Pretty Things

by Virginie Despentes

  And again: her legs, in front of the mirror, ankles strained by the heels, calves, straight up to the top of her thighs . . . she has the same legs as her sister. Which are the same as those of women in the fashionable films they saw when they were kids.

  She absolutely wants to go out in a dress. And since Nicolas insists, she lets him prepare his odd mixture.

  It’s the first time he’s contributed to the plan without her having to push him. He’s loosening up, slowly. Becoming more agreeable.

  HER HEELS CLACK against the parquet, making little nicks in the wood. She starts to get used to it, she’s ready to go out, just has to find the keys. Pauline goes from one room to another, not bothered at first but getting annoyed now, looking in corners, lifting up magazines, moving the clothes she had piled up after trying them on, throwing them in a ball, searching them again, she can’t find the keys. It’s almost absurd, she turns around in circles in the dump and then starts to overheat.

  She is dressed completely in pink, a skirt that goes down to her knees, a rarity in Claudine’s wardrobe. Her hair pulled back, hours in front of the mirror trying to keep it from frizzing out in every direction. Stubbornly, she doesn’t adapt, she doesn’t look like she’s supposed to. Even when everything is done well, something about her acts up. In the bedroom there were small boxes, red stones, blue, amber like water or a funny mauve, gold or silver metal to wear around your neck, fingers, wrists, ears, and even fake things to wear in your nose. In a drawer, elsewhere, neatly arranged in little boxes, other spoils: makeup, colors for lips, eyelashes, eyelids, or cheeks, different textures, a painter’s palette, all impossible to apply herself. Nicolas, leaning over her for several days, turning her head, absorbed in what he was doing, manipulated her face, looking for the light, explaining that she couldn’t put too much on because she doesn’t know that about herself yet, which colors do what to her, and goes flipping through magazines, confident gestures, to teach himself how it’s done. Manipulation as an art form. And then her own face, vaguely changed, distancing itself from her. She quickly understood that he wanted, more religiously than he realized, more actively than passively, for her to slide more toward Claudine. She was surprised to see him searching for her with so much care, trying to break down her methods, what she did to make her eyes look so much bigger, to make her skin seem as soft as the skin of a fruit. He had very gently shown her. Pauline frowned. “How do you know how to use a makeup brush?” He responded, “My entire childhood, I watched my sisters do it,” and fussed around her.

  Today, she is finally ready to go out.

  She is supposed to meet Nico somewhere other than Claudine’s. She even has to take the metro, cross a large part of the city. As it turns out, the keys are hanging from a nail. Nicolas probably hung them there without thinking about it, having always seen Claudine do it.

  On the staircase, it’s not as easy to wear heels as it was in the apartment. The floor’s not the same, this one seems more slippery, and it’s not the same ankle exercise, going down the stairs. Clinging to the rail, Pauline, cautiously, step by step, arrives at the bottom. Kitchen smells mixed with odors of wax, noises behind certain doors. On the ground floor, the super pulls his curtain aside an inch, Pauline nods at him.

  She presses the wrong button on her way out; intending to open the door she turns on the light. Then finds herself outside. She imagined that after days shut inside it would take a few minutes to get used to it, but it wasn’t a big deal.

  Except that the street she had been watching for a while from the window is different now that she’s on it. Opposite her, on the sidewalk, two very tall and excessively large women; the orange one pushes her as she walks by, deliberately, shoves her with a powerful jab of the elbow. Then goes on her way. Pauline takes a few steps to the side, slips off the sidewalk and leans on a car. Nicolas had advised her once, all charm, “You just have to think of it like skating—there are a few tricks to learn and then it’ll be fine.”

  Difficult to move forward on the sidewalk. Too many people, some block the front of the grocery stores, their baskets full of improbable things, others talk right in the middle of everyone, others seem sapped of all energy.

  She walks with her eyes fixed on the ground. She passes a guy and her eyes look up at him instantly, identify him. He’s the first white guy she’s seen since turning down this street. Strange reflection to make. She is so not used to these shoes that for the first time she notices the difference in consistency between one place in the sidewalk and another. She also realizes that no one on the street is looking at her, as if she were transparent. The woman from earlier who’d jostled her, as if resolved to pass right through her, had signaled, You aren’t even here.

