Philippe Djian - Betty Blue

I dropped Bob off on the way back and returned the truck to the rental office. I took a bus home. The rain had stopped, and there were a few patches of blue. The tension from the morning had exhausted me, but I was coming home with pockets full of money, and one thing compensated for the other. Even better, I managed to get the window seat right behind the driver, and nobody bothered me. I sat there watching the streets go by.

There was no one home at the apartment. I couldn’t remember if Betty had told me that she was going somewhere-yesterday seemed centuries away. I went straight to the fridge and got some things out on the table. The beer and the hard-boiled eggs were all frozen. I went to take a shower, and wait for the world to rise to human temperature.

Back in the kitchen, I gave a kick to a piece of crumpled-up paper that was lying on the floor. I find myself in this position more often than is my share, but that’s how it goes. Something’s always lying around on the floor. I picked it up. I unfolded it. I sat down and read it. It was the laboratory results. They were negative… NEGATIVE!

I cut my finger opening my beer bottle, but I didn’t notice right away. I drank it in one gulp. It must have been written somewhere that all my disappointments come by mail. It was vulgar-atrociously trite-it was a glimpse of Hell. It took me a while to react, then Betty’s absence began to weigh heavily on my shoulders. If I don’t move, I thought, I’ll burn. I grabbed the back of the chair to get up. My finger started pissing blood. I decided to run some water over it. Maybe this was why I hurt all over. I went up to the kitchen sink. Then I spotted something red in the garbage can. I already knew what it was. I fished it out with my hand. There was a black one, too. It was the Oshkosh jammies. Maybe it’s true that they wash well-we’d never really know- but one thing was sure: they didn’t stand up well to a pair of scissors. This little touch made me plunge to the murky depths. It gave me an idea of how Betty had taken the news. To all appearances, the blood was coagulating at the end of my finger, but in truth my skin was crawling-in truth, the Earth had fallen off its axis.

I controlled myself. I had to think. I ran the water over it, then wrapped it in gauze. The problem was that I was suffering for two. I had a keen intuition of what Betty must have felt. My brain was half paralyzed and my intestines were gurgling. I knew I ought to go looking for her, but for the moment I didn’t have the strength. I almost just slid into bed to wait for a blizzard to come numb me, to sweep my thoughts away. I stood there in the middle of the room, pockets full of money and finger cut. Then I hit the streets.

I searched in vain for her all afternoon. I must have covered every street in town two or three times, my eyes riveted to the sidewalks. I chased after girls who looked like her, slowed down next to porches, combed the places we frequented. I rolled through deserted streets, until very slowly the night came on. I went and filled the gas tank. When it came time to pay, I pulled out my wad of bills. The dude was wearing an Esso cap with grease smudges on it. He gave me a suspicious look.

“I just pillaged a church,” I said.

By that time, I knew, she could have been two hundred miles away. All I’d gotten for my efforts was a throbbing headache. There was only one place left to look-the cabin-but I couldn’t quite decide to go. I thought that if I didn’t find her there, then I’d never find her. I hesitated before firing my last shell. There was one chance in a million that she’d be there. Still, there was no other choice. I drove around a while longer under the neon lights, then stopped by the house to get a flashlight and throw on a jacket.

The lights were on upstairs. This didn’t surprise me. I was fully capable of leaving something on the stove, or the faucets running. In the shape I was in, I could have found the house in flames and taken it with a grain of salt. I went up.

She was sitting at the kitchen table. She was outrageously made up. Her hair was cut going in all directions. We looked at each other. In one way, I breathed deep relief. In another way, I felt myself suffocating. No words came to mind. She had set the table. She stood up without a word and got the main dish. It was meatballs in tomato sauce. We sat across from each other. She had simply demolished her face-I couldn’t stand looking at it for very long. Had I opened my mouth just then, I would have started whimpering. All that was left were her bangs. Eye shadow and lipstick were smeared all over her face. She stared at me. Her stare was the worst of all. I felt that something was going to rip apart inside me.

Without taking my eyes off her, I bent forward and shoved both my hands into the bowl of meatballs. It was hot. I picked up a handful of it. The tomato sauce ran out between my fingers. I smeared it all over my face-in my eyes, up my nose, in my hair. It burned. I stuck it everywhere, blobs of it sliding down the sides of my head and onto my legs.

With the back of my hand I wiped away a tomato-sauce tear. No one had said anything. We sat like that for quite a while.

“Jesus Christ, I’ll never be able to do this if you don’t let me!”

We were standing by the wide-open kitchen window and the sun was in my eyes. Her hair shone so bright that I had trouble getting hold of it.

“Bend forward a little…”

Snip, snip. I evened out two locks. It had taken three days to get her to the point where she’d let me fix her hair. We were waiting for Eddie and Lisa to arrive that afternoon-that’s the real reason she let me. Three days to climb out of the hole. Her, that is, not me.

It turned out that short hair looked good on my little green eyed brunette. Thank God for small favors. I held the locks between my fingers and trimmed them like ripe stalks of black wheat. Her face was not exactly bursting with health, of course, but I was sure that a little pat on the cheeks would put her back in shape. I’d make the punch. I told her not to worry-people who come down from the city are always pale as death themselves.

I was right. Eddie had gotten a new car-a salmon-pink convertible-so they’d eaten quite a bit of dust on the way down. They looked like sixty-year-olds. Lisa jumped out of the car.

“Oh sweetheart, you cut your hair! Looks great!”

In the course of conversation, we made our way gently toward the punchbowl. It was dynamite, if I do say so myself. Lisa wanted to take a shower. The two girls disappeared into the bathroom with their drinks. Eddie slapped me on the thigh.

“Good to see you, you old bastard…!” he said.

“Yeah…” I said.

He took another look around, nodding.

“Yep, I got to take my hat off to you…”

I went to open a can of food for Bongo. Eddie and Lisa’s presence allowed me to loosen up a little. I needed it. For three days I’d wondered if we were going to make it, if I’d ever be able to get her spirits back up-bring her back to the land of the living. I’d given it all I had-all I had in my head, and in my gut. I’d fought like a wildman. It was difficult to fathom how far gone she was. I don’t know by what miracle we came through it, what wonderful tide carried us to the shore. I was exhausted. After an exercise like that, opening a can of dog food seemed like drilling through a safe to me. But two glasses of punch later I was walking into a rising sun. I listened to the girls laughing in the bathroom it seemed too beautiful for words.

When the flames of reunion had turned to embers, Eddie and I swung into action. The girls wanted to spend the first evening at home, necessitating some grocery shopping, not to mention a stop at Bob’s house to borrow a mattress and a Chinese-like partition. The punch was beginning to wear off. The day was coming to an end by the time we left the house. There was a light breeze. I would have felt just about fine, if I could have rid myself of one rather idiotic thought: Though I knew there was nothing I could do about it-it’s just one of the little differences between men and women-still, I couldn’t help thinking how unequally the pain of the recent events had been distributed. For me it remained somewhat abstract. I felt like there was an air pocket in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.