Vernon Subutex 2

by Virginie Despentes

  They cross the roadworks at the place de la République, heading for métro line 11. Anaïs keeps prattling all the way to Pyrénées. Gaëlle listens inattentively. She is no longer sure she wants to bed the girl, she needs another drink to review the question. There is road work on the corner of the avenue Simon Bolivar. If it’s not a new bank branch opening, it’s bound to be a shop selling sunglasses or a real estate agent. It’s been a long time since anyone opened anything else. Along the avenue, trees grow, protected by metal girdles, the areas between the trunks are littered with cigarette butts and dried dog shit. The sidewalk is strewn with gravel, they pass an upturned bathtub someone has attacked with a hammer to rip out the pipes, flecks of ash and white porcelain are scattered all around.

  The road work stretches all the way into the park, some of it blocked by hulking yellow diggers that look as though they are shipwrecked in the mud. The rain starts up again just as they reach Rosa Bonheur. Little Céleste is behind the bar, chattering away to her friend Aïcha. Gaëlle waits for her to finish, thinking she will talk to her about a tattoo—she wants an Erzulie Dantor vévé on her forearm. It’s something she saw online—a quadrille heart pierced by a dagger. The website said that Erzulie Dantor is the goddess of lesbians and whores, and the idea appealed to her, but it’s a voodoo symbol and, although Gaëlle doesn’t believe in anything, she wonders whether it is a good idea. Céleste is a good inker. And she’s pretty, too. Gaëlle likes the idea of being locked in her tattoo parlor with her.

  Anaïs comes back from the bathroom. Either she’s a lightweight who gets drunk on a single whiskey, or this is her way of dealing with the anxiety of her encounter with the Hyena: she does not stop talking. She manages a five-minute free-form solo about the joys of the Dyson hand dryer, which she “adores” because it really gets your hands dry, and she “adores” the feeling of the hot air pushing against her palms. Gaëlle loathes this sort of conversation, it’s like people thinking they are hipsters because they talk about the temperature of the milk they pour on their cereal, it’s tedious.

  Céleste is taking her time about serving them. Gaëlle gives her five minutes. If she has to get up to order her JD, she is going to initiate a campaign of being very crabby. Young women these days, they have to have everything spelled out for them, especially that they are being paid to work.

  But Céleste’s expression suddenly changes. At first, there is a flash of terror in her eyes. Aïcha, who is sitting with her back to the door, turns around to follow her gaze and immediately stiffens and, skipping the box marked terror, heads straight for blind rage. The object of their sudden mood change is a short little man. As nondescript as a glass of lukewarm water. He is drenched, but seems stupidly happy to see them, he bounds toward them enthusiastically. Aïcha stops him in his tracks: “What the fuck are you doing here?” her tone arrogant and menacing. Anaïs immediately intervenes, as though it were her responsibility to protect him.

  “Remember me? We bumped into each other at the office a couple of hours ago?”

  “I followed you. I didn’t dare approach you. I’m the son of Laurent Dopalet. The way he treated you made me feel sick.”

  “You’ve followed me all the way from the office?”

  “I needed to talk to you. It was harrowing, what I witnessed.”

  Without troubling to explain further, he lays a hand on Anaïs’s forearm, urging her to be patient, and, turning to Céleste, says reassuringly:

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you here, don’t worry, I won’t say anything to anyone.”

  To which Aïcha immediately responds:

  “Maybe I’ll just smash your face in as a little precaution—you won’t be able to say anything to anyone when I’m finished.”

  On the off chance, Gaëlle steps around the bar and calls the Hyena from the landline—“You walked off with my lighter. I’m at Rosa Bonheur. I need to see you right now.” She has a feeling that this is precisely the sort of thing her old friend had in mind when she nonchalantly asked “whether she heard any gossip about Vernon at Rosa’s.”

  “YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE HURT MY MOTHER. Even if she was a whore.”

  “I guess you thought you could kill her and get away with it?”

  “No, he didn’t think he could, he knew he could.”

