Betty Blue

by Philippe Djian

  So I took the phone and turned it toward me. The house shined like a new penny. I called Eddie.

  “Hi, it’s us!… Just get back?”

  “Yeah. Everything okay down there?”

  “We’re doing a major cleanup. We’ve moved the furniture around a little…”

  “Fine. Great. Tomorrow I’m going to put all your stuff on a train…”

  “Thanks, great. Listen… Betty and I were wondering if we could do a little painting in the kitchen… one of these days, I mean…”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Great, That’s good news. Actually, we’ll probably get on it pretty soon. Right away, even…”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what I thought. Listen, while I’m at it, I wanted to talk to you about the wallpaper in the hall. You know, the sort of flowered…”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Nothing. Just that maybe someday if it turned out that we could sort of replace it with something a little brighter. You don’t see something in a blue there? What do you think of blue…?”

  “I don’t know. What about you? What do you think?”

  “It’s a lot calmer.”

  “Look, do whatever you want. I can’t see any problem.”

  “Okay, cool. I’m not going to bug you about all this, you see, I just wanted your okay, you know what I mean…”

  “Don’t sweat it.”

  “Yeah, good.”

  “Okay…”

  “Wait. I forgot to ask you something else…”

  “Hmm?”

  “Well, it’s Betty. She wants to break through a wall or two.”

  “…”

  “You there? You know how it is when she gets an idea into her head. Listen, it’s no big deal-just a couple of little walls, not big walls. It’s not like a big job or anything, not what you think. Just puttering, you know…”

  “Right, puttering. That’s not puttering anymore. Breaking down walls, that’s a notch above puttering. You guys make me laugh…”

  “Listen, Eddie, you know me. I wouldn’t bother you with all this if it wasn’t important. You know how it is, Eddie. You know how a grain of sand can change the whole world. Imagine that this wall is like a barrier between us and a sunny glade. Wouldn’t it be like slapping life in the face to let ourselves be beaten by a silly little barrier? Wouldn’t that really worry you, to miss out just because of some stupid little bricks? Eddie, don’t you see that life is full of terrifying symbols?”

  “Okay. Do it. But go easy…”

  “Never fear. I’m not crazy.”

  When I hung up Betty was looking at me with a Buddha smile. I believe I detected in her eye a spark that dated back to prehistoric times-to the days when guys sweated and groaned to prepare a shelter for their mate standing there smiling in the shadows. In some strange way it was nice to think I was obeying an instinct that went back to the dawn of time. I felt I was doing something good-contributing my drop of water to the great river of humanity. Plus, a little puttering never hurt anybody. You’d have a hell of a time these days not running across a sale somewhere in the electric drill and saw department. It allows you to lift your head up a little-feel good about things like shelves. The real secret lies in not blowing every fuse in the house.

  “Okay, you happy now?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hungry?”

  We ate, watching a horror movie-some dudes who came out of their graves and went running around in the night screaming. Toward the end, I started yawning-nodding off for two or three seconds-and each time I opened my eyes the nightmare was still going on. They’d found this old lady in a deserted street and were eating her leg. They had gold-plated eyes. They were watching me peel my banana. We waited until every one of them had been roasted with a flamethrower, then went to bed.

  We carried the cushions into the bedroom and I swore that the first thing I’d do tomorrow was go buy a mattress-I swore on my mother’s head. We made the bed in silence. We were wiped out. Not one speck of dust showed as the sheets came down like parachutes, stirring the air in the room. We would be able to sleep on our pillows without risk of inhaling a germ.

  Early the next morning I heard somebody drumming on the door. I thought I was dreaming. I saw the pale glow of dawn floating timidly behind the window, and the face on the alarm clock was still lit. I had to get up. It gave me a stomachache, but I got used to it. I made sure not to wake Betty and went down stairs.

  I opened the door, shivering in the early morning cold. There was this guy standing there, an old guy with a two-day beard, looking at me and smiling. He wore a cap.

