Billie

  When I was too tired to cry anymore, I fell asleep and, just as I was nodding off, I made him promise never to abandon me again. Because I did too many stupid things without him . . . too many really, really stupid things . . .

  He laughed one more time and a bit strangely in order to hide his nervousness, adding with a silly laugh:

  “Okay, whatever you want! I value my life!”

  Then, in a really low voice and in the crook of his elbow:

  “Oh . . . Billie . . . I had forgotten . . . ”

  * * *

  Hey, little starry . . . Season 2 wasn’t bad, huh?

  A bit of ass, action, amorous adventures, it had everything!

  After, you’ll see, it’s more conventional.

  After, it’s two young people getting by. Nothing very original. Especially because I’m not going to be able to go on and on since the sky is beginning to get lighter over there. All the way over there, that must be the East, I think . . .

  Yes, I have to hurry up and recount for you the end of the film before the lights come back on.

  The next morning, we took the train to Paris.

  On the train, Franck brought me up to date on his life: To please his father, he had enrolled in law school and was sharing a little apartment with one of his cousins in the suburbs where the rent was less expensive.

  He didn’t like law or his cousin and he liked the suburbs even less.

  I asked him what he wanted to do.

  He told me that his dream was to do an internship that would help him get into a terrific jewelry school.

  “You want to be a jeweler?” I asked. “You want to sell necklaces, watches, and all that?”

  “No, not sell then, design them.”

  He turned his computer on and showed me his designs.

  They were beautiful. It was as if he’d lifted a lid off an old chest covered in sand and revealed a treasure.

  I asked him why he didn’t do what he loved rather than obey his father.

  He answered that in his whole life he had never done what he wanted and he had always obeyed his father.

  I asked him why.

  He acted like someone who was busy closing the windows.

  After a few minutes, he answered that it was because he was afraid.

  Afraid of what?

  He didn’t know.

  Fear of disappointing his father yet again.

  And fear of disappointing his mother.

  Fear of sinking his mother a little bit deeper in her depression.

  I said nothing.

  As soon as the discussion focuses on parents, I can’t be of help anymore.

  So he put away his dreams and we continued our trip in silence.

  When we arrived in Paris, he suggested we leave our bags at the baggage claim and tour around before going to his place. That is . . . to his cousin’s place . . .

  We went more or less the same way as we had during our class trip four years earlier.

  Four years . . .

  What had I done in four years?

  Nothing.

  Given blow jobs and sorted potatoes . . .

  I was numb with sadness.

  It wasn’t at all like the last time. It was winter, it was cold, the Seine no longer danced, the walkway was deserted, and the love padlocks had all been cut off and thrown in the trash. People were no longer picnicking in the gardens, turning their faces to the sun; they were no longer chatting away on the café terraces, drinking glasses of Perrier; they were walking just as quickly, but they were no longer smiling. They were all sulking.

  We each drank a cup of coffee (small) that cost €3.20.

  €3.20 . . .

  How was that possible?

  I was also afraid.

  I wondered if Manu had had to go to the ER and if he had remembered to empty the washing machine before the laundry started to smell like mold. I almost looked around for a phone booth to leave him a message.

  It was horrible.

  * * *

  Franck’s cousin may have come from an aristocratic family with a string of names, a long nose, manners, and a Lacoste shirt, but he greeted me exactly as Jason Gibaud’s parents had.

  Actually no, as a matter of fact. Because of his education, which had taught him to confuse politeness with hypocrisy, he behaved even worse than they had: he talked about me when my back was turned.

  For the moment, he said, “Ah, a friend of Franck’s. So nice to meet you. Welcome.” But in the evening, when I was in the bathroom, I heard him acting all serious as if he were talking about nuclear missiles pointed at NASA: “Listen, Franck . . . This wasn’t part of our agreement.”

  I was ready to leave right then. Because it was true . . . This little Billie was beginning to be a lot of trouble now, she who had never taken the train and who was still thinking about the towels she had left behind.

  Wherever I went, since I was born, I disturbed things. Wherever I went, whatever I did, however much I tried, I was always in the way and was punished with a slap.

  I didn’t hear Franck’s answer, but when he entered the bedroom we were going to share from then on (he had given me his little bed and set himself up on a piece of carpet, explaining that all Japanese sleep like that and they live a lot longer than we do), yes, when he entered and he saw my expression, he sat down next to me, took my head between his hands, and said while looking into my eyes:

  “Hey, Billie Jean? Do you trust me?”

  I nodded yes and he added that I should just continue on then and all would be okay. He didn’t say, like Jason had, that this was all just temporary, but fine, he could have . . .

  And because I trusted him and because I didn’t have a job, I went back into servant mode. The boys left in the morning, I cleaned the house, I took care of the laundry, and I prepared a meal for them to eat in the evening.

  I loved to cook. I had quickly discovered that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I tried plenty of things and gained seven pounds by just tasting to make sure I had exactly the right amount of seasoning.

