Pretty Things

by Virginie Despentes

  He goes on and on about it, almost shaking with enthusiasm. She lets it happen and sits in front of the TV. She thinks, I’m not going to see any of this, asshole, I’m going to squeeze all of that money out of you, one way or another, and I’m going to get myself far away from you, forget you immediately, and you, to console yourself for having been betrayed, you can just drive off in a van, since that seems to amuse you so much.

  Rumbling in the street, she leans out the window to see what’s happening. It always takes a bit of time to understand, discern in the idle of the crowd who is mixed up with who, try to guess why . . . A canary has escaped, she can see it, frantic, flying around the whole street, it went crazy in its cage. Many hands reach out to try and catch him, the owner at her window yells something then signals that she’s coming down.

  Pauline returns to her seat, fingers the contract Nicolas brought back from the record label. She goes through it once more. There’s no jargon or fine print that you might miss. Everything is black and white: I’m fucking you in every orifice. It’s very, very clear. And the artist will do this and the artist will do that. And the label will become their owner and will do absolutely nothing except milk the cow and drink the milk.

  Nicolas starts on a sauce, chucks in the tomatoes. Says everything he’s doing out loud, “Don’t put the gas on too high or else it’ll burn.” He does this every time he prepares a meal. Sometimes she feels really sorry for him, then dismisses it immediately: It’s not a good idea to act so blissfully ignorant, he’s really asking for it.

  IT’S A PRETTY aggravating summer. The sky is white enough to strain your retinas and then all at once it changes, torrents of water crash against the windshield and around you everything becomes black as night waiting to fall.

  Sébastien is glued to the car window, devouring the scenery, without really being able to tell if it’s actually making him emotional or if he’s faking it to match the idea he had of himself upon release. Forest to his left, trees stretched in one direction because of the wind, blowing strong.

  There are other cars on the road which pass them regularly. A noise like mechanical waves. The car radio crackles, ruining all the bass lines, making a mess of the groove.

  The man driving follows the other cars too closely. Idiot. A guy who used to come to the visiting room. That’s his thing, he visits people. He’s done time, too, a while ago though. He never wound up back there, but he didn’t move on to another place in his life either. As soon as he got out, he understood that the link was broken between him and those who had never been there. He didn’t have much respect for them anymore, he had the impression that they understood nothing, that they didn’t know, and most importantly, that they had seen nothing. In fact he would talk only about that: the joint, the guards, the cellmates, the schemes . . . He clings to it, his suffering, it’s the crux of his soul.

  He offered to bring Sébastien back in his car, it was really nice of him. That day, in the visiting room, Sébastien wasn’t unhappy to see him, it was a special occasion.

  Now out, it’s almost annoying that he knows his driver. Marker on the side, Paris is ninety-three miles away. He has to be patient with his irritation.

  How many times, way too many times, he’s imagined this day. The world getting back into the swing of things, the world turning without him, rejoining it once again. Being outside. He must have set his expectations for freedom too high.

  Now it’s just this: the lousy weather, the car that isn’t moving and smells a little like feet.

  It’s perhaps this, precisely, that is so good. To be able to complain about the little, not-so-bad things that make up a part of life, be a little bothered without it turning into despair.

  “So your girl’s waiting for you in Paris?”

  Bitterness at hearing this question. Sébastien apologizes, “I don’t really feel like talking. But I don’t want you to take it the wrong way . . .”

  “Of course, of course, I know what it’s like, you know . . . I know.”

  But Pauline was not waiting for him there. He hadn’t told her that he had gotten out, supposedly to surprise her. But if he was being honest with himself, it was to have two days. And he knows exactly what for, what he’s had in mind all these weeks, exceedingly distinct images, mixed with memories, driving him insane. Each time it’s the same thing, gradually growing worse.

  Once he’s done it, he’ll feel even worse than he does now. He knows from experience. But even still, he can’t help himself.

