her request like it’s a business transaction that would be unseemly to refuse.

  “You have to listen to the messages on the answering machine. I’m not sure I completely understand, but I think they want us to make an album.”

  In this type of situation, he is always bewildered not to have someone on hand who he can ask to take care of the situation for him; he feels entirely incapable. Ditch her there. Call a doctor. Slap her silly, pummel her with his fists. He settles for keeping quiet. She insists.

  “Listen to them. I need you to tell me what you think.”

  “Were you already sick in the head, or is it just the shock from yesterday?”

  “I don’t like your sense of humor. I’d even go so far as to call it shitty. If these people are prepared to pay for it, I want to make an album with them.”

  He holds his head in his hands, a funny gesture that he never does, mutters, “There’s nothing wrong with that. You have the voice for it. But you don’t have to be Claudine to do it.”

  “It’ll make things easier.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “I want to get it done quickly. I don’t want to meet twelve thousand people and introduce myself and be nice. Claudine knew tons of people, even if no one was interested in her they at least remember her legs. The telephone hasn’t stopped ringing since yesterday, if we do it in her name, it’ll go much faster. What I want is cash, and we have a way to get it.”

  “You’re dreaming. You can’t make an album just like that, you have to—”

  “I’m not dreaming at all, listen to the answering machine.”

  Then, he realizes, “What did you say? We can make an album faster? You’re counting on me for—”

  “Everything. I don’t want to see anyone. You do everything and you make the tracks. No offense, but it’s probably the first time in a while that you’ve had the opportunity to do something.”

  “No way.”

  “Listen to the answering machine.”

  She plays the messages; at first he won’t listen. She fascinates him a little, her reckless courage, she scares him a little too. Obscene stubbornness, she’s a calm kind of crazy. And then the names catch his ear and he starts listening.

  It’s not the right moment, but he doesn’t have time to stop it from getting his blood pumping. The number of calls, the eagerness of the offers. Incredible unanimity. During the concert, he wasn’t aware of any of it. She blew their minds.

  If Claudine had known that day. She was gone the night before. Exactly what she had been waiting for: the people with power ready to bid on her.

  It’s not a given that she would have taken it well. For two or three days, she would have called the long list of her enemies to taunt them deviously. Then she would have gone to see all those beautiful people who so wanted to meet her. Then she would have slept with everyone. Every guy, one by one, a clean and meticulous enterprise. She used to talk about that the way other people talk about alcoholism. The only way she had of avoiding it was avoiding men. “At least,” she corrected herself, “not a man who I think wants me. If I catch a look, just one faint fraction of a look, it’s like I smell blood and have to have the guy. I’m not talking about getting him in my bed, I’m talking about having him at my feet. And I can’t stop myself.”

  Nicolas had been a survivor of the massacre. It was completely obvious from the first time they met, when he was with her he felt like he was with a little girl. Right away she had deemed him worthy of her trust.

  All the messages had been played. He admits, “I’m impressed, you were a big hit.”

  Since the night before, he’s felt broken in two, his heart flayed. He feels things really intensely, like he’s under bright lights. He adds, “Listen, you put on a good show. Being mentally unsound never stopped anyone from singing well.”

  Pauline remains silent, seated next to him. He goes as far as encouraging her, advises her to call everyone back, and gets ready to leave. She persists, a phase of acute insanity. She looks at her knees, tenses her hands on each side of the chair, talks through her teeth, “I already told you I wouldn’t go. If you don’t do it for me, I’ll go back home and that’s that.”

  “That would be such a shame.”

  She interjects, “It would be like suicide.”

  “As you wish.”

  Outside, the garbage collectors go by, the racket of the truck and the garbage cans lifted tipped-over emptied.

  Nicolas wants to end the conversation.

  “I have no desire to stay here any longer.”

  She affords herself the luxury of a sardonic smile, insists, “Of course you do.”

  He smiles sadly, thinking she must really be losing it now. Except precisely at that moment he wonders what he’s going to do when he leaves. Go where and see who to talk about what crucial thing. It’s true, he wants to stay here. Between these walls, with this crazy woman, letting himself be fascinated by the scandalous resemblance.

  She says, “I could really go for a whiskey.”

  He offers to go buy some.

  On the way, he’s still pretending to himself that he’s going to reason with her. But in his gut he knows that he’s going to go along with it. He has a soft spot for freaks, for certain people he can identify with, and he loves to curl up in their strangeness.

  THERE ARE TWO windows side by side in Claudine’s living room that look out onto rue Poulet. Nicolas and Pauline each take one, and leaning outside they talk irregularly.

