All the Way (13 page)

Dring
.

She leaps up. She's Carl Lewis.

It's her mother. Asking if she's eating here or over there. No, no one has phoned. Was she expecting a call from Rose? From Nathalie? How was Delphine's?

23 57 01.

That's his number. She knows it by heart, it was imprinted in her memory straight away. 23 57 01. Two and three (the two of us and then a child?), five to seven like the secret rendezvous time, and zero and one (why zero and one?). Anyway if you add it all up, 2+3+5+7+0+1, it makes 18, adulthood, when she'll be free. Perhaps 18 is his age? There are so many things for them to discover about each other.

23 57 01.

Bihotz is going to lock up the chickens.

She lifts up the receiver and punches the numbers into the air. How are you? Very well and you. I was just thinking about you. I couldn't call you. Because. I was thinking about your mouth and your breasts. Yes, I mean it, they're amazing. You're so beautiful. No other girl has ever made me stiff like you do. You've got potential. Stop, you'll make me come. No other girl. You're more beautiful than. Stop, you'll make me come. I love you. Do you love me. I love you. Yes. Yes.

Bihotz comes back from the chickens.

Night falls.

Dring!

She picks up, her heart pounding terribly, she really is way too
cynical
—once again, it's her mother. Who is expecting her for dinner. Who has not seen her the whole weekend. I only have one daughter and I don't even see her. No, I told you to come and have dinner. I really wonder sometimes which way your head's screwed on. Do I really have to
ask
you to come and see me? What will it be like in a few years' time?

She spends the evening watching
2001: A Space Odyssey
with her mother.

She plays back the moment when he had his expert fingers in her and she felt like she was going to drown.
You
look sort of wistful.
She's got to stop running her own movies in her head. She is a total
egomaniac.
Why would this straight-up
high school
guy call her at all? He's probably forgotten her number. As if he didn't have a pencil—so stupid.

There should be telephones with extendable cords that follow you wherever you go. Or actually without cords at all. Not that she has much to do, or places to go. Or even wants to.

‘I don't recognise you,' says Bihotz. ‘You used to be like a bee in a bonnet. Now you stay inside all the time, you look like Dracula. Come and help me with the corn.'

She feigns a headache.

‘What the hell? Don't try the line about migraine.'

After two days of imprisonment, she really does have a headache. Her mother wants her to go to the doctor. She sounds so unbearably sympathetic.

A telephone cord to follow her bike, run along the roads after her, circle the village and come back here, a ball of twine winding tighter and tighter around her.

Bihotz puts on a shocking record, a slow dance song by the Scorpions:
I'm still loving YIIIOUOUOU
and his long hair sways as he shakes his head. ‘You can put on your own records if you don't like it.'

23 57 01

Where should she be? Where should she go? Should she call him or not? What should she do? If only it would all stop. If only something would stop, so she didn't have to think about it anymore. So she could move on. One month later, one year later, two years later, three years later. And be sixteen. Eighteen. Such an unbearable wait. To be an adult. To be whatever it means to be a woman. To know how life works, what direction her life will take, who she will be. Be able to come and go, make phone calls, speak, go away. Fuck.
Fuck
. Take hold of the entire Earth and fuck.

She pictures herself as a giantess clinging to the Earth, stuck on, rubbing herself, stopping the planet's rotation and sinking down to the molten rock, who knows how far.

She no longer knows she's there, she's waited so long. She: nothing.

At the sound of the
dring
she is no longer disembodied. The ringing brings her to life again. Her head is throbbing unbearably. The atoms in her hand assemble on the receiver—it's her mother, or Delphine, and she's held fast by her own frustration.

Then she rescreens the movie of herself: she's a tiny pulsating speck in a village in a country in a continent, a miserable speck. Time has wound back to zero, no past, no future.

She remembers the words of her childhood prayer:

Hail Mary, full of grace, our Lord is with thee. Blessed art
thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy
Mary, mother of God, make Arnaud call me, please Holy Mary, I'll
do anything you want. Amen.

