Marlene

by Philippe Djian

  Don’t be silly. I don’t want any part of this. Do you see the words dating service written across my forehead.

  Never mind. Ask me to dance. Let’s not just stand here like dopes. What do you think of her, she asked, resting her hand on Dan’s shoulder. She’s not bad when she dresses up. I could see her with some upper exec, raising a kid, living a quiet life.

  No idea. We’re not in her shoes. I mean, you could be right, but it’s none of my business.

  In any case, the guy shouldn’t be too young.

  Richard joined them as the song finished. This type of gathering was the last, extremely reduced, mark of respectability that he could lay claim to and he took pride in it, knew how to behave when necessary. It faked out the guys he hung with to see he had entrées with the big shots, and that was all he asked, it was the only medal he cared about.

  What say we slip out of here and go get a quiet drink on our own, he said. We’ve done our bit.

  Nath and Dan were all for it. They beat a discreet path toward the door and passed the message to Marlene, who declined the invitation, claiming she was tired and wanted to go home.

  You’re not tired, Richard told her, just bored silly. And who could blame you.

  Saying nothing, Dan went to wait for them outside, where a few gusts of wind were still blowing. The young leaves trembled with a rustle of tissue paper. The sky was clear and stretched impressively far. When you moved away from the lights, the stars came out one by one, the signs of the zodiac reappeared. Marlene was playing a strange game with him. He didn’t quite get the rules, but he knew it had begun. No woman could just do things simply.

  She never refused to see him, welcomed him into her bed whenever he wanted, and the gentler she acted, the more distant she became. It was weird. She never held anything against him. He would have preferred that she blame him for something. She sometimes fell asleep against his shoulder and when he left, she watched him go without a word and even smiled as he went out the door—that kind of weirdness. But she no longer asked him for anything.

  The flags snapped like whips above the barracks. A few strains of music intermittently escaped from the buildings. He removed his tie, stuffed it in his pocket, and unbuttoned his collar. And if he had the misfortune of not seeing her, of being out of touch for two days, she smiled even brighter when he returned, pressed herself against him, caressing and silent, but doubly aloof, so that he pushed her at arm’s length to look at her and seek an answer and, with closed face, she slipped between his fingers and busied herself with taking off his jacket.

  And now here she was avoiding him and preferring to go home after ignoring him all evening and dancing with every Tom, Dick, and Harry as if he didn’t exist. Not that he held it against her. If this was about not displaying their relationship, she was perfect, he couldn’t complain. Still, you could take it too far.

  Richard thought she was into someone, that she’d spotted some cute blond guy in the crowd and wouldn’t be going home alone, he’d bet his bottom dollar on it.

  Dan merely emptied his glass while Nath shook her head, deeming that Richard didn’t know what he was talking about.

  It must be starting to get to her, don’t you think, he chuckled. Don’t you think so, Dan, and anyway, where’s the problem.

  If you had asked the same question of every person in that bar—who seemed to be happy as clams there—not one of them would have known where that nagging, exasperating problem could be. The fact remained that Dan suddenly started asking himself the same thing.

  The idea that Marlene might be sleeping with someone else hadn’t occurred to him. He got up to fetch some more drinks—he downed one at the bar before returning to their table. It was an unpleasant thought. A few drinks were a good idea. Luckily, you had to shout if you wanted to be heard, hence the tendency to stay silent if you had nothing to say. While Richard and Nath started talking to others, he scrunched into his chair and stared at the ceiling.

  He buzzed, she answered, he went upstairs, the bedroom door was open, it was two in the morning and she was wearing those flannel pajamas he liked. He’d evidently woken her up. Did I wake you, he asked.

  She answered with that benevolent, almost tender smile that she reserved for his impromptu visits. He sat down on the bed and she untied his shoelaces.

  You seem very strange these days, he said.

  No, not really.

  Nothing bothering you.

  She raised her eyes toward him and shook her head.

  So much the better, he said.

  He reached out to her and settled her on his knees.

  The next morning, armed with a stepladder and a pair of shears that he’d carefully sharpened, he started in on the dentist’s hedges, the latter having driven off with his golf clubs. He stretched a rope from end to end to help him cut straight and put on a T-shirt, as it was warm out despite the gusts of wind that furrowed the water in the infinity pool and ruffled the fringes of the taupe-colored umbrellas.

  The work wasn’t unpleasant and he took a certain satisfaction in it. If his reputation and his integration into the neighborhood benefited, so much the better, an added bonus. After the last storm, he had helped the woman who lived with her backward son up the street to clear her lawn of debris, and since then he’d been getting a few hellos as he returned home from his dawn run.

  By late morning, he had just finished trimming and was about to clean up when he caught sight of the dentist’s wife watching him fixedly from a ground-floor window, naked as a jaybird, hair loose. He pretended not to notice and kept raking up the clippings. Seeing that pallid blonde, with her flat heels and dresses that fell below the knee, her elusive air—it was mind-boggling. He dropped two bags of lawn trash on the curb, and when he came back, she was still there, arms hanging at her sides, as if petrified, chewing her lip, but he didn’t dwell on her.