  * * *

  Laurent Dopalet has no idea how they got the code to the private elevator that leads directly to his apartment. He never gives it to anyone—usually, callers press the buzzer on the intercom and he screens them on the video monitor. He is even wary of couriers, he would rather go downstairs than allow them in. And these women didn’t even check to see whether he was alone in the apartment, it is as though they knew.

  Dopalet was not expecting visitors, so the first time he heard the buzzer, he decided to ignore it. But when they buzzed again, he thought, I’m going to look like a complete idiot if it’s the guy next door with an urgent message. So he opened the door to find a pretty little redhead who had begged him to let her in, claiming she lived downstairs but had locked herself out and the battery on her cell phone was dead, could she use his phone? His immediate reaction had been, what a pain in the ass, but he believed her and let her in. As she stepped inside, his first thought was that she had curves in all the right places; it was at this point that the Muslim mastodon with her had shoved him back into his own apartment.

  The situation is so violent that he is wondering whether he has been teleported to some distant planet. His mind refuses to accept the fact that the two girls have locked the door behind them and pocketed the key. The aggressive one, the one in the hijab, is gripping the back of his neck, she is incredibly strong. The other girl is glaring at him hatefully, standing so close that he recognizes her perfume—Chance, by Chanel, his daughter has been wearing it since she turned twenty. He always remembers to buy her a bottle when he is passing through the duty-free section of the airport.

  He is so terrified, he cannot move. He had a premonition about this some time ago, and every time he did a tarot reading about Bleach, it was the same: destruction and turmoil. He is convinced that this is where it all began. He knew he needed to get his hands on those tapes. He had a premonition the moment he first heard about this “testament.” That deranged singer, that odious piece of vermin had accused him before doing away with himself … The girl wearing the hijab pushes his chin back and begins again:

  “So where is it now, your fat, fuck-off bourgeois impunity?”

  * * *

  It seemed clear that he could dismiss the classic robbery scenario that had flashed through his mind when they shoved him into his apartment. And the idea of offering them money to let him go seems deeply misplaced. Despite his maxim: “Everyone can be bought, you just need to know how much to offer” … He can see now that there is a limit to such axiomatic truths. He is petrified, but his brain is still working as though nothing terrible were happening. Some part of him is observing the situation. Pictures come flooding back to him, images that idiot Anaïs had shown him of violent girls in the suburbs. She had thought he might find it interesting. But all the girls were pig ugly, it didn’t push his buttons. She was a stupid cow, that assistant of his. She scammed him. Now he has violent girls right here in his apartment. The potato-head Muslim is going to strangle him if she keeps this up. She is staring at him with a vicious glee that does not bode well, and however much he asks, “What the hell are you talking about?” trying to sound as respectable as possible, she does not answer, but like a dangerous psycho she simply repeats:

  “I know what you did.”

  Okay. Fast forward. Dopalet is concentrating on breathing, out of the corner of his eye he can see the other girl wandering around the living room, admiring the furniture. He tries to beg. He knows that pity can disarm as well as disgust. He stammers:

  “But I don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about my mother. Vodka Satana.”

  He feels like saying, �
�Sorry, honey, but I can’t help it that your mother was a whore.” He can understand how that might be difficult to live with. But as they say: he can’t carry the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. In a gentle voice, he says:

  “Satana was your mother?”

  If she’s prepared to tell him her name and has not tried to hide her face, it can only be because they plan to kill him. He imagines his obituary: “Brutally murdered in his own home by two jihadists,” and the thought is so absurd that he feels a desperate energy shudder through his body. He has to save his skin. Collect his thoughts. He cannot allow himself to be overcome by fear. He says:

  “I don’t get it. I knew your mother well. I did everything I could to help her. We were friends. What do you want from me?”