23 57 01

She lets it ring once and hangs up. The number is real. That has to be a sign.

‘Come and set the table!' shouts Bihotz. The clanging of stainless steel cutlery.

She puts on a tape that Delphine made for her, turns the volume up loud. She doesn't understand any of the lyrics but the music is all about her, her life. She presses her hands into her eyes and shakes her head around. Bihotz is there in a flash.

‘For someone who has a migraine…'

She presses Pause and sighs, waiting for him to please go away and leave her alone. If her father is only a
porter
, she won't be getting a Walkman any time soon.

‘If I'm so annoying, go home to your mother.'

He slams the door. Charming.

She is alone on the edge of the world. Cast out by some centrifugal force, alone, a long way from the centre where everything's happening.

23 57 01.

Just one ring. Hang up quickly.

23 57 01.

Just one more time.

‘Hello.' A woman's voice. Annoyed. She picked up as soon as the ringtone started.

Is Arnaud there?

‘Who is it?'

Her heart is pounding.

‘Whom shall I say is calling?'

It looks like her porter father didn't teach her how to introduce herself.

It's Solange.

What a horrible name she has.

She hears the sound of a flute, ‘Arnooooooo', an elegant, mocking flute.

She hangs up. She opens the window and looks down. It's only one storey but it's pretty high. Cement paving. There'd be a fair amount of damage. She should try it with Lulu.

The telephone rings. She makes herself wait for three rings. One. Two. Three.

Yes?
It's more elegant than hello.

‘Solange?'

Yes?

‘Did you just call?'

No.

‘My mother said it was Solange.'

No.

‘Well, I only know one Solange…'

His deep voice, his voice that has two registers. Everything they've experienced together, every moment comes back to her, the blue bedroom and the river below. (Was it actually blue? With a Chinese screen.)

‘Do you want to get together?'

Yes.

‘When?'

Tomorrow?

‘I can't tomorrow. The day after?'

Free.

She pedals as hard as she can. Town, silos, Milord's, marina. She heads off into the wind, into a blank space, without images, all speed, leaving behind her the places on a map. An enormous energy is coursing through her body, every push against the pedals is one more step towards far away, faster, a breakthrough.

On the promontory over the lake there is a statue of the Virgin Mary. Thank you, Mary, thanks for Arnaud's phone call. She has to go there with a pure heart, to appear as pure as possible before the goddess, who has X-ray vision and sees through our bodies right to the bottom of the cauldron that is our skull, focusing on our dreams and our desires like converging mirrors, amen. Because it's clear to Mary that she (Solange) is pure, as pure as when she was little (even purer, when she thinks now about what she thought about then).

She freewheels down to the river. Looks at the chateau on the opposite shore. Tries to locate the window. The balcony, on the top floor. The blue bedroom. Something's moving. Perhaps it's just a reflection in the windows—she had noticed there were cracks in the panes (when she stayed under the sheet struggling against the urge to go and join him straight away, to run after him).

As she cycles down along the shore, it really does look like something's moving. Lætitia d'Urbide? The servants? A rose garden. A tennis court. A swimming pool. An ensuite for each bedroom.
A dressing room.
There's even a
video room.
And a leather lounge suite, pay by instalment. Designer carpet, cheaper by the yard.

Cheap Carpet—Lætitia d'Urbide, Lætitia d'U, Lady Di, Lady d'U.

Does she do it? Does she get like that too? Arched over and panting?
Penetrated? Possessed?
Does she make noises like on Canal+ TV? And Lady Di, does she?

Her mother. Her mother in that chateau. Waited on by servants. And why not? Her mother who drums into her that a woman must have a job. But the ideal would be not to work.

(Georges has a joke about sex on a posh couple's wedding night, it goes something like this—snobbish accent—‘My dear, come in or go out but stop this ridiculous in and out business.')

