Vernon Subutex Three

by Virginie Despentes

  After two weeks, fucking hell, it dawned on her that people were a lot more creative before the internet was invented: with no access to the net she was bored out of her skull. She spent all day listening to Mary J. Blige and singing. She knew the whole back catalogue by heart. She spent the rest of her time sketching. Every time Esteban came by with supplies, she would say, “Get in touch with the Hyena, tell her I can’t carry on like this – it’s like I’m fucking dead, man.” A little less distant than usual, he had said, “You’ll have a job, it’s just that the thing we had in mind fell through.” “So who are you, exactly?” “The Hyena is an old friend. I had my own problems once upon a time and she really helped me out.” She could get nothing else out of him, except a bunch of dumb promises – that this was just temporary, that they were working on making sure she had a social life. And the piss-poor advice: you should cut your hair, that way you won’t be so recognisable. Although Céleste had been prepared to disappear for a few months, she thought it was a bit much to dump her in some godforsaken shithole and tell her not to see anybody. She had spent two more days holed up. Her only friend was Mary J. Blige – “Real Love”, “Family Affair”, “No More Drama” . . . Then one morning, in desperation, she had picked up the twenty-euro note Esteban had given her and had gone to the salon. It was here that she met Juanito. He’s a stylist, but he’s not gay. He’s got a Mexican skull tattooed on his hand. She used her fingers to mime that she had come to have her hair cut short. She had shown him a photo so he would get the idea. Juanito had nodded. And then he had done something completely different. When she saw herself in the mirror – shaved temples and a little fringe – Céleste wasn’t exactly Yaaas! but she liked this guy too much to rip him a new one. Goth girl gone. Juanito spoke a few words of French, just enough to understand that she did not have a mobile phone, “kaput, kaput” – maybe kaput is universal. He arranged to meet her that night in the bar next to the salon. And after ten minutes, he took her back to her place. Not speaking the same language, they had to find other ways to communicate.

  He got into the habit of dropping by to see her after work. He would make gin and tonic. He would rock up with huge balloon glasses, ice, cinnamon stick and he would pour the tonic quickly so the bubbles burst. From the start, she was really into him – she was completely gone. With him, it was different, he had his life.

  When he told her that he’d been offered a couple of weeks working as a stylist on a shoot in Catalonia and he was leaving the following day, Céleste hadn’t thought twice. “Take me with you.” Awkward moment: he had a girlfriend waiting for him there. A regular bae he had never mentioned. But Céleste had got it into her head that she could not stand another day buried in this hellhole, so she said, “Take me.” She’d had a bellyful of the Hyena’s plans.

  This is how she came to cross Spain from west to east with a guy she was so hopelessly in love with she had to hold back tears when she looked at his face, because she knew that when they came to the end of the journey he would disappear. And there were no second thoughts: he dropped her off, as arranged, on Plaza de Cataluña. She never saw him again.

  People often make good decisions for bad reasons. She was convinced that Juanito was too into her, that it had to be reciprocal, that all she had to do was wait, that love would prevail and all that drivel.

  On the day she arrived, she met up with Nora, a girl she’d known when she was studying at the Beaux-Arts who had moved to Barcelona ten years earlier. To work in graphic design, though in the end she became a waitress. Céleste decided she was done with the Hyena’s paranoid fantasies. She didn’t use her existing Facebook account, but she went online using a different identity. How else could she get in touch with her friends?