  Beneath the varnish, the paint was cracking. He hastened to finish his chore and went inside without looking back. The image of that naked woman, whose puritanism and reserve normally chilled his blood, pursued him a moment, under the shower, and even a little later as he vacuumed, dumbfounded by the almost hallucinatory incongruity of that pale-faced prude being susceptible to the demons of the flesh. It was heartening, in its way.

  He had no wish to keep debating the matter and he had nothing to sell. Night was falling; he had been patient.

  The request wasn’t hard to understand, and it was pointless to let the man jabber on. In the middle of a sentence, he grabbed him by the hair and banged his head on the bar. Not hard enough to knock him out, but Vincent saw stars and wavered on his stool.

  You can thank your personal god I’m not her husband, Dan muttered, sliding the napkin dispenser toward him.

  And enough with the dog, too.

  Dan swallowed his third shot of Irish whiskey with honey, an intriguing concoction Vincent had introduced him to at the beginning of their chat, before things started dragging on and sounding like a haggle between rug merchants, with Vincent trying to wheedle some concessions, the possibility of occasional meetings, like maybe once every two weeks, or even once a month, until the moment Dan had slammed his head against the bar to shut him up.

  This is nothing personal, Dan continued. I’m just the messenger. You seem like a nice enough guy. But as far as this is concerned, best forget about it and disappear.

  I’m saying this for your own good. I’m not the one who’ll come see you next time, and I’m the good cop.

  But you don’t understand, she’s gotten under my skin.

  Don’t you know how crazy I am about her. I dream about her every night.

  That’s too bad. Get it through your head. It would be too easy. You think you can just waltz in and screw up twenty years of marriage. Give me a break, not in your wildest dreams. You’re not in the same league, pal, you’ve bitten off more than you can
chew. You’re like the pauper in love with a princess. I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to face facts.

  I don’t think I can handle that.

  You’re going to have to. Unless you want someone to break your kneecaps and lord knows what else. Listen to what I’m telling you. She’s not the only one, there are others out there.

  If you can say that, it means you don’t understand shit.

  Dan signaled to the bartender, who was apparently so out of it that he hadn’t seen Dan bounce Vincent’s head off the counter. How’s it going, guys, everything okay, he asked, yawning behind his pink eyeglasses even though it was barely eight in the evening.

  It means you don’t understand how much I hurt, Vincent insisted.

  Dan emptied his glass and left without answering.

  Nath lost no time finding out what happened. He had no sooner gotten home and started opening a can of ravioli than she called.

  I’m outside, she said, we can talk freely.

  Oh, gosh, I think it all went well, he said. Seems like an okay dude. I relayed your message. But he’s got it bad, and I can’t guarantee what’ll happen next.

  So what the hell does he want.

  You know perfectly well what he wants.

  There was a long silence on the other end.

  SLUT

  Over the following days, Dan came to the conclusion that secrecy was no longer viable. It was a huge step—whose consequences he didn’t fully gauge—to bring out into the open the relationship he’d been having for some time with Marlene, but they risked hitting a wall if he did nothing.

  He couldn’t imagine losing her. He couldn’t see himself going back to his old life, between solitude, multiform nightmares, bitterness, OCD up the wazoo, and the battery of molecules that kept his head above water. He was doing better since she’d been around, or at least not so bad. And every veteran he knew, without exception, would have killed for the tiniest hint of improvement in their condition, the slightest drop of light that could draw them out of the shadows in their brains.

  This leap into the unknown was totally different from parachuting at three thousand feet with an oxygen mask: it was really scary. At dawn, after running for an hour, he sat down in the cool air and the silence and rested his head in his hands to think. And he continued thinking on the rowing machine, or hanging upside down from the bar attached to the doorframe.

  During a quick visit to his mother, as a dry run, he mentioned—hesitantly, with many circumlocutions—a woman he’d met and whose company he’d like to keep for a while, but his poor mother was practically gaga now and didn’t understand a word he said.

  Marlene had long ago realized that she shouldn’t rush him. She simply worked it so that he’d fall into her hands like a ripe fruit. She moved forward in small increments, but move forward she did, and every centimeter of terrain conquered was permanent. Sometimes she acted a bit imprudently, stole a furtive kiss between doorways or rubbed against him for an instant when the others weren’t looking. If she hadn’t been pregnant, if time weren’t of the essence, she would have enjoyed staying on that course, which was electrifying and wonderfully whimsical—especially since when the time came, they could sleep together no holds barred.

  Despite everything, since Nath had gotten it into her head to marry her off, things had grown more complicated. Officially, she was on the market and couldn’t make a face whenever her sister introduced her to someone and Dan got mad every time—even though he knew the game—and preferred to split, turn off his phone, and go home.

  One evening when the Toyota dealer organized a cocktail party to launch his new crossover hybrid and Nath and Marlene had gotten dressed to the nines, he bailed, making at least one of them happy.

  They were parked more or less in the same spot and the same little old man was walking between the rows, hawking popcorn and fingering his white lock of hair. You can start taking out your hanky, said Dan, rubbing his hands together after pushing back his seat and reclining.

