Breakneck

by Nelly Arcan

  Models were categorized as bitches depending on their aggressive intentions. Through comments implying that Rose was out of place, by unneeded exhibitionism, by selfishness pushed to the limit that revealed unhappiness, disorder, the inability to digest, by a display of prideful prostitution, by a desire to crush, hurt, torture. Their bodies and features and words and work and slinking across the studio displayed their bitchiness, made them bitches, bitch a brutal word, a metronome giving the shoot its rhythm, bitch like a position to fight exclusion and obliteration, bitch for the pins to pin on clothes that were often too ample for skinny bodies, bitch for each tooth of the comb through each strand of hair, and every touch-up that Laurent, official hairdresser and makeup artist for the team, performed, each time a bit more powder on already perfect cheeks, bitch for poses held perfectly for hours, for the lighting and even for everything Charles did and said, since he too was sucked in by the bitchiness of the models despite his best intentions.

  One truth saves us, Rose thought, us other women, a very simple truth, attested to by statistics: models aren’t only beautiful to photographers but to all men, they can choose men in prestigious positions, in the movies, music, sports. One fact that played in her favour was Charles’ lack of sexual attraction to models, which Rose had always only half-believed, since she couldn’t explain it to herself, because Charles’ absence of attraction seemed like a cover, a white lie about his secret desires, dangerous, that his denials kept hidden.

  After the move there was Julie on the roof, the cursed roof on which a few other tenants sometimes tanned, the way white people bereft of colour tend to do.

  It was possible that Rose made a mistake. That on the roof that day she only managed to rouse Julie, and create movement where before there had been only death. When you fear a woman, she told herself over and over again after the fact, it’s best to remain calm. When you fear that a man might leave you, don’t alert the neighbour women.

  In her distress her theories sounded true. Montreal held even more women than usual. At Plan B, it was three women for one man, at the Baraka and the Assommoir, the ratio could be even more tilted. In Mile End and in the restaurants on the Plateau, it was a constant numerical disadvantage for the always too-numerous women who, to make matters worse, seemed younger with each passing day. Going to Montreal’s hot spots demanded a fair measure of abnegation, Rose deplored. During this period she began feeling a new emotion, many-pronged, venomous, corrosive, a spell, an acid reaction handed down by her mother who, one day, couldn’t deal with only having daughters and began rejecting them, starting with Rose, the third daughter, in Rose’s case it had lasted almost a year, the longest duration of rejection among the siblings. This new emotion was a hatred for little girls, the baby girls who kept multiplying around her—at least so it seemed to her—and gathered around their mothers during summer strolls, hand in hand, one next to the other, in horrific combinations. Bunches of little girls in which you could see sisters, in whom the scourge of a lack of men was replicated. But this hatred she felt for the new generation of girls that would perpetuate the tension of their numerical asymmetry, the tension of competition between them, was nothing compared to the pity she had for herself. She was incapable of accommodating herself to reality, and granting herself the possibility of happiness since after all she was here, in this reality and not elsewhere, alive, small, but still young. Instead, she had to let the vise tighten around her, she had to press her own hands on the vise to tighten it further, she had to lend a helping hand to what was crushing her and contemplate, in Charles’ life, her own destruction.

  Julie on the roof was visible all the way from Mount Royal Avenue. Rose recognized her by her short hair, almost white. Her shoulders had become familiar, and tanning was the sort of thing she’d do, especially standing, looking toward the horizon. Rose had first seen her from behind, a fine muscular build weakened by the sun, bent over the wooden rail that kept her from falling. They were both wearing bikinis like true Montreal women, always expecting to be photographed, always ready for the perfect shot. Even from behind, Rose could tell that Julie was deep in thought, she was in dialogue with the world before her, conversing with her words, always sylphlike, words that surprised, opinions that shocked, that Charles listened to, her beliefs elaborated into sentences woven around the thoughts she expressed. Julie was a woman of the mind, even if she worked hard on her muscles. And her muscles, Rose hoped, were a way of thickening the wall that separated her from her emptiness.

  As she came closer, Rose hesitated, maybe because of the sun’s glare, she thought. Could Julie not hear her because of the heat? But it was too late, she was already standing next to her, with her reasons for being there.

  “My name is Rose. I moved in across from you a week ago.”

  Their hands touched like twins, two delicate hands, of the same kiln, Rose thought, despite Julie’s superior height. Julie hadn’t spoken her name, she might have been saving it for a special occasion. From up close, Julie’s eyes took her breath away. Their beauty came from neither makeup nor the hands of a surgeon. Her eyes betrayed her thoughts, a farandole of words, her eyes picked up signs wherever they lingered, they searched you for information, to read you. Julie looked Rose over from head to toe, top to bottom, discovered the traces left by rhinoplasty on her face, noticed the tone of her nail polish and the colour of the shoes she held in her hands, shoes that cost a fortune but that she hadn’t paid for. Julie devoured Rose the way Rose devoured other people, Charles’ women chopped into particles then rebuilt as a single unit in a photo. Rose felt her eyes on her like an understanding of what she was, of a beauty similar to hers but also her being as a whole, in this moment where they searched for sisterhood. This woman had once been capable of love, Rose—who’d heard Julie’s story through Bertrand—said to herself, and her eyes revealed that truth, they sought a way back to love. Time to push forward, she told herself, and turn her away from my door.