  He pictures himself face down on the ground, his head being kicked in. He wishes someone would grab him and stick a rifle to his temple, shoot over and over. That would ease his conscience for being the way he is.

  And he wishes he were there already.

  “It’s normal to be like that, you can’t let it get to you,” a guy from his cell had said, arms crossed behind his neck. He had talked with him for hours. He didn’t need to explain in detail, he had understood in a matter of seconds. “The little girl in red we saw in the video the other day?” No attitude of salacious complicity, no dirty locker-room talk between men discussing the same hole. He had just shaken his head, resigned. “Everyone is like that, or else why would there be so many whores?” No one could argue with that.

  PAULINE IS LEANING out her bedroom window.

  A black sweater is lying there, a sleeve folded back, fallen on the sidewalk. A veiled woman crosses the street. A bike is attached to a pole that says WRONG WAY, it’s been there for days, with no wheels. The grubby shutters opposite, the PMU LOTO MÉTRO signs at the tabac, fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, a guy sweeps out front, a baseball cap on his head. The passersby trace different lines, their trajectories never identical.

  Nicolas left a minute ago. Much earlier than usual. Since she wouldn’t speak another word, he ended up promising her, “I’ll go see them as soon as possible to say we changed our minds and we want the money all at once.” She had barely shaken her head, “Do what you want,” as if that weren’t the problem. Sudden attack of paranoia, she should never have taken a drag from the joint, it does this to her every time. Convinced he’ll suspect something, even that he sees it coming. So she had carefully avoided the subject. She would talk to him about it again tomorrow, or after, stay prudent, don’t rush anything. First, make sure he doesn’t know anything. Then, only then, confirm that he’ll really do what needs to be done. If she stays focused, everything will turn out the way she wants.

  Telephone rings, three times, then the answering machine message, always the same, a beep and the voice starts, irritated, frantic.

  She closes the curtains, goes back to her seat. The telephone starts ringing again. Bitter pang, pit of her stomach. She resolves to unplug the phone as soon as he’s left his message, looks for the outlet along the baseboard. She barely listens to what’s being said on the machine, but the name leaps into her eardrum.

  “It’s Sébastien, you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here . . . But where are you?”

  “I’m downstairs. Can I come up?”

  “You’re really downstairs?”

  “Give me the code?”

  She waits at the door, she doesn’t understand how he could be outside, even less how he could have guessed that she was at her sister’s. First she’s scared. For him to see her in that outfit, and she doesn’t have time to change. Is he going to think she’s gone crazy? And what she’s done, she thought she would never have to tell him about it. Will he be sad, disappointed? She’s mad at herself for ruining this moment, this day when they’re finally reunited, which should be light and cheerful.

  She thinks of her made-up mouth. Bathroom, she wipes her lips with a towel, looks in the mirror, too much makeup for him, way too much. But already he’s ringing the doorbell. She hurries to the door.

  In his arms. This body that she knows entirely, nothing forgotten, they are buried in each other, it’s like breathing again.

  Grateful that he takes her in his
arms first, and stays pressed against her for a long time, before asking questions. That he doesn’t judge anything before hearing from her own mouth what’s going on. All she can say is, “It’s so good to see you again.”

  Then come brusque gestures, desire fed by so much waiting, it’s an explosion. He takes her in his arms like he’s never done before, similarly driven mad by all this time without her.

  “Come on, Claudine, let’s go to your room.”

  He takes her by the hand, leads her without hesitation toward the bedroom.

  She follows him. It starts from her nose then mouth throat middle of her chest and down to the bottom of her stomach, scraping through her from end to end. The heart of a machine pounds in the middle of her, a collapse that carries away everything, nothing left standing, she is shattered against the ground, each limb smashed and bones nearly crumbling.

  She says nothing. In the bedroom he sits on the bed, looks at her, wild animal gleam in his eyes, and he half smiles at her, a brutal joy, gently coaxes her toward him.

