Pretty Things

by Virginie Despentes

  But he feels that it has to come from her. Otherwise, she’ll give herself to him just to immediately recoil and it’ll start all over again: “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

  That’s certainly what she came looking for, but she’s afraid of going for it. He has to give her the time to calm down.

  He watches her play, tense over her controller. She does what girls do: scolds herself for things nonstop. “Fuck, Pauline, what are you doing,” instead of insulting the machine.

  He says, “What are you doing? The zombies already ate all your health.”

  “I’ll find some health again, I’m not worried. I don’t think you have enough faith in my strategic decisions, you’ll see.”

  “You have to kill the giant, there’s plenty of ammo behind you.”

  “No, I don’t kill the giants.”

  When the sun rises, they go out for coffee. It’s clear they haven’t slept, and they giggle nervously over everything. She’s excited.

  “Those games are great, really great . . . It’s too bad we couldn’t finish.”

  “I can save it if you want, I’ll wait to finish it with you.”

  “I have twelve thousand things to do, I won’t be back before Christmas—not this coming one, but the one after. So it’s better you don’t wait for me.”

  That snaps him back to reality, all at once. Since last night he had forgotten that they didn’t see each other every day anymore. He hides it well, but feels hollow inside, he could have suggested You could just stay at my place instead of what he asks.

  “You’re really super busy then?”

  “Overbooked, like a fucking yuppie. Yesterday, I was tired of it, I told them I was sick.”

  “And you’re going to record another album?”

  “Have to wait a bit, they’re still putting out two more singles.”

  She smiles.

  “But I’m in talks for the next one. We’re discussing the advance.”

  “Well if you want me to take care of it for you . . .”

  “And you, you still spend your time doing nothing?”

  “I also spend some time feeling sorry for myself, but really I don’t mind.”

  She looks at the time, assumes a grave tone, “If I don’t leave now I can tell I’m going to waste another day . . . I have to get going.”

  She takes the receipt, pays, leaves an enormous tip. Since looking at her watch, she has changed slightly, reassumed the attitude of a confident woman.

  And she scuttles toward a taxi.

  Nicolas goes back home. Smell of old cigarettes. He clears the coffee table, empty cans, coffee cups, box of sugar.

  He goes to lie down and sleep. Tomorrow he’ll play alone. It’s not the same, alone. It’s fine, but obviously it’s less fun. And there are things you find faster with two.

  BEFORE GOING HOME, Pauline stops at the bank to get a new checkbook.

  There’s a woman in front of her who must be about her age but with three kids. A little girl with a head full of braids who’s drawing flowers on a leaflet. She hands it to a man waiting there. Her little brother is terrified, clinging to his mother’s leg. The last one she’s still carrying, a tiny little baby. She’s a very beautiful woman, dressed like she’s in North Africa, a red dress with gold embroidery. She waits, the employee verifies something, shakes his head no.

  “It hasn’t arrived in your account. I’m sorry.”

  The woman doesn’t move. She says nothing. The bank teller repeats, “Come back tomorrow, maybe it’ll be here then. I can’t do anything for you.”

  She doesn’t make to leave. She stays there, as if she lacks the strength to go back home without a cent, as if she doesn’t want to believe it.

  Then she calls her little girl, takes her little boy by the hand, leaves, slowly. Her eyes stare straight ahead, big chasms.

  The bank teller recognizes Pauline, gives her a big smile, she says hello, explains what she wants. He asks her, “Would you like one checkbook or two?”

  As soon as she’s back home, she goes to the answering machine, now a conditioned reflex.

  Message from Sébastien, he leaves them now and then. His voice is monotone and sad. “I know the latest with you, all I have to do is turn on my TV . . . but I’d like a real update.”

  It’s that same voice, the one that ripped apart her flesh, made everything turn upside down, shooting blood from her wrists all the way to her skull; now hearing it is just like any other voice, hard to believe that it is, however, the same, it’s nothing but another message. All that’s left is snippets, a memory of emotion, still a bit of regret, in places. Now completely alone, she isn’t mad at anyone.

  She never calls him back. She’s a little bitter, she’d needed him so badly, during all those transformations, when she felt like she was losing her mind, and it could have been different if he had been there all this time. But above all, she became afraid of him. Of judgment. Not his judgment of her, but the way she would judge herself if she were ever to go back to him. Now that she’s alone, she can be the father—egotistical, ambitious, aggressive—and only do what she wants. If she were to be his woman again, she would transform back into a wife, the one who has to help, forgive, be forgotten.

  And she really likes what she’s become.

  It’s over, this game of stifling the worst parts of herself. She likes easy money, the kind that comes out of walls, all she has to do is slide her piece of plastic inside. That credit card with the whitened numbers because she uses it to crush powder. She likes to show up somewhere and feel like a magnet, someone under the spotlight. And she doesn’t care that people don’t like her for who she is, as long as they all pretend.

  She even likes the hostility she triggers in people. Gossip is such good publicity, people share whatever dirt they can get on her, and the publicists add an extra dose in transit.

