Gloria puts on the CD very low and crouches between the speakers. She tries to concentrate on the music, wiping everything else out. Filling her head with sound.
How many times, in how many different situations, has she retreated into herself just like now? She has been listening to Janis Joplin since she was a kid. Accompanied by her, as if by a big sister.
In the early 1980s a girl who worked in the market, older than Gloria, orange hair, shabby leather jacket, class act, told her that Janis Joplin was the leader of all lost girls. She’d advised Gloria to make her a personal patron saint, whenever she was unhappy in love, or when she was looking for dope and couldn’t find it, or when she had nowhere to sleep and was sick of being in the street, or if she wanted a job. In fact, on any occasion, she should make a little altar to Janis, the urban goddess, light candles to her and make her offerings such as a nice big spliff, a can of Kronenbourg, a pretty garter belt, whatever you like, depending on your mood.
Gloria had met this girl at a party after a concert by the Stranglers and KaS Product at the Pulsation Jazz Festival. She’d taken two packets of Mercalm, antiseasickness pills that were supposed to give you a high, but had just sent her off to sleep, sitting down, with her head on the table. When she came out of it she chatted with the people still at the party. She had never known whether the older girl was nuts or just kidding. She never met her again to find out. But at any rate, she liked the idea, and often in her life she had built little altars so that good ole Janis, patron saint of wild girls who’ve gone over the top, would come to her aid. She had bought a secondhand Joplin vinyl LP, chosen because of the sleeve by Crumb, and had left it lying about in full view so that she looked like a rock buff. And by pretending, Gloria ended up being genuinely touched and then supported by those tracks.
Day breaks and Véronique’s alarm goes off. Gloria curls up on the sofa pretending to be asleep, she aches all over as if she’d spent the night fighting. When the apartment’s empty again, she gets up—black coffee, cold shower—then lies down in front of the TV, watching kids’ shows. She can’t concentrate on anything. The emptiness is like a white flash, within reach, imminent.
For the first time in two decades she feels like talking to Eric. She has hated him with such intensity until now that it has never occurred to her. He’d written, apart from the famous letter about returning to the straight and narrow, perhaps three times in twenty years. Flattering her ego perhaps, vaguely, but disgusting in fact. Stupid twat, I don’t want anything to do with you. You think just because you’re famous, I’m going to care about what’s been happening to you? She had told herself he was writing to her because he liked being the kind of a guy “who doesn’t deny his past.” Or out of guilt. Or because he simply got off on it. Well nothing doing, buster. Every time she got one of these letters it had surprised her, only slightly interested her, and she’d forgotten about it within ten minutes. It’s over, the past, nothing to do with me, finito. He was a useless prick and she’d been taken for a ride, end of story. She wasn’t going to spend all day thinking about it.
That afternoon, she trails along to the Royal. Jérémy greets her with a shout.
“Hey, you’re a star! Everyone was expecting you last night.”
Michel is already sitting there. With his pretty bitch of a girlfriend. Gloria reflects that it’s odd to be so in love and already in the bar by two o’clock. Then she deduces from it that their pretense of being a happy couple is coming apart. She’s willing to take a bet: in a couple of weeks that girl will be gone.
Vanessa has always looked at Gloria with that slightly amazed contempt of girls who divide the world into two categories: those who make an effort and the others. Boxing in the second category, Gloria has never actually been worried by this lack of sympathy. But today the deal’s completely changed.
“Where the heck were you last night?”
She hasn’t even had time to sit down, kiss people, take off her coat. The other girl, beside herself with excitement, is talking to her as if they are old friends.
“You missed it all! Eric was so disappointed. We had a fab evening, such a pity you weren’t there!”
Sneaking a glance at Michel, taking a deep breath, and looking puzzled, Gloria rubs hard at her eyes with the flat of her hand, hoping that after this reality will seem plausible. But Vanessa slides along the seat toward her, coming on full strength and with a big smile.