  “Hey there, I hope I’m not bothering you,” he said. “But are you the one who put that mattress there, by the garbage cans?”

  I spotted a garbage truck rolling along slowly behind him, a yellow light revolving on top. I made the connection.

  “Well, yeah. Something wrong?”

  “We don’t handle them things. Don’t even want to know about them.”

  “So, what am I supposed to do with it? Cut it into pieces and swallow it? Take one a day…?”

  “Don’t know. It is your mattress, ain’t it?”

  The street was empty and silent. The day seemed to be stretching like a cat come down from an easy chair. The old man lit a cigarette butt in the golden light.

  “I realize it’s a pain,” he said. “I can put myself in your shoes. Nothing more annoying than getting rid of a mattress. But after what happened to Bobby, we don’t mess with them anymore. Plus, it was one just like that, gray with stripes. I can still see old Bobby trying to push it into the compactor. Bang-took his arm straight off. Get the picture…?”

  He brought me up short. My eyes were still half glued shut from sleeping. Who was Bobby, anyway? That’s what I was going to ask him, when the guy behind the steering wheel started yelling from the other side of the street.

  “Hey, what’s going on? He giving you a hard time?”

  “That’s him-Bobby,” the old man said.

  Bobby kept it up in the truck. He had his head out the window, making little puffs of steam.

  “That guy giving us a pain in the ass over the mattress?” he yelled.

  “Cool down, Bobby,” said the old man.

  I was cold. I noticed that I was barefoot. There were even a few layers of fog here and there, floating in the early-morning air. My brain was going in slow motion. Bobby decided to open the door of the truck and get out, whining. I shivered. He wore a bulky sweater with the sleeves rolled up. One of his arms sent off light reflections-it ended in a giant hook. It was one of those cheap artificial limbs made out of chrome-totally reimbursed by health insurance, fitted like a shock absorber. I was startled. The old man was looking at the end of his cigarette. He crossed his legs.

  Bobby came toward us, rolling his eyes, his mouth twisted into a frown. For a second I thought I was back in front of the TV, watching a scene from the horror movie, only now it was in 3-D. Bobby looked totally nuts. He stopped when he got to the mattress. I saw him clearly-there was a lamp post just over his head, as if put there on purpose. The tears on his cheeks looked like tattooed lightning bolts. I couldn’t hear too well, but I think he was talking to the mattress-whimpering. The old man took a last drag on his cigarette and spit it out, looking into the sky.

  “We ain’t come across one in a long time,” he told me.

  The cry that Bobby let out pierced my ear like a javelin. I watched him lift the mattress with his one good hand, as if he were grabbing someone by the neck. He stared into its eyes, as if he were holding in front of him the person who had ruined his whole life. He drove his arm into the thing. The hook came out the other side, sprinkling little pieces of stuffing onto the sidewalk. The revolving light gave me the feeling of a giant spider weaving its web all around us.

  The old man crushed his cigarette butt, Bobby tore the prosthesis out of the mattress, sobbing. The poor guy tot
tered on his legs but didn’t go down. Day was breaking. He let out another shriek. This time he aimed a little lower-around stomach level and his moving arm went through it like a howitzer. The mattress bent over in half. Without missing a beat, Bobby freed himself, then went for the head. The cloth must have been brittle-it cracked open with the sound of a pig getting its throat slit.

  While Bobby continued to let loose on the mattress, reducing it to bits, the old man looked away. The sidewalk was deserted, with one foot in the night and one finger in daylight. I had the feeling we were waiting for something.

  “Okay. That ought to do it,” said the old man. “You want to give me a hand…?”

  Bobby was completely exhausted. His hair was plastered against his forehead, as if he’d dunked his head in a tub of water. He let us guide him back to the truck. We sat him down behind the steering wheel. He asked me for a cigarette. I offered him the pack. They were filtered.

  He started shaking his dull head.

  “Hey, those are faggot cigarettes!”

