Bye Bye Blondie

by Virginie Despentes

  Michel confirmed this with a knowing look. “Even in the middle of nowhere, even in a plane, even in a hospital, if you want to, you can find the stuff, the craving makes you like superman. She’s telling you the truth. If the kids in that place can’t get ahold of anything, they must be locked down with triple locks.”

  Gloria scratched her throat, not wanting to give in yet to the obvious. And it was taking her some time. “Oh, surely they must be able to get out?”

  The Goth concluded: “Sorry, nope. His family can go and see him in the spring, not before. But he won’t get out of there till he’s finished the baccalauréat exams, so—minimum two years, if I understand right.”

  “So, they did it, he knew they would, they’ve clapped him in jail . . .”

  “You know, what I picked up about Amandine’s family, you should be careful not to tangle with them, they’re one of the richest families in the region. You don’t get as well off as that by letting your kids do what they want. They’d rather one of their kids die than fritter away their fortune. Otherwise it’d be a free-for-all, and you have no idea how much there is at stake.”

  Michel nodded again in agreement.

  “Yeah, great big inheritance, too much status to lose, they bring their kids up to obey. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to pass on their power from father to son for centuries and centuries, and just think what a disaster that would be . . .”

  Gloria wanted to go on believing there was some way of reaching him, once she had the address. Evidence had never intimidated her. She was unwilling to understand.

  THE NEXT FEW days she spent riding buses. She looked out of the windows at the city, at the people who got on, she went to sleep or jumped out to have a drink, steal a bottle of beer, or look at sweaters in some shop window. She would walk along for a few meters, catch the first bus that came along, and stay on it to the terminus, staring down the man opposite, then get off, change buses, and so on. She was in suspended animation. Those first days, she rejected the idea that he wouldn’t find a way out. Eric would be knocking at her window one night or one morning. His parents would have given up, or he’d have been able to escape. She was waiting, full of calm energy. Completely stunned, in reality.

  One day, at about five in the afternoon, Gloria was struck by the obvious. She had to write to him, if only to tell him how well she was doing, that she wasn’t suffering. That she’d wait for him.

  So she took a bus, this time with a destination: Eric’s parents’ house.

  She pushed open the street door, and the feel of the stairwell brought a lump to her throat. A kaleidoscope of impressions, voices, whispers, memories jostling in her head as she walked up the stairs to their landing, surprised by the clarity as well as the anarchic confusion of the moments they had spent together. “Both together,” these words were waltzing in her heart, filling her with fervor. Nothing would separate them. Certainly not a few years.

