Pretty Things

by Virginie Despentes

  “Not to throw a wrench in things but . . . Claudine, you can’t sing, we’ve already tried.”

  Together they had tried anything and everything to get noticed. Wasted effort. Years piled up, ambitions dampened. More than anything else, what they learned was what to ask for from the social worker, what papers to falsify to get a certain kind of assistance, how not to get audited.

  “I don’t plan on singing.”

  Nicolas was flipping through the channels, stopped on a commercial where a completely crazy-looking girl illuminated by green lights was on her knees in front of a keyhole, eyeing a couple. An already-outdated image.

  “Just tell me up front what you’re planning to do, I’ll never guess.”

  Behind him, Claudine put a cassette in the player and, before starting it, explained, “We’ll send your stuff to my sister, and she’ll plop her voice on top of the track . . . like she’s taking a big shit.”

  “Your sister sings?”

  “She’s not bad. I’ll play something for you.”

  “You have one of her songs?”

  She rubbed the back of her neck like she did when something was bothering her.

  “I sent her your stuff, that we had worked on, you and me, for her to give me a couple ideas. But she made her suggestions too complicated for me to replicate on purpose. I already told you how much of a bitch she is.”

  “You could have had me listen, so we—”

  “No, she sings too well, it pisses me off. But I don’t have a choice now.”

  She had chosen between tact and ambition a long time ago.

  That was the fundamental difference between Claudine and the world. Like everyone else, she was calculated, egotistical, shit-talking, petty, jealous, a fraud, a liar. But unlike everyone else, she owned it—without cynicism, with a disarming nature that made her irreproachable. When someone criticized her, she would rub her neck. “Calm down, I’m not the Virgin Mary, I’m not a hero, I’m not a role model. I do what I can, at least that’s something.”

  She pressed play.

  After listening, he only asked, “Is it possible for her to change the lyrics?”

  “No way. Nothing’s possible with her, she’s absolutely determined to be a pain in the ass.”

  “But she’ll come here to finish production?”

  “No way. She despises Paris. Which is for the best, because I despise her.”

  “You really look that much alike?”

  “Don’t you remember? I showed you a photo.”

  “But even now you—”

  “We’re twins, we look alike. It’s not that complicated.”

  Nicolas admitted, “I really like her voice, we can make a lot of pretty things with it.”

  “Singing is the only thing she’s good for. Lucky for her she knows how.”

  After that, as is often the case, nothing happened as expected.

  “If you’re not the one singing, what will you do?” Nicolas asked.

  “I’ll do the music videos, the interviews, the photos. I’ll meet tons of people and then I’ll start acting in movies.”

  “And your sister won’t say anything?”

  “No, Pauline can’t stand anyone except for her boyfriend and two or three of her friends. I’d be shocked if she was angry about not being in the spotlight.”

  When the tape was done, Duvon thought it wasn’t bad, just needed some modifications. Modifications made, there were still two, three things that he wanted to see changed. At this third stage he had shaken his head, very disappointed. “That’s not it, that’s not it at all . . .”

  From that moment on, he became unreachable by telephone.

  “Yet another thing going wrong,” Claudine commented soberly.

  But the tape made the rounds, some kid ended up calling her back.

  “Well, some kid, he was definitely at least thirty, but he was in Bermuda shorts . . .”

  One year later, she and Nicolas were walking along the quays, the leaves were starting to turn green, the girls were showing off legs they had already tanned, and a lot of people were out walking their dogs.

  “He said, ‘Come to my office,’ so I showed up. I couldn’t stop laughing, it was a totally disgusting closet with filthy junkies doing nothing but pressing buttons on the fax machine. And him, in Bermuda shorts. Pretty pleased with himself . . . I swear, it’s too bad you didn’t come, you’d have been cracking up. His label sucks, just shitty bands, his office is dirty, he dresses like a moron, but he’s so fucking pleased with himself. As if he’d accomplished something. If the point of the game was to be a fuckup, then there’d be something to be proud of . . . birds of a feather flock together, you’ll tell me, I’m sure.”