  That all helped His Royal Highness chill out. He acted more cordial with me. Not nice, just cordial. The way those types of people were surely used to behaving with their servants. But I didn’t give a damn. I made myself practically invisible and tried to bother Franck as little as possible. And this time I think it worked for me, that defensiveness I always had inside me. For the first time in my life, I was no longer afraid of my own shadow when I turned around too quickly or when I heard footsteps behind me.

  I enjoyed the feeling.

  In the afternoons, I took a route that passed by all the bus stops so as not to lose my way, and I went to hang out at a big shopping mall on the other side of the highway. I loafed around, pretending to be a demanding bourgeois type who has her husband’s debit card but can’t make up her mind, and out of boredom, I annoyed the saleswomen, who were really bored as well. Some of them began to hate me and others told me about their lives.

  I never bought anything, but one time, I went to the hairdresser.

  The girl who washed my hair asked if I wanted a little extra treatment. I was about to say no but then nodded my head. Even if no one knew, it was my birthday after all.

  Then, it was Christmas and New Year’s and I was alone on those occasions too. I swore to Franck that I had become friends with one of the cashiers at Franprix supermarket— “Yes, you know, the blonde who grumbles all the time”—and that she had invited me over because she was divorced and wanted company for the kids. As I said it in just the right way and even bought toys, he believed me and left reassured.

  It was my gift.

  At any rate, I didn’t give a damn.

  The magic of Christmas?

  Well . . . uh . . . How should I put it?

&
nbsp; * * *

  The only thing I began to fret about was the cheap brew.

  Because, since I was alone, I, too, began to knock back a few.

  The boredom, the isolation, the disorientation, the pretext that all this housework made me thirsty and deserved compensation, with all this I started drinking.

  I went to the Turkish grocery store below our place and bought 12-ounce cans of beer.

  Then 16-ounce ones.

  Then a pack.

  Like the drunks.

  Like the homeless people.

  Like my stepmother.

  It was sad.

  Really, really sad.

  Because I was clear-headed, I . . . I saw myself.

  Yes. I saw myself doing it.

  Each time I pulled the tab, hisssss, I saw it, a piece of me disappearing.

  No matter how much I tried to tell myself what we all tell ourselves: that it’s just beer, it’s just to quench my thirst, that tomorrow, I’ll drink less, that tomorrow, I’ll stop, that in any case, I can stop whenever I want to, and so on, I knew exactly what was happening.

  Exactly.

  It was the education I’d received.

  In practically one gulp, I recognized it, that shipwreck about to happen . . . that crappy inheritance . . . My head, my arms, my legs, my heart, my nerves, the entire terrycloth body that had been passed down to me . . .

  And what does alcohol do to an idle little country girl lost in a sea of traffic?

  It takes her back to her origins.

  It makes her start stealing again from the stores at the mall in order to pay for her alcohol without raiding the cookie jar at home.

  It makes the security guards notice her.

  It forces her to be a cheap whore, so they won’t make trouble for her.

  It forces her to be a cheap whore, so they won’t make trouble for her and so they’ll have a soft spot for her.

  It gains her a reputation.

  It makes her hang out with those cowboys from the supermarket in their synthetic uniforms who are convinced they have a little power in their hands and a bit lower down as well.

  It gains her friends.

  A certain type of friends . . .

  Boys who are more welcoming to her than the two she feeds in the evenings, who never take their noses out of their books.

  Who make her forget the sulky face of Franck Muller, who, not liking what he studies to obey a father he likes even less, has returned to his solitary mode.

  Who distract her from always being the least intelligent one at the table.

  And then it makes her start dressing up again in short skirts.

  A lot shorter.

  And more conspicuous.

  In other words, it turns her back into a slut . . .

  One afternoon as I was on the way out to see my new friends, I ran into Franck on the stairs.

  Shit, I must have had his new schedule wrong.

  I was wearing a skirt that barely covered my private parts, a pair of stolen boots, each boot a different size (thanks to the antitheft devices), and my fake Louis Vuitton bag that I held up in front of me immediately like a sort of shield between the two of us.

  I don’t know why I did that. He didn’t even say anything mean . . . Just the opposite.

  “Well, little Bill! It’s chilly outside, you know? You shouldn’t go out like that; you’re going to catch a cold!”

  I replied with some stupid remark in order to get away from his badly timed kindness, but a few hours later, while I was shut in with a security guard on his break in a trash storage area so that he could screw me standing up against the paper-towel rolls, the sweetness of Franck’s voice reverberated with all the rest of it and I suffered in silence.

  The guy was nice, we had a good time, that wasn’t the problem. I just couldn’t go back in the other direction.

  I couldn’t. I knew too well where it led . . . Especially at the end.