  His mother answered the door: severely dressed, gray suit, looking a bit like the former justice minister Simone Veil, but less distinguished. There were strands of gray in her hair, as if in accusation. Illness had aged her, she’d lost weight. Gloria had prepared her little speech. Calmly, she wanted to persuade Eric’s mother to pass on a letter, just a note if necessary. If she wouldn’t give her the address, could she at least let her communicate briefly with her exiled son? But the mother slammed the door in her face as soon as she recognized her. Calmer still, Gloria leaned on the bell. She could feel the blood hammering in her temples, with a heavy regular pulse. Pressure built up inside her. Then the father came out, furious. Gloria burst into tears, begged him to listen to her, but he didn’t want to know, he was very sure of his position: she was not to come near them again or he’d call the police. Then, without premeditation, finding it inevitable “because I had to do something,” she collapsed onto the big thick doormat on the landing, screaming and writhing like in a scene from The Exorcist. She heard the neighbors on the other floors opening their doors to see what was going on, asking each other. She heard the nearest ones, across the landing, move up to peer out through their peepholes. She found herself pathetic, yet at the same time doing exactly the right thing, this was really what she wanted to do, to cry out all the tears in her body, banging her head against a closed door. A perverse voice inside her was saying, Let them call the police, the bastards, at least I’ll have spoiled their evening. Insidiously, the rage inside her had reached its boiling point. From tears she moved on to insults, at first quietly, then screaming out loud: “So you’ve locked your son away, but that wasn’t enough, oh no! Not for you, you rich slobs! Just to send him a letter, I’ve got to make a scene, cry my eyes out. But he doesn’t belong to you, do you hear me? You’re the wasters round here! Shitty bourgeois assholes!” Getting back to her feet, she threw her head back, drawing in as much breath as she could so that everyone would hear her invective. She imagined that this kind of family would be petrified of scandal, so she did her best to provide one. Then it occurred to her that this would really make Eric laugh, it was exactly the kind of tantrum he adored, and Gloria choked, torn between pain and rage. She had no idea what to do next, but she didn’t want to leave for home, not yet, she hadn’t gone far enough. She wanted the police to be called, she wanted everything to go through to the bitter end. She had begun to aim a series of kicks at the front door, getting more and more violent, hurling herself against it as hard as she could, taking longer runs at it and howling like a banshee. Now all the neighbors were glued to their peepholes, but nobody dared venture out, and she was running up and down, out of breath on the confined landing, aiming for full impact against the door, her whole body landing with great thuds. She flung herself at it in a frenzy and—quite unexpectedly—the door gave way before the police got there. She lost her balance and sprawled, amazed, on the floor of their entrance hall. Delicious smells of cooking, comfort, the ruins of a nice evening. She stood up, her left shoulder was indescribably painful, but for the moment that was a side issue. “Where are you, you bastards! I’m glad I’ve got in here, now I’m going to bust your balls!” The father tried to grab hold of her, she had the reflex of pulling a coat stand over onto him, and then the presence of mind to kick in the sitting-room door, a table, and a window, with the help of a minibar. Amandine, pale in the face, tried to calm her down, but Gloria had only to look her in the eye to send her reeling back. “As for you, you bitch, you’ve been in league with them! When your brother gets out, and he’ll never ever be the same after this, think about what I’m telling you now. You bitch, you let them do this to him. You hear me? You’ll remember this, like it or not, you’ll remember what I’m saying.” She was so convinced of what she was shouting that she must have been convincing in turn, since his sister staggered backward, her eyes full of tears. It was as if she’d cast a spell on her, and it brought immediate relief to be able to return some of the pain these people had inflicted on her. But it didn’t last. Because five minutes later she was just feeling pathetic. At which point, Gloria, at something of a loss, since no one was trying to stop her, attacked what was left of the sitting-room door.

  When the cops finally got there, appearances were, naturally, completely against her, and there was plenty of good cause for the householders to lodge a complaint.

  Gloria allowed herself to be handcuffed without a word, exhausted after all this wildness. But on the stairs, thinking that the bastards hadn’t yet had all they deserved, she started yelling again at the top of her lungs, “All I wanted was to get to write him a letter, you filthy fascists, damn you to hell for what you’ve done to me, let me write to him, you have no right, hear me, no right at all to keep us apart!”

  At the police station, she took out her shoelaces, emptied her pockets, and showed them she wasn’t wearing a belt. She was quite calm. She had no voice left to make her statement, her hands were aching, she’d cut her forearm quite deeply, her neck ached and her shoulder was dislocated. She was calm and sad. She k
ept repeating, “All I wanted to do was write to him, just write him a note,” vaguely, under her breath, partly because it was true, partly to make an impression on the police, so that they wouldn’t be too hard on her. And indeed it seemed to work, they were more understanding with her than usual.

  She had been arrested under her real name, and since she was under eighteen, they’d had to call her father and wait for him to come and get her. She collected her things and got into the car without a word. On the way, her father said resignedly, “If you think that’s the way to get them to let you see him . . . ” It pierced her to the heart again, you would think she’d never get tired of this. She opened the car door and flung herself out onto the road. This time, she sprained a shoulder and an ankle, and they had to take her to the hospital. She could sense her father had had enough, but that he was still determined to get her cared for and to say nothing. Later, she was to produce the same result with other men, with her crazy way of experiencing pain, always turning it into a big performance, something that would often have her ending up in the emergency ward.

