Pretty Things

by Virginie Despentes

  “Allow me to inform you that you can go fuck yourself and that I don’t give a damn what you think of him.”

  The big boss scowls but doesn’t get upset.

  “You plan on seeing him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “But he’s not a parasite . . . Come on.”

  “And you, your wife, she’s a parasite too?”

  The big boss defuses the situation. He shows her his watch.

  “We can’t be late. Go get ready, please?”

  He looks at her, she’s wearing a completely rumpled dress, the first one she found when she got up, her hair’s not done and neither is her makeup.

  He adds, “It’s clear you don’t care about making yourself pretty for him.”

  “He, at least, likes grunge.”

  “I like you when you’re pretty.”

  That was one of her father’s criticisms. Back when she didn’t realize that she could look like her sister, that all it took was presentation for a man to find you desirable. She thought that you either had femininity or you didn’t; she didn’t know it could be manufactured.

  She goes to take a shower and get dressed, hears him on the phone in the other room.

  They’re going to a dinner with such fascinating people. She wanted to cancel but the big boss was against it. “They absolutely want to see you. They’ll be very offended if you refuse.”

  Now her job is to honor important people. There will of course be one in the group who will make her feel like an idiot, talentless, like she doesn’t merit so much success. There’s always at least one. And another to make the comment that it won’t last, that she has to take advantage of it, that the public gets bored quickly. Another still to say, kindly, that on top of that, women get old fast.

  There will be yet another to tell her a few secrets. Since that porno came out, there’s always someone who wants to talk to her about what he’s into, with a conspiratorial tone, who just wants to tell her: “You know, I did that with a man,” or “I was tied up,” or “I’d like to be pegged, but my wife isn’t really up for it,” or “I like to wear high heels.”

  There will certainly be several people who will lavishly ignore her, to really make the point that they don’t give in to mainstream fads.

  And all together they’ll discuss, case by case: “What so-and-so does is crap” and someone else “is the only true filmmaker of his generation, what a waste that he’s so unknown.” It’s always the ones no one knows about who are the only legitimate ones. The general public, true boors . . . bad taste, always rewarding the incompetent.

  She’ll dine with the elite. She won’t let out a single giggle. She’ll understand nothing of what they say. “You haven’t seen that movie?” Poor her, sweet her, ignorant her, fortunately she has a big ass to make up for it, “It’s a real gem,” and everyone will agree, “Nothing happens in the first hour, absolutely nothing, and out of that nothing surge true moments of grace.” There are a lot people who like it that way, that she is as uncultured as she is ravishing. That’s their idea of a good lay.

  She can’t manage to put her makeup on. She screws up one eye, takes it off, screws up the other, starts over.

  The big boss has calmed down, he asks her from behind the door, “Almost ready?”

  “It’ll be another ten minutes.”

  “Oh, you women!”

  What an original comment. She isn’t sure what jacket to wear. She says to herself, quietly, “I have such intriguing dilemmas.”

  Then she does a line and lectures herself. “You won’t complain about what happens to you, you won’t complain about the life that you lead. Today, the boss upset you, but most of the time you’re really happy about how things have turned out for you. And you like all this duplicity. There’s only one thing you’re in a rush to do, which is to make a second album just to prove to these assholes that you’re a big deal and that you sing well. Today, you wanted to stay and have fun with Nicolas, but I know you: tomorrow you won’t even think of calling him anymore, he’ll feel distant, because it’s true, he’s a loser, he’s not interested in anything, and going out with guys like that always ends up pissing you off.”

  Doesn’t stop her from finding her boss pathetically burdensome, that already-old idiot who acts like a lady, calling it “savoir-vivre.”

  She’s ready to go out. Looks at herself a last time. Smiles at herself in the mirror; she’s pretty like that.

  She had an idea, just then, while the boss was telling her off. An old idea, utterly stupid.

  Tomorrow, she will have forgotten it.

  METRO PLATFORM. IT comes by a little less often at night. A banana peel is on the ground. Nicolas skims a poem posted in the station by the RATP. Silence of strangers, the majority have their noses in books. Opposite, an old woman is talking to herself, getting mad at someone who doesn’t exist.

  The metro arrives, unbearable racket, a catastrophic noise every time.

  Pauline didn’t call the next day, that didn’t surprise him. But she did two days later. “I have so many things to do, I can’t meet up, I’m just calling to hear how you’re doing.”

  They talked about a slew of stupid things, she had stopped playing the game. “This week I can’t, but right after I’ll call you, so we can get to the end.”

  Then for a month he didn’t hear from her again. Not that it really surprised him, or disappointed him, he continued on with his little life.

  Yesterday, she called. The drugs were probably really good because she was super bizarre, euphoric, a little too emphatic. He said, “I’ll come over tomorrow if you want.”

  “Perfect.”

  “So it’s safe to say that you’re really set on it, finishing this game.”

  “There are ideas, they come to you, but the next day they’re gone. And there are others, they come, and then you can’t let them go again. You have no control over it, and sometimes it even surprises you.”

  “I hear you loud and clear.”

  “I’ll explain better tomorrow, when we see each other.”