“I didn’t know you knew Eric Muyr! Wow, that’s fantastic! Michel had never told me.”
Her voice is embarrassingly eager. Gloria is paralyzed with shame for Michel, who’s acting like he’s not taking much notice, but his face is livid and fixed in an awkward smile. She forces herself to reply with a pretense of friendliness.
“Oh, you know, when I used to know him he was just a snotty teenager—it was in the olden days . . . like people say, that doesn’t make us feel any younger.”
She’s secretly praying Vanessa will gather she doesn’t want to talk to her. Certainly not in this girly, best-friends way.
She’s shocked, actually. For one thing, that anyone can be so half-witted as to be impressed by someone on TV, and for another that Vanessa has completely changed her manner toward her so shamelessly. She could at least have had the hypocrisy to approach her more discreetly, make a little attempt at being friendly first . . . Well, Gloria certainly prefers people who are manipulative to those who make fools of themselves. She scrutinizes Michel’s expression for anything that confirms her intuition: he’s going to detach himself, this girl is too much, he’s going to send her back to her mother.
Instead of that, however, Vanessa, now acting like her best friend, leans over and announces proudly, “Guess what! Michel and I are going to move away. I wanted to be the first to tell you. We’re going to live in Lyon! You’ll come and see us, won’t you?”
Gloria freezes her face, so as to show nothing at all of what she feels, and turns toward Michel, who explains, more quietly, “She’s got family there. She can get a job in journalism. Me too.”
“You too? What? The Lyon press? They have papers there? They have restaurants, not newspapers, wake up!”
“Yeah, they do have newspapers, I’ll be able to write stuff . . . It’ll be interesting. A change of scene, a change of life, you’ll see.”
Gloria swallows, her smile is almost pained.
“Well, that’s fantastic, congratulations! And good luck!”
Beside herself with excitement, Vanessa jumps up. “Let’s celebrate! Champagne anyone?”
Michel raises his eyebrows in surprise. Gloria shakes her head. “I prefer beer, if it’s all the same to you.”
Taking advantage while the bimbo goes to bother Jérémy at the bar, Michel tries to sugar the pill.
“I’m in love. I’ve never done this, gone off with a girl to settle somewhere. I want to try things I’ve never done.”
“You couldn’t just take up surfing? Like everyone else?”
“Do you want to take over my apartment?”
“Ah! First good news of the day.”
“I don’t want to move my stuff right away, maybe in three months. Just so’s to not be bothered, not have to rush and so on. If you want to stay there while I’m away that could be fixed. Then if you wanted to take it over, you know, for good.”
“That would really suit me. I’ve got no income, no references, I don’t have any of the things you need to rent . . .”
“It’s okay, you have all the qualifications!”
“Well, if I could sublet for a bit, it would help me out. I’m gonna end up homeless, if this goes on, so . . .”
But actually, it doesn’t really suit her, being all alone again.
Vanessa comes back to the table with two beers. Her phone is making a ghastly noise, supposed to be this disco music but in fact it’s something eardrum piercing. Vanessa answers and moves away because the signal inside the bar isn’t too good, so she goes out onto the street, walking up and down
in the cold, chatting.
Michel takes a piece of paper from his jacket pocket while she’s outside.
“Eric asked me to give you his number. I’m giving it to you while Vanessa isn’t here, otherwise she’d copy it and start bothering him . . . She’s a bit . . .”
“. . . of a groupie.”
“Well, yeah, a bit, she is . . .”
He scratches his neck thoughtfully.
“You were right not to come here last night, you’d have been really pissed off, watching everyone hanging around him. It was freaky, you know, really freaky.”
“It was, like, ‘We’re in the backwoods here.’”
“Yeah, pretty shameless. Even people you and I like, they were hanging around him, trying to talk to him, get close, stare at him. Midnight here, you should have seen the place, CRAWLING! People phoned each other to tell them about it. I felt a bit bad for him.”
“He must be used to it.”