  * * *

  Terror makes him sound convincing. It is not hard for him to sound sincere. He didn’t kill her. It’s way more complicated. That said, Satana was one hell of a thorn in his side. He had been furious with her. She had insulted him, threatened him. But things had been good, in the beginning. She had an extraordinary charm, the body of an angel, and she loved to party. Dopalet is a dom, and she appreciated having a man who knew how to treat her with a firm hand. They saw a lot of each other. For months, he would call her whenever he was at loose ends. He had even taken her to the Cannes festival one year. He was proud to be seen with her, especially in more libertine circles. He liked being that sort of man who could have such a girl as his partner. And can share her around, if he so chooses. She was always up for it. She loved sex, she had no taboos. But she had taken a wrong turn when it came to her drug consumption. From recreational, her substance abuse had increased until it was embarrassing. He had tapered off his calls. She had felt hurt. She had probably fallen in love with him. She couldn’t bear the idea of him being distant. She had become impossible. By now, she wasn’t right in the head. At first he would help her out, give her a gram so as not to seem rude, he would have a quick fumble before telling her to leave. But she said he had forced her to do things against her will and she was going to expose him. He was too much of a gentleman to say, “I remember watching you drain the balls of every stiff prick at Les Chandelles, you were much too enthusiastic for anyone to think you were being forced.” At the time, the girl had been insatiable, anywhere you could stick it, she was happy to take it. But after Satana went around the bend, there was no way of bringing her back. She started hounding him. She got it into her head to talk to a friend in the media, give him a list of the people she’d slept with, and all the gory details. This was a decade ago, years before Strauss-Kahn, people were not so defensive, but even so … He had felt obliged to warn some of his more libertine friends that Satana kept saying she was going to talk. For some of them, it was the sort of scandal to be avoided at all costs. He was furious. He had thought he could trust her, had introduced her to important people, she had done well out of it. Now here she was, turning on them, making up sleazy stories. She was completely off her head. She had no idea of the gravity of the threats she was making. Certain situations necessitate extraordinary solutions, there are brilliant careers that cannot be derailed over some vulgar sex scandal. He warned her. She persisted. She left him no room to maneuver: he had to let his friends know what was happening. But, honestly, when some minor bigwig had said, “All right, then, she’s left us no choice,” he had not understood. Perhaps he had sensed that things might go too far. He had thought they might ask some Chinese gangster to break her leg, so what, she might have a little trouble dancing. But she had to be made to see reason: she had to leave them in peace. When they had asked him to arrange to meet Vodka Satana, he did so, and when he saw the suave playboy they had sent to flirt with her and persuade her to go to another party, he had felt reassured: hardly what he would call a punishment … She had been found dead the next morning. Accidental overdose or suicide. There was nothing to prove it was anything other than a terrible coincidence. He had met with some of the friends involved, in Normandy some weeks later, and they had not mentioned her death. Poor kid, when you think about it … but what happened was bound to happen. If someone did palm her off with contaminated dope, that’s sickening. But she was a car crash waiting to happen, it was just a matter of time. He had not done anything.

  Her daughter is Muslim. In different circumstances, he might find this deliciously ironic. But right now, her teeth are chattering only millimeters from his mouth, compulsively repeating, “I’m going to rip your tongue out,” and he urgently needs to find some way of making her understand: none of this is his fault.

  Jesus Christ, Satana is managing to make his life hell even from beyond the grave. He would have been better off going and getting a prescription for potassium bromide the day he first succumbed to her charms. Because after she was dead, he had had to deal with that fucker Bleach. He had kept it up for years, his little campaign of harassment. Dopalet changed his phone number, his fax, his email address, but the little shit always found a way to contact him. And it would start all over again. The same threats, the same bullshit. Over time, it started driving him insane.