  “I live with Charles.”

  A slight change in the shade of Julie’s green eyes, turning away from Rose.

  “I don’t know any Charles.”

  “You talked to him at the gym. You asked him for advice. A photographer. Bertrand from Plan B talked about him too. You told him you were looking for a photographer for a documentary you’re writing.”

  Julie’s eyes floated back into thought: she remembered. Rose had said too much, or maybe not. Julie’s door faced hers, which would have brought Charles to her eventually, or Bertrand would have given her his phone number. In any case she was surrounded.

  The truth was that the three of them crossed each other’s paths in the neighbourhood, everywhere but in the building’s hallway. For weeks Rose had counted Charles’ steps as he moved toward the elevator, her ear against her front door, and each time he left home by himself. His steps never hesitated. A few times she heard his voice on the phone, other times the ringing of the phone itself, an irritating music, an interruption from the outside world in synthetic blues. But she never heard him speak with Julie. Neighbours, she wrongly concluded, instinctively know how to keep the peace. Neighbours don’t really like having neighbours, but they get used to them by getting to know their private noises, the comings and goings of life in a residential building.

  On the roof, nothing had moved between the two women. There was a silence during which Rose attempted to see what Julie was looking at in the distance, a world of activity outside that didn’t interest her but captured Julie’s attention: the racket of the soccer fans celebrating a victory by honking their horns, cars seen from above, filled with fans, a sky preparing for battle, turning grey. Rose couldn’t look at any of that for any length of time, she was too busy trying to find something to say, that might give her reason to celebrate, to save what she thought was lost.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Yes. We don’t see each other very much but we want to live together. He’s an architect.”

  It might have
been true but Rose had her doubts, her sixth sense told her. Because of the architect business, a profession that seemed pulled out of thin air. Because of Bertrand, who never noticed an architect hanging around.

  “Well, I wish you the best of luck,” Rose continued, suddenly feeling the dagger’s thrust, a shallow drag of the knife without warning, like an impulse.

  “Moving in together can be a test for a couple.”

  Again, the silence between them; Julie tired of being there and Rose ill at ease standing next to her, claiming some kind of right over Charles. Then, in defiance of her will to act and construct her happiness, a downpour swept them away, followed by lightning that had destroyed the wooden guardrail next to them, a horror of noise and power fallen from the sky, an obstacle in her path. This was what the storm was telling her: understand that there was nothing to gain by resisting, it wasn’t only the multitude of other women who could take Charles away from her, but the world as a whole, its devastating power that watched her and followed her every step. Her shoes fell from the building. At the same time the number 500 struck her like the symbol of her loss, just before she fell to the ground, injuring her wrist.

  Rose watched Julie run to the staircase that led inside the building, then stayed on the roof a moment, buffeted every which way by rain so dense she couldn’t see a thing, so opaque that the bottom and the top, the behind and the before, lost their place. She wanted to stay on the roof to cleanse herself of herself, and end it all right then, halt what had not yet happened. A power had pushed her out of her project, prevented all sisterhood and brought her back in line.

  At the foot of the broken railing, Rose didn’t even have the dagger anymore to keep her company. From that day on, she knew, her days would be a desertion, from that day on, she would be nothing.

  III

  * * *

  THE TROUBLE WITH BEGINNINGS

  JULIE O’BRIEN WAS at home on Colonial Avenue, lying prone on her leather couch, eyes on the ceiling, thinking of Steve Grondin, her last lover. In four years she’d seen him only six times, six times her soul re-entered her body like a warm mouthful, a swallow of smooth liquid, smooth poison, she was thinking as she lay on her back that there was always something unpleasant about meeting him, a warm unpleasantness emptied her. Six times she suffered from weakness that began in her chest like lava, flowed into her legs that suddenly went feeble, a pair of rags. She would lose her sense of direction when she saw him, sometimes she acted like she was talking on her cell phone with someone. Each time, for days, she kept the image of Steve seen furtively, walking on the other side of the street, or his elbow on the bar, always surrounded by women, never the same ones, with no idea she was there, most likely concentrating on what he shouldn’t be doing, preoccupied with ignoring her, not giving her the slightest sign, indifferent, having seen her but forgetting her immediately. Indifference was a state that tormented her because she couldn’t be indifferent due to her emptiness that left her feeling alone, the shock of seeing him from the outside, the feeling of neither warmth nor chill that was the opposite of who she was, the absence of a reaction that hurt her, and reduced her to nothingness, unworthy even of contempt. Other people’s indifference always forced you to react, she concluded when she thought of him. Faced with nothing, you had to deal with hard emotions—you were forced to feel.