  “Right.”

  I could see that he didn’t even remember what had happened. Just to be sure, I glanced over at the mattress. These kinds of people sometimes make you doubt what’s real and what isn’t, and that’s hard enough to deal with under normal circumstances there’s no reason to make things difficult on purpose. By now my feet were completely frozen. The old man tossed a full garbage can into the compactor and I went inside quietly to put some shoes on. Betty was still sleeping. I heard them start down the street and asked myself why I had bothered to put my shoes on, when it was only seven o’clock in the morning. I had nothing special to do and was still pretty sleepy.

  16

  We worked on the house for a good two weeks, Betty astounding me at every turn. It was a pleasure to work with her, especially now that she’d adopted my pace. She left me alone when I didn’t feel like talking. We stopped regularly to down a few beers, It was nice out. She restocked my mouth with nails, she never screwed up, and she was finally able to use a paintbrush without the paint running up to her elbow. I noticed a million little things that she took care to do correctly she was a natural. There are girls like that-you wonder how many more rabbits they have in their hat. In these eases working with a girl is the best, especially if you’re clever enough to have scored a new fifteen-inch foam mattress and can make her come down off her ladder with one well-placed beckoning glance.

  Since we had to do our shopping on foot, and since we had a little extra money, I started checking out used cars. I read the want ads, Betty peering over my shoulder. Big cars were cheap because people panicked about gasoline. Big cars were the last flicker of a dying civilization, and now was the moment to take advantage of it. What difference does it make-sixteen or twenty miles to the gallon? Is it really worth making a big deal over?

  We wound up with a Mercedes 280, fifteen years old and painted lemon yellow. I wasn’t wild about the color, but it ran well. At night I’d look at it through the window before going to bed. Sometimes a little ray of moonlight would hit it. It was by far the coolest car on the street. The front fender was a little dented, but it didn’t matter much. What bothered me most was that the headlight frame was missing. I tried not to notice. The back three-quarters looked like new, though. That’s how it is everything in life is but an illusion. Every morning I’d look to make sure it was still there. Eventually I got used to it. I got used to it until the day I had a fight with Betty-the day we were coming back from the supermarket.

  She had just calmly run a red light-we had missed becoming pancakes by a hair. I offered a subtle reflection: “Keep this up and we’ll be walking home with the steering wheel in our hands. Is that the idea?”

  We’d gotten up early that day. We were planning to start on the biggest part of the renovation. At seven in the morning, I took the first swing with the sledgehammer into the wall that divided the bedroom from the living room. I went right through it with ease. Betty was standing on the other side. We looked at each other through the hole while the dust settled.

  “You get a load of that?” I said.

  “Yeah… you know what it reminds me of?”

  “Yeah. Stallone in Rocky III.”

  “Better than that. You writing your book.”

  She came up with things like that from time to time. I was starting to get used to it. I knew that she was being sincere, but she also had this need to prick me with a needle, to see if I reacted. I reacted. When I thought about it, it gave me a feeling like having a bullet lodged in my back. It would move without warning. The pain made me groan inside. I looked away. But that wasn’t the most important thing. Sometimes life seemed like a forest full of vines-you have to grab hold of one before you let go of the other, or else you wind up on the ground with both legs broken. In the end, it was all amazingly simple-a child of four could understand. I discovered more things living with her than I ever would by sitting in front of a blank page, my brain boiling. The only thing worth anything here on earth is what you learn by doing.

  With my finger I dislodged a little brick that was getting ready to fall.

  “I don’t see really the connection between breaking a wall down and writing a book,” I said.

  “I’m not surprised. Forget it,” she said.

  I went back to smashing the wall without a word. I knew it hurt her when I said things like that-spoiled her fun-but I couldn’t help it. I had the feeling I was talking to myself. We spent most of the morning piling up boxes of broken plaster on the sidewalk. She didn’t unclench her teeth once. I didn’t want to annoy her. I even made a little small talk here and there, not needing a response-about how warm it was for January, how one sweep of the vacuum cleaner would make it look like nothing had happened, how she ought to at least stop and drink a beer, how I’ll be damned if the house doesn’t look completely different now, how won’t Eddie be thrilled when he gets a load of this?

