Betty Blue

by Philippe Djian

  “Only problem is you got to know how to drive it,” he smirked.

  “No problem,” I said. “I could drive a slalom course in a semi.”

  The truth is that it was a hell of a machine to maneuver, and it was the first time I’d ever laid hands on one. I made it across town with no damage, though-it wasn’t as diabolical as I thought. You have to start with the idea that it’s up to everybody else to get out of your way. The day was having trouble dawning-the clouds seemed glued together. I went to get Bob. I brought croissants.

  We all sat down at the table, and I had a cup of coffee with them. It was so dark outside they’d had to turn the lights on. The bulb in the kitchen was a bit cruel. Annie and Bob looked like they hadn’t slept in weeks. While we were devouring our croissants, the baby decided to throw a little temper tantrum. Archie spilled his bowl of cereal all over the table. Bob got up, teetering slightly.

  “Just give me five minutes to get dressed, and we’re out of here,” he said.

  Archie was washing his hands in the little stream of milk that ran over the edge of the table, and the other little one was still screaming. Why do I always have to bear witness to abominable things? Annie pulled a baby bottle out of a saucepan, and we could almost hear each other again.

  “So,” I said. “You and Bob getting along a little better?”

  “Well, let’s say we’re getting along a LITTLE better, but that’s all. Why, you have something in mind?”

  “No,” I said. “These days I use all my energy to not think about anything.”

  I looked ever at my little tablemate, who was busy making patties out of his cereal, squeezing it in his hands.

  “You’re an odd duck,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I’m not really… unfortunately…”

  When we were finally outside, Bob looked at the sky and made a face.

  “I know…” I said. “Let’s not waste time.”

  We carried the piano out onto the sidewalk and tied the straps on. I went and got the user’s manual out of the glove compartment, then went over to the mechanical arm. There were all kinds of levers to work it-levers to start it, make it go left, make it go right, up, down, withdraw, extend, levers to work the claw. All you had to do was coordinate everything. I turned it on.

  On my first try I almost decapitated Bob-he watched me do it from the other side, standing there with a little smile. The controls were supersensitive and it took me a good ten minutes of practice before I could work them well enough. The hardest part was avoiding the sides of the truck bed.

  Don’t ask me how, but I loaded the piano. I was covered with sweat. We tied it down like madmen, then took off.

  I might as well have been transporting nitroglycerin, I was so nervous. The storm was hanging over our heads. I could not morally allow it to rain on a Bosendorfer-l just couldn’t. Unfortunately the heavens slowly started descending, and the truck dragged along at thirty-five.

  “Bob, I’m a hair away from sinking the ship,” I said.

  “I know. Why didn’t we put a tarp over it?”

  “What tarp? Did you see something that looked like a tarp?

  Fuck, light me a cigarette, will you…?”

  He leaned forward and pushed in the cigarette lighter. I glanced at the dashboard.

  “What are all these buttons for, I wonder?”

  “Beats me. I don’t recognize half of them…”

  I had my foot to the floor, a cold sweat running down my back. Just another fifteen minutes, I told myself-a wink of the eye, and we’re home free. The suspense was killing me. I was biting the inside of my mouth when the first drop fell on the windshield. It hurt so bad I wanted to scream, but nothing came out of my mouth.

  “Hey, I found the window-washer button,” said Bob.

  When we got there I drove around the house and parked next to the window, doing a slalom between the flower beds. The lady was ecstatic, walking around the truck, wringing her handkerchief.

  “I decided to handle this myself,” I explained. “All my men split on me at the last minute.”

  “Yes, I certainly know how it is,” she complained. “So hard to find good help nowadays…”

  “You said it,” I added. “Someday they’ll come murder us in our sleep!”

  “Hahaha,” she said.

  I jumped out of the truck.

  “And we’re off!” I shouted.

  “I’ll show you how to get the window open,” she said.

  There were occasional light gusts of wind, cool and wet. I knew that every second counted. The piano shone like a lake. Inside, I jittered. The atmosphere was a little like in a disaster film-the part where all you hear is the ticking of the bomb.

