She’s full of a new exaltation—and it’s certainly paradoxical. She doesn’t get angry. She’s ready to leave. Let it go. She feels old. She wants to go back to her local bar, find her friends. It’s over, this adventure, the scandal, the fuss she made, and all this self-harming, just because she was cheated. She feels older, wiser, ready to set off.
THE DOORBELL WAKES him. He’d dropped off to sleep on the couch, a dead sleep. The window’s wide open, outside it’s pouring rain. The Taxi Girl vinyl he’d put on before going to sleep is crackling on the song he kept playing over and over when he was a kid: “Et son regard si triste / une croix tracée dans la chair sur son front” (“And her eyes are so sad / A cross scratched in the flesh of her brow”). It’s three thirty-three, he knows it’s got to be her. She’s soaked through, standing at the door.
“I didn’t mean to come back. But I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Come in.”
He lets her go past, for once she’s not attacking him.
“I don’t want to ruin your life. I just didn’t have anywhere to sleep.”
“You saved my life, guess I can put you up . . .”
“Cool, I see you’ve got your sense of humor back. I’ll take off tomorrow.”
She’d like it if he objected, say he wants her to stay. But he just goes over to the fridge, helps himself to orange juice, and offers her some. They sit down in the kitchen, he switches on the radio, classical music.
“See the poster down there?”
“I’ve come all the way here from Gambetta on foot. I’ve seen every poster in Paris. Honestly, it’s like in a sitcom. If God really wanted to stick it to me, he would have done exactly that. Mind if I get a dry towel for my hair?”
“Go ahead, this is your home.”
“Don’t overdo it, please.”
She comes back from the bathroom, rubbing her hair energetically.
“But it’s so weird. When I do something stupid, I pay a price a thousand times higher than anyone else, don’t I? They could have not managed to make the film, they could have not done a big promotion for when it came out, or they could have advertised it when I wasn’t around. But no, it’s just the night when I walk all the way across Paris. And, you might say, I’ve never walked that far before in my life.”
“Well . . . and you didn’t smash all the glass fronts of the posters to tear them down?”
“Not even. Surprised myself.”
“You seem quite calm.”
“I walked a lot. And now I’ve stopped making such a fuss, now that it’s totally fucked-up, because I went over the top.”
By turns sad and exalted, relieved and torn to shreds, they are looking at each other in silence, hesitating between effusion and distance, between speaking and remaining silent. They’re circling each other, without knowing quite what to do. She gets up and makes them tea, fetches the milk from the fridge. Gestures full of habit, her body knows where things are kept, where everything is. Eric watches her move around, his arms folded. Since she’s come back, they haven’t touched each other.
She avoids his eyes, then declares: “Don’t look like that. As if you were responsible for something. Nobody can live with me. Even me. I don’t find it easy to live with myself. But I can’t leave myself. If I could, I’d run a mile.”
“I’m not looking any particular way. I’m just tired. It’s been a long day. And don’t be so pretentious, I’m going to bed.”
He gets up, leaving her alone in the kitchen.
Out loud, to nobody, she announces: “I’m going to have a shower.”
Then scratches her head and mutters: “Why did you call me pretentious?”
Under the hot water she closes her eyes and wants to cry, but she must have done too much of it lately, her eyes sting and nothing much comes. She admits to herself finally, what her body already knows: she’s at home here, she’s in the right place, with him. What she doesn’t know, on the other hand, is how the hell they are ever going to be able to make it work.
The bedroom’s in half darkness. The moon’s shining onto the sheets. He’s already asleep on his side of the bed. Gloria lies down quietly beside him and goes to sleep quickly, her head pressed into his back.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
VIRGINIE DESPENTES is an award-winning author and filmmaker, as well as a noted French feminist and cultural critic. She is the author of many books, including King Kong Theory and Apocalypse Baby (2016 ALA Stonewall Honor Award; 2010 Prix Renaudot). She also codirected the screen adaptations of her controversial novels Baise-moi and Bye Bye Blondie.
SIN REYNOLDS has translated many books on French history, including most of the works of Fernand Braudel. Recent translations include fiction by Antonin Varenne and French crime novelist Fred Vargas. She is professor emerita of French at the University of Stirling, Scotland.
ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS
King Kong Theory
Virginie Despentes
With humor, rage, and confessional detail, Virginie Despentes—in her own words “more King Kong than Kate Moss”—delivers a highly charged account of women’s lives today. She explores common attitudes about sex and gender, and shows how modern beauty myths are ripe for rebelling against. Using her own experiences of rape, prostitution, and working in the porn industry as a jumping-off point, she creates a new space for all those who can’t or won’t obey the rules.
VIRGINIE DESPENTES is an award-winning author and filmmaker, as well as a noted French feminist and cultural critic. She is the author of many books, including Bye Bye Blondie and Apocalypse Baby (2016 ALA Stonewall Honor Award; 2010 Prix Renaudot). She also codirected the screen adaptations of her controversial novels Baise-moi and Bye Bye Blondie.
Apocalypse Baby
Virginie Despentes
France’s most notorious feminist writer gives us Apocalypse Baby, a raucous road trip in which two mismatched private investigators—the Hyena, a mysterious and ruthless vigilante, and Lucie, an apathetic and resentful slacker—cruise the streets of Paris and Barcelona in search of a missing girl. The duo questions a cast of unsavory characters, exposing lust, violence, greed, and disillusionment, and the corruption of contemporary youth culture. As their desperate search unfolds, we careen toward a conclusion no one could have anticipated.
VIRGINIE DESPENTES is an award-winning author and filmmaker, as well as a noted French feminist and cultural critic. She is the author of many books, including Bye Bye Blondie and King Kong Theory (2016 ALA Stonewall Honor Award; 2010 Prix Renaudot). She also codirected the screen adaptations of her controversial novels Baise-moi and Bye Bye Blondie.
ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS
The Feminist Press is a nonprofit educational organization founded to amplify feminist voices. FP publishes classic and new writing from around the world, creates cutting-edge programs, and elevates silenced and marginalized voices in order to support personal transformation and social justice for all people.
See our complete list of books at feministpress.org
Bye Bye Blondie Page 22