Billie (8 page)

One day, I remember, I was secretly reading in an employment contract a thing about alcohol that said, of course, you shouldn't drink, but if you got, like, sloshed one night, it was like throwing a bucket of water on the floor: it's not great, but okay, afterward you mop up quickly, the floor dries, and we forget about it, while alcoholism, even if concealed and under control, it happens drop by drop, and little by little, drop of water after drop of water, in the end you inevitably have a hole in the floorboard. Even the most solid kind . . .

And, well, that's what it was like, little slaps and little bruises that I received nonstop since I was a kid . . . It didn't get me a mention in the news or a file with social services, but it messed with my head. And that was the reason I was so nervous: any little draft of air blew right through me and knocked me immediately back. And Franck, at that moment, he wasn't all that sturdy either and couldn't support me the way I needed him to. So we were very cautious with each other. We liked each other, but we didn't stick together too closely to avoid jinxing it.

But it was okay because once again, we knew.

We knew that between us, it wasn't disdain or indifference but precaution and even though we couldn't show it, we would always be friends.

 

He knew because when I sensed that he was more sad than lonely or a little more depressed than dreamy, I stood in front of him, and said: “Raise your head, Perdican!” and I knew because even if sometimes he wanted to know or was curious about my life, he never suggested accompanying me to my house. Plus he never asked me questions that were too specific. He was polite, respectful, discreet. As his father would say, he must have suspected that at the Morels' place, it wasn't exactly the cradle of Christianity.

 

The half-hour trip we shared on Wednesdays allowed us to get through the rest of the week. We didn't really speak to each other, but we were together, and we revisited the good old days.

And that was fine.

It kept us going.

 

* * *

 

It was around the middle of June that I started to freak out: I wasn't promoted to the next grade, not even on the vocational track, and Franck, he was going to boarding school in order to get a better education.

It was a period when my head spun from all the anxiety in an alarming way and I tried not to think about it, but there was no avoiding it, it was written right there on my report card: “Not promoted,” and on the letter he had just showed me, all happy: “Accepted to boarding school.”

And bam! Another punch in the stomach.

That day, I remember, I asked Claudine if I could stay to eat with them and it was dumb because I didn't swallow a thing.

I told the truth, that I had a stomachache, and Claudine forgave me since it was normal for a girl my age to have stomachaches but she was wrong of course . . . It wasn't that type of stomachache . . .

 

* * *

 

Fortunately, there was still a nice memory in store for us at the end of the school year: a class trip to Paris.

 

It was the week before exams, and we dragged ourselves around the Louvre with the idiots from our class. All those morons who did nothing but take photos of themselves and look at the stupid photos they had just taken while there were so many more beautiful things to absorb.

 

Franck and I sat next to each other on the bus because we were the only two all alone.

During the trip, he lent me one of his earbuds. He'd made a mix for the occasion so I was finally able to hear her—his famous Billie Holiday. Her voice was so clear that it was the first time I understood a few words in an English song . . .
Don't Explain . . .
That one was really beautiful, right? Really sad but really beautiful. We listened to a few others afterward and then it was time for a bathroom break on the highway so he took back his thingamajig and we each kept to our own side of the seat to give each other some space.

 

When the bus got going again, he told me some things about the person behind the voice we had just listened to. He told them to me in a gossipy way, like in the magazine
Oops
, and of course, I answered that way, too: like, Oh? Yeah? Really? But of course, once again, he and I knew very well what was happening between us.
 

It was like my dumb explanation as to why he should play the role of Camille: The words I used weren't good but they got the job done anyway . . .

 

What did he tell me about the very beautiful voice we had just heard, which was one of the most famous in the world, which has stirred the emotions of millions of people since the invention of jazz and which two little junior high country bumpkins were still listening to in the back of a bus snuggling up next to each other fifty years after her death?

Oh . . .

Not much . . .

That her mother was kicked out by her parents when she was thirteen because she was pregnant; that she herself had a very difficult childhood; that she didn't speak for a long time because her grandmother whom she adored had died in her arms; that she was raped when she was ten years old, one night, by a lovely neighbor; that she was sent to a type of girls' home where she was tortured and beaten; that she wound up in a brothel with her alcoholic mother; and that she too had been forced to have sex more often than anticipated, . . . but okay . . . go figure . . . it eventually worked out fantastically for her anyway . . .

That she didn't simply achieve immortality; her life really soared like a bird—a bird she flipped at the sky.

Don't explain, right?

 

What was nice was that just afterward, on his mix, was
I Will Survive, Brothers in Arms
, and
Billie Jean
, specially dedicated to Lady Day, so that allowed us to more easily move on from her.

 

Do you understand, little star? Do you understand who he is, my friend? Can you see my little prince from where you are or do you need a pair of binoculars?

If you see him the way I'm describing him to you, in other words, from very close up and without any imperfections and you let him suffer needlessly, you really need to take a little time to explain your reasons to me because I swear to you, I've endured many things in life, many, many things, but this calamity, God knows, I'm already sure I'll find it difficult to go on living . . .

 

* * *

 

At the time, I was too dim-witted, but for Franck, Paris was a shock that day.

Why do I say
a
shock? I should say
the
shock. The shock of his life.

He had already been there several times for shows paid for by his mother's trade association but it was always at Christmastime, so at night and in a hurry, and also with his father who spent his time pointing out the buildings and explaining to them how they were spoiled thanks to such and such schemes and this or that Jew (that guy was off his rocker) and so he had bad memories of the place . . .