  I untied the piano with abandon. It rocked back and forth heavily. The sky was about to crack-I was holding it at bay with sheer brain power. As soon as the window was open, I aimed carefully, then sent it through. There was a sound of breaking glass. The first drop fell on my hand. I lifted a triumphant face to the heavens. I found each little drop prettier than the one before, now that the piano was safe and dry. It was with a happy heart that I turned off the controls and went to see what in the world I could have broken.

  I asked the customer to simply have the bill for the window pane forwarded to me, then gestured to Bob that it was time to undo the straps. Bob had tied the knots. I took one in my hand and discreetly showed it to him.

  “You see, Bob…” I said. “A knot like this is not even worth trying to undo. It is impossibly tangled. I suppose you tied all the other ones the same way…?”

  I saw in his eyes that the answer was yes. I pulled my Western S.522 out of my pocket and cut the straps, sighing.

  “The devil sent you,” I told him.

  Still, the piano had found a home-had come through without a scratch. I didn’t have much reason to complain. Outside it was coming down in buckets. I took an almost animal-like pleasure in watching the raging storm drown out the countryside. I myself had managed to escape it. I waited for the lady to get it together to pay me, then considered the job done.

  I dropped Bob off on the way back and returned the truck to the rental office. I took a bus home. The rain had stopped, and there were a few patches of blue. The tension from the morning had exhausted me, but I was coming home with pockets full of money, and one thing compensated for the other. Even better, I managed to get the window seat right behind the driver, and nobody bothered me. I sat there watching the streets go by.

  There was no one home at the apartment. I couldn’t remember if Betty had told me that she was going somewhere-yesterday seemed centuries away. I went straight to the fridge and got some things out on the table. The beer and the hard-boiled eggs were all frozen. I went to take a shower, and wait for the world to rise to human temperature.

  Back in the kitchen, I gave a kick to a piece of crumpled-up paper that was lying on the floor. I find myself in this position more often than is my share, but that’s how it goes. Something’s always lying around on the floor. I picked it up. I unfolded it. I sat down and read it. It was the laboratory results. They were negative… NEGATIVE!

  I cut my finger opening my beer bottle, but I didn’t notice right away. I drank it in one gulp. It must have been written somewhere that all my disappointments come by mail. It was vulgar-atrociously trite-it was a glimpse of Hell. It took me a while to react, then Betty’s absence began to weigh heavily on my shoulders. If I don’t move, I thought, I’ll burn. I grabbed the back of the chair to get up. My finger started pissing blood. I decided to run some water over it. Maybe this was why I hurt all over. I went up to the kitchen sink. Then I spotted something red in the garbage can. I already knew what it was. I fished it out with my hand. There was a black one, too. It was the Oshkosh jammies. Maybe it’s true that they wash well-we’d never really know- but one thing was sure: they didn’t stand up well to a pair of scissors. This little touch made me plunge to the murky depths. It gave me an idea of how Betty had taken the news.
To all appearances, the blood was coagulating at the end of my finger, but in truth my skin was crawling-in truth, the Earth had fallen off its axis.

  I controlled myself. I had to think. I ran the water over it, then wrapped it in gauze. The problem was that I was suffering for two. I had a keen intuition of what Betty must have felt. My brain was half paralyzed and my intestines were gurgling. I knew I ought to go looking for her, but for the moment I didn’t have the strength. I almost just slid into bed to wait for a blizzard to come numb me, to sweep my thoughts away. I stood there in the middle of the room, pockets full of money and finger cut. Then I hit the streets.

  I searched in vain for her all afternoon. I must have covered every street in town two or three times, my eyes riveted to the sidewalks. I chased after girls who looked like her, slowed down next to porches, combed the places we frequented. I rolled through deserted streets, until very slowly the night came on. I went and filled the gas tank. When it came time to pay, I pulled out my wad of bills. The dude was wearing an Esso cap with grease smudges on it. He gave me a suspicious look.

