Betty Blue

by Philippe Djian

  “Now,” he went on. “You’re probably thinking, what took me so long to find you? I have other things to do, you know-I only worked on this during weekends.”

  He went back and got another drink. On his way, he stuck his finger in the chili.

  “Hmmm… delicious,” he said.

  The other one hadn’t moved an inch. All he could do was stare at me. Henry shook him a little:

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? What are you waiting for-search the place!”

  He didn’t seem to be feeling well. He set his half-full glass on the table and turned to Henry.

  “God, are you really sure that’s him…?”

  Henry squinted.

  “Look, do what I say and don’t get on my nerves-you get me, little pal?”

  The little pal nodded and left the kitchen, sighing. He wasn’t the only one who felt like sighing. Henry dragged a chair up next to me and sat down. I think he must have had a thing for grabbing people by the hair. He didn’t stand on ceremony-it was like he was determined to pull it out by the roots. It wouldn’t have surprised me if half of it had stayed in his hand. He leaned toward me. It no longer smelled like chili in the house-it smelled more like hemlock.

  “Hey, have you noticed that I walk with a slight limp? You seen that? It’s because I don’t have a big toe anymore, see, it makes me lose my balance…”

  He sent his elbow into my nose, thus adding it to the ranks of my useless arm, my split lip, and the huge bump on the back of my head. It was not very late, and he didn’t seem anxious to go home to bed. I wiped at the blood running down my chin. He didn’t let me recover. It wasn’t that I was suffering so much, it’s just that the pain came from all over at once. It was as if I’d been plunged into a bath that was slightly too scalding. I couldn’t analyze the situation coolly. I couldn’t do much of anything.

  “Okay, now I’ll let you in on how I found you. Tough luck for you, it was me you were dealing with-I was a cop for six years.”

  He let go of my hair to light a cigarette. He’s going to put it out in my ear, I thought. He blew a few smoke rings at me. He looked like he’d just won the lottery, his eyes in the air.

  “First, I asked myself why you went out the back way, and why nobody heard the car start. It bugged me. I said to myself, that bitch couldn’t have come here on foot, she must have parked her car far away to keep it from being spotted. You dig how the Wonderboy’s mind works…?”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to piss him off. I wanted him to forget about the cigarette. I bitterly regretted having done that to his foot. I regretted that all this had to happen to me on the night I was about to dig into a bowl of chili-a night when life seemed almost gentle. He was not the kind of person I could have asked to let me finish my novel.

  “So I took a stroll out in back,” he went on. “Running it through my brain, I climbed up onto the railroad track. And what do you think I saw, buddy boy? THE SUPERMARKET PARKING LOT! Yeah, you got it. And I got to tell you something that was pretty clever. I walked down there tipping my hat to you. My foot hurt, but I had to give you the parking lot!”

  He flicked his cigarette butt out the open window, then bent over me, sporting a horrible, sexual grimace. I didn’t deserve a death whose face was so hideous. I was a writer, interested only in Beauty. Henry shook his head slowly.

  “I can’t tell you the feeling I had when I came across your little Kleenex tissues. They were all in a bright little pile, calling out to me. I picked them up, but I’d already figured it out. I said to myself, for a broad, he sure has some balls…”

  I wished he would talk about something else, that he wouldn’t all of a sudden get obsessed with that part of my anatomy-you never know what goes through the mind of someone like him. I heard the other one pulling drawers out in the apartment. It had taken me a long time to rebuild the pieces of my life-but I’d been sent these two to remind me of the fragility of all things. Did I need to be reminded?

  Henry mopped his brow, never taking his eyes off me. The grease came back almost immediately, shining like a quartz field in the moonlight.

  “You know what I did next? Well, tough luck again, the supermarket manager is my wife’s cousin, and I never let him forget it-he can’t refuse me anything. So I got the names and addresses of everyone who’d paid by check that day, then went to see them all, one by one, asking if they hadn’t noticed anything fishy in the parking lot the day in question. You bastard, I almost lost you there…Just then we were even-steven… I thrived on it, you know… the chase…”

  He turned around and took the wine off the table. What I wouldn’t have given for a big glass of water and a handful of sleeping pills. I wasn’t particularly interested in how he’d found me-I’m not a detective-story freak. But what else could I do, except listen? I breathed out of my mouth-my nose was plugged with blood. He drained the last drop of wine, then stood up. One of his hands plunged into my hair.

  “Come over here,” he said. “I can’t see you where you are.”

  He dragged me over to the table and sat me down on a chair under the lamp. Three drops of blood plopped into my bowl of chili. He walked around the table and sat down in front of me-he pulled out his gun. He aimed it at my head, leaning both hands on the table for stability. His fingers were knitted around the butt, except for his index lingers, which were wound around the trigger. They didn’t have much room to move-I hoped he wouldn’t sneeze. Each second that passed made me happy to be alive. He smiled.