  “You think he’ll make the record?”

  “He says he will . . . he thought the lyrics were ‘so cool.’ I swear, I couldn’t keep it together, the lyrics—what an idiot. Then he said to me, ‘I’ll do the record,’ happy it won’t cost him a lot, and he doesn’t even know how to do promotion. Regardless, I signed the fucking dish towel he called a contract, we have nothing to lose, right?”

  “You told your sister?”

  “Yeah, yeah. She knows the guy’s company, she knows all those shitty labels. She said it was cool, for once she didn’t burst into tears. Maybe she’s going to commit suicide.”

  “And she knows that you’re saying you’re the singer?”

  “Yes, I told her. She’s so sweet, she said, ‘Go ahead, with all the talent you have, you have to appropriate wherever you can if you want anyone to pay attention to you.’”

  “You’re right, she’s so generous.”

  “It’d be nice to think she’s wrong . . .”

  “Are you having a little bout of depression?”

  “No, I don’t give a shit. I’ve told you there’s rarely a link between talent and success. I haven’t lost hope.”

  “What if there’s a concert?”

  “There won’t be. Maybe there’ll be naked photos of me all over the place, but there won’t be any concerts. For a start, if he manages to put out a CD, I’ll be blown away. Want to go sit outside?”

  Someone’s playing the guitar downstairs. Deep chords stretched over a background of repetitive, sad sounds.

  Claudine complains it’s giving her an earache, she washes down her painkillers with Anjou Rosé. She’s been drinking for a while. She walks around her apartment barefoot, soles black with dirt.

  Sitting at a bit of a distance, magazine open on the table, Pauline watches her, disgusted. Noise from the window, she glances over. Meat truck, a dumpster filled with pink and white. Some ladies are talking next to it, unidentifiable language, they’re wearing elaborate dresses, summer colors, suddenly break into intense laughter that never ends.

  Nicolas calls a friend, keeps flipping through the channels. On the screen, flashes of athletes dripping with sweat; zealous, pert, and abrasive female TV presenters; a prudent political man; a blond kid in a commercial.

  Seated next to him, Claudine rips apart a cigarette. As soon as he hangs up, she asks, “So? Did he feed you a bunch of bullshit?”

  “Less than usual. He seemed off. He was really disappointed you didn’t want to talk to him.”

  “Absolutely nothing to say to him.”

  “In any case, you’ve certainly got him hooked.”

  “That’s all they want, all of them. To collect women, it’s the only thing that gets them off.”

  “You thought he was so smooth two weeks ago.”

  “I remember. But I must have some molecule, it’s ridiculous, some thing that turns people into total losers. You take the coolest guy in the entire city, seductive, funny, open-minded, you leave him with me for one night and the next day he’s dead weight. It’s inevitable.”

  By now, he knows her little mean-girl schemes. Whether she sleeps with him or not, a man is still her worst enemy. The first time she lands a guy, she’s as nice as a babysitter, all smiles between two blow jobs. Until the d
ay she disappears. She pulls that move almost every time, to make them realize how attached they are. When she comes back, it turns serious, and the guys pay. Until the day it’s no longer enough for Claudine: the gifts, the attention, the acts of love. Then, the final phase, she declares that not only is she seeing someone else, but she fucking loves it. Feigning sincere distress, she lets slip, “If you knew how hard he makes me come.”

  Nicolas takes a drag of the joint, coughs a little, remarks, “I’m glad we don’t sleep together.”

  Claudine grabs the remote and looks for a channel with music videos.

  “That would never happen, I’m not your type.”

  His type? He made a point of not fucking girls who think they’re beautiful. Just to piss them off, those girls who think they have the irresistible gift of seduction. He figured out long ago that he’s hot, that people really like him, without actually understanding why. He likes nothing more than getting a skank all heated up, until he can feel her really burning. Then not touching her. On the other hand, he has a weakness for homely physiques, the injustice of it gets to him, he really enjoys taking care of them, unearthing the good in them. At the very least he can be sure he’s not the umpteenth guy to make them meow with his pelvic thrusts.