  Nora had said, you can stay at ours, there’s five of us. You can crash on the sofa, no problem. After that, Hélène, who’s also French, had said, the restaurant I’m working in is looking for a prep chef, and bingo. That was how it had all started. This house – it’s the G.O.A.T. For the first few days, she had cried over Juanito. But she didn’t suffer for long. All the people living in the apartment are amazing. They’re fam. Not one of them gets on her tits. Sure, she’s got more in common with some than with others. She slipped into the group with no problems. Diego likes to think he’s swank, he’s not from around here, he slicks his hair back like an Italian stallion and he likes motorbikes and surfing. They speak English to each other and he treats her like his kid sister. Hélène is older than the others, but mentally she’s, like, fourteen – she gets home from work, pours boiling water over some instant noodles and slumps on the sofa watching reality T.V. shows on her phone with headphones on. She follows every version of “The Voice” – American, Australian, British . . . She shares the biggest bedroom with Myriam, a trilingual, super-educated undocumented Turkish girl who left her country because she says it’s shit there. She works as a cleaner, but Céleste has noticed she always seems to have wads of cash. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if “cleaning” is actually the horizontal mambo. Karim is the youngest, he has the scuzziest room, and has painted it completely red, he wants to be a painter – artist, not housepainter. Although he’s enrolled at the Bellas Artes, he rarely shows up to class and spends most of his time getting shitfaced on rum, sometimes he’ll collapse in midsentence and it takes four of them to put him to bed, fully dressed. He’s really sweet to Céleste, he stole a “Sons of Anarchy” sweatshirt from some shop in the city for her. He steals all the time. He never gets caught, he’s agile as an acrobat. Angela is a poet and a footballer, her feet are destroyed and she works for some posh clothes shop for tourists and at night, when she hasn’t got training, she rolls spliffs, and lays out her notebooks all around. When the muse visits, she’s capable of writing a dozen poems in a single session. The following morning, she rereads them and rips up half of them. Céleste can’t tell the difference between a good poem and a shit one. Which is probably why she’s not a poet. Angela has a thing with Pablo, the only rich kid in the gang, but he’s from Venezuela, so even though, back in his country, his family are loaded, once his monthly allowance has been converted into euros, it’s not exactly guap. He’s studying to be a webmaster, but he spends most of his time strung out on Molly, he’ll gently open the fridge door and wave everyone over to look at the beautiful glow – and when he’s not off his tits, he’s watching Venezuelan T.V. programmes that leave him so bummed that someone has to go out and score some speed just to perk him up.

  They have parties all the time, the downstairs neighbours are a Russian couple who spend all their time beating the shit out of each other, screaming and screwing (still screaming) – you need a keen ear to tell the difference between fights and fucks . . . Basically, they never complain about the noise since they’re making too much themselves to hear it. And next door is a sublet for tourists, so even if they complain, no-one gives a shit. They’re hardly going to call the police, since they’ve no right to be there.

  Céleste was destined to land here – she hadn’t even spent a week crashing on the sofa when Virginia, who had the room at the back, announced that she’d found a job in Vienna, and Hélène had said, do you want the room? It’s about two hundred euros a month, all in . . .

  The place is always crawling with friends of someone or other, Céleste gets a lot of work doing small tattoos – she charges so little that it barely covers the cost of the needles and the gloves, but she wants to keep her hand in. She does a lot of infinity symbols: in the world of tattoos, ∞ is the new dolphin. And then there are the flowers and the butterflies, because she’s a girl, and everyone assumes she’ll be good at them. She hates doing butterflies, but she doesn’t give people a hard time. Thirty euros here, fifty euros there . . . plus her shifts in the kitchen – she regularly gets called in, the head chef is a lipstick lesbian with a thing for French girls.

  She loves her new life. She has considered going back to Paris – she doesn’t give a shit about Dopalet. He didn’t grass the
m up to the feds. Her father would know if he had. He still claims she’s living at his place, for tax purposes. The cops would have been banging on his door, pronto. Céleste thinks that the Hyena is paranoid. The needle-dick fucking producer wouldn’t have the cojones to pay someone to break her legs. The guy got what he deserved. The more time passes, the less she feels she is in danger. But she’s happier in Barcelona than she was in Paris. For someone her age, there’s a lot more work. And a lot less hassle. Hélène wants to move to Berlin, and Céleste thinks maybe she’ll go with her.