  So, aren’t you going to buy me popcorn.

  Sure. Of course I will. What made you say that.

  She told me so.

  He felt his pockets for change.

  Skip it, said Mona. I was joking. So this is where you bring them.

  Bring who.

  Oof, I don’t know, the girls you pick up.

  No, I generally go to a hotel. Why are you breaking my balls with this. Look around you at all those morons.

  You think I could screw someone with twelve pairs of eyes gaping at me.

  I didn’t say anything.

  I know. I’m jumping ahead. What else did she tell you.

  And anyway, what could she say. Ask her about the movie.

  She undid three buttons of her shirt. It’s hot in here, don’t you think, she said.

  He gazed at her for a second, with a slight apprehension that translated into a vague grimace as he turned his eyes back to the screen.

  Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson rock, he declared.

  Do me a favor and pay attention, will you.

  Your green-eyed redhead is in black and white.

  Use your imagination.

  That might not have been the smartest thing to say.

  She wiggled on her seat to pull off her striped leggings.

  Sorry, but I’m dying in this heat, she protested.

  It was nice out, the evening was mild, but it wasn’t as hot as all that.

  How far you going to take this.

  I have no idea.

  What’s up. Is it because it’s spring.

  What do I have to do, beg. Are you doing this on purpose or are you really so clueless. I’m all grown up. I even kiss with tongue.

  He turned toward her smiling and asked if she was done. And as she leaned toward him, he gently pushed her away and asked again.

  She lapsed into an enraged silence. The thought occurred that the next time he wanted to see a movie, he’d go by himself. She opened the car door and took off at a run. He didn’t try to catch her, there would be no point.

  She was right not to want to rot here. There was no future for her in a backwater like this, he thought, and it made her nuts like most of the girls her age, and even the others, and even more or less everybody, if you didn’t mind generalizations. Nath and Richard had been relieved that she wanted to be a secretary but they were dreaming, they didn’t know her, she wanted to become a secretary about as much as she wanted to lop off a leg. She was chomping at the bit while waiting for better days and was ready to try anything—like throwing herself at a guy who was broken beyond repair, who was old enough to be her father and would make her even crazier.

  Wallowing in his black mood, he quietly got drunk in his yard, under the moonlight, and ended up slumping onto the grass and spending the night amid the slugs and June bugs.

  He didn’t hear from Mona for several days, but nothing especially worrisome there. He’d sometimes gotten the silent treatment for a week or more over a simple argument when they were on the same team and he’d flown off the handle at her lousy playing. She could be highly sensitive and it wasn’t improving with age. The episode in the car came back to him at regular intervals—with the same intensity as those flashbacks full of blood and dead bodies, except that this one was just sad and dull—and he shook his head, feeling regretful, for things would never again be the same between them.

  The minor fights, the minor squabbles and sulks were no more. Clown time was over. They were hurting each other for real now.

  He arrived early in the morning when it was his turn to oil the lanes. The bowling alley was closed. He switched on the lights. Compared with the usual hubbub, the reigning silence made the place seem unreal. He hesitated a moment, then rolled a few balls that echoed as if at the rear of a cave. The pins were raised, there was only emptiness at the end of the
lane. But he took his time, aimed carefully, applied himself, adjusted his stance, and the ball left his hand, rumbled to the other end, and disappeared without meeting a single target. He remained seated a moment, listening to the silence. Then he put on his overalls, cleaned his hands with sanitizer, and got to work.

  Meanwhile, Nath and Marlene arrived at the salon, leaving the door open to air the place out and let in the morning sun that sparkled between the lazy buildings of the shopping center.

  Richard had half-awoken on hearing them leave, but he’d been playing cards until dawn and fell back asleep with a grunt while Mona smoked weed at the window of her room and vaguely searched for an excuse to skip her class on Cooperation and Productive Relationships.

  The radio announced nice weather until Easter and a few degrees warmer. Dan took advantage of a break to go get two memberships to the pool. He thought of it as a beginning—and not a downward spiral, as the nervous, reptilian, maleficent part of his brain whispered, urging caution. It was still a stiff combat, a cruel dilemma that he expected to get ahead of, to win by forcing his way through it. Running out into the open was sometimes the only means to stay alive.

  Nath turned to Marlene and said remind me that guy’s name, oh yeah, George, that’s right, George, so what didn’t you like about him, he’s tall, he’s not bad-looking, doesn’t seem too boring, he’s got money, he’ll probably get a nice pension. So what is it, the color of his eyes. No, I don’t know. Maybe the way he talked to me. It’s hard to say.

  I see. Seems to me you’ve gotten awfully choosy.

  She trimmed a terrier’s whiskers with a snip of the scissors.

  Yeah, I was kind of a piece of work, answered Marlene.

  But that’s all behind me now.

  For me, it’s the opposite. I’ve come into my own, sexually I mean. With that guy, Vincent, you know, it just hit me. I still can’t get over it. I don’t have as much experience as you, but even so. You see what I’m driving at.

  Oh, listen, that George didn’t do it for me, sorry, but I wasn’t attracted. He had that awful high-pitched voice.