  She likes it so much when people insult her that she feels like hatred incarnate. What’s wrong with you, that I piss you off so much? What nasty score do you have to settle with yourself that makes you flip out and look elsewhere, to others?

  She meets people who are all smiles around her; as soon as they get home, they play Claudine’s movie, to watch her get fucked.

  They can say what they want about her, to her face and among themselves; she has a power over them that exceeds their comprehension. She has done the impossible, it gives her a lot of leverage.

  She sits down, listens to an old song, “Do the Right Thing,” she would really like to chill and stay in all day. She has a lunch meeting to talk about a commercial.

  The big boss says it pays a lot of money. He gets a kick out of her love of money like he got a kick out of how much she liked sex. She still vaguely despises him, and he regularly frustrates her. But she calls him, even without having anything to say to him, he’s the one she tells her stories to. He confides in her, too, often mentions money.

  It’s a bottomless hole, his need for dough. Like a man gorging himself, he’s sick from having too much but it’s the only way he knows how to assure himself that he’s competent: earning more and more and more.

  He also talks about his age constantly. She doesn’t know what to say to him when he tells her what it’s like to be on the decline, how horrifying it is. “Your age is visible in the looks of others, even when you yourself don’t think about it anymore. Your skin falls off, your smell changes. It’s an unfamiliar body, unlike your own, the one you should have always had, the one you always knew. It’s like a pathetic mistake, but there’s no one you can complain to. And feeling yourself pass, inexorably, into the camp of old men who until now were on another planet that never concerned you. And on the inside of this body nothing changes, you’re the same as twenty years ago, in a machine that’s slowly breaking down. And even the suffering of the soul, the disappointments we thought we were used to, with all the time we’ve had to toughen up. But it’s the opposite, they’re more damaging than ever. And always feeling them in the same
place, it’s painful, atrociously painful.”

  It’s precisely because of those moments that she feels the desire to take him in her arms and tell him, I love your body, even if it’s a lie, because he’s right, she remembers it, he has an old man’s body. Lie, at least to soften the blow. Like every time she hears about someone else’s unfair burden, too heavy for them to carry.

  Voice mail. The big boss, as it happens. She picks up immediately, he’s worried.

  “I called you all day yesterday. You were sick? I almost came by. Is everything okay?”

  “Actually, I wasn’t even sick, I just really needed some air.”

  “You could have let me know.”

  “No, I know you, you would have convinced me to go to all my meetings . . .”

  Then she’s only half listening. The tiniest thing he has to say takes him thirty sentences to get out. He’s loaded with so much stupid shit that he weighs down everything he touches. He says he’ll come get her, for the lunch, she says okay and gets ready.

  Before leaving, inspiration strikes. She calls Nicolas, wakes him up.

  “Sorry, I thought you’d be awake by now.”

  “I have no reason not to sleep, so I’m taking advantage.”

  “You told me about a video game store, do you want to meet up later and buy a console together? You give me advice, you help me set it up, that way we can play a little tonight.”

  “Didn’t you have a ton of things to do today?”

  “I’m going to cancel. I have a lunch that I’m not skipping but the rest I’m canceling.”

  “You’re right, have to stay grunge.”

  When she hangs up, she jumps up and down with delight. There’s nothing better than getting ready for a super busy day and then bailing.

  She won’t let the big boss know because he’ll throw a fit on the spot.

  Nicolas turns the TV around to mess with the wires in the back.

  “I have no idea how you installed your TV.”

  “I didn’t do a thing.”

  “If it was Claudine who did it, that would make more sense.”

  “You know that you’re the only person who talks to me about Claudine without thinking she’s me?”

  “You’re not afraid it’ll get out?”

  “I am. But it’s always the same story: it would be good publicity.”

  “You transform everything into publicity now?”

  “Just watch me.”

  “And you’ve never ended up in sketchy situations, people who knew your sister and you didn’t recognize them?

  “I have. But since I’ve become ‘somebody,’ they think I’m just being pretentious. In fact, I mistake myself for her sometimes. I don’t always think about it, that it’s all a lie.”

  “All right, it’s working, we can play. Where did you put the games?”

  She points to the table, takes a hit off the joint and some still-lit ash falls onto her blouse, she jumps up and wipes at her chest. It makes a little hole.

  She asks, “Will you go buy some beer before we start?”

  “You haven’t changed all that much: you never want to move your ass.”

  “It’s different now. You saw, people recognize me. I can’t walk around freely anymore.”

  “You’ve found yourself a good excuse.”

  It’s a game with different worlds. There’s water. Doors only open with the help of keys that are difficult to find, you have to swim run jump from roof to roof, kill guards, dogs, rats, tarantulas. When the girl finds something interesting she stoops down and says, “Ah-ha.” There are disconcerting noises to warn that something bad is about to happen.

  They play until late. At the end they find themselves trapped inside an elevator, they have to kill three guys but they have almost no life left and die every time. Pauline is discouraged.

  “We should never have saved it here. Now we have to restart the entire thing.”

  “You’re never actually stuck in this game.”

  “I don’t know where you get your ideas from. You can see that it’s impossible to kill them!”