And the word
fuckpad
, which a friend of Arnaud's used. Arnaud and this friend, seen from above when she was coming down the staircase. Their noses in their drinks, leaning in to each other. The friend had looked at her (arched over, panting) (as if he knew what she had just done, or not done).

Arnaud and her embracing, standing at the window. Lord and lady of their dominion.

Her arm around a tree like it's an imaginary body, her mouth open and sending kisses into the air, slightly arched over, slightly panting, glancing around to check that the foliage is hiding her.

She drops her bike and strides to the edge of the lake. Breathe and run. That's exactly what youth is, she thinks: grab and dash; it's fleeting, really fleeting, and hugely thrilling because it's NOW.

She has two days to lose two kilos. Once again she makes the solemn resolution not to eat anymore (only apples, tomatoes and cigarettes).

Georges is rigging windsurfers and there is absolutely no one else around. He says he can lend her a windsurfer and a wet suit. ‘All those times I've offered you a go!'

She takes off her clothes as discreetly as possible behind the trailer. She hadn't thought about bringing her swimsuit so she puts the wetsuit on with nothing underneath and Georges tells her that it's not hygienic. ‘Keep your underpants on. Who do you think you are, miss? I've seen plenty of
bums
.'

The wind is strong and steady towards the middle of the lake. She is hanging by both arms from the boom, the sail lifts her up, her feet are barely holding on and she charges straight ahead. She's so light. Lightly between sky and water. Anticipating the rhythm, bending her legs and absorbing the motion of the waves, taking off.

Back there the class has begun, four or five clowns and Georges like a king in his outboard, with his long blond hair, looking almost as good as her father. A big guy is with him, a distant cousin of Bihotz. She doesn't like him at all because he's always making idiotic jokes. And, sure enough, they head over in her direction. She has to turn around,
to go about
—but she falls in just when they get to her. Rusty-coloured slime oozes between her toes. Three mallards take off squealing and there are spiky reeds and the metallic taste of the water and the depressing absence of the sea.

‘You okay?' asks Georges. Oddly enough, he offers her a cigarette. She takes one nonchalantly and pushes back a strand of wet hair. Everything's normal.

‘It all depends on the positions'—the cousin is in full flight—‘but I'm here to tell you that I was using my calorie-burning quota to the max, especially given what a sexpot the girl was.'

‘He's doing Weight Watchers,' Georges translates.

‘Three times,' continues the fat guy. ‘Three times eight hundred calories makes two thousand four hundred calories—just watch how much weight I'm going to lose on this diet!'

They tow her out of the reeds and she can't wait for the day after tomorrow to come, so she can finally get back into her life.

Behind the trailer, she takes off the wetsuit and feels a weird warm spot. Did the rusty water seep inside? Blood. The wetsuit legs are full of it. What did she expect—there you go, it could only happen to her, her date is
the day after
tomorrow
and she always gets it for at least five days.

Has it already been twenty-eight days since the last time? You could get your bearings if the calendar was in line with the moon, in girl months, and not their stupid imperial months of thirty or thirty-one days that get everything out of whack. Twenty-eight times thirteen makes exactly 364, plus an extra day for things like the 29th of February—so you can't say it doesn't work. If you followed that system you could actually organise dates.

She could have told him:
I can't the day after tomorrow.
Be mysterious, busy.
Next week, perhaps. If I'm free.

‘Be strategic. Be strategic,' Nathalie always says. Nathalie was the one who lent her a tampon, to try. But it hurt like hell, even after she dipped it in oil the way Nathalie told her to. Still, the fireman put a whole finger in there, and a finger is pretty big (and if you think about the other thing, about the size of it…better not to think about it). ‘But you've got to be a bit wet,' explained Nathalie. ‘That helps it slide in.'

She tried
masturbating
but even though she sighed, like her-mother-in-the-lotus-position, it didn't work. And anyway, Nathalie warned her about tampons: a girl forgot she had one in, and the guy pushed the tampon so far up her that it tore her insides and she died in a pool of blood.

Why is she crying tonight? She has no idea.