  Images of Vodka Satana flicker through his mind. He didn’t kill her. But he was turned on by the way she used to debase herself. He’s a man, is that a crime? He liked the way she pretended butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and, at the end of the evening, he would have to persuade her to flash her tits for his dinner guests. It was part of the game, urging her to do things and watching her give in. Coaxing such a beautiful woman to do these things for a guy like him made him feel powerful. There was a dark side to it. There always is with sex. In a pleading voice, he says:

  “How could you think I killed her? Just give me a chance to explain … We were friends, why would I have done anything to hurt her? Are you the one who’s been persecuting me for weeks? This is all a misunderstanding, I swear … I didn’t do anything wrong. I loved your mother. I don’t know what you want from me…”

  * * *

  Alex Bleach. That bastard. Not honorable enough to speak out, not clever enough to capitalize on what he thought he knew. If he had been smarter, he would have taken up the offer of an inordinately well-paid starring role in a rom-com with the actress of his choice naked in every other scene. Everyone in Dopalet’s inner circle agreed: keeping a famous singer quiet takes tact. It was tacitly agreed that they would come to an arrangement: Dopalet told him to calm down, that the cachet he could offer was worth considering. But the little shit had neither common sense nor manners—he had hurled insults, had even mocked him. The producer had laughed when Bleach started insulting him about the size of his cock—which according to Vodka Satana was considerably smaller than average. Did the dumb nigger really think he was the first person to point out Dopalet was hung like a squirrel…? But, all the same, he had not appreciated the remark. After all, he had done nothing wrong, there was no reason he should allow himself to be humiliated by this asshole. And Bleach had continued to stalk him. Unless you’ve experienced it, it’s impossible to imagine the torture involved. Tensing up every time you answer the phone, worrying every time you open an email that it will be abusive, constantly checking before you leave home in the morning, because sometimes that fucker Bleach would be standing, arms folded, next to the car that had been sent for him. As soon as they realized that Bleach was not interested in them, and blamed Dopalet for everything, they had left him to deal with it. He had had his revenge. He had met the Hyena and, though it had cost him an arm and a leg, it was now impossible to google the name Alex Bleach without stumbling on pages of sleazy stories. It had done Dopalet a world of good. That was all that he needed to do. Bleach shut up. The dumb bastard. He had celebrated the day he heard the guy was dead. What a relief. He had not been able to stop himself, he had spent two whole days with a pack of Kleenex, taking to anyone and everyone. Every time he said, “Such a shame,” he felt fireworks in his chest. Finally rid of that vermin. Free at last. So, when he had seen his apartment building sprayed with in
sults a few months later, he had gone apeshit. It was starting all over again.

  He can sense that these girls have a weakness. They cannot be completely sure. They know nothing of what actually happened. He is innocent. Not exactly snow white, but not guilty of what they’re accusing him of. They need to realize that. The girl in the hijab grabs him under the arms, forces him to his feet, and slams him against the wall. He feels weak and feeble, a baby seal in the paws of a polar bear. He is losing track of his thoughts. He suffers a brief syncope. A black veil descends. They don’t give a shit.

  “I bet you haven’t given much thought to my mother since you killed her. But after this, you’ll think about her every day.”

  “At least tell me what put this idea into your head? For God’s sake, I’m trying to understand!”

  How old would she have been when it happened? Satana never mentioned that she had a daughter. Or maybe he wasn’t listening. She certainly didn’t have custody, that he does know. She didn’t really have a home. She was a lost soul. A complete wreck by the end. It’s such a shame, beautiful girl like that … He goes all in:

  “You’re making a mistake. She wasn’t well, but it had nothing to do with me. She got involved with that singer, Alex Bleach, and he fucked her up. I tried so hard to convince her to leave the guy. He humiliated her, beat her, gave her drugs, he treated her like scum…”

  The pressure on his arm relaxes for a split second. She is wavering. He presses his advantage:

  “Bleach was a bastard. He hated me for trying to take Satana away from him. I was the only person who never gave up on her. She was completely under his control, he destroyed her. She used to call me, it was tragic, he threatened her with a knife, broke her ribs, but she refused to press charges. I put her up in my spare room more than once. He was the one who got her onto smack. He was the one who gave her the fatal dose. I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Read the results of the autopsy. I did. It was an overdose. When she was dying in his arms, he didn’t call an ambulance. He panicked. He left her there, in the hotel where they’d been staying, it was hours before the paramedics were tipped off by an anonymous call. He never forgave himself. Could she have been saved if he had called earlier? But all he could think about was the fallout for his career…”