“Not sure you could get used to that. Kind of humiliating. I think he tries not to get caught in that kind of situation. We had a word or two. I didn’t know him, in fact, apart from . . .”
“Ah well, what goes around comes around, that’s how we met, you and me, after all.”
“And since then, we’ve stuck together, haven’t we?”
“Yeah, except now you’re going seven hundred kilometers away, so of course that won’t change our relations . . .”
He’s ill at ease, as unhappy as she is. She unfolds the paper with the phone number he’s given her.
“Hey, I could always call him and tell him I’m broke, he’s absolutely loaded.”
“He’s in Nancy till tonight, I think. Call him if you like. He seemed genuinely keen to see you. I didn’t imagine him the way he is.”
“He doesn’t look as good as on TV, don’t you think?”
“Not physically, but I was thinking he’d be a total bastard, guess I was prejudiced.”
“Prejudices, prejudices—usually justified.”
She puts the number in her pocket, telling herself that she doesn’t have a phone anymore anyway. Then she drinks off her beer, lifting her elbow high, without a word and without looking at him, and waits for Michel to do the same, picks up his glass, and goes to the counter. Jérémy is rinsing glasses, he looks tired from all his efforts the night before. He shakes his head.
“Oh, he was really disappointed you didn’t turn up. You didn’t say, honestly, he was really . . .”
“Look, I can’t be bothered with him, okay? You’re not going to be on at me for months just because when I was fifteen I used to know this asshole who’s on TV.”
That was telling him. She’s fed up with bad news, fed up that everyone forgets she’s just broken up with her man. In short, she is mega pissed off with everything.
Gloria spends the afternoon sitting at the same table. Vanessa keeps buying her drinks, her glass is empty one minute, refilled the next. She really wants to be best friends. And well, that’s not a bad way to try. Then the loving couple leaves the bar. Gloria doesn’t feel like going to Véronique’s place, no desire to chat. She wonders what to do, feels terrible, sinister, thinks about hanging herself or jumping off a bridge, when Salim turns up, a tall black guy, always with a smile, stereotypical Caribbean. Good-looking, elegant, reliably willing to lend a hand. Suddenly she changes her mind and asks to borrow his phone.
“I’ve lost mine, do you mind, can I use yours?”
He slaps his thighs with laughter.
“Can’t fool me! You didn’t lose it, I saw Lucas last night, he told me all about it.”
“Oh, he couldn’t keep his big mouth shut, could he?”
“He was in despair. Know what, Gloria? You’re a wild woman, you’re impossible to tame. What you want is a real man, someone who can properly keep you in order.”
And he taps his chest, boastingly.
Gloria smiles.
“Oh right, sure, if I was with someone like you, who screws anything that moves, I’d calm down.”
“Why do you say that? What do you mean? Okay, you can borrow my phone. Just don’t throw it at the wall, okay?”
She calls Eric. In fact, she’d prefer it if she got through to his voice mail and could say, “Too bad,” but he must be one of those people who think they have to be available all the time for any call.
He sounds happy, natural, and surprised in a nice way, he acts as if they were seeing each other every day.
“What about tonight, shall we dine together?”
Gloria cooks, goes home to eat, sometimes has a meal in a restaurant, but she doesn’t usually “dine.” And the word makes her laugh, she feels suddenly as if she’s in a French film.
“Okay, let’s dine. So, where do people dine?”
“I’ll meet you in Place Stanislas, in the Foy? Eight o’clock.”
She agrees to everything and realizes as she’s talking that she’s more drunk than she thought. And more impressed, which is really annoying.
After finishing the call, she drinks several black coffees—which are on the house the minute she says, “I’m dining with Eric tonight, so I’d better be in good shape.”
Jérémy bustles around her, “Try and come back here afterward, it’s great business for the bar if a celeb comes in to have a drink. Do try to come over . . .”