  They look down. A man passes, a bass guitar case in hand. A couple goes in the other direction, they’re glued to each other, they don’t talk and they slow down to kiss under the windows before taking off again. Apartment opposite, a guy types on his computer.

  Pauline spins her glass of liquid fire, she has the feeling that everything has simplified. Her desires have become whole, less irksome, things are clearer, plainly outlined. And she finds herself laughing often. She forgets to ask herself how she’s behaving, if what she’s saying is right, she forgets to keep tabs on herself again and again and feels relieved. She asks, “Why did she do it?”

  “I would feel less stupid if I knew. I was supposed to be her friend, the guy she could count on. And the only thing I noticed was that she took a lot of drugs . . . but I take so many drugs that I didn’t even no
tice. I didn’t find it strange, the desire to be wasted all the time, with the life we live.”

  “What kind of life did she live?”

  “Didn’t you ever talk on the phone?”

  “She lied to me all the time. She’s always been a compulsive liar, so I was skeptical . . . but I didn’t think it would go this far. She said she would make some cash, a whole load of it. She said, ‘In this city, money is everywhere, you can’t even imagine. You just have to be in the right place at the right time and you’ve hit the jackpot—and I’m in, I’m swimming in cash.’ I went through her stuff, there were bank statements. At first I was furious that she was on welfare because I thought it was some kind of scheme to get a little more while she was overflowing with money. And then I dug deeper, and she had almost no other money coming in . . .”

  Nicolas doesn’t say anything, lets her continue, taking advantage of her drunkenness to find some things out. She drinks more, a tiny sip, she’s furious about what she’s learned. She continues, “She told me she was a dancer, that she had so many things going on, she couldn’t find the time to do it all. Modern dance. Since showing up here, I see why they call it modern. Same for the concert: she presented the idea to me as if it were pure generosity on her part, almost like she didn’t need me. She knew everyone, the big shots in the area kept calling her, they were all crazy about her. There was a lot of money on the table, like I was lucky to get a piece of it. It could have been a reality, but she had no idea. Little Miss Liar.”

  “Everyone is like that here. Except for those who don’t have to pretend to be important anymore because they actually are. This isn’t a city where it’s okay to fail. If you admit straight up that you’re not making it, you make everyone else too scared, losers contaminate everything, like they’re contagious—”

  “It’s the same for everyone. Why was it absolutely necessary for her to have a better life than the rest of us?”

  “Because it’s human nature. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? On veut vivre et pas survivre! Un deux un deux trois quatre. We want to live, not just survive.”

  He moves away from the window and starts to do a sort of dance where he lifts one leg forward and then the other and hops in place, kicking the air. His head moves from right to left, he hums something at the same time.

  Pauline watches and finds it bizarre to see him let himself go like that, it makes her think there’s another him, barely still alive inside. Like a nesting doll, a new Nicolas enveloping another, but sometimes a younger Nicolas comes to take a victory lap and dance a little.

  He’s clearly very drunk. He’s become quite red, already sweating a bit. He tacks on, “Do you know this one? Quelle sacrée revanche! Je croyais là un mode de vie ce n’était qu’une vie à la mode!”

  He continues doing the same kind of dance, but with his feet together and moving his arms in a bizarre crawl, an unfamiliar jerk.

  Pauline is embarrassed by it. She finds it funny, but she’s embarrassed to see him lose control like this. He’s showing her something that sober Nicolas wouldn’t want her to see.

  Pounding against the wall.

  He stops abruptly, out of breath, yells, “I already told you never to pound on this wall again, you old bitch!”

  But doesn’t resume his wriggling. He looks for the lighter on the table, jostles the empty beer bottles, picks up a magazine, asks, “So you’re that alone? There’s no one from your old life that you’d regret never seeing again?”

  “No.”

  She holds out the lighter that she had actually been holding in her hand, then pushes her glass toward him so that he’ll refill it. She makes an effort to reflect, or to figure out how to explain it to him.

  “Five minutes before I did it, if you had asked me, I would have said that I liked my life. And it wouldn’t have been a lie. I liked my friends, I’ve known them forever, I liked my home . . . I’ve never really complained about anything. And then there was that reflex. I didn’t have any other choice. It’s so clear to me that there’s no space for me to regret it.”

  “It’s like that now, it’s the shock of the news, but in ten days you’ll be back to normal and you’ll want to go home. Only you won’t be able to anymore.”

  “What’s done is done.”

  Nicolas tries hard to understand.

  “Why do you hate her so much? Did your daddy love her more?”

  He said it as a joke, except he hit the nail on the head. Pauline tenses, without even trying to conceal it, her eyes narrow slightly.