  Glance in a shop, beauty products, wigs. She passes in front of a hairdresser, then a butcher’s shop, then arrives at the metro.

  The boulevard she has to take is on a slant. In normal shoes she wouldn’t have noticed, it only slopes downhill a tiny bit. In high heels, the difference in level is insane, a truly perilous exercise. She sets her feet down one after the other, concentrating as though she were on a balance beam, trying not to fall flat on her face in front of everybody.

  People watch her. Some even turn around. And others permit themselves close-ups with impunity, her legs, her ass, her tits, her mouth, some smile at her, or make little noises and whistles to entice her. She wishes she could pluck them all away; she can only move forward in small measured steps and act as if she hasn’t noticed anything.

  A man on the sidewalk is selling corn from a cart, the smell of grilled food, he calls to her, a sort of kind enthusiasm, as if wanting to play with a dog. A woman veiled from top to bottom is waiting for her ear of corn, she scrutinizes her, only her eyes visible, inspecting her, scorn tinged with anger. The seller keeps at it, even when Pauline is several yards past him, he continues making a big racket. She is entirely public, approachable, entirely made so that everyone pays attention to her. She’s dressed for that.

  Glance in the window of a jeweler’s, full of gold and clocks. Her own appearance. Between fright and amusement. She looks like other girls, not herself. She never thought it was possible to go out like that without someone shouting, “Where’s the costume party?” Her appearance, legs on display, silhouette transformed. And no one realizes that she’s not at all like that. For the first time she understands: in fact, no girl is like that.

  She’s arrived at the bottom of the boulevard, her shoes already hurting her ankles, she waits to cross, a crowd of people. A hand slides along her lower back. Contact all the more obscene because it’s slow, heavy petting, not furtive, a hand lingering on her ass. She turns around, impossible to know who did what, he’s laughing isn’t he, and in any case what would she say to him? Pauline feels like she might collapse at any second. It’s not only the shoes but also the skirt, which is too tight. The light turns green, she follows the crowd toward the other sidewalk. Glances around, the entire neighborhoods stinks of poverty, like being in another city, another era too. And at the same time like something alive, howling with laughter, uninhibited.

  Metro stop Barbès, the pigeons coo and shit on the columns, two guys selling melons, a lot of people, next to her a woman sings softly in a lovely deep voice, a man hands out marabout cards, the ground is littered with them: pink, green, blue, yellow.

  She takes an open passage but realizes you don’t pay here, you go directly into the metro without passing through the turnstiles. Pauline passes two young girls with their still-growing boobs and their formfitting pants, towering shoes with square heels and tops revealing their stomachs. When she passes they call her a slut. She stops, turns around to face them, they notice and slow down, one of the two is nervous. “What do you want from me, cum dumpster? What do you think you’re looking at?” Already people are slowing down around the three girls talking to each other loudly; when there’s a chance they might hit each other or . . . people gather right away.

  A guy selling
vegetables shouts to them, smiling, “Easy, kiddos, easy,” and comments to his colleague, “When they beat each other up they’re like the Furies,” grinning like he’d really like to see that.

  The girl insulting her has something gruff about her, she’s bawdy and brutal. It’s funny, jewels on her wrists, eye shadow on her eyes, princess clothes, and a way of moving and talking that makes her look like a boxer. Immediately she yells that she won’t allow her, the dirty slut, to talk to her like that. Nailed to the spot, Pauline stammers, “We can’t talk to each other like this, us women.” It makes the girl burst into laughter. “Dirty whore, who do you think you are?” Her friend drags her by the sleeve. “Let it go, you can see she’s crazy. Come on, let’s get out of here, we’re going to be late.” A little circle forms around them, still no one intervenes, it’s a lazy attention. The nastier one’s cell phone rings in her purse, she takes a moment to look at Pauline and spit in her eye, “Us women . . . stupid dyke.”