  One of the doctors thought to give her a powerful sedative and at last she went to sleep. She didn’t want to be there at all, she didn’t want to know anymore.

  Within the next two weeks, Eric’s parents moved away. She heard later that they’d gone to Paris. But no one was able to give her their address.

  She was afraid of meeting Michel again in a bar, afraid that he would have found out what happened, and be angry with her, but instead, he smiled when they bumped into each other, stifled a broader grin and commented: “So, when you’re not pleased, you certainly let the whole world know, eh?” as if it were a compliment, and he bought her a drink. She was still just as surprised that he treated her as a friend. She could listen to him talk for afternoons on end. He told her anecdotes, he commented on the news, he read the papers, he had enthusiasms, made jokes, got angry. He fascinated her, he was an education.

  They’d meet every afternoon at the Petit Théâtre, a bar on the edge of the old town. He’d read his newspaper, she’d draw in a little sketchbook.

  She felt torn to pieces, it hurt so much to be herself that she could feel no change in the pain. Michel told her, “You’re like a nineteenth-century heroine, it’s as if you’re going to die of a broken heart,” and indeed her face changed, showed marks of grief, the circles around her eyes deepened.

  Eric’s parents brought charges. Her own parents tried to get her to take an interest in the case that was coming up, because it was important, but it was wasted effort. She was so listless that she allowed her mother to advise her how to dress for the occasion. Then she listened to the lawyer appointed by the court, some arrogant young idiot. She waited, sitting between her parents in the big modern building, one with that horrible cold architecture, where they told you the verdict. They came to tell her she was sentenced to pay a fine along with an injunction against ever going near Eric’s parents’ home again. She couldn’t care less, they didn’t live there now anyway.

  A fortnight after this outburst she went back to school. One morning when she was cutting class and sitting at home listening to Bérurier Noir’s Concerto Pour Détraqués full blast, she saw the postman arrive and almost automatically went to see if there were anything for her. There was. A letter with a Swiss postmark. And immediately she realized that she shouldn’t rush to open it, because it wasn’t the letter she was hoping for. She put it on the kitchen table, in their tiny kitchen with its blue walls, and the tablecloth with its floral pattern.

  She took a few deep breaths, hesitating to open it, then poured a shot into a mustard glass and drank half of it off, holding her breath. She hated the taste of whiskey. She was afraid to open the envelope.

  IT WAS TIME, he said, to “pull himself together,” to “come out of it,” to “face reality.” He’d thought hard, he didn’t want to ruin his life, he wanted to study. He knew she would understand, and that since his mother was ill, “He couldn’t do this to her.” He insisted that it had been hard making this decision, but they couldn’t go on seeing each other. It had been painful for him too, especially the first days—again, she’d understand, wouldn’t she?

  Tiny handwriting, compressed and suddenly cramped, too regular, observing the margins, too correct, too mean, too infuriating. And he hoped she’d understand!

  She understood fucking nothing. Above all, how he could have written such a cold letter, so inappropriate, so unexpected? What was she supposed to understand? She felt ashamed, for him as much as for her, as she read the letter. She felt wicked and stupid, an idiot in hell. To have waited so trustingly. To have felt so good with him. To have believed even for a second, to have imagined it could be happening to her, true love—beautiful, luminous, and without complications. “You poor fool,” she kept telling herself, “that’ll teach you about life, you stupid fucking idiot.” She hated herself, in waves of anger, then it turned against him, “Mama’s boy, go lick your mama’s ass, do whatever she says, stupid, weak fucking coward!” Her head whirled, she was betrayed, humiliated, abandoned, furious, mad with rage . . . and deeply unhappy.

  When had he started lying? Had he always known he’d go back home when they were together that summer? Had he been bored secretly, had he regretted running away, had he wanted to go home? Had she been so naive she hadn’t realized it at the time? Now she didn’t miss him at all—or not the same way. In the time it took her to read that letter, she had armed herself head to foot with scorn. Something inside her had retracted, closed in on itself, and would never be exposed ever again.