But on that beautiful day in June, alongside little Billie who believed, unlike Franck's bigoted father, that a freemason was an honest Portuguese man and who pointed out tons of pretty details for him to remember it all by, it completely changed him.

The Franck on the bus ride to Paris and the Franck on the bus ride home had absolutely no relation to each other. When the bus headed back to the site of our gloomy adolescence, he no longer spoke, he gave me both of his ear buds and the scraps of his food, and he spent the rest of the trip daydreaming while looking out the window . . .

He had fallen in love.

 

The Palais du Louvre, the Pyramide, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Élysées, I watched him admiring them and I had the impression I was seeing Wendy with her little brothers when they flew over London with Peter Pan. He didn't know where to look given that everything was so wonderful.

More than the monuments, I think it was especially the people that had really had an effect on him, their way of dressing, of crossing the street any which way, of dancing between cars, of speaking loudly, of laughing among themselves, of walking quickly . . .

The people sitting in front of the cafés who looked at us, smiling, as we passed by, the incredibly chic people or people in business suits who were picnicking on the benches of the Tuileries or who were sunning themselves on the side of the Seine with their briefcases as pillows, the people who were reading newspapers while standing on the bus without holding on to anything, those who were passing in front of the cages on the Quai de la Whaddyacallit without even noticing that there were parakeets inside because their life seemed more interesting than those of the parakeets, those who were speaking, who were laughing or who were getting annoyed on the phone all while pedaling in the sun, and all those who were going into or coming out of super classy boutiques without buying a thing as though this was normal. As if the saleswomen were paid just for that, for smiling at them while gritting their teeth.

Oh dear, yes . . . It all made my Francky really emotional: the Parisians in springtime; they were his
Mona Lisa
. . .

 

At one point, when we were on a bridge, or more like a sort of walkway above the Seine, and when, all around, every which way we turned our heads, the view was amazing—Notre-Dame, my famous
Académie
française of our rehearsals, the Eiffel Tower, the beautiful carved sculpted buildings along the quays, the I-no-longer-remember-what museum, and so on—yes, when we were craning our necks and the other country bumpkins who were with us were using their cameras in zoom mode while leaning on the padlocks that lovers attached to the railings. I wanted to promise him something . . . I wanted to take his hand or his arm while he was looking at all that beauty, salivating like a poor skinny dog before an enormous super juicy bone that was permanently out of reach and whisper to him:

“We'll come back . . . I promise you we'll come back . . . Raise your head, Perdican! I promise you we'll come back someday . . . and to stay . . . that we'll live here, we'll live here too . . . I promise you that one morning you will cross this bridge like you were going to Faugeret (the name of our local bakery) and that you will be so busy with your super completely thin cell phone that you will no longer even notice all this around you . . . At any rate, you may notice it but you'll drool less than today because you'll be so well-heeled . . . Let's go, Franck! What man believes in nothing? Since it's me who's promising you . . . me . . . your Billie who owes you so much . . . You can trust me, right?

My dear brother, your family and Jacques-Prévert Junior High taught you what they know, but believe me, it's not all; you'll know more, and you won't die without living here.”

 

Yes, I felt this terrible need to promise a picture-perfect future, but of course, I stayed silent.

For me, the bone wasn't out of reach, it was completely absent from my life. There was very little chance I would come back here someday . . . Really no chance at all.

So I did what he did: I looked at the view and hung a sort of imaginary padlock with our two initials engraved on it.

 

* * *

 

And there you have it—the last pleasant moment in season 1.

I'll sum it for you in the recap at the start of the next season: we're the heroes, the setting is shitty, there hasn't been much action but there will be more before long, no one gives a crap about the secondary characters, the prospects for the future are zero, for the girl in any case, and the reason all this continues anyway, well, there isn't one.

 

So? You have nothing to say?

Hey! . . . Are you asleep or what?

Raise your head, little star!

There is one reason! And you know it well since it's precisely because of it that I've been going on and on like this for hours!

The reason is totally idiotic and I can barely dare to say it. The reason is: love.

A
fter that it got sadder and I'm going to run through it quickly.

Afterwards, you were looking elsewhere . . .

 

First there was summer vacation which put a bit of distance between us (we saw each other three times in two months, once by chance and super uncomfortably because his mother was nearby) and then his going off to school separated us completely.

 

He was far away and as for me . . . during that period, I repeated a year of school, developed tits, and started smoking.

To pay for my cigarettes, I began to fool around, and so that my tits would serve some purpose, I shacked up with someone.

Yes, . . . shacked up . . . there was a boy who passed by, he had a motorbike, he could take me away from the Morels from time to time, he worked at a garage, he wasn't all that nice, but he wasn't mean either, he wasn't all that handsome and couldn't have hoped for better than a girl like me for an easy lay. He still lived with his parents, but there was a trailer at the back of their yard—and that was great because I felt completely at home in trailers—so I brought my bag of clothes and moved in.

 

I cleaned it; I sat inside and did what he did: I lived stealthily at the back of the yard.

His parents' yard . . .

His parents who didn't want to speak to me because I was such bad marriage material.

He was allowed to have his meals with them, but me—no. Instead, he brought me out a lunchbox.

It bothered him a bit, but as he said: it was only temporary, right?

 

Where were you little star?

 

Oh . . . I have to go quickly over these moments from my past because it reminds me too much of the present.

Because, you know . . . I keep going on and on with my story, but I'm waiting for you and feel really cold.