  And walks away. Pauline finds herself alone again, right away a man approaches, a comforting gentleman, graying temples, he’s a little taller than her, he puts his hand on her forearm. “You shouldn’t stay here, mademoiselle, come . . .” and he pulls her away, she leans on his arm to climb the staircase, her ankles are hurting. He says, “With how ravishing you are, you shouldn’t be in this neighborhood, that could have been dangerous, you know. You’re not from around here, are you?”

  As if it were perfectly natural for there to be neighborhoods she shouldn’t be in. He asks where she’s going, follows her to the platform. He’s happy to be next to her, holds her close, he says, “I’ll accompany you to your destination, it’ll spare you from any more unpleasant encounters.” As if it were totally natural for her to need someone with her.

  Pauline shakes her head no, asks him to leave, she says, “I just want to be alone.”

  “You don’t understand,” the guy starts to insist, to give her compliments, as if she just had to be flattered, compliments on her clothing, “It’s rare, these days, a woman who aims to please men,” as if it were a shame that that was the case, as if it were owed.

  She looks straight ahead of her, refuses to look at him too much. Did the mother of this old, very gallant gentleman dote on him to such an extent that he now believed all women exist to be nice to him, looking simply to “please” him? Does he find it pleasing that she’s dressed like a whore, should she be flattered? She repeats that she wants to be alone, she gets more and more disagreeable, he doesn’t take it badly, instead he’s amused, as if she were a child. She pushes him away violently—“Let go of me right now”—and all chivalry stops, through clenched teeth, without backing away: “Don’t come crying back to me if you get raped in a back alley, you hear me?” She repeats that he needs to back away, he’s suffocating her, this old man, with his kindness that only wants one thing, to screw her with his mangled and disgusting dick, and she has a responsibility to be friendly, he still won’t leave, his eyes have changed, now he’s saying things he doesn’t even mean: “What are you doing in the Goutte d’Or, huh? I’ve seen you girls from around here, you like to get fucked by black guys, huh?” And she shoves him with both hands, forgets her heels and her skirt, once again people are staring, he’s not discouraged, he says to her in a low voice, “You don’t want to see mine? If you like getting fucked by guys with big cocks, you’ll be satisfied, you’ll see. Is that it, huh, you like big black cocks?”

  Then a younger man with a ponytail intervenes, his jaw animal-like but he’s well dressed, all inflated with authority, he asks Pauline, “Is this man bothering you?” She wants to be able to tell him, Mind your own damn business, but the other man scares her so she nods yes. The younger guy chases off the old guy like a mangy dog, and the old guy, who it seemed nothing would drive away, immediately takes off, like a thief.

  Pauline doesn’t thank him, Zorro is very happy to play the hero in this situation, he asks her, “Are you okay?” full of menacing benevolence, all gentle, “You’re sure, you’re okay?” He rolls his eyes. “I’m ashamed to be a man, sometimes, ashamed of how we act.”

  She thinks, I’m ashamed to be me, incapable of scaring him off, ashamed that he wouldn’t even listen to me and you show up and it’s over. She stammers, “I’m fine, it’s okay . . .”

  The guy stays next to her, he has taken the place of the other guy, he’ll look after her until it’s safe.

  They get in the metro car, another girl who saw everything says, “She’s the kind of whore who looks for trouble, she’s not satisfied until guys fight over her.”

  The guy smiles. “She’s jealous,” leans toward her, “you’re extremely pretty.”

  First she feels anger toward Claudine: how could she reduce herself to being treated like this, flaunting herself and risking—

  Then her anger shifts: Why can’t she just be left in peace?

  The guy is saying, “You don’t look like you’re doing so well, would you like to get out and have a coffee? You’re so pale.”

  And she responds calmly, “I would like for you to go to hell, asshole. That would give me back some color.”

  He gets up and leaves her, final looks exchanged, he seems sincerely hurt, not his pride, but hurt as if he’s ashamed. She immediately regrets having hurt someone who might actually have been cool, in the end.

