Pretty Things

by Virginie Despentes

  Her brain is malfunctioning again, it transmits the image to her one more time, same as before, he spreads her thighs wide and guides her hand so that she touches herself, his eyes riveted to her. Fascinated by her crotch.

  She turns her head toward the wall, as if to physically make the image fuck off and haunt someone else.

  Layers of emotions cohabiting the same body, but at war with each other. Anger and feeling destroyed, a lack of him and of shame, relief, a heavy sadness.

  Her nails are unclean, uneven lengths, a bit of black underneath. She gets up to wash her hands, the white soap lathers, smells good, she lets the warm water run over her hands.

  The telephone, again, a nauseating pang. Sébastien calls nonstop, doesn’t leave messages but doesn’t hang up.

  He comes and rings her doorbell, she freezes when she hears it, her heart pounds at full throttle, she doesn’t want to open the door. She waits for him to leave.

  Now everything is stupid, everything meaningless, a world full of ants.

  When she told him, he had hesitated for a moment. Before speaking, he put on his Bénard pants, his T-shirt. A strange precaution.

  She took advantage of his silence.

  “The best thing would be for you to leave. The keys to our place are at Armand’s. I’ll write to you once you’re there.”

  “Wait, wait . . . I’d like to understand what’s going on, at least.”

  “I’ve already understood too much. We’ll finish this another time, okay?”

  Shoving his bag into his hands, she pushed him toward the entryway. He let himself be pushed. She could feel his distress, and she wanted a lot of things in this world but what she wanted most was for him not to go. Still, she opened the door, avoided his eyes, and waited for him to leave. She was dying to hold him back and act as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. When he was in the stairwell, she leaned over the banister to yell, “And bravo on the pelvic thrusting, asshole, I had no idea you were so talented.”

  Door slam.

  She is seated on the couch. In fact, she wasn’t surprised. The most incredible things tend to veil themselves in absurdity. Never had she actually suspected, Did he go see my sister?

  But now that she knows, she can remember when it began and even list the dates of his visits. And her mind had always made sure, unbeknownst to her, not to make the connections, not to realize. Above all, not to know.

  And so that’s how it was.

  It didn’t happen right away. Of course, the first few weeks that Sébastien and Pauline were together, her sister did what she always did: hovered around him. When she had to lean over to get something next to him, she happened to be wearing a low-cut shirt. When he would talk about a band that he really liked, would you believe it—“How funny!”—and her eyes would sparkle as she said it—that was her “fave” group. If he was talking about a country that he wanted to visit—“That’s crazy, Pauline told you!”—that’s where she wanted to go too, and for a while now. And she had small gifts for him, books to give him, a tape to lend him, a film he had to see.

  That was her little game. Not entirely devised to piss off Pauline, to steal her boyfriend. She did it as soon as any man was in her vicinity. An anxiety took hold of her that she absolutely needed to subdue. She needed to exist, at least in his eyes, the curve of an erection, to verify that she was really there.

  And until Sébastien, her strategy had always worked.

  One day, they weren’t yet fifteen years old, Pauline remembers well, it was her first real relationship. With a sweet and sad boy who seemed entirely made for her. They had already been together a few weeks. In her parents’ garden, a white plastic table with rickety chairs. The boy didn’t seem to be falling for her trap, he seemed not even to realize, or to care. Claudine lost her head, exasperated, she ended up sighing, “Fuck it’s hot out,” and took off her T-shirt, looking him right in the eye, a whore’s smile. He turned red, looked away. She lay down on the grass, she touched her breasts as if it were natural, she stroked herself in front of him, flaunted herself.

  A little while later, almost night, they were talking, Pauline heard her say, “I like to have sex with much older men, because they know all about women . . .”

  When she hadn’t yet slept with anyone. The boy didn’t know what to say, he ended up suggesting to Pauline, “Let’s take a walk into town?”

  She left them alone for about five minutes, the time it took to go upstairs and throw on a sweater and brush her hair. Through her bedroom window, without meaning to, she saw them. Claudine was lying on the table and he was between her legs, pants around his ankles.

  Pauline lingered for a few minutes. When she went back downstairs the boy had left and her sister had shrugged her shoulders. “He got tired of waiting for you. And anyway he’s kind of lame, isn’t he?”

  He was the very first guy she had sex with.

  And from that day on, Pauline found it normal for her sister to devour all her guys. She had what Pauline didn’t, she had what men needed.

  So Pauline willingly brought each new boyfriend home, for him to meet her sister, and for him to leave with her—until Sébastien, the first guy to not want the other twin.

  With him, Claudine had quickly abandoned her efforts. They got along terribly. It was rare to leave them seated in the same room without returning to them fighting.

  Claudine exasperated him. “Can’t she ever shut her mouth? That stupid bitch just likes to provoke people. And on top of it she’s ugly, she’s a two-dollar whore.”

  The first two years, Claudine and Sébastien rarely crossed paths, and nothing happened.