  Claudine turns toward her sister, hands her the spliff.

  “You still don’t smoke?”

  Pauline briefly signals no, her twin looks at the clock, adds, “It’s almost time . . .”

  Her sister doesn’t even bother to respond. She continues reading, Nicolas turns his head toward her. It’s still difficult for him to admit that this boring nerd, hair as lackluster as her skin, dressed in a sack, her gaze black when she wants something, really looks like Claudine.

  Who says, “You okay, sis, not freaking out too much?”

  “What the fuck do you care?”

  “Wow, you’re a real barrel of laughs.”

  “We can’t all be a joke like you, Claudine.”

  Solid mastery of contempt. Nicolas stifles a snicker, elbows Claudine, convinced it’ll make her laugh too, since she’s normally so easygoing. But Claudine doesn’t take the opportunity to laugh it off lightly. She usually makes fun of everything, or at least puts up a front, but she takes it badly this time, not even trying to hide it.

  She swallows painfully, squints, spits out, “I guess we can’t all be human either.”

  Her sister rolls her eyes, smirks slightly, snaps, “With how deranged you are, it’s hard to feel any sympathy.”

  A few tears run down Claudine’s cheeks, she doesn’t even wipe them away, as if she doesn’t feel them. Nicolas racks his brain, how to intervene tactfully and stop things from escalating. At a loss, he turns to Pauline, hoping she’ll stop her bullshit. Pauline gets the hint, shrugs her shoulders. “She always was a crybaby.”

  Neither spoke another word to each other after that. Nicolas flips through the channels, pretending to be absorbed by a wildlife documentary. When it’s time to go, Pauline gets up, stands in the entryway, waits for Nicolas. He looks her up and down, not wanting to believe it.

  “You’re planning to go out like that?”

  “Yes. I do it every day.”

  “You have to put on your sister’s clothes!”

  “Don’t count on it, asshole, I don’t dress like a slut.”

  “No one’s going to believe she’d go onstage like that!”

  Nicolas, who saw Claudine often, had never seen her without makeup. Even when they slept in the same place, she made sure to get up first and get ready in the bathroom. Not to mention her obsession with clothes and the time she spent putting together the right outfits . . .

  “Believe it or not, you can actually go onstage without dressing like a groupie.”

  “Have you heard of a little something called a happy medium?”

  “That’s for cowards.”

  He turns toward Claudine, counting on her support. She shrugs her shoulders in a sign of helplessness.

  “Don’t push it, there’s no way. You shouldn’t worry about it, there won’t be anyone who knows me anyway, it’ll be like I had a sudden grunge crisis. Could happen to anyone.”

  With a forced smile, without a shred of enjoyment. She accompanied them to the door, Nicolas lingered on the landing, still hoping for a word of goodbye that would ease the tension. Claudine barely looks at him, murmurs, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

  Monotone voice, closes the door, without the slightest sign of complicity.

  Following Pauline down the stairs, he starts to detest her so badly he feels solidarity with those people who corner girls and force them to shit their little panties before using those same panties to suffocate them.

  Rue Poulet smells like a butcher shop, whole creatures hanging from hooks. Women talking in front of packed displays of vegetables. On car hoods women sell underwear to other women, gesticulating, bursting into laugher, or throwing tantrums. A giant man lifts up a thong to get a better look, black lace stretched in the sun. Sidewalks strewn with crushed paper cups from KFC, food wrappers, green takeout boxes. Farther on, a guy sells pills in little plastic baggies.

  It’s not easy to get by with so many people on the sidewalk.

  Accompanied by Nicolas, who’s pouting because she didn’t want to change, Pauline heads toward the metro. He shakes his head, pointing toward the taxi stand on the opposite sidewalk.

  “I can’t take the metro, I’m claustrophobic. We’ll take a cab, it’s not far.”

  She rolls her eyes, follows him without saying a word. His stupid struggle, the metro stresses him out. I don’t give a crap about your whiny bullshit.