  “I just pillaged a church,” I said.

  By that time, I knew, she could have been two hundred miles away. All I’d gotten for my efforts was a throbbing headache. There was only one place left to look-the cabin-but I couldn’t quite decide to go. I thought that if I didn’t find her there, then I’d never find her. I hesitated before firing my last shell. There was one chance in a million that she’d be there. Still, there was no other choice. I drove around a while longer under the neon lights, then stopped by the house to get a flashlight and throw on a jacket.

  The lights were on upstairs. This didn’t surprise me. I was fully capable of leaving something on the stove, or the faucets running. In the shape I was in, I could have found the house in flames and taken it with a grain of salt. I went up.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table. She was outrageously made up. Her hair was cut going in all directions. We looked at each other. In one way, I breathed deep relief. In another way, I felt myself suffocating. No words came to mind. She had set the table. She stood up without a word and got the main dish. It was meatballs in tomato sauce. We sat across from each other. She had simply demolished her face-I couldn’t stand looking at it for very long. Had I opened my mouth just then, I would have started whimpering. All that was left were her bangs. Eye shadow and lipstick were smeared all over her face. She stared at me. Her stare was the worst of all. I felt that something was going to rip apart inside me.

  Without taking my eyes off her, I bent forward and shoved both my hands into the bowl of meatballs. It was hot. I picked up a handful of it. The tomato sauce ran out between my fingers. I smeared it all over my face-in my eyes, up my nose, in my hair. It burned. I stuck it everywhere, blobs of it sliding down the sides of my head and onto my legs.

  With the back of my hand I wiped away a tomato-sauce tear. No one had said anything. We sat like that for quite a while.

  21

  “Jesus Christ, I’ll never be able to do this if you don’t let me!”

  We were standing by the wide-open kitchen window and the sun was in my eyes. Her hair shone so bright that I had trouble getting hold of it.

  “Bend forward a little…”

  Snip, snip. I evened out two locks. It had taken three days to get her to the point where she’d let me fix her hair. We were waiting for Eddie and Lisa to arrive that afternoon-that’s the real reason she let me. Three days to climb out of the hole. Her, that is, not me.

  It turned out that short hair looked good on my little green eyed brunette. Thank God for small favors. I held the locks between my fingers and trimmed them like ripe stalks of black wheat. Her face was not exactly bursting with health, of course, but I was sure that a little pat on the cheeks would put her back in shape. I’d make the punch. I told her not to worry-people who come down from the city are always pale as death themselves.

  I was right. Eddie had gotten a new car-a salmon-pink convertible-so they’d eaten quite a bit of dust on the way down. They looked like sixty-year-olds. Lisa jumped out of the car.

  “Oh sweetheart, you cut your hair! Looks great!”

  In the course of conversation, we made our way gently toward the punchbowl. It was dynamite, if I do say so myself. Lisa wanted to take a shower. The two girls disappeared into the bathroom with their drinks. Eddie slapped me on the thigh.

  “Good to see you, you old bastard…!” he said.

  “Yeah…” I said.

  He took another look around, nodding.

  “Yep, I got to take my hat off to you…”

  I went to open a can of food for Bongo. Eddie and Lisa’s presence allowed me to loosen up a little. I needed it. For three days I’d wondered if we were going to make it, if I’d ever be able to get her spirits back up-bring her back to the land of the living. I’d given it all I had-all I had in my head, and in my gut. I’d fought like a wildman. It was difficult to fathom how far gone she was. I don’t know by what miracle we came through it, what wonderful tide carried us to the shore. I was exhausted. After an exercise like that, opening a can of dog food seemed like drilling through a safe to me. But two glasses of punch later I was walking into a rising sun. I listened to the girls laughing in the bathroom it seemed too beautiful for words.