  It was then, in those situations, when it would be great to have a mom . . . A mean mom who gives you a harsh look or a nice one who helps you gather up all the paper-towel rolls and the brooms before pushing you toward the exit.

  That was what I was thinking about on the way back. That I had to be my own mother. At least for one day in my life. That I had to do for myself what I would have done if I had been my daughter. Even if she were a pain in the ass. A crybaby. Even if Michael had abandoned me in the meantime.

  But I could try at least . . .

  I’d done many things that were a lot harder.

  I walked with my head down, I made screeching sounds on the sidewalk with my pointy high-heeled shoes, I took turns playing the role of mother and daughter, getting all worked up by myself.

  I was agitated. In a really bad mood. Cursing internally.

  I wasn’t used to authority. And damn, what could morality do for me at this stage? After all the suffering it had caused me? All those pieces of kittens I had to bury in secret; all those Mother’s Day gifts that I had to skip since giving something pretty to my stepmother would have devastated me; all those schoolteachers who had believed for years that I was inept and who looked at me like I was a half-wit. All those bitches who had mistaken my tenderness for weakness.

  All those sorrows . . . All those little sorrows lined up in single file.

  Shit, now it was too easy to explain life.

  Get lost, you slut!

  Disappear.

  That you know how to do.

  I frowned and looked at myself viciously in the shop windows.

  I said to myself no, no, no, and yes, yes, yes.

  No.

  Yes.

  No.

  If I was acting out, it wasn’t a teen rebellion, it was because to do what I was asking of myself was too hard for me. Much, much too hard . . . I wanted all the rest, but not that.

  Not that.

  I had proved that I was capable of risking jail for Franck, but what Dame Pluche was demanding of me today, it was worse, more dangerous than prison.

  It was worse than anything.

  Because I had and would forever have only that in the world between the underclass and me.

  It was my only shield. My only protection. I didn’t want to touch it. Never. I wanted to keep it intact until I died to be absolutely sure I would never go back to the humiliation of hair that itched and layers of skin that begin to smell like dead hamster.

  You, star, you can’t understand. You must think I’m inventing ornate sentences to make it sound like a book.

  That I’m acting like Camille. All alone and ripped apart in front of the whole world.

  No one can understand. No one. Only I can. Billie from her cemetery with the little kittens . . .

  To hell with you, little star.

  To hell with you all.

  The answer is nyet.

  I will never jeopardize my life insurance.

  I got home, I still avoided Franck—he was studying in our room—and I changed my clothes.

  I was watching a stupid TV show when His Royal Highness came home from business school with his tennis racket strapped to his back.

  Trying to sound, like, a little too friendly, he spat out:

  “So? What’s on the menu for tonight?”

  “Nothing,” I said, continuing to repolish my fingernails with a slightly classier color. “Tonight, I’m taking my friend Franck to a restaurant.”

  “Reeeeeeeeeally?” He said, in that upper-crusty way he always spoke, as though he had marbles in his mouth. “And why does he deserve that honor?”

  “We have something to celebrate.”

  “Do you? And might I ask whaaaaat, if it’s not too nosy?”

  “The prospect of no longer seeing your filthy hypocritical face, you little
asshole.”

  “Oh! What luuuuuuck!”

  (Okay, fine, as I was too chicken, instead I said: “It’s a surprise.”)

  Shit . . . the sky is getting lighter and lighter . . . I really need to hurry instead of making you snicker idiotically along with that other idiot.

  So buckle your seat belt, my Taurus in the sky, because I’m going to turbocharge now . . .

  I don’t have any more time to mess around so I’ll give you the end of season 3 at suuuuuuuper speeeeeed!

  I took Franck to a Chinese-run pizza place, and while he dug into the crust of his calzone, I took charge of our life for the second time.

  I told him the secret promise I had made to myself when we were still kids, standing on the walkway of the Pont des Arts.

  I told him how I hadn’t dared say it to him out loud, but that it was still there in my head and that it was time to seize the moment.

  I told him we were going to get out of here. That it was too ugly, that his cousin was too stupid, and that we didn’t come all this way to face more ugliness and to deal with yet another idiot. Better dressed, perhaps, but as much of a moron as the guys from school.

  I told him he should find us a place to live, but in Paris proper. Even a tiny place. That we would manage. That our room here was small, too, and that we’d already proven to each other that we could respect each other’s privacy. That I had always lived in trailers and that it didn’t scare me to live in a cramped space again. That I could handle it. That when it came to a place to live, I could deal with anything.

  I told him that my favorite time of day was evening, when I watched him from behind, when he was drawing instead of studying lousy laws that no one respected anyway.

  Yes, that it was the only beautiful thing I had seen since we had come here: his drawings. And, especially the way his face finally relaxed when he was bent over them. That Little Prince face that I had loved so much when I was a kid and that I had glimpsed from afar in the schoolyard. His disheveled hair and his light-colored scarf that set me dreaming so much at a time when I really needed it . . .