  She looks around her, a guy gives her a big smile. Other people are plunged in their books, a kid waves hello to the people on the platform opposite, his mother asks him to sit down.

  Glance at her watch, she’s been out less than fifteen minutes. This plan is off to a really great start.

  A LONG AND narrow bar, in reds. Containers of straws, mustard and ketchup like in America. The waitress is extremely pretty, all wrapped up in black jeans. Long fragile legs and something bright and vulnerable about her, like Bambi escaped from the big screen.

  Nicolas looks up at her, she smiles at him sweetly. Girls all say he has the eyes of an angel. Some guys have all the luck, he thinks with satisfaction.

  Next to him, three young girls, eyes lined in black, talking around a cell phone. One of them advises the other, “Go on, teach him a lesson.” The other goes one further, “You have to scare him a little sometimes or he won’t respect you.” Then they start searching for who they could call that would know what was going on that night. They’re wearing T-shirts that are much too small, modern bras that make their tits look almost aggressive.

  Pauline enters, one of the girls looks her up and down briefly and pointedly, then leans over to whisper something, and the others turn around before bursting into laughter.

  The twin sits, pulls her skirt down to hide as much leg as possible. Then sighs, abandons the idea, and lets herself sink into the bottom of her chair, arms dangling, mouth open. “This is the last time I go out dressed like this.”

  Nicolas takes the bun off his hamburger, removes the pickles, and adds a dollop of mustard. She admits, “Okay, I spoke too soon, I take it back: it’s not so easy to act like a moron.”

  “Seems to me you’re managing just fine.”

  “Until now, when I saw girls all dolled up, I imagined it was impractical and took a lot of work, but this much of a hassle, I had no idea.”

  “That’s part of what forces you to respect them, that they inflict so much pain on themselves.”

  “Forced respect, huh? I mean fuck, when you go for a walk in this city, it’s an adventure every fifty feet. No one ignores you. It’s even more annoying because it doesn’t add up: you can’t tell me that other girls, because they wear a skirt, are gangbanged twelve times a day. I don’t get it.”

  “You should’ve taken a taxi.”

  “Well that’s obvious. I just won’t go out anymore, that’s one solution. What a life. I’m finished. This is the first and last time I mess around with this stuff. Tomorrow, I’m going to buy myself normal shoes and take the metro without anyone pissing me off.”

  “You said you want an advance, ri
ght?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then you’ll stay dressed as you are. And you’ll come with me to see them.”

  “That’s enough, I’m not a whore.”

  “No, but if you play the part of a woman convincingly, they’ll double their offers.”

  “That’s bullshit. They liked it the other night without me needing to—”

  He raises his hand, a sign that there’s no need for her to continue.

  “You’re right, it doesn’t matter at all. It doesn’t have an effect on anyone. Totally, no one gave a fuck about Claudine. Those guys who called to see her, they just want to know her thoughts on Heidegger or the evolution of grunge . . .”

  The waitress arrives, her pad in hand, Pauline opens the menu while signaling that no, she doesn’t know what she wants to eat yet, the girl turns around right away. She has a stubborn air, small visible forehead, hair shiny and in place. Nicolas watches how her ass shakes as she scrubs the table.

  “What are you doing looking at girls like that? Shit, it’s degrading.”

  “To have a nice ass?”

  “To be looked at like a piece of meat, like she’s in a window.”

  She doesn’t have time to elaborate, a voice suddenly shoots up behind her, “Claudiiine!”

  Recognizing someone, Nicolas pales. Keeps his cool, whispers in a low voice as the guy arrives, “The time has come to see if you can pull it off . . .”

  A hand grabs her neck, a warm palm insists on the embrace. Lips that kiss her not very far from her own, mouth that lingers a bit, making the most of her skin.

  She waits for it to be over, for him to straighten up so she can see what he looks like. A disgusting mug, almost pitiful it’s so ugly. His eyes are too small, like those of a dim-witted animal. He lets a hand hang off her shoulder, extends the other to Nicolas. “Philippe, Mémémusic.”

  Nicolas shakes his hand. “Nicolas. I produce stuff for Claudine.”