  She has not yet told her father where she really is. But she’s not planning on lying to him long-term. She told him she’s doing an internship with a tattoo artist in Australia. He huffed and puffed because she didn’t even take the time to say goodbye. But given that his current girlfriend is pregnant, and he thinks that bothers Céleste, he probably assumed she was salty. And, as it goes, it probably suits him for her to be on the other side of the world. At his age, with a new baby, life’s complicated enough. Céleste doesn’t care one way or another about having a little sister. But her father is convinced that she’s devastated.

  In the early days, she and Aïcha would chat using the comments section of Justin Bieber’s Insta page. They assumed no-one was going to wade through all that shit for two girls talking about nothing much. Because everything they say had to be coded, they couldn’t really tell each other very much. So Céleste gave up. Besides, Aïcha wouldn’t approve of her doing a runner. She’s too serious. If someone says “hide”, she hides. Céleste is more of a free spirit. She’s not hung up on religion.

  *

  Céleste smooths out the sheet in front of her. It is more creased than ever. Sprawled on a cushion on the floor, Pablo has been on his phone for hours, playing some game where you have to smash glass panels in some weird zero-gravity world. She tried watching over his shoulder and it made her feel seasick. Hélène is on her phone, swiping through photos of David Bowie’s ex-wife, who’s like sixty but has pigtails and she’s on some kind of Big Brother show, and they tell her that David is dead and ask her not to tell anyone else but she goes right out and tells some kid that David’s dead and the girl thinks she’s talking about some guy called David who’s on the show with them and the ex-wife thinks she’s crying because she loved Bowie, but the girl’s too young to know who the fuck he was or give a shit, and then all hell breaks loose. Fuck’s sake, Céleste can’t wait for people in this house to get over Bowie’s death.

  *

  She checks the time. The night before, some guy got in touch about a tattoo. She’s made a new Facebook page, creating a pseudo from her paternal grandmother’s first name, Blanche, and her mother’s maiden name, Klint. The guy wants a realistic wolf tattoo. She doesn’t really do animals, and realism isn’t her thing, but she sent him a sketch and he wrote back saying, “O.K. But not too big.” That’s the deal here – “not too big”. Partly, it’s about the price, but mostly it’s that people assume you can tattoo the Sistine chapel on their little finger – what’s the big deal? A wolf needs a whole shoulder at the very least, otherwise what’s the point? They’re pussies – they want a tattoo, but they’re afraid people will see it. That said, given her wolf sketch, maybe it’s best if it’s not too big. Looks more like Snoopy tripping balls. She was surprised he went for it. She asked the size of his arm, so she could prepare the stencil, and he replied, “Two iPhone 6s.”

  He asked her if she had a studio. Normally, she works in her bedroom, drawing the curtains so the neighbours opposite don’t grass her up. She doesn’t have a licence to tattoo at home. And she’s not registered. The client is French. She has no idea how he stumbled on her Facebook page. He wants her to do the tattoo at his place, because he’s a snowflake and needs to have a nana nap afterwards. The only reason she didn’t tell him to go fuck himself is because when she said it would cost about a hundred euros, he didn’t quibble. And she needs that money. She has arranged to meet him in a bar, so she can get a good look at him before going back to his place. You never know. She hopes he’s not some pickup artist. She hasn’t posted a photo of herself online. She’s not that stupid. Since she shaved her head, guys have been less grabby with her. But even so. The French are always the worst. Everyone here thinks so. All the girls who work in bars, restaurants and museums say the same thing – French guys are the worst. You can spot them at five hundred metres. They’re always the ones yelling and killing everyone else’s buzz. They’re always the ones putting the moves on girls. Even Italians aren’t that bad. And that’s saying something.

  THREE EUROS FOR A BOTTLE OF WATER AT A BRANCH OF PAUL at the Gare de Lyon, these people are taking the piss. Max refused to pay. He pushed away the paper bag with the ham and cheese baguette, the bottle of water and the canelé – ten euros for this, are they fucking kidding?