  Meeting him six times over four years was something on the Plateau where everyone was always bumping into everyone else. Lying on her brown couch, she understood why she met him so rarely: Steve had a car. She was surprised she never considered that possibility, since she’d visualized the routes he might have taken so many times. It was clear, Steve had a car because he was rising through the ranks in his profession—and why wouldn’t he be?—driving a Mini Cooper, accumulating success, just as she had hoped for herself. Steve had become successful in a craft she’d never master. He was an editor for movies, reportages, and documentaries, a profession that would forever keep him from public recognition and celebrity. Julie was happy he wasn’t a public figure like some of her exes. Happy she wouldn’t bump into him each time she opened the newspaper, happy he didn’t exist in the mass media to which he contributed. But once the car had been established, the possibility that he had changed professions also became something to consider, maybe now that his job was in the public eye, he could be married, the father of a child—and why not?—a rising father driving a Mini Cooper, a wife by his side.

  The possible promotion of her lovers, their change and progress, troubled Julie so much she used to drink, vodka and white wine, to calm her upheaval. She drank to prevent this compulsion that made her create a life for him through endless scenarios, and to stop the pain of imagining him—even if it was only in a dream—continuing his life without her. Essentially, she drank to check the constant storytelling of what had become his life and, just as she fell into unconsciousness, stop it entirely. She had fallen into unconsciousness more than a hundred times over the past few years, more often than not at home, but sometimes on the ground, in parks, alleyways, or the building’s hallway, and she suspected that the times she lost consciousness had led to the destruction of her soul. She brutalized her soul in her loss of consciousness, she disavowed her own being, so that nothing, not even shame, could bring her back.

  She drank without ceasing for three years, then slowly started to quit, slowly started to forget, but when she got back on her feet she realized she was no longer capable of desire, be it for love or sex. Her pussy had rubbed against so many cocks over those three years, but now it no longer responded to anything, even her most perverse fantasies. That part between her legs that once demanded so much no longer wanted anything, and Julie felt nothing about this new state of being, nothing except perhaps a sort of relief at the death of her pussy that made all other deaths easier to take. The disappearance of her desire was followed by an extraordinary intolerance to movement, sound, to anyone else. She rejected all manifestations of the outside world: the weather, the phone ringing, traffic, road work in the neighbourhood, buildings being built, drivers and pedestrians, even her work as a scriptwriter, for which she no longer felt anything but weariness.

  To bring a project to fruition, she needed far more time than before, and she took long and frequent breaks from lack of energy. Life had a listless heart that kept her from moving forward, advancing in her career, the normal progress. Only physical exercise retrieved her from the minimum state required to stay alive, the smallest effort of daily life, she liked the pain that didn’t disfigure her the way alcohol had, and appreciated the results. She managed to achieve the rare feat among white people: she had a black ass.

  With the years Steve had faded and lost his substance. He was still present, but difficult to grasp, he slipped between her fingers not because he refused her embrace, but because she had no more strength to embrace him. Often she would bring him to the forefront of memory but never for extended periods of time, and with no great emotion. Lying on her couch she tried to imagine his car but immediately lost interest, Mini Cooper or not. No sooner had he taken shape than she drew away, into the distance of four years of absence, four years without a word exchanged, without a sign.

  Then Charles Nadeau came and replaced him in her thoughts as she examined the grey cement ceiling of her apartment. For the past month Charles had made his way into her, like the beginning of a love story. A man lived in her, him and his cock would soon push themselves inside her and mould her to their shape.

  She and Charles had crossed paths in front of the building a few days before, they agreed to have a drink and chat about the documentary project Charles knew about. She wanted to talk to him about her approach that was far from journalistic, her intimate way of seeing the subjects she treated.

  The crowd was thin on the Plan B patio, the heat bearable, the sun dry, high in the sky. Children played behind the cedar hedge, their presence like a reminder to the customers not to go too far, like so many little judges reminding Julie
of her past degeneration, when more than once she ended up on her back in the same playground when she left to go home after drinking too much, only to be forced out of her coma by the police, called by the neighbours.

  She was grateful to the world for not oppressing her at this particular moment. She had to be in her best state of mind, alert and attentive to Charles. She was grateful too that the world let her present an affable face that gave her a chance of pleasing a man who liked her. She was feeling good even if alcohol threw its shadow over her, with its threat of a breakdown. She had to start somewhere; a tirade broke the ice.

  “I don’t study themes, but people,” she began. Unconsciously, one of her hands grasped the bicep she was impudently flexing, a demonstration.

  “Themes emanate from people. They shouldn’t be forced to exist. They should come from people and not be the starting point. And I never know when I begin a project what I want to talk about. Which means that if I’m talking about the fashion world I might drift toward another topic with no apparent connection. The results are always very baroque.”