Pretty Things. Виржини Депант

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ stayed angry. He had always pulled out when he felt himself coming and ejaculated on her stomach, because he was too young to have a kid and because he wasn’t sure—far from it—that he wanted to have one with her. From that day on, he started fucking her like he was nailing something into the ground, all the way inside so she would get a fat stomach and stay put.

      But almost as soon as she was pregnant, her mother began to rise up and get comfortable with him. Supposedly she knew better than him about certain things regarding her condition. “Because I’m a woman,” she would reply, shrugging her shoulders. Her mother proposed that they call the twins Colette and Claudine. Her father was firmly against it; she didn’t concede.

      “Then we’ll each choose one name.”

      And so it was done, her stomach ripped in two.

      THE VENUE IS filling up. Security regulates the flood of people, the bouncers glance in their bags, make them take off their jackets. It serves no purpose, to tell the truth, but it’s part of the ritual.

      At the top of the stairs people meet and chat, share rumors and opinions about what’s going on. The stoner version of a social gathering, most of them are overly done-up: bleached pierced tattooed gap-toothed scarred high-heeled.

      Nicolas moves through them, making himself look like he’s in a hurry because he doesn’t want to run into any old friends. It gets him so down, every time, makes him confront the reality of aging when he sees old faces again. Already a little wrecked, withered, fatigue settling in, and cynicism to top it all off, extinguishing what’s left of their gaze.

      Pauline, sitting fully dressed on the toilet seat, smokes cigarette after cigarette. She regrets being there. She’s dreamed of this moment for a long time. But it was nothing like this. It was her own name, and Sébastien was there, backstage, proud of her as he heard her sing. And it wasn’t in front of these idiot kids who’ve come to have their souls sodomized, ready to swallow any subversive commodity as long as it makes them think that it adds something to their identity.

      Mainly, she misses Sébastien.

      Chest strained by his absence, she remembers and lists the best things about him, like a little internal song playing on loop.

      The first time she saw him she didn’t really give a shit about him, he seemed like kind of an idiot.

      Older than her, he had a car, drove her home.

      Then there was that day: he brought her to her place and, sitting on the hood of his car, told her jokes. Claudine showed up, gave him her number. And when she walked away, Seb had remarked, “It’s funny to see the two of you together. Your sister is super pretty. But she doesn’t have what you have.”

      He was neither flustered nor aroused; he was the first boy to resist her sister’s charms. To prefer her, Claudine’s sister. So, in his arms, she realized that he was her entire world. And since then, nothing had ever weakened the hold he had on her.

      Until one night in March, she had been waiting for him, irritated that he was late. They were supposed to go see a movie and he wasn’t very excited, so she was getting annoyed looking at the time, convinced he was doing it on purpose. Then night fell and worry kicked in.

      The telephone rings, the lawyer calling on his behalf. He was picked up that morning, in the papers they’re calling it a “big catch,” he’ll have his sentencing soon, he doesn’t know how much time Sébastien’s facing, he can’t answer any of her questions, it depends on who he does or doesn’t give up. The lawyer has tact, a distant politeness, but doesn’t care at all, just fulfilling an obligation: notifying the girlfriend of one of his clients.

      Clean break, everything on hold.

      FROM THE OTHER side of the door, some of the people working the bar are getting riled up talking among themselves.

      “This crowd pisses me off, they’re always trying so hard to be fashionable.”

      Another voice, from elsewhere. “When it’s the Americans doing it, everyone thinks it’s so cute, but when it’s the French it’s not funny anymore.”

      Aggressive tone, between people who have already been drinking, trying to convince one another without seducing one another, sterile conversations that make up mosaics of meaning. Everyone is actually saying something different. An unhappy ex-child interjecting at every opportunity—sometimes while trying to affirm something, something else emerges—little pieces of poisoned cakes that we’d rather spit out.

      Two girls loiter by the sink for a bit, she listens to them talk. They’re probably washing their hands, touching up their makeup, redoing their hair. One of them says, “Two-hundred-thousand-franc advance, that’s not nothing.”

      “But is the money for them or for gear?”

      “It’s for them, to get them to sign there instead of somewhere else. It’s an advance against what the label thinks they’ll sell.”

      “Two hundred thousand! Just like that, your problems start melting away.”

      “I’d certainly hope so . . .”

      “For all the time you’ve spent slaving away, he must have no shame.”

      “That’s definitely him: shameless. You’ll never guess what he told me. He’s going to give me two thousand a month—to pay the bills.”

      “No way.”

      “Oh yeah, he’s a kid, this guy, he doesn’t understand that he could pay the rent too. For him, money is pocket change, it’s for buying his toys. I have to say, maybe I did let him take advantage of me.”

      “Still, with two hundred thousand, you’d have to be really stingy to only give away two.”

      They leave.

      Then Nicolas’s voice. “You in here?”

      And as soon as she opens the door he tells her to wait five seconds. While he pisses he says, “It’s nerves, makes me have to piss every five minutes. Does that happen to you?”

      It’s only right then that she puts a name to what she’s feeling: panic and fear, like being up on the highest diving board. That emotion deep inside of her, anxiety mixed with a terrible desire to be elsewhere, to backpedal. And mixed with impatience, too, to feel its effect.

      Pauline follows him backstage, asks, “Is it really possible for someone to give you a two-hundred-thousand-franc advance to make an album?”

      “It’s possible, but it doesn’t happen to everyone.”

      “You’d need to already be famous?”

      “Yeah. Or make everyone really like you.”

      SHE’S THREE STEPS from the stage, standing where there’s no light. First rows of the audience, people gathered together standing and talking, red tips of cigarettes, general commotion. Two sound guys are moving around again onstage, taping up one last thing, moving the floor monitor a bit. She no longer feels her legs, nothing but her throat, it’s like a chasm inside of her, she doesn’t want to go onstage. Yet she’s crippled with desire to be there, it makes her tremble through all her limbs.

      Someone СКАЧАТЬ