  “So, to finish the story,” he went on. “I came across this woman who had written a check for her ironing board, and she told me: ‘Oh yes, Sir, I did see this blonde woman, loitering in a yellow car. I even noticed that it was a yellow Mercedes, with a local license plate, and even that she was wearing sunglasses.’ Well, I can tell you… it was a Sunday afternoon, not too late, and I went and sat down at a sidewalk café, thinking of you-thanking you very much for the help. I’m the grateful type, see. Cars like yours… there aren’t a whole lot of them in these parts-in fact, there’s only one.”

  I jolted ridiculously-the kind of jolt I’d tile under Taking a Kick at the Great Wall of China. I tried to play coy. I shook my head.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I’ve had that car stolen from me twenty times…”

  Henry got a big kick out of this. He grabbed me by the T-shirt and yanked me onto the table. I felt the tip of the silencer against my throat. I was putty in his hands. It might have made a difference if I had tried to defend myself, who knows-he was older than me and was starting to get pretty drunk. Maybe if I’d really gone nuts I could have turned things around-it’s not impossible. But I knew that I didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t have gotten my motor to turn over. Try as I might, I couldn’t get mad, I just couldn’t. I was too tired-more tired than I’d ever been. I would have been right at home on the side of the road somewhere, a small lukewarm sunset for my nightlight, a few blades of grass, and basta.

  The young one came back just as Henry was starting to say something. He threw me back in my chair so hard that I tipped over backward and sprawled out on the tile. I was like a bump on a log with my dead arm. I went down hard, like at the end of a fifteen-rounder. I decided to stay down for the count. Nowhere was it written that I had to stand up and go calmly toward the torture chamber. I didn’t budge, I didn’t even move my leg, which remained twisted in midair, my heel coming to perch on a leg of the overturned chair.

  I asked myself if the light bulb that hung from the ceiling wasn’t a 200-watter-if that wasn’t why I found myself blinking, or was it perhaps the satchel that the young one was holding in his hands. He looked rather pale. He lifted it up slowly, though it wasn’t very heavy. It took quite a while for him to maneuver it onto the corner of the table. We wondered what the hell was wrong with him, Henry and I.

  “I found this,” he murmured.

  Suddenly I felt sorry for him-he seemed to have lost his faith in everything. He seemed sad. Henry didn’t
try to console him: he grabbed the sack of bills and opened it up wide.

  “Oh, Jesus…!” he said.

  He shoved his hands into it. I heard the crinkling of bills, but what he took out were my falsies and my wig. He held them up to the light, like a river of diamonds.

  “Oh my God in Heaven!” he wheezed.

  I couldn’t tell you why I’d kept those old things, or why I’d decided to put them back in the satchel. I assume I’m not the only one who does things he doesn’t understand, for whom things seem to organize themselves to their own ends, dizzying him, pulling him by the hand and God knows what else. Had I been able to dig myself a hole in the kitchen linoleum, I certainly would have.

  “It’s Josephine…” the unhappy fellow sighed.

  “No shit, Sherlock!” said Henry.

  All at once the kitchen changed color-it turned all white. My ears started ringing at full speed. Before I could get my leg out of the way, Henry took aim at my big toe and fired. The pain went up to my shoulder-I saw blood spurting from my shoe like a poison fountain. Oddly enough, it was then that the feeling came back into my arm. I grabbed the chair leg with both hands, pushing my forehead into the floor. Henry jumped on me and turned me back over. He was breathing heavily, sweat beading in his eyebrows and dripping onto my face. His eyes were two baby vultures with their beaks open wide. He grabbed my T-shirt.

  “Come here, pretty boy, come here, baby… I’m not finished with you yet!”

  He picked me up and threw me onto a chair. He was smiling and grimacing at the same time. He was really into it, running his tongue over his lips and talking to the young man:

  “Okay, now we’re going to take him for a ride. Find me something to tie him up with…”

  The young one shoved his hands in his pockets, looking like a beaten dog.

  “Listen, Henry, I think this has gone far enough. Let’s just call the police…”

  Henry made an obscene noise with his mouth. I was looking at my foot-the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

  “You poor kid,” he said. “You’re really a little jerk. You don’t know me very well…”

  “But Henry…”

  “God damn it, you asked to come with me, now do what I say! I’m not about to give him over to the cops, so he’ll be out in three months. Jesus Christ, after what he did to me… Jesus Christ! You must be kidding!”