  Her disdain evident since her arrival, her every look has been critical, condescending. She knows everything and judges instantly. How he would’ve liked plenty of disgusting things to happen to her, to break her in two and make her understand that everyone is doing what they can and that she isn’t any better than anyone else. It’s all relative. It’s easy being perfect when you live under a rock.

  He stares hard at her profile; they both have the same features. It only adds to his dislike. As if she’d stolen something from Claudine, something precious: her face.

  There’s always a truck at the street corner, either the cops or the Médecins du Monde.

  At eight o’clock the doors of the Élysée Montmartre are still closed. The sound check is running late. A few bouncers are going up and down the stairs with worried looks.

  At regular intervals the metro spits out people who clump together on the sidewalk, filing into groups. Some people recognize and call to one another as if they’d just seen each other yesterday. No one thinks of complaining about the wait, unexpected and prolonged. Sometimes someone turns their head, deceived by a murmur in the crowd, gets up on tiptoe to see if it’s moving, but it still isn’t moving.

  A woman carves out a path through the crowd, a kind of stubborn urban crawl. A bouncer listens to her sweet-talking—they’re waiting for her inside for an interview—lets her flash her press pass. He pulls out his walkie-talkie to ask what he should do with her. He takes advantage of the wait to get a good look at her cleavage. Not because it actually pleases him, to look at her tits, he mainly just likes to make a show of it in front of his friends. As soon as she turns around, they’ll have a good laugh about it.

  The guy who works with him avoids meeting her gaze. Embarrassed for the man who skewers a woman like that, embarrassed for the woman who exposes herself like that. And embarrassed for himself because his eyes can’t help themselves, they spring up and land on her. Every time he sees a woman like that—which is every time he works—he asks himself where it is she wants to go. He lets her pass, she climbs the stairs leading to the concert hall, pushes open the doors, and disappears. She scours the hall, looking for someone she knows.

  She heads toward the food. Approaching the stage, she recognizes Claudine. That bitch made herself look like a total dyke. Some people aren’t disgusted by anything.
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  The journalist scampers toward the stage, ecstatic at the idea of approaching her, of Claudine coming to shake her hand. Not that she would be happy to see her, they barely know each other, and the snob is hardly friendly.

  Nicolas intercepts.

  “Save your breath, she doesn’t want to see anyone.”

  “She’s getting a big head already?”

  “No, but she’s freaking out. Anyway, how are you doing?”

  She could have smacked him. And that whore, up onstage, pretending not to see her and acting like someone who can sing. Whatever, it’s not like they just filled the Zénith, she’s only an opener. She acts like she isn’t bothered.

  “Listen, it’s dumb, but I really wanted an interview. I can still talk to her after the sound check, right?”

  “Not today, she’s on edge, she doesn’t want anyone to talk to her. You know, to really concentrate. But tomorrow, if you want, she’ll give you a call.”

  “Tomorrow? That’ll be too late. I’m afraid I’ll be too on edge.”

  She turns on her heel and goes directly to the bar and orders a whiskey. Contemptuous anger: What is this bullshit? Does she want us to talk about her or does she want to die in obscurity? She didn’t even sell a thousand copies of her album and it’s turned her into this. But she knows very well that when creatives and journalists have common goals, plenty of things are forgotten.

  Nicolas watches her walk away. For the moment, no one suspects a thing. Until now he’s only experienced this level of absurdity in dreams.

  Just then, the label manager worms his way to Claudine-Pauline. He congratulates her for a while. “Everyone’s crazy about the album, I’m so happy to have done it.” Standing nearby, Nicolas’s heart comes out of his chest and he imagines causing a diversion by throwing it on the ground. But Pauline gets herself out of it, retorting, calm and dry, “Shut your fat mouth, I don’t want to listen to you talk anymore.”

  Instead of being furious, Bermuda Shorts blushes, starts stammering, perfectly cheerful. “Well then, she’s got some balls, huh, when she wants something . . .” in a very administrative tone, which he never used while talking to the real Claudine, who had always made an effort to be friendly.