  I tried a potato omelet to get her mind off it, but it didn’t work-the spuds just stuck to the bottom of the frying pan like the lowlife trash they are. “There’s nothing more depressing than grabbing onto a branch that only breaks in the end.

  It was hard to go back to work comfortably after that. I thought we ought to get a little air. We took the car-destination shopping center. I needed more paint, and I knew she had two or three things to buy-it’s rare when a girl isn’t out of some cream or moisturizing lotion, it’s rare when a girl refuses to go shopping. If everything worked out, I’d be able to chase away the dark clouds with a tube of lipstick, two or three new pairs of panties, or an industrial-strength candy bar.

  We drove slowly up the main street with the windows half open-the noonday sun like peanut butter slathered on holy wafers. I zipped into the parking lot. She hadn’t said a word the whole way, but I wasn’t worried-in thirty seconds I’d have her in the cosmetics department, and the game would be won. I pushed the shopping cart myself. She kept her hands in her pockets and her head turned aside. Twenty more seconds, I told myself.

  There weren’t many people. I stayed behind her, letting her go, watching her toss box after box into the basket. I thought maybe I could get a discount at the checkout line-all I had to do was show them how damaged their packaging was. But I kept my mouth shut. I still had a few good cards left to play.

  We went toward the beauty department. We went right by it, not even stopping. I didn’t get it. There was a foxtrot coming over the loudspeakers. Maybe she had decided to keep sulking until nightfall-at any rate that’s the way it was looking. I’d have to play it close to the chest.

  Same story in lingerie. She didn’t even slow down. It didn’t matter, though-I stopped anyway. I parked in second gear. I picked out two pairs of panties in a hurry-shiny ones-and caught up with her a few seconds later.

  “Look,” I said. “I got you size twenty-four. Nice, huh?”

  She didn’t turn around. Fine. I took the panties and threw them into a bin of frozen food as we went by. Wo
rst thing that’ll happen, I told myself, is that in a few hours the night will fall, and she will have kept her oath. I saw that I was going to have to bear with it. I slowed down and stopped in front of the paint with a beatific smile. As I was perusing the labels, I heard what sounded like the flapping of birds’ wings behind my back, followed by a small collision. I lifted my head up. Betty and I were the only ones in the aisle; she was standing farther down, looking at the books. Everything seemed calm. The books were arranged on five or six revolving stands in single file, just in front of the computer-memory stoves and microwave ovens. Despite the presence of a lovely girl in the area, there were no birds flying around. Still, I could have sworn… I lowered my eyes, looking at a can of acrylic one-coat, and the flapping noise started again. There were two noises this time-one following the other in some sort of aerial ballet. Indeed, such a loving mysterious prologue, the shadow of which I might have surprised, had I not first heard them splatter against yon far wall.

  I turned toward Betty. She had just picked out a book-a fat one. She flipped through three pages, then threw it angrily over her head. This one didn’t go too far. It fell almost at my feet, then went sliding across the center aisle. I decided not to pay attention. I tilted my paint can and started reading the instructions calmly, while books went flying in all directions.

  When I’d had enough I stood up. I picked up my paint can and put it into the cart. For a moment our eyes met. It was hot in the store. I would have loved something to drink just then. She shook her hair all around her, then grabbed the revolving stand in front of her and pushed it with all her might. It turned over with a horrendous crash. She overturned the others without breaking stride, then took off running. I stayed there, nailed to the floor. When I got my wits back, I turned the shopping cart around and walked away in the opposite direction.

  A guy in a salesman’s coat showed up, running after me. He was so upset I thought he had the devil on his heels. He was red as a bloody poppy. He grabbed my arm.