Philippe Djian - Betty Blue

“Nothing doing! You’re not getting one penny until you change it!”

I looked the old fruitcake right in the eye. It was clear I was wasting my time with him, and I wasn’t interested in overtime. All I wanted was to get back in my little car, roll down the windows, smoke a cigarette, and go home in peace, that’s all. So I walked up to the sink, bent my knee, and kicked the U joint with all my might. I managed to break off half of it. I turned to the guy.

“There you go,” I said. “Something’s wrong with your sink.

You’d better call a plumber.”

The old man hit me in the face with his crop-I felt a line of fire from my mouth to my ear. He looked at me, his eyes gleaming. I smashed him in the head with my pipe. He backed up into the wall and put his hand on his heart. I didn’t go get him his pills. I just split.

I felt my cheek burning all the way home. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a red-purple stripe. One corner of my mouth was swollen-it made me look even more exhausted than I was. It seemed to put into motion some process that made all the fatigue from the past few days show up on my face. I wasn’t a pretty sight. Caught in a traffic jam, I was able to recognize all my brothers in misery-we all looked alike. Same wounds, or almost. Every face ravaged by a week of meaningless work fatigue, privation, rage, and boredom. We crept forward a few yards each time the light turned green, without saying a word.

Betty saw the welt the minute I walked in. My cheek was all puffed up, glistening. I didn’t have the heart to make up a lie-I told her exactly what had happened. I poured myself a tall drink and she jumped on me:

“That’s what you get for clowning around all day long! It had to happen!”

“Shit, Betty. What are you talking about?”

“Spending your days on your knees under a bunch of fucking sinks, rubbing elbows with garbage cans, unplugging all sorts of shit, putting in toilets… you think that’s smart?”

“Who cares? It’s not important.”

She came up close to me. In a sugar-coated voice she said, “Tell me, do you know what I’ve been doing all these days? You don’t know? Well, I’ve been recopying your book! I’ve been at it day after day, and sometimes at night-it keeps me up nights, for your information!”

Her voice got more and more bitter. I poured myself another one and grabbed a handful of peanuts. She didn’t take her eyes off me.

“I am convinced that you are a great writer. Can you get that through your head at least?”

“Listen, don’t start up again with that. I’m tired. Being a great writer is not going to put food on the table. I think you’re working too hard on that thing. It’s giving you delusions of grandeur.”

“But God! Don’t you see that someone like you shouldn’t have to stoop? Don`t you understand that you don’t have the right to do that?”

“Hey, Betty… you gone nuts?”

She grabbed me by the lapels. I almost spilled my scotch.

“No, it’s you who’s nuts! You’re not with it at all! It makes me sick to see how you spend your time. What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you open your eyes?”

I couldn’t help sighing. The crummy day just wouldn’t end.

“Betty… I’m really afraid you think I’m someone I’m not.”

“No, stupid! I know who you are! I just didn’t know you were so thick! I’d rather see you out just walking around, gawking, anything-that would be normal. But instead you go out and deaden your mind with a bunch of sinks, and you think it’s very cool…”

“I’m doing a little fieldwork in human relations,” I said. “I’m trying to store up a maximum of infor-”

“Oh, cut the bullshit! I’ve already said that I want to be proud of you, to admire you, but I think the idea really bugs you! I think you’re doing all this to annoy me!”

“No, I’d never do anything to annoy you.”

“Well, it seems that way to me, I swear. I mean, Jesus, try to understand. You don’t have time to do a hundred different things with your life. Don’t think you’re going to get out of it with a few witty remarks. You’d be better off facing it once and for all: you’re a writer, not a plumber.”

“How can you tell the difference?” I asked.

We glared at each other across the table. She looked like she was ready to slit my throat.

“You’re going to give me a lot of work,” she said. “Yeah, you probably will-but for now there’s nothing we can do about it. I’m warning you, I’m not going to give in. I’m telling you it bugs me to live with a guy who comes home at seven o’clock at night, plops his toolbox on the table and sighs: ‘THIS REALLY GETS ME DOWN!’ How do you think I feel when in the afternoon I’m completely absorbed in your book and the telephone rings and some creep asks where you are because something just went blooey in his toilet bowl? I can almost smell the shit! How do you think I feel when I hang up? Some hero…”

“Look, I think you’re going overboard. I think it’s a good thing that there are plumbers. I can tell you I’d rather do that than work in an office.”

“Lord, don’t you understand anything? Don’t you see that with one hand you’re pulling my head out of the water and with the other you’re dunking me in again?”

I was going to tell her that it was a good metaphor for life in general, but I didn’t. I just nodded and poured myself a glass of water and went to drink it looking out the window. It was almost dark out. The writer wasn’t very sharp, and the plumber was dead. It was after this conversation that I started slowing down. I tried at least not to work in the afternoon, and things changed right away. Permanent good times came back between Betty and me-we recaptured the flavor of peaceful days, we winked at each other again.

The plumber had trouble getting up in the morning after the writer had gone to bed at three o’clock. He had to be careful not to wake Betty up-to heat the coffee without his face falling in it. He yawned, unhooking his jaw. It was only when he set foot on the street that he started emerging. The strap from his toolbox sawed his shoulder in half.

Betty was sometimes still sleeping when he came home. He would jump in the shower, then wait for her to wake up, smoking a cigarette at her side. He would look at the paper piling up next to the typewriter, listen to the silence, or play with a rolled-up pair of panty hose at the foot of the bed.

By the time Betty woke up the writer was deep in a session of self-introspection, a small dreamy smile on his lips. Usually they fucked, then had breakfast together. It was the good life for the writer. He felt just a bit tired, that was all, and when the sky was clear he liked to take a nap on the terrace, listening to the noise coming up from the street. The writer was cool. He never worried about money. His brain was empty. Sometimes he asked himself how he had ever managed to write a book-it seemed so far away now. Maybe he’d write another one someday, he couldn’t really say. He didn’t want to think about it. Betty asked him the question once, and he told her that he just might, but it made him uneasy for the rest of the day.

When he got up the next morning, the plumber had a serious hangover. He waited until his client turned around, then threw up in the shower stall. It gave him the willies. Sometimes he hated that fucking writer.

Before we knew it the evenings started getting cooler, and the first leaves fell from the trees and filled the gutters. Betty went to work on my last notebook and I continued to putter around here and there to earn enough money to keep us going. Everything was fine except that now I found myself waking up at night, eyes wide in the dark, brain burning, squirming around in bed as if I’d swallowed a snake. All I had to do was reach out my arm-I’d put a new notebook and pencil right next to the bed-but this song and-dance had been going on for two days, and no matter how I racked my brain I couldn’t come up with the slightest new idea. Nothing came out at all-but nothing-so every night the big writer went down for the count. He had lost his muse’s phone number, the poor jerk; he’d even lost his desire to call, and he didn’t even know why.