  “Whatever you want . . . And if you’re sick of singing, I can tell you’re ready for a job coming up with riddles for that game show Fort Boyard.”

  He hopes she’s thinking what he’s thinking. He hopes she’ll open the door and say, “Eat my pussy,” and then they’ll fuck until it hurts.

  A guy has just entered the train, he’s tapping on his seat. He’s massive, and very unhappy.

  The metro stops, Nicolas gets off immediately. He’s only two stations away, he decides to continue on foot. Walking beneath the elevated metro tracks, it’s cold out, the way he likes.

  Rue Poulet, he passes a kid running with the police at his heels. It’s pretty rare, after nightfall, for the pigs to still be active in this neighborhood. During the day, he saw it a hundred times from Claudine’s window, they wait for there to be four cars and two trucks before they arrest a single person. A crowd gathers around them and there’s bellowing, each time it would only take a tiny little thing to turn the situation into a riot, and there are always plenty of people to make some noise. And that has always fascinated him: that the little thing never happens. If just one person were to throw a stone, there would be a riot for an entire week. Four cars two trucks, that’s not a lot compared to all these people . . . In plenty of situations, it’s the same thing: all that’s missing is the first stone.

  IT’S REALLY FUCKING clean when he arrives. He’s never seen the apartment like this. Claudine didn’t like things too tidy, she said it was only the seriously deranged who couldn’t handle a bit of disarray. And Pauline had never really dared to disturb anything. Had been happy to maintain the mess.

  He whistles, admiring, “You really cleaned up.”

  “I’m moving out of the apartment, I prefer to leave everything clean behind me. I emptied all the cabinets, I tidied everything.”

  �
��You did a good job.”

  “I’ve been at it two days.”

  Talking to him, she puts her finger on her right nostril, then looks at him.

  Nicolas asks, “Are you afraid of getting a nosebleed, or what?”

  “Yes and no, it’s more of a tic . . .”

  She sighs, smiles, “Have to say, I overdid it the past two weeks.”

  “You should be careful. Then again, it’s none of my business . . .”

  “It’s finished tomorrow.”

  “So, you’re moving?”

  “I’m leaving. I’m going on a trip.”

  “Cool! Where to?”

  “Dakar.”

  “That’ll be a big change from your neighborhood . . .”

  He laughs, mentally stumbles: Why is she taking off, and where did she get the idea to go so far away, without him? He tries to stay in control and keep a semblance of dignity.

  “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow night, but I can change the ticket if I want.”

  She stares at the TV, switched off, she seems concentrated on something else. It stabs him between the ribs, she can’t just run off like that.

  He says soberly, “You lied to me then, we can’t finish the game between now and tomorrow night.”

  “That depends. If you come with me, we’ll have all the time in the world to finish it.”

  Bingo. He acts like he doesn’t understand so that she really has to spell it out.

  “You want me to come to Dakar with you to finish Tomb Raider?”

  “That, and for a whole bunch of other reasons.”

  Explosion of joy, he knew it would happen, he acts like a smartass.

  “I don’t really like foreign countries.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Well that’s inconvenient, because I can’t stay in France.”

  He fills their two glasses, messes with her a little.

  “Too much success? You’re sick of it, you want to be able to walk around in peace without anyone jumping you in the street.”

  “No, I’m used to that now. I even think it’ll piss me off, at first, to go unnoticed.”

  She thinks about it for a moment. She’s acting like the other druggies Nicolas knows, stopping in the middle of an explanation, eyes elsewhere, dropping out of the conversation. Then she adds, “I’ll explain what I did, and after, I’ll explain what I want to do: a month ago, you know when we saw each other, that day, a little while after you left, I decided that I was bored, and that I was on a slippery slope.”

  “I thought you were having a blast?”

  “Everything was great. Except that there’s no end to it. Nicolas, they’re all completely depraved. I made myself a list, and I realized: I never laugh. Maybe one or two snickers when someone says something really mean. Otherwise, I never laugh. And you know what that makes someone?”

  “Acceptable.”

  “Super sick, actually, and when you’re old it really costs you, to have led the life of a poor loser. Do you get it?”

  “Not quite. But I’m listening.”

  “So for a month I’ve been shuffling around all over the place, a manic supermodel. I was paid a lot of advances.”

  “Advances on what?”

  “On everything. A new record contract, cha ching, a series of commercials, cha ching again, my memoir as a porno actress, cha ching, and a whole bunch of ridiculous things . . . It was like cha ching cha ching. I put everything in a bunch of accounts, I’m telling you straight: I’m set. And now I can leave.”

  “You couldn’t just go on vacation instead, reflect for a bit? Do all of your ideas have to be so stupid?”

  “Listen. I’m all about the advance. As soon as I heard the word, I knew that it was my thing: advance.”

  “Is it a lot?”

  “Combined with what I have from the album . . . Together we can live for ten years doing tons of stupid shit, fifteen if we restrain ourselves a bit. And twenty if we take it easy . . .”

  “Together?”

  “I want you to come. I didn’t really know how to tell you. But I won’t go alone.”

  “That’s all really nice, but I’m not a piece of luggage.”