  When the flames of reunion had turned to embers, Eddie and I swung into action. The girls wanted to spend the first evening at home, necessitating some grocery shopping, not to mention a stop at Bob’s house to borrow a mattress and a Chinese-like partition. The punch was beginning to wear off. The day was coming to an end by the time we left the house. There was a light breeze. I would have felt just about fine, if I could have rid myself of one rather idiotic thought: Though I knew there was nothing I could do about it-it’s just one of the little differences between men and women-still, I couldn’t help thinking how unequally the pain of the recent events had been distributed. For me it remained somewhat abstract. I felt like there was an air pocket in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.

  We went and got the mattress and the partition from Bob’s house, then came back. We unloaded the mattress onto the sidewalk, swearing and huffing and puffing. The shocks of the car groaned. The trouble was that we couldn’t let the goddamn thing drag on the cement. We had to carry it. Next to the mattress, the partition felt light as a feather.

  We made it upstairs, winded. The girls fussed over us. While I was getting my breath back, I felt the effects of the alcohol starting to multiply. My blood coursed through my veins at full throttle. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was the first time in three days that I had the sensation of having a body at all. The girls had made a shopping list for us. We went back downstairs at a sprint.

  Once in town, we took care of business in no time flat. The trunk of the convertible was full. We were on our way out of the bakery, cake boxes under our arms, when this guy walked up to Eddie and threw his arms around him. I vaguely recognized him-I’d seen him the day of the funeral. He shook my hand. He was small and kind of old, but he still had a good grip. I moved away a little to let them talk. I smoked a cigarette and looked at the starlit sky. I overheard every other word. From what I could understand, the guy didn’t want to let us go so easily. He insisted that Eddie come see his new gym, just around the corner. He wouldn’t believe that we didn’t have five minutes to spare.

  “What do we do?” I asked Eddie.

  “Stop asking stupid questions, and follow me!” said the guy.

  I put the cakes in the trunk. I can’t refuse, Eddie explained, I’ve known him for over twenty years. We had some good times together, back in the days when I helped him organize little regional bouts. He didn’t have gray hair back then. I told Eddie that I understood perfectly-it wasn’t very late and it didn’t bother me at all, really. We closed the trunk and took off, following the guy around the corner.

  It was a small gym, smelling of leather and sweat. Two dudes were working out in the ring. You could hear the sound
of gloves on skin, the water running in the showers. The old man led us behind a sort of counter. He brought out three sodas. His eyes were like bubbles.

  “So, Eddie, what do you think?” he asked.

  Eddie grazed his list affectionately on the old man’s jaw.

  “Yeah, I get the feeling you run a pretty tight ship here…”

  “The one in the green trunks is Joe Attila,” the old man said. “He’s my latest. You’re going to hear big things about him one of these days. He’s got the killer instinct… he’s got the stuff…”

  He gave Eddie a phony right hook to the stomach. I slowly lost the flow of the conversation. I drank my soda pop and watched Joe Attila practice his technique on his sparring partner, an older guy in a red sweatsuit. Joe Attila laid into the old guy like a locomotive. The old guy hid behind his gloves, muttering, “Attaboy, Joe, keep it up, Joe, good boy.” Joe just let him have it, as hard as he wanted. For some reason, I was hypnotized by the spectacle-it set my brain on fire. I approached the ropes. I knew nothing about boxing. I’d seen maybe one or two matches in my whole life. I had never been particularly attracted to it. Once I got a spurt of somebody’s blood on my pants. Yet I sat there watching the old guy get showered with punches, my tongue hanging out like a junkie. All I saw were gloves shooting back and forth like arrows. I was captivated.

  Eddie and his pal came up next to me, just as Joe was finishing the session. I was perspiring. I grabbed Eddie by the lapels.

  “Eddie, look at me. You know, all my life I’ve dreamed of putting the gloves on-getting into the ring-just for one minute to pretend I’m slugging it out like a pro!”

  Everybody laughed-Joe hardest of all. I insisted. I told them, “Just among friends, it’ll be fun-I just want to do it once before I die.” Eddie scratched his head.

  “Are you kidding, or what…?”

  I bit my lip and shook my head. He turned to his pal.

  “Well, I don’t know… You think we could arrange something…?”