  “I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long, Claudine.”

  She lets it happen. Convinced he’ll realize his mistake on his own. She waits. Too embarrassed to intervene.

  She lets herself be manipulated. He undresses her with care, very slowly. Each part of her body that he discovers he devours attentively with his eyes, his fingers, then his mouth and tongue. This face, she’s never seen it before. Run through with a frenetic energy, joy bursts in his pupils, consumed with rage.

  She should have said something earlier. Now the moment has passed. She doesn’t want for everything that will happen to happen. She doesn’t want to know more. But she still lets herself be worshipped, like she’s being dissected.

  What we don’t know about the other. All that he hid.

  She is lying on her back. He’s on his knees next to her. With one hand, he holds out the head of his cock for her to suck. The other hand is plastered against her breasts, he kneads them so feverishly that he hurts her a little and when she tries to free herself she feels his cock shove into her mouth even more violently, his arousal upped a notch.

  He makes her change position, regularly, wordlessly. He grabs her to show her how he wants it now. She feels like an amusement park unto herself. She’s on all fours, he corrects her arch, bangs against her guts until he’s striking at her core. He spreads her ass wide, she glances over her shoulder, he is fascinated by the haunch he’s massaging, at his disposal. His gaze turns serious, as if he were about to descend into a pit of snakes.

  She feels like a fly on the wall. She feels the in and the out, the hand spanking her ass. But it’s like she’s not there, witnessing it from afar. She thinks of other things, of what she’ll say after, of how comfortable he is having sex with her. She thinks, He fucks my sister, he’s used to it. And she makes him like this, completely nuts, unrecognizable. Never has she had this effect on him. He didn’t like for her to take him in her mouth, he would slide his hand under her chin and bring her back up right away, with a little embarrassed smile. “I don’t really want you to do that to me.”

  He puts her on her back again. Brings her thighs around both sides of his neck, he starts very gently, going in and out of her, his eyes riveted to her breasts. It’s impossible, to look at her the way he looks at her, and not realize right away. Then he speeds up, smashes into her methodically, now he’s looking only at her breasts swinging in every direction and the more they shake the harder he rams into her. It burns, it’s almost painful, he’s thrusting so fast.

  Her mind is still elsewhere—Did he come to see her often?—while she feels her body (it wouldn’t be right to say despite herself, since she didn’t even think to resist, it was all so inconceivable) respond to his advances. He slows down the tempo, her pelvis raised up and his two hands knotted into her back, bringing him deep inside her. He raises his head, like a sprinter near the finish line, she hears him say, “So, slut, no matter how long it takes, I can always make you come.” And she moans. For a period of time that she’ll later be unable to quantify, she is given over completely to her sex, something inside her that she didn’t know existed before opens up, an entire space, vast, sensitive, absorbing, made up of a thousand fractures.

  He stops breathing, apnea, he’s soaked with sweat, then he humps her like a madman.

  She comes back to herself, breaks away again, mentally, from the woman performing. He lets out a sort of growl. The one that she knows, the one he always makes. But with her it’s a little wheeze and today it’s a loud roar. Finally collapses onto her. Falls over. His body is damp, a bit too heavy. She gently extricates herself, he asks, “You want me to pull out already?” She nods yes, she slides to the side.

  He likes to stay inside for a while after the act with Pauline, too.

  He grabs one of her breasts, kisses it, and murmurs, “I’m crazy about your tits.” He smiles, then gets up to go rinse off.

  He’s also used to doing that, cleaning off his cock at the sink and even checking himself out a little.

  She hears him singing at the top of his lungs, from the other side of the wall, “I’m completely crazy about you,” clowning around.

  He knew exactly where the bathroom was. He’s at home here.

  He pokes his head through the door.

  “I’m a little hungry, can I take a look around?”

  “Help yourself.”