  “I should have talked to you about it earlier. But I was afraid of changing my mind. At the last minute. That I would want to stay. I was so fucking afraid you’d say no.”

  He is the happiest of men, it’s a thousand times more than he needed to be happy. He masks it all, remains pretty cold. There is still one last little thing he wants to hear her say.

  He whistles. “You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself. I can’t leave just like that . . .”

  “I don’t understand. Aren’t you happy with me?”

  “Yeah, sure. But there’s a difference between being pretty good with someone and throwing everything away to run off with them . . . And then I’d look like a real asshole, once we’re in Dakar, if suddenly you realize that you have better things to do than nothing at all with me, and you ditch me like you did . . . Here, it was fine, I handled it well. But out in the middle of nowhere, that would be harder to laugh off.”

  “Back then I was young, I knew nothing about life. You are the only person I really get along with.”

  One by one, the words he’s been dreaming of. He plans to take advantage of the situation as much as possible.

  “I’m sorry, honestly, I just don’t want to. But maybe I’ll come visit you, one day . . .”

  “Do you want to have sex? Sometimes that makes people fall madly in love and then that’ll convince you to come with me.”

  “To be honest, you’re starting to get on my nerves.”

  He gets up, barely feels his legs. Just a bit of revenge, for what she did to him, and most importantly: make her sweat. Make her wait until the next day.

  He turns his head toward her, she’s biting her lip until it bleeds, too much coke makes her look crazy. He explains, “That hurts me. It’s like you’re taking me along in your bags. The way you pull me into your bed to try to make me do what you want. That hurts, I feel like you’re just using me.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “You’ve just done too much coke. You’ve lost the meaning of certain things . . . On top of it, the way you talk to me, you’re saying: you’re such a loser, you really have nothing going on here, why don’t you come and entertain me? Do you understand why that’s hurtful?”

  “But don’t you remember how good it was?”

  “Not really, no.”

  TERRACE OF A big house, right on the edge of the sea.

  “Fuck it’s nice out.”

  “Yeah, it hurts your eyes.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR & TRANSLATOR

  VIRGINIE DESPENTES is an award-winning French author and filmmaker, as well as a noted feminist and cultural critic. She is the author of many books, including Vernon Subutex, King Kong Theory, and Apocalypse Baby.

  EMMA RAMADAN is a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is the co-owner of Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of a PEN/Heim grant, an NEA Translation Fellowship, and a Fulbright.

  ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS

  KING KONG THEORY

  Virginie Despentes

  Translated by Stéphanie Benson

  With humor, rage, and confessional detail, Virginie Despentes—in her own words “more King Kong than Kate Moss”—delivers a highly charged account of women’s lives today. She explodes common attitudes about sex and gender, and shows how modern beauty myths are ripe for rebelling against. Using her own experiences of rape, prostitution, and working in the porn industry as a jumping-off point, she makes the bold, stinging point that when it comes to sex today, everyone’s getting screwed.

  VIRGINIE DESPENTES is an award-winning author and filmmaker, and a noted French feminist and cultural critic. She is the author of many award-winning books, including Apocalypse Baby (winner of the 2010 Prix Renaudot) and Vernon Subutex
(winner of the Anaïs-Nin Prize 2015, Prix Landerneau 2015, Prix La Coupole 2015). She also co-directed the screen adaptations of her controversial novels Baise-Moi and Bye Bye Blondie.

  STÉPHANIE BENSON is a literary translator.

  APOCALYPSE BABY

  Virginie Despentes

  Translated by Siân Reynolds

  Apocalypse Baby is a smart, fast-paced mystery about a missing adolescent girl traveling through Paris and Barcelona. She is tailed by two mismatched private investigators: the Hyena, part ruthless interrogator, part oversexed rock star, and Lucie, her plain and passive—almost to the point of invisible—sidekick. As their desperate search unfolds, they interrogate a suspicious cast of characters, and the dark heart of contemporary youth culture is exposed.

  VIRGINIE DESPENTES is an award-winning author and filmmaker, and a noted French feminist and cultural critic. She is the author of King Kong Theory and Vernon Subutex (winner of the Anaïs-Nin Prize 2015, Prix Landerneau 2015, Prix La Coupole 2015). She also co-directed the screen adaptations of her controversial novels Baise-Moi and Bye Bye Blondie.

  SIN REYNOLDS has translated many books on French history, including most of the works of Fernand Braudel. Recent translations include fiction by Virginie Despentes, Antonin Varenne and French crime novelist, Fred Vargas. Four Vargas translations have been awarded the Crime Writers’ Association International Dagger (2006, 2007, 2009, 2013). She is professor emeritus of French at the University of Stirling, Scotland.

  BYE BYE BLONDIE

  Virginie Despentes

  Translated by Siân Reynolds

  Gloria and Eric were once punk mascots, homeless, high, and in love, on a noisy mix of drugs, Parisian counterculture, and each other. Now, he’s a television personality and she remains bitter at the local bar. Reunited twenty years later, Gloria’s hunt for immortality and redemption in love reveals the simultaneous ecstasy and banality of a wrecked modern romance.