  These things weren’t meant for her: happiness, complicity, a soul mate, love.

  “His dear mama, his schoolbooks, being reasonable, not doing anything out of turn . . . stupid, mediocre, mean-spirited fucking little idiot.” She’d have liked to have him in front of her for two minutes. With time to tell him a thing or two. She beat her brains to the bone, she dug deep inside herself for the wounding things she’d say when she saw him again. And for several days she rehearsed in silence the moment when they next bumped into each other.

  Next day, at the counter of a café, she’d met Roger again and called to him from the other end of the bar: “You told me not to trust him! Well, know what? You were abso-fucking-lutely right.” She’d had too much to drink. Roger listened patiently to her story and was kind and sympathetic, agreeing with her how appalling it was. He bought her a few beers. Gloria, being well brought up, bought him a few as well. She couldn’t get over his being so thoughtful and concerned. That was the good aspect of that terrible time: people were warmer and more attentive than she had expected. He ran a few theories past her.

  “It’s this government’s fault, the socialists, bunch of hypocrites, pretending we’re all in it together, rich and poor, brown and white, Jews and Protestants, well forget it. In the end it’s just everyone for himself and it never works, their big society. Socialist politicians just want to be able to fuck black girls with a good conscience, believe me . . .”

  Then the evening got wilder and more confusing. Roger started a fight, but Gloria couldn’t work out why he was grasping the head of this young fair-haired guy under his arm and bashing him. They’d had to run away because the bartender was furious. Perhaps the blond boy worked there, she wasn’t sure. Anyway, a bit later she and Roger were standing on the roof of a car, arm in arm, concentrating hard on getting the words of a song by Renaud right: “Et la blonde du sixième / Le hash elle aime” (“The blond on the sixth floor / Hash is what she’s for”). Soon afterward, as far as she could remember, they were in a bedroom, in a hostel for young workers and they were fucking. She found out that night that he talked nonstop during the act. She wasn’t used to that, it made her lose concentration. It was quite funny.

  In the morning, big hangover, dry mouth, bruised all over. She left before he woke up, not finding him such fun the next day.

  Outside, the light was too bright, it hurt her eyes. She stopped to
drink a black coffee. There was a lump in her throat. She’d never sleep with Eric again. Never again curl up alongside someone believing so hard that they loved each other to distraction. It wasn’t even a decision. She just knew, and unlike most of the ideas you get when you’re a teenager, it was true. It hurt so badly that she couldn’t even cry.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER Véronique is in bed, Gloria spends a good fifteen minutes trying to unfold the sofa bed, without success. She gives up and decides not to bother. “For all the sleep I’d get anyway,” she tells herself as she paces around the bookshelves, hands in her pockets, head to one side, trying to read the titles. Then she tries the medicine cabinet, finds nothing but a little cough syrup containing codeine, and finishes off the bottle. Sometimes it helps her sleep. Inside her head there is a confusion of things, she’s too tired to put any order to the thoughts, memories, and pangs of anguish going on there. She feels as though she’s riding an old-fashioned Mobylette the wrong way up a motorway, trying to avoid trucks and cars coming at her, thirty-five tonners speeding toward her, like in a Mario Kart game, rolling her over, knocking her out, then sending her flying into the wilderness. In this chaos, it’s hard to distinguish what really hurts, the old episodes from her adolescence or thinking about her parents, both dead now, and vanished with them is all that time of her life. She’s inexorably cut off from it. She knows that Eric is an orphan too, she read it somewhere. Does he get sad every Christmas like she does? She wants to call Lucas, she hasn’t lost the reflex yet of counting on him when she’s had too much to take. Just yesterday, he was still her partner, her other half. Gloria would like to extinguish all these thoughts, lie down, drowse off, and be able to leave herself behind.

  Poking around among Véronique’s things she finds a CD compilation of Janis Joplin. Joplin, astride a huge motorbike, is laughing as she looks straight at the camera.