Philippe Djian - Betty Blue

After five minutes, however, my thoughts got foggy, and I lost control of the situation.

“Does a woman really need to have a child to be fulfilled?” I asked.

The woman’s eyelashes fluttered a little. I went on to enumerate the conditions of the sale, then proceeded through the details of delivery. I would have liked to be in some deserted place, where I could sit and think everything over peacefully. This was no laughing matter. Looking around me, I wondered if this was any place for a child to be born-and this was only one small part of the problem. The lady was circling the living room, looking for the right place to put the piano.

“In your opinion, ought I to set it here, to the south?”

“That depends on whether you intend to play the blues or not,” I said.

Anyway, I was a true bastard-it was clear. Then again, lacking courage make you a bastard? I spotted the bar by accident. I gave it a sad look, in the style of Captain Haddock. Shit, I said to myself, to think that the fucking IUD slipped out of line and I didn’t feel a thing. I had an anxiety attack: Was I merely an instrument? In the end, was there only the blooming forth of the female, and nothing for me? Don’t guys ever get a break? The attack mysteriously evaporated when the lady got out the glasses.

“Easy,” I said. “I’m not used to drinking in the afternoon.”

I couldn’t stop myself from downing my drink in one gulp, though-the anticipation had been too great. I saw Betty in her panties standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Here I was, driving myself crazy, when all anyone asked of me was to rise to the occasion-it always pays to go all the way. I poured myself another finger of maraschino.

On the way home, I forced myself to not think about it. I drove carefully, keeping to my right. The only thing they could have given me a ticket for was obstructing traffic. But I was the only car on the road. I was alone and apart from the universe-a speck of dust sliding toward an infinite tininess.

I stopped in town and bought a bottle and some passion-fruit ice cream, plus two or three cassettes that had just come out. It was like I was going to visit a sick person. I must admit, I wasn’t too chipper.

When I got home she was ecstatic. The TV was on.

“They’re going to show a Laurel and Hardy movie,” she said. It was exactly what I needed-I couldn’t have imagined anything better. We plunked ourselves down on the couch with the ice cream and the booze, and let the rest of the afternoon slip away happily without bringing up the subject. She seemed in top form, completely relaxed, as if it were just another day of eating ice cream and watching television. I felt like I’d been making a mountain out of a molehill.

At first I was thankful that she didn’t talk about it. I was afraid that we’d be forced to go into all the gory details, while what I really needed was time to adjust. Yet as the evening wore on, I started to realize that it was me who was having trouble containing himself. After dinner, as she was busy gulping down a plain yogurt, I found myself cracking my knuckles.

Finally, in bed, I put my foot in it, while stroking her thighs:

“So, tell me… how do you feel about being pregnant…?”

“Gee, I don’t really know yet. It’s not really sure. To be sure I have to go get a test.”

She squeezed herself against me and spread her legs.

“Right, but what if it was sure…? Would you like that?”

I felt her fur under my fingers, but I stopped myself. She could try and squirm out of it all she wanted-I needed a straight answer. She got the message.

“Well, I’d really rather not think about it too much,” she said. “But my first impression is that it’s not so bad…”

That was all I wanted to know. Things being clear, I went down on her in a way that made my head spin. While we were screwing, I imagined that her IUD was an unhinged door, flapping in the wind.

The next day she went to get tested. The day after that, I stopped in front of a certain kind of store for the first time in my life and did some detailed window-shopping. It was horrible, but I knew that sooner or later I’d have to go in. To get my feet wet, I bought two Oshkosh jammies, one red and one black. The saleswoman assured me that I’d be happy with them-there was absolutely no shrinking.

I spent the rest of the day observing Betty. Her feet were six inches off the ground. I got discreetly plastered while she was making an apple pie. I took out the garbage in the spirit of a Greek tragedy.

Outside, the sky was a dizzying red, the sun’s last rays casting a sequined light. I found my arms twice as tan as before, the hairs nearly blond. It was dinnertime, and there was no one on the street-no one to see what I was doing. There was me, though. I went and crouched down in front of the store window. I smoked a cigarette, soft and sweet. There were a few sounds off in the distance, but the street itself was silent. I let my ashes fall delicately between my feet. Life was no longer absurdly simple-it was horribly complicated, and sometimes very tiring. I grimaced in the sunlight, like someone with ten inches up his ass. I looked until my eyes filled with tears, then a car passed by and I stood up. There was nothing left to see, anyway. Nothing but some guy who had just taken out his pitiful garbage at day’s end.

After two or three days, I’d gotten used to things. My brain went back to its normal functioning rhythm. There was a strange sort of calm in the house-an atmosphere that I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t bad. I had the feeling that Betty was breathing a bit easier, as if she’d come to the end of a long race. I noticed that the perpetual tension that had always lived in her had somehow gone soft.

One day, for instance, I was in the middle of dealing with this crazy woman-the kind a piano salesman comes across once or twice in a lifetime-a woman with no age and bad breath, weighing in at about one-eighty. She ran from one piano to another, asking all the prices three times, her eyes looking elsewhere, lifting up all the lids, pushing down all the pedals, and at the end of thirty minutes we found ourselves back where we started, and the store stank from sweat and I thought I was going to choke to death. I was talking a little loud, so Betty came down to see what was going on.

“What I just don’t understand,” the woman was saying, “is the difference between this one and that one.”

“One has round legs and the other one has square legs,” I sighed. “Look, we’re going to close pretty soon…”

“Actually, I can’t decide between getting a piano and getting a saxophone,” she went on.

“If you can hold on for a few days, we’re getting in a shipment of ocarinas…” I said.

But she wasn’t listening. She’d stuck her head in a piano to see what was inside. I gave Betty a sign that said I’d had it up to here.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered. “Tell her we’re closing.”

I went up to the apartment and I didn’t come back. I drank a tall glass of cool water. Suddenly I was struck with remorse-I knew that in two minutes Betty would be chucking the woman’s ass through the front window. I almost went down, but I held off for a minute. I didn’t hear anything-no breaking glass, not even a scream. I was stupefied. The strangest thing of all was that Betty came up forty-five minutes later, relaxed and smiling.

“She was really annoying,” she said. “You should take it a little easier with people like that.”

That night we played Scrabble. I could have made the word ovaries and gotten a triple-word score, but I scrambled it and exchanged the letters instead.

Ordinarily I got up early when I had to make a delivery. This left me the afternoon to get my strength back. I had struck a deal with these guys who hauled furniture for a store a few blocks away. I’d call them the night before and we’d meet at the corner early the next morning. We’d load the piano in a van that I rented, then they’d follow me in their truck. We’d deliver the piano and I’d give them cash. They always gave me the same smile. The morning we were supposed to deliver the baby grand, though, things didn’t exactly work out that way.