  “Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”

  She is stretched out, her arms spread-eagled. She’ll have to talk eventually. She knows this sensation well, when her sister takes what matters most to her. It’s an old routine that doesn’t happen so often anymore; she thought she had escaped it. Now that it’s returned, it’s familiar, there’s nothing pleasant about it but it’s certainly hers.

  She gets up without him seeing, she watches him in the kitchen. He makes coffee, he knows where the filters are and what metal tin to open, the one with the sugar.

  She lies down again. He comes back with a tray full of food. He’s beaming. He sits next to her, kisses her neck. “So that’s it, I’m really out. Until I got to your place it hadn’t really sunk in . . . But now I’m outside.”

  And he extends his arms as if to take full advantage of the space and all that breathable air. Then he leans toward her. “How many times did I make you come?”

  As though it were a question he asked often. Pauline coaxes him against her, tears filling her eyes now, and she kisses him as she would if it were just the two of them. He pushes her away, a bit surprised, but without losing any of his good humor. “Hang on, I’m super hungry. We’ll go back to that after.”

  And he laughs. “Let me regain some of my strength first at least . . .”

  He eats, talks, without realizing that she hasn’t even moved. Her throat is too tight for her to get out a single word.

  He talks about her. “I’ve got to call Pauline tomorrow, before I leave. Have you had any news from her?”

  She shakes her head no. He swallows the last bite of his sandwich. “Are you guys fighting?”

  She’s intrigued by the question. She still can’t manage to say what she needs to say.

  He gets back in bed, lies against her. Immediately she remembers how she missed his body and presence while she slept. That he is everything for her, her only comfort in the world. She feels his hand sliding right between her legs. She moves away, he pulls her back, he laughs. “Are you trying to turn me on even more or what? Quit your games, I bet you’re all wet.”

  “Stop it.”

  She straightens up and lights a cigarette, clears her throat as if trying to strengthen her voice. She says, without even planning to, “Madame Lentine, you know, the cool neighbor, she died all of a sudden.”

  He waves his hand to signal that he doesn’t really care. “She was an old woman after all. Pauline told you that?”

  She smiles, as if it were a stupid question.

  “I don’t share stories about our neighbor
with Claudine. You know I don’t talk much. She fell in the street. Dead.”

  He grimaces the way he does when he doesn’t really like a joke.

  “You’ve never pulled this trick on me before. And I suggest you don’t do it again.”

  She rubs her eye, acts as if she didn’t hear him. She continues.

  “Also, those assholes from the building management company never sent anyone to replace the water heater. I lost my mind every day turning the hot water tap. They’re idiots, seriously, idiots—”

  He grabs her by the arm. She doesn’t know this face either, like he could slap her.

  “Knock it off, Claudine. If there’s something you want us to talk about, you spit it out, whatever you have to say to me . . . But you don’t joke about that.”

  He nearly breaks her wrist, she lowers her eyes.

  “I didn’t really know how to tell you. I took her place two months ago.”

  JULY 14. KIDS going ballistic with firecrackers. Three days of this. Nonstop explosions, more or less jarring. At the beginning, it’s startling—“Was that a gunshot?”—and then you get used to it, like with anything, pretty quickly too.

  Lying on her bed, at the end of the afternoon, the curtains in the bedroom still drawn. The mattress springs cut into her back in big, hard circles. She stays for entire days like that, doing nothing but listening to the answering machine going off, the people arguing in the street, the kids playing in the stairwell. Their mother calls, they don’t listen, she has to go over and smack them. Pauline stays there, drinks tea drowned in milk, lights cigarettes, turns onto her stomach to smoke them.

  One image stands out from the rest, deploys itself very distinctly, makes itself more urgent than the present. She’s on all fours on the bed, he still has his white T-shirt on, he had her lie down on her back to suck him off with her head bent back. She blinks her eyes to make it pass, to not think of anything, to block it out, clear away that distinct sensation. Each time, she feels herself tense, as though she had bit into a lemon. That terrific shame, reddish black, towering over her.