Philippe Djian - Betty Blue

“You’re going deaf in your old age.”

“Right. The worst is that it’s all downhill…”

I was trying to be witty, but the truth is I was disconcerted. I was so sure the bad news would have her moaning and groaning that I couldn’t handle her easygoing attitude, so carefree. I sat down randomly in a chair. I leaned backward to get a beer out of the icebox. Maybe a miracle had occurred-why not?-maybe on the million-to-one chance that she’d take it in good spirits we’d picked the winning number. The beer hit me like a bottle of amphetamines. I felt my mouth start to twist itself into a half-smile, half-snarl.

“You have a nice walk?” I said. “Tell me, did you have a nice walk?”

“Great. I jogged a little to warm up. Hey, feel my ears, they’re frozen!” There was of course another hypothesis: she was playing with me. Jesus, I said to myself, shit, SHIT-she must have read the letter. What the hell was she trying to pull? What’s she waiting for? When is she going to dissolve in tears and start throwing the furniture out the window? I just didn’t get it.

I felt her ears, but I didn’t know why. She smelled like fresh air, cold outdoor air. I stood there holding her ears.

“See? They’re frozen, aren’t they?”

I let go of them. I grabbed her hips instead. I pressed my forehead into her belly. A ray of light came through the window and landed on my cheek. She stroked my head. I went to kiss her hand. It was then that I saw her fingers were bright red. It was so odd that I jumped back.

“What in the world…?”

She looked at the ceiling and sniffled.

“It’s nothing… It’s… it’s red paint.”

Something like an alarm went off in my brain. Somewhere a Cheshire cat was grinning. I felt the motor starting to go out of control, but I didn’t put on the brakes.

“Paint? You were painting this morning?”

Her eyes lit up with a glow, her face congealing into a little smile.

“Yeah. I was,” she said in a clear voice. “I decided to get a little exercise…”

I had a flash, like a hallucination. It half strangled me.

“Fuck, Betty… you didn’t…”

She gave me a huge smile, but it was bitter.

“Yes I did. Sure I did.”

I looked at the floor, shaking my head. I saw stars.

“No, I don’t believe it,” I said. “I don’t believe it…”

“What’s the problem? Don’t you like red?”

“Why would you go and do something like…”

“How should I know? I just did. It makes me feel better.”

I stood up and walked around the table gesticulating.

“So every time a publisher rejects my book you’re going to go bombard his building with red paint, is that it?”

“Yeah, something like that. I wish you’d have been there to see the look on their faces.”

“But that’s crazy!”

A chill of anger and admiration went up my spine. She tossed her hair and laughed.

“You got to let the good times roll a little. You have no idea how much good it did me.”

She took her jacket off and undid the scarf that circled her neck like a multicolored snake.

“I’d love some coffee,” she said. “Darn, look at my hands. Got to wash them.”

I went to the window and lifted the curtain with my finger.

“Hey, you sure no one’s after you? You weren’t followed?”

“No, they were pretty stunned. No one even had time to lift his ass off the chair.”

“Next time the cops will be out there surrounding the house. I can see it now…”

“Jesus, you always expect the worst.”

“Yeah, it’s true. I must be sick in the head. You go out and paint half the town crimson and I shouldn’t worry…”

“Listen,” she sighed. “You’ve got to get at least a minimum of justice in this world. You know? I’m not going to spend my life getting pissed off and not reacting.”

The story made the last page of the next day’s newspaper. Witnesses said they’d seen a “madwoman with two paint-bombs suddenly appear.” The end of the article said that the act of terrorism had not yet been claimed by any particular activist group. I tore out the article and put it in my wallet. I put the paper back in the pile while the guy at the newsstand had his back turned-there was nothing else interesting in it. I bought some cigarettes and gum, then left.

Betty was waiting for me across the street at a sidewalk café, drinking a cup of hot chocolate. The weather was clear and crisp. She looked into the sun and closed her eyes, her hands in her pockets and her collar turned up. She was so beautiful that I slowed down, walking toward her. This was something that would never leave me. It made me smile in the morning sun as if I’d just somewhere, somehow hit the jackpot.

“Take your time,” I told her. “We can go whenever you’re ready.”

She leaned over to kiss me on the lips, then went back to her hot chocolate. We were in no hurry. We’d decided to do a little window-shopping, buy what we needed to keep our teeth from chattering too much in the winter. The streets were already full of wolf, wildcat, silver fox, and red cheeks-a sure sign that temperatures were going down, and that the fur sellers were making shitloads of money.

We walked arm in arm for about an hour, not finding what we wanted, not really knowing what it was. All the salesgirls heaved sighs of relief when we left, then set about refolding the mountains of clothes we’d taken down off the racks.

The last place we went was this big department store. One step inside the doors and I thought we’d landed in a box of chocolates left out in the sun too long. I gritted my teeth to keep the perfume-music from coming in through my mouth. It’s unhealthy to breathe that stuff, something I’m not into. I didn’t say anything, though-I cut my losses with some chewing gum and followed Betty to the women’s department.

There weren’t many people, and I was the only guy there. I hung out for a while in lingerie, looking at a few of the items they had lit up-familiarizing myself with the latest zipping and hooking devices. It might have been a little voyage among the clouds, if it hadn’t been for the saleswoman, a sort of troll about fifty years old, with hot flushes and burn marks on her forehead from so many permanents. The kind who’s been laid maybe twice in her whole fucking life and does her best to forget it ever happened. Every time I stuck my hand in a basket of panties, or dared to stretch an elastic, she gave me the evil eye, but I never let go of my special industrial-strength smile. By the time she finally came up to me she was as red as the blood of Jesus.

“Tell me,” she said. “What is it exactly you’re looking for? Perhaps I can help you.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “I want to buy some underpants for my mother. I want the kind you can see the hairs through…”

She let out a ridiculous moan, but I didn’t see what happened next because Betty came and grabbed me by the arm.

“What the hell are you up to?” she asked. “Come on, I want to try on some things.”

She was carrying an armload of brightly colored clothes. On our way to the fitting room I got a glimpse of a price tag dangling from the bunch. I just about fell on my face-a belly-flop, like a tree struck by lightning. Then I just laughed.

“Hey,” I said. “You get a load of that? Must be some mistake. That’s two weeks’ salary…”

“Whose?” she said.

I cooled my heels outside the fitting room like someone left on a desert island-bare head and broken legs. I didn’t feel well. I didn’t have enough money to pay for half of what she’d taken. The poor dear-she wasn’t aware of what she was doing. I wondered how I was going to console her, except with a pale smile. Obviously the world was not yet our oyster. I heard Betty breathing and moving around behind the curtain.