  The cashier pulled a face, like it was a big deal for her to cancel the transaction. She can go fuck herself. He saw a video on the net: the whole train station is full of rats scurrying between the croissants. Another good reason to throw the sandwich back in her face. Paris is overrun with rats. Apparently, if you leave a sandwich lying around in one of the squares in the Marais, pigeons and rats fight over it. Not a pretty thought.

  Max hates making a fuss in a shop, getting wound up like this. But he’s pretty strung out right now.

  Little Céleste took a savage beat-down. He’s never seen anyone take a beating like it. It’s not like she’s dead or anything. But, even so . . . Max can be very brutal verbally. He knows that when he shouts, he’s the man. It scares the shit out of people. He’s always like that. But he rarely uses his fists. He’s never even raised a hand to his son. He’s seen his fair share of street brawls, he went on demos when he was young, he saw the cops batter his friends with truncheons and he didn’t bat an eye. He’s not some piss-weak little faggot. But he’s not violent.

  His plan was to put Céleste out of action, lock her up as arranged and leave her to scream and shout until Dopalet showed up. He felt pretty sure that giving it a little of the Lord Kossity growl would be enough to get her to play along. He planned to give her the fright of her life. Hence the idea of roping in a couple of Hell’s Angels buddies who have the sort of faces you don’t argue with. They would be waiting at the house, Max would bring her back and boo! They’d jump out and that would be that. The girl would be primed, psychologically. She’d see all these guys standing around, she’d be terrified they might rape her, she’d keep a low profile. A simple, pragmatic, intelligent plan. Once they had her tied up, a couple of slaps and she’d spill everything she knew. Then Dopalet could decide what he wanted to do to her.

  *

  His part of the job went off smoothly. Though he’d been shitting bricks before meeting up with Céleste who was waiting for him in a bar in El Raval. From the moment he recognised her, he hated her. Hated her for showing up. How many times do girls have to be told that you don’t meet up with some stranger, even in a public place? Now, if she’d had a guy with her – or even just a couple of girlfriends – he would have had to backtrack. He would have had to come up with a different plan. Or even give up. But she rocked up on her own, not even suspicious – the girl is an XXS model, she can’t weigh more than fifty kilos. But sexy as fuck. Full of shit, but pretty. Not much more than a kid. Max didn’t know that things were going to go pear-shaped, so he was professional. Part of him thought it would teach her a lesson. Dopalet had told him about the attack, it was vicious. You can’t just allow kids to go round breaking into other people’s apartments and brutally torturing them for no reason. So, although he wasn’t exactly comfortable with it, he was thinking, I need to knock some sense into her. She was asking for it. And anyway, he doesn’t like girls who crop their hair short. Is it really too much to ask for them to have a little fucking thought for their femininity? You really think you can pass for a guy with a body like that?

  How often do you hear about women being killed by mentally disturbed lon
ers? All the time. Before the recent fashion for mass murderers, new serial killers seemed to turn up every other day. How many times has she heard the story of the jogger, the hitchhiker, the waitress, the girl coming out of the métro, the girl walking home, a girl minding her own business – raped mutilated tortured. You’d think she would have learned her lesson. Hell no. There she was, silly bitch, sitting waiting for him. They just don’t listen. He chatted shit for fifteen minutes, explained why it would be easier to go to his place and do the tattoo there. And she followed him. He played the old guy who wants to be down with the kids. He’s used to dealing with younger women, he knows how to reassure them. She followed him, and don’t go telling him that, deep down, she didn’t realise he wanted to hurt her. Women know. But they go along anyway. If they took precautions, guys wouldn’t be able to abuse them. She came to the posh house on the outskirts of Barcelona. The isolated house where, even if she managed to escape from the cellar, she’d have to run five hundred metres before she could alert anyone. The house carefully chosen for the business at hand.