  And then Pauline left for an internship. The first night she called the house everything was fine except the car. It didn’t want to start anymore, nothing he could do about it, and Sébastien was temping far out in the suburbs at the time. He was pretty upset; for once he had found work and he couldn’t go, and he had already tried all his friends, no one could lend him their car.

  “Call Claudine.”

  “No.”

  “Stop being so against her. You’re just borrowing her ride, not going on vacation with her.”

  “I’ll see . . . I’ll figure it out in any case. Shit, the one time I have a job.”

  After that, when she called, he was never there.

  When she came back, she asked, “Where were you every night? You never picked up.” Just asking, just curious. And that pissed him off. “I was here, there, can’t I go have a drink without filling out a form for you?”

  He also said, “In the end, Claudine helped me out with the car.”

  “Did you guys argue?”

  “No, no . . . your sister’s changed, she’s not such a cunt anymore. I have to go back to her place, by the way. Since she did me a favor, I told her I would change her headlight. I’ll probably go Monday.”

  “That’s too bad, I have work Monday, I won’t be able to go.”

  “Yeah, but if I don’t go then I’ll never have the time.”

  And everything was the same as before, except for several weeks when he didn’t let her kiss him when she passed him at home. It bothered him. “Don’t you ever get sick of being glued to my side?” He said it like he’d been sick of it for months, whereas he had always been affectionate before. She got on his nerves for no reason.

  At the time, she told herself that he was irritable because he couldn’t find work. He had little unpleasant outbursts.

  Now she understands, these scenes would happen, inevitably, just after he had spent the night out with his friends: “You think we have two drinks and then go home to sleep? No, we drink all night and talk about the entire world and how it should be put back together.”

  And then it was done. The two lovers had stopped seeing each other.

  She also remembers when Claudine left for Paris, her going-away party, to celebrate. Sébastien refused to go, it was Pauline who had insisted, “We never go out anywhere together. Come on, we’ll stop
by, just long enough to have a drink, see some people, and say goodbye to her.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Please.”

  But she didn’t feel well when they got there, a sudden headache. She had taken Sébastien aside. “I’m going home, you should stay.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Stay, I’m just going to go to sleep right away, stay here and have fun.”

  He came home the next morning, without a word. From then on, very precisely, a terrible despair began working its way into their relationship.

  Then the trips there. He would go to Paris for “business.” He never said that he had seen Claudine.

  But now she knows, every time he came back it made him sick, physically sick, sore throats or toothaches or other delightful things, every time he came back.

  Except everything was going well between them. So she didn’t want to know anything. To have to change anything.

  THE TELEPHONE AGAIN. Nicolas, in a tiny quiet voice, “I don’t want to overload your answering machine, but I’m on the verge of panic, wondering what’s going on with you . . .”

  Pauline picks up, for the first time in three days. “I needed some rest. How are you?”

  “A lot better now that I hear your voice.”

  “Can’t I have a few quiet days without having to justify myself? What horrible thing did you imagine happened to me?”

  “That you had become friendly, all of a sudden. I missed you yelling at me, I got too used to it.”

  Pauline pretends to laugh at his dumb sense of humor. Maintains the illusion that everything’s going pretty well between them, even though she’s still resentful.

  But through pretending, it’s become a reflex. She forgets to remember that she doesn’t find him funny, that she isn’t happy to hear from him, that she has no desire to see him. The responses come out on their own, sometimes she even forgets that she’s doing it on purpose.

  Nicolas clears his throat, adopts an annoyed tone, “There are some things we need to talk about . . .”

  Burst of mounting adrenaline: of course he suspects something, enormous exploding panic, her chest shatters. Block it all, sealed mask. Keep acting like someone who has nothing to be ashamed of. She proposes, “Want to hang out tonight?”

  He accepts. Unassuming, ask questions to find out more, discern the reasons to be worried. She inquires, “It seems like something’s wrong, is it something bad or what?”

  “Not pleasant. But nothing to worry about either. I’ll come over around eight? I won’t stay long, I have a party to go to after.”

  “Oh yeah? I’ll go with you.”

  Brief silence at the other end, then Nicolas sighs. “For three months I’ve been pestering you to come out with me, and it’s today you decide to!”

  “That’s the point, it’s getting old not seeing anyone. Why is today worse timing than yesterday? Just to piss me off?”

  “We’ll see each other soon, we’ll talk. I bet you won’t want to come with me anymore.”

  “You never know . . .”

  He laughs a little, obviously fake, disgusted, hangs up.

  She doesn’t know what to think. Leans toward the option: False alarm, he wants to talk to me about something else. But without losing sight of another possibility: He’s being deceitful in reassuring me, really trying to corner me tonight. Overestimate the enemy, always think he’s capable of being as clever as you are. Sometimes they only pretend to be stupid . . .

  She needs to find the willpower to go to this party with him tonight. She has absolutely no desire. Except that she has to get out of here. Break the cycle with Sébastien at its core, force herself to be distracted, cut herself off from her delirium.

  She wants Sébastien to be there, to hurl insults at him.