  “She told you that?”

  Claudine never talked about her parents. Until that night, Nicolas had never paid attention. She had never said a single word about them. He nods, “Yeah, she said it. She said that her father adored her, but that you had been a disappointment to him.”

  Then she starts to cry. Really huge tears fed by the eighty-proof alcohol. Even she is amazed to find it feels so good, after holding back so many tears and having so much weighing on her heart.

  Nicolas watches her cry, without moving, without really knowing what he hit on, but the last drink was the clincher, the thing that glues you to the chair and entangles reason. He mumbles from time to time, “What I would give to be able to cry like that.”

  UNTIL THEY WERE ten years old, their father brought Pauline with him everywhere. Claudine hated her for that.

  One day, it was school vacation, a room with bunk beds. It must have been in the mountains, because in this memory they were in their winter clothes.

  At the table, with friends, their father was running his mouth. An alcohol-soaked lunch, he had gone a bit harder than usual. His eyes riveted to little Claudine, ready to disappear under the table, he seemed on the verge of vomiting. “I can’t believe you two came from the same stomach.” Then he started to really heap it on, bringing his guests over to bear witness, who also would have liked to crawl under the table to escape his questions. “They look alike but one of them’s ugly. Right? It’s funny, there’s barely a difference, it’s just that bovine glimmer in her eyes, it makes you want to smack her. Right?”

  The children were at the age when parents still speak bluntly, no matter what they’re saying or how unbelievable it is.

  Their friends took off earlier than planned, visibly angry. Their father had walked around in circles for a few minutes, gestured to Claudine. “Come here, you. You understand how ashamed you made me? Do you understand, you little cunt? Come here for your spanking, come closer.”

  And he had snapped his fingers like he was calling to a dog. The little girl approached, was given a good thrashing.

  Behind her, her mother cried, “Stop it, don’t work yourself up like that, it’s nothing, stop . . .”

  And as soon as he had walked away, she picked up Claudine, sighed, “You’re always screwing things up, huh? Why can’t you just make yourself invisible? Go to your room. Pauline, sweetheart, please go play with your sister. Make sure she doesn’t make too much noise, so your father can calm himself down.”

  In their bedroom, Claudine was sitting opposite the window, swaying back and forth, humming something between her teeth.

  Pauline hesitated for a while, searching for the words, then came up behind her, timidly caressing her hair. Mouth filled with tears, she had trouble expressing herself.

  “You know, when he talks to you like that, it’s like he’s saying it to me.”

  She hadn’t felt her sister’s shoulders tense up. She continued, really starting to cry, “When he hits you I swear I feel it too.”

  Claudine stood up, turned to face her, grabbed her by the hair. Pauline didn’t scream so that her parents wouldn’t come. Claudine dragged her down onto the bed.

  “You’re sure you feel it?”

  And covering her face with her hair, started to hit her, her little fists striking her face with as much force as possible. To really hurt her, she had taken the pillow and held it down against her sister’s face with both hands. To be absolutely sure s
he was heard, she started to scream, “That’s weird because when he kisses you, I feel nothing.”

  The door flew open. Her father came in, alerted by her screams. He wrested Claudine from her sister and threw her against the wall.

  “I’ve had enough of you. You hear me? I’ve had enough.”

  Their mother had taken Pauline in her arms and was covering her with kisses, asking, “Are you okay?” One of them precious and the other tainted.

  A few years later, insidiously, the order would reverse.

  One summer, it might have been the very next, their father discovered he had a great talent for photography. In the space of a few weeks, Pauline had become annoying to lug around everywhere. The little girl’s education had stopped interesting him. He had other things to do, important things. He came home before they were in bed less and less frequently.

  Then, for a long time, he didn’t come back at all. Without saying anything to the girls, he packed a bag, announced to their mother, “I need to isolate myself in order to create.”

  Pauline remained their mother’s favorite. One birthday, when their father hadn’t shown up, she came to tuck in Pauline, who slept in the same room as her sister.

  “My poor baby, your father didn’t think to call you for your birthday. He forgot you too . . . like your old mother.”

  Then she closed the door again without saying anything to Claudine. Double impact, nice shot.

  In the dark Claudine gloated in a taunting voice, “The little baby whose daddy forgot her . . . oh he used to love his little girl. But now he loves someone else. Little baby, all alone.”

  Pauline lifted herself onto her elbow. “You shut up right now, we have to go to sleep.”

  “Did you know that the new woman he’s with has a little girl who looks like you? But he says he likes her better.”

  “That’s not true, he’s not with a new woman. He left to work, he had to.”