She starts to wonder whether she really wants to do this or to chicken out. She goes back to Véro’s place. As the alcohol loses its potency, the adolescent anguish of going on a date starts to kick in. Gloria isn’t someone who normally has to overcome such anguish. She’s been in infuriating situations, painful ones. Her life has few good points, except that she’s used to it. She sees the same people all the time in more or less the same places. She knows them all by heart. She’s rarely intimidated by a new situation. And not sure she likes it.
“WHAT ARE YOU thinking about?”
“That it’s been twenty years. And I didn’t imagine it this way.”
“How did you imagine it?”
“That I’d be punching you in the face, of course. I dreamed too often of breaking every bone in your body by throwing rocks, oh, many times, many times. Then after a bit, I stopped thinking about it anymore.”
He’s drinking martinis, she thinks that’s snobbish.
Everyone in the place is looking at him. He doesn’t seem to notice. Gloria is shocked every time someone comes up to their table, interrupts them in midsentence, to say how much they admire him, ask for an autograph, or ask him why the time of the show’s been changed. He replies, politely but distantly, he has a technique to get it over quickly.
She comments: “So now you belong to everybody.”
“It’s the magic world of TV. I’m not complaining. But still, if you don’t mind, I’ve booked us to have dinner at the restaurant in my hotel. It’s very fancy, I’m warning you. But we’d be in peace there for two seconds.”
“Oh, me, you know, long as they have fries.”
He hasn’t changed that much physically. Tall, thin, he’s kept that litheness of a young man, a supple, energetic animal. His hands are very white, well cared for, but enormous. They contradict the rest of his body, they seem as if inhabited by some surprising, worrying strength. He’s acquired great authority, a calm authority that might be taken for charisma or virility, but it’s pretty attractive whatever it is.
He seems sincerely moved. She’s watching for the catch, the trick, the problem, what does this asshole want with her and how long is he going to go on looking at her with those silly big eyes? But she has a tendency to lower her guard, thinking he’s just glad to see her, still finds her amusing, whatever she does. In that respect he hasn’t changed perhaps. She only has to turn her head or open her mouth for him to burst out laughing, he’s entertained and under her spell. That is still quite a pleasant feeling. But a bit surreal now.
He takes advantage of a couple of minutes when nobody has come to their table to talk about TV to lean toward her.
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br /> “And how are you? Well? How’s your life, that sort of stuff?”
“Am I happy? No. I’m on benefits. Or when I have a job, it’s minimum wage. It kind of makes life less pleasant, I can tell you. I’ve no regrets, if I could do it over again, I’d do the same, but no, I’m not happy. I’d like to have a car, I’d like to be able to go away on holiday, I’d like to buy a CD Walkman, and not have to line up at the post office on the first of the month, just to have enough to pay my phone bill.”
“Okay, I see, in material terms, things aren’t so good, but what about the rest?”
“You don’t get it, my friend. I’m on benefits. That affects all the rest. I’m in debt up to here, there isn’t any ‘rest.’ I’m dead broke, end of story.”
She wants him to feel guilty, to feel bad, as if he were indirectly responsible. On the other hand, she has no intention of telling him about the fiasco of her love life.
She turns the question back to him.
“And you? You’re happy, I guess?”
“No. And please don’t give me a lot of grief because I’m depressed although I’m loaded. That’s just the way it is. I’m not in a good place. For some years now. And it doesn’t get any better.”
“Oh I see, I was surprised you wanted to see me so much—but it’s because you’re depressed.”
“I wouldn’t have put it quite that way. You think you’re an expert at cheering people up?”
In his eyes, there’s that same amused, playful light that she had completely forgotten. And which still touches her. She feels her throat constrict. A mother—the embodiment of trailer trash, a big blond, with masses of makeup, perching on high-soled trainers that Loana was wearing four years ago—comes into the bar with her two kids who are already heading for obese. The kids have lovely faces, big clear eyes, delightful smiles. The mother wants an autograph. Gloria thinks about making this the moment to make her getaway. She’s beginning to feel moved, touched. She doesn’t want to feel this way. It would be inappropriate. And ridiculous.
Bye Bye Blondie Page 13