  She repeats them on loop, all the reproaches she has for him. She yells them out loud, as if he were there. Relief, immediately followed by a renewed frustration that exacerbates the wound. Vaguely aware of the pain, Pauline knows that she has to go about things differently. Incapable of doing the right thing, she is tortured, distorted by the sullied desire to go back to him, to revel in what hurts. Like an alcoholic who knows that it makes them violent, that they shouldn’t drink, even they, frankly, would prefer not to do it. But if you leave a bottle next to their bed, they’ll drink it. Inevitably.

  Her own bottle is full of regrets, remorse, sorrow at being abandoned. She can’t stop herself, it’s so full, she’ll drink from it. Inevitably.

  She shouldn’t have been there. This pain, like the whole world is cruelly collapsing around her. These things, so tangible, that should never have disappeared, become elusive all at once, turn against us.

  Why did she have to be there? She’s the one who asked for it, she’s the one who didn’t warn Sébastien. It is, in the end, her fault that everything has gone to hell.

  And when he fucked her like a whore, she, also, started moaning. And he heard her.

  Both of them, face to face, expressing things that should have remained secret.

  She puts on her makeup in front of the mirror. She thinks of Nicolas, when she first arrived, giving her advice and showing her the girls in magazines. She’s looking forward to seeing him, it surprises her. She’s impatient for him to arrive, for him to recount his silly stories.

  Thinking about the notorious advance, she suddenly has an idea, the only idea that makes sense now: she will actually make the album.

  Rather than barricading herself in with the money all alone with no desire to go anywhere, she will stay in this apartment, they’ll work in the studio over the summer. They’ll record something good, together.

  The advantage of innocence is that it allows others to make mistakes without causing suffering, and it leaves them the time to recuperate.

  She concentrates and applies her lipstick, outlining the upper lip without going over the edge. Then she finds the color disgusting, takes it off right away. She opens all the tubes, one by one, trying to find the right one.

  Out loud, to herself, she comments, “But if we do it for real, one or two things will have to change . . .”

  She had let him make all the decisions, thinking it was all a joke. He has pretty shitty taste, eccentric ideas, except everyone else has the same ones. For the title and the sleeve, for certain parts of the tracks.

  She takes stock, mentally, of all the things she had let slide when she still thought . . .

  She looks at herself in the mirror; she’s ready. She did everything as required, it took her all afternoon.

  The nails to paint, the legs to shave, the calluses on her heels to smooth, the hair to wash and dry while fighting to make it straight, the armpits to shave, the foundation to apply, the eyes to line, the body to perfume. Everything needs tampering, you have to be careful.

  Then choose what goes best with her body, with the weather, with the fashion, with the occasion.

  Now she looks at herself, and she thinks she looks okay.

  Spinning around in every direction, to see herself from behind, in profile, verify that everything looks good, she observes, “It could be great, to record an album.”

  She even feels stupid not to have thought of that before.

  HE RINGS THE doorbell at eight on the dot. Six-pack of beer in hand, he puts them directly in the fridge to keep them cold.

  “You’re not very talkative today.”

  He’s still trying to be a smartass, but it’s clear he’s nervous. Very visibly, he would have preferred to find someone else to bring her up to speed. Pauline lets him sort himself out, gather momentum, and get out what he has to tell her that’s so unpleasant. She already knows that it won’t be: “So, you little whore, your plan was to ditch me and take off with the advance?” because his embarrassment is real.

  He sits down and opens a can. She turns on the TV and starts to flip through the channels. She lands on a black-and-white film, a baker who’s lost his wife. It’s the end of the story
, she comes back. A priest lectures her. Then he sends her back to her husband, who is very nice to her. Pauline is fascinated. Not even sad. It comes back to her, all the times she’s seen people cry in those circumstances, or else make themselves sick: “I can’t stop picturing them together . . .” Why is it so painful when everyone goes through it?

  The baker takes it out on the cat, and his wife is in tears. She seems to regret it. Pauline comments, “She’s lucky, to have a husband like that. He’s incredibly nice.”

  Nicolas isn’t convinced.

  “Maybe she would have been better off if she’d stayed in the cave with her stud. In any case, girls never like that, guys who are nice to them. Unless you tear them down first. Then it pays off to be the nice guy.”

  “Stop talking nonsense and let me watch the end of the movie.”

  “You’ve never seen it?”

  It’s the fear of infidelity, in the modern sense of the term. What’s broken, between her and Sébastien, is all the trust she had in those things she knew about him, things that never changed, that she really liked. All the respect for the man she thought he was. Her trust must have weighed heavily on him. Those ideas she had, that she stuck to him, and don’t you dare change, or else you’ll have nothing. And that’s the reason she put up with it, let it happen, as long as he lied. As long as he kept up with the fantasy she imposed on him.

  Credits, she flips through the channels again. Nicolas brings over two beers. Movie trailer, a guy breaks everything in an office. He screams, “I waited for her all night!” A friend tries to calm him. The furious guy explains, “I asked her, ‘Are you cheating on me?’ She responded, ‘Took you long enough to realize.’” Pauline declares, “It’s a conspiracy! Did you set this up?”