  “Tonight, because we’re exhausted and wasted. But tomorrow, we’ll beat it no problem.”

  “You want to sleep here? We can pull out the sofa.”

  “Are you leaving super early tomorrow?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t wake you up. You’ll just have to lock the door behind you. That way, before you leave, you can try to beat it.”

  “Okay.”

  She points to the sofa. “You know how to open it?” He’s still playing, he signals yes.

  “I’ve slept on it before.”

  She leaves him, she wants him to hold her back, she’s relieved he doesn’t.

  She closes her bedroom door, undresses, lies down. She wants him to enter without knocking and slide between her thighs. She’s relieved he doesn’t.

  In the morning, he’s woken up by gunshots and Pauline shouting, “On the first try! Can you believe it?”

  “Congratulations. Have to admit you’re lucky, that helps.”

  “Dexterity, agility, strategy, an understanding of the game, impeccable state of mind . . .”

  “You’re not late?”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “I’m starting to regret bringing you this game.”

  “I’ll finish it, and then I’ll get back to a normal life.”

  “It’ll take you a good week to finish.”

  “That doesn’t scare me.”

  “They didn’t say anything about you canceling again?”

  “I didn’t tell them. They’ll figure it out on their own.”

  “Won’t they be worried about you?”

  “Yeah. They’ll get over it.”

  THE BOSS WAS sick of calling and Pauline not picking up. He came to her place.

  She knows that it’s him as soon as she hears the doorbell. She mutes the TV, Nicolas whispers, “Are you expecting someone you don’t want to see?”

  “It’s the big boss. He’s so clingy!”

  “Go open the door for him.”

  “I don’t want to. I have the right to relax for two minutes, don’t I?”

  “Yes, exactly, you just have to tell him that.”

  He insists and rings again. Nicolas also insists, “You have to. What if he calls the police?”

  She’s afraid, for no real reason. Nicolas’s argument persuades her to get up, because it’s true that that’s what he’ll do and it’ll look bad, once the door is broken down, the two of them desperately trying to clear a steep incline with fans below that chop Lara up every time she falls through them.

  She was right to open the door, the big boss has worked himself into an indescribable state and at first she thinks that something bad has happened to him. He’s pale and trembling, throws himself onto her as soon as he sees her, takes her in his arms, he looks like he’s going to sob.

  “My precious Claudine, I was so afraid . . . I imagined things, things that were . . . I was so afraid!”

  She pats his back. She’d like to go back to playing, but can tell it won’t be so simple.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d be so upset. I just decided to switch off for a few days.”

  Now he’s indignant.

  “Everyone is looking for you! Don’t you realize? That’s not professional, Claudine.”

  It’s the worst insult he knows. For him it’s very, very bad when someone isn’t professional. You can be wretched, dishonest, exploitative, an imposter, just about anything you like, but you must remain professional.

  He catches sight of Nicolas in the living room, who had the smart idea to turn off the TV. The big boss thinks he understands everything, without saying hello or anything else, he shouts, “I should have known!”

  Turns toward Claudine. “Claudine, get ready, we have a dinner tonight.”

  Then toward Nicolas. “Sorry, young man, I won’t get her back to you until very late.”

  “No problem,
boss. I’m taking off.”

  She lets him leave, judging that it’s the most reasonable thing to do, accompanies him to the door, Nicolas stifles a giggle, then whispers, “You’re in for a scolding.”

  “Tell me about it . . . I’m going to try to get him to play a little, maybe he’ll like it. I’ll call you tomorrow?”

  She closes the door behind him. The big boss is going around in circles in the living room, still on the verge of tears, he throws up his arms.

  “It’s all well and good that you have love affairs . . . But that can’t impinge upon your commitments. And you know that. What came over you?”

  “Don’t act like it’s the end of the world, I switched off for two days. I needed it. I’m sure the world is still turning. You know me, I’m serious, dedicated, ambitious, it’s just a phase, I wanted to decompress.”

  “Go tell that to the two newspapers you bailed on, and the TV segment you didn’t do, and the meeting at the production company that it took me three months to get, you didn’t even cancel, the guy was furious, I had to lie to defend you.”

  “That must have been hard for you, to lie.”

  She tries to calm him down. He really thinks of himself as her father, someone who knows what’s best for her. He asks, “Who was that guy?”

  “A friend.”

  She could explain to him that they’re not doing anything together. Because he doesn’t say so, but it hurts him, that she shuts herself in with another person. And on top of that, a guy her own age.

  And that’s what she was planning to do: reassure him. He is, after all, the closest person she has. She is grateful to him for coming to her in person to get her back on track. Enough with the games, she has other things to do.

  She opens her mouth to explain to him, He’s just a friend.

  The big boss speaks first. “You sure he’s not just a little freeloader?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “When someone is in your situation, all the parasites come out of the woodwork, and you know it.”

  “No, no. He’s a good guy.”

  “Allow me to hold on to my suspicions. In my opinion, a good person is someone who would know how to support you. Not some lazy asshole that lets you cancel all your appointments.”