  “Yeah, but Henry, we’re not authorized to…”

  Henry went crazy-I thought he was going to start beating on him. They argued, but I couldn’t understand all that they were saying-I had just noticed a small stream of lava spurting out of the west flank of my shoe. It burned so much that I couldn’t get near it with my hand. I don’t know what they decided, but when I lifted my head back up Henry was putting the falsies on me. He got a little worked up over the hooks in back. The other one was standing in front of me. We stared at each other. I sent him a silent message. Help me, I told him. I’m a doomed writer. Henry screwed the wig onto my head.

  “So… now do you recognize him?” he shouted. “This the little whore, or what? Is this what you got all weak in the knees about? This?”

  The young one bit his lip. I just stayed there, not moving. There was obviously nothing that could get me angry-l wondered if there ever would be again. Just then, though, I felt myself flowing toward the waves, sinking into the ocean. Henry looked like an oil well on fire. His fury had turned him red-orange. He grabbed my last-hope’s arm and threw his head between my breasts, then started throttling the two of us.

  “All right, God damn it!!” he screamed. “Is THAT what you want? Is that what you had in mind, you fucking little creep…?”

  The young guy tried to get away. His hair smelled of cheap cologne. He whined and cried in a smothered voice. I was afraid he was going to step on my wounded foot. Then Henry pulled him backward and flung him into the table. The chili almost went all over him. The kid was on the verge of tears, red splotches all over his face. Henry put his hands on his hips-a horrific smile on his face, and his stench permeating the room.

  “So, asshole…” he said. “You going to go get me that rope now?”

  Henry held his forearm up in front of his face. A bullet, however, goes easily through a forearm, then continues through the skull, and if there is nothing behind it except an open window, goes right on whistling over the rooftops, disappearing in the night on its way to Bullet Heaven. Henry slid to the floor. The young man put the gun back on the table and slumped into a chair. I’ve never seen hide nor hair of the kind of silence that came down on us then.

  ***

  His elbow propped on the table, he looked at the floor. I took my wig off and tossed it in the corner. I popped the hook of the bra-it fell onto my lap. I was exhausted. I had to stop to catch my breath. The kitchen was a block of translucent resin, shot in the air and endlessly spinning. I never knew that I loved life so much-this is what I thought as I sat there rubbing my busted lip. It hurt a little. You really have to love it to keep on going against all the suffering-to have what it takes to reach out and grab a few aspirin tablets.

  There was a bottle of them in the drawer. I always keep aspirin nearby-this shows that I’ve been around. I put three of the little white jobs on my tongue.

  “Want some?” I asked.

  He shook his head without looking at me. I knew what he was thinking. I didn’t insist. I breathed out heavily, then bent over toward my shoe. The general sensation was one of having left my leg in a campfire, smoldering in the coals at dawn. I grabbed the rope sole and slipped my shoe off delicately, as if I were undressing a sleeping dragonfly. I had to admit that it was a miracle-I’d call it that-a bullet that goes right between two toes, leaving only a bit of torn skin, a little slice of destiny. I stood up, straddling Henry without feeling a thing, then went and drank a tall glass of water.

  “I’ll help you carry him downstairs,” I said. “Take him as far away as you can.”

  He didn’t move. I went around behind him and helped him stand up. He wasn’t in good shape. He held onto the table without saying a word.

  “You and I would both do well to forget this whole affair,” I suggested.

  I took a few handfuls of bills out of the satchel and stuffed them in his pocket. He had two or three hairs on his chest, tops.

  He didn’t argue.

  “You got to learn how to open the door when opportunity knocks,” I said. “Take his legs.”

  We dragged him. It was like dragging a dead whale down the stairs. No one outside-minimal moon, small wind. Their car was parked right in front. We jammed Henry into the trunk. I went back upstairs as fast as I could, grabbed the gun with the bottom of my T-shirt, then limped back down. He was already sitting behind the wheel. I knocked on the glass.

  “Open the window,” I said.

  I slipped him the gun.

  “When you’re done, go bury this at the North Pole,” I said.

  He nodded, looking straight ahead.

  “Drive smart,” I told him. “Don’t get noticed.”

  “Yes,” he muttered.

  I sniffled, both hands on the roof of the car. I looked up the street.

  “Remember what Kerouac said,” I sighed. “The jewel-the real center-is the eye within the eye.”

  I gave the fender a slap as he pulled away. I went back upstairs.

  I took care of my foot. I cleaned the place up a little-the urgent things. To tell the truth, it was almost as if nothing had happened. I put the chili back in the saucepan over a low flame. I put the music back on. The cat came in through the window. The night was calm.

  “I saw the lights on,” he said. “Were you writing…?”

  “No,” I said. “Just thinking.”

  Philippe Djian

  ***

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