Yet another panic attack. I don’t know if I can control it this time, I’m being sucked into a vortex of anxiety. What’s happening to me? What if it isn’t time that’s going faster but me who’s slowed down? Do these people think I’m coming down from a bad trip? Who would take me seriously if I tried to explain what I’m experiencing? What if I really am coming down from a bad trip? The drugs last night. Maybe they were badly cut. Or maybe I’ve simply gone mad. Maybe that’s the way it happens, suddenly, without anybody being able to do anything about it.
Absorbed by my paranoia, I still don’t see You for what You are: not an abstract entity, but a living being, who has me by the balls. I’m champing at the bit, but You won’t let go. Maybe You’re trying to teach me a lesson and You won’t stop until You’ve brought me to my knees.
“I’m fine, I don’t want any more.” I refuse to order a sweet. I pass, as if I’m playing poker, even though my stomach is twisted with cramp and I don’t have an iota of energy left in my body.
“Shall we go?”
Gaëlle says this to Federico, not me. I guess she’s alienated by the way I’m behaving and is intent on making me pay for it. And Federico plays along with her. If he wasn’t my best friend, I’d have already given him a kick up the backside.
In the car I sit in the back, in order not to hinder their brilliant conversation. God, how I wish I was in Rome right now, independent, driving my baby, on my way home to do my own thing. But Gaëlle drives quickly, she’s in a hurry to get to her party, she’s hungry for adulation, she wants everyone clinging to her like insects to flypaper.
Forced smiles, laughing, overexcited faces. I can’t stand anybody tonight. Their snobbish, cursory nodding, their longing to be admired. There they are, those four famous faces that come to life only under the spotlights, their thoughts on the people who’ll be reading the gossip columns tomorrow, lingering over the most trivial details. The place is chaotic, people are pushing and shoving to get in through the doors. Reluctantly, they move aside to let us pass. On other occasions this triumphal entry would have amused me, especially on an evening when the flashbulbs are going off like crazy, but not tonight, I’m anxious and silent, I look like someone who’s just survived a plane crash.
At a certain point I look at Gaëlle, who’s going to want to sleep with me tonight, and panic takes hold of me again. I try to convince myself that my night with her won’t just flash by, but will actually help me to find myself again.
“You look rough,” she says, just inside the door. She’s deliberately harsh, she wants to hurt me. She thinks she looks better than me, but I’m sober enough to notice her reddened nostrils, her slightly blackened teeth, her wild eyes circled in red. I don’t have time to answer her, though, before she’s already away, somewhere in the club, where all that matters is the music which everyone except me thinks is so infectious.
A friend of Gaëlle’s I haven’t seen in a while approaches me, says hello in an ingratiating tone, and immediately launches into a rapid monologue, the subject of which seems to be the boob job she had last week. Then she stops, presumably to give me time to say something, but I don’t know for how long, the minutes flash past.
“Tout va bien?”
Her voice is so urgent, it’s almost orgasmic.
“Quelles nouvelles?”
I’m about to make a superhuman effort to answer her, but luckily another orgasmic yelp tells me she’s just caught sight of her next victim.
“Oh, Paul! So nice to see you! Ça vaaa?”
I lean over the balcony and look down. Two white marble staircases lead to the dance floor, where everyone’s going wild to the feverish rhythm of unlistenable music. On a big block in the middle, two female dancers dressed as devils are jigging about, with pink feathers cascading down from the tops of their heads. At the far end of the room, mounted like a precious stone, is an impressive rocky fountain, on which a fire-eater is blowing flames over the heads of the crowd like an angry dragon. A club worthy of this city, and at any other time I might even have reflected on how thin and insubstantial the nightlife of Rome seems in comparison.
When I turn to say goodbye to Gaëlle’s friend and leave her in the company of her new interlocutor, I realize that not only has she already sneaked away, but she’s got as far as the fountain and is dancing next to the fire-eater.
I don’t know if she told Paul about her boob job, but she must at least have said a few words to him, then gone down to the lower floor, made her way through the crowd to the fountain, jumped on one of the rocks and started to dance, all in what I perceived as a fraction of a minute at the most. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have superpowers.
I lean on the rail, I must look unsteady on my feet, I keep feeling I’m about to drown. I’m sweating, and my smell makes me feel nauseous, but so does everyone’s smell. A fetid mixture of alcohol, smoke, heavy food and chewing gum. I have to get out of here.
I see Gaëlle dancing with Federico at the far end of the dance floor, next to the private area. Now she’s getting up on the table they’ve reserved for us in the front row. Federico gives her a hand because she’s had too much vodka and she could easily lose her balance. With her arse out and her head back, she’s more provocative than usual. She needs to attract attention and she can do that better on a table. From up here they all seem so tiny, a colony of frenzied ants, and in the middle of them, there she is, Gaëlle, the queen. So proud of her little throne, a glass table, fragile and transparent.
I need to rinse my face with cold water. The toilets are behind me. Outside the Ladies, there’s an interminable queue of miniskirts and high heels.
Once in the toilet, I wipe my face with a handkerchief, then lean on the wall with a sigh. I start to feel a little bit better.
When I look up and peer into the semi-darkness of the washroom, I make out the figure of a man who’s just pinned a woman against the wall.
He’s holding her wrists above her head to keep her still. She isn’t putting up much of a struggle, her tapering fingers just seem a little slack. She’s wearing a flashy-looking ring, like the one I gave Gaëlle last year. My Gaëlle.
She bends her long leg, letting him get in where nobody can see him. They sway back and forth a bit, slowly, and I notice that the woman has a silver belt, worn low on the waist, and metal sandals with dizzyingly high heels. Just like Gaëlle. My Gaëlle.
The man’s hand moves down her bare thin arm, until it reaches her shoulder, and then again down, to her breasts. Against the blood-red wall, I now see the bouquet of feathers the woman is wearing as a hat, just like Gaëlle. My Gaëlle.
I have a better view of the man now, too. Dark jeans, white shirt, curly, unkempt hair. Just like Federico. My friend Federico.
His bum sticking out, his feet splayed, his handmade leather moccasins. Again, just like Federico. My friend Federico.
I keep telling myself it can’t be them, I saw them dancing in the private area downstairs only a moment ago. I flatten myself against the wall and creep towards the door, as if moving along a ledge. I’m dazed, I feel as if I’ve just been knocked on the head. At last I can hear what they’re saying to each other.
“Don’t be so impatient.”
It’s Gaëlle’s voice, there’s no mistaking it.
Knowing she’s in a clinch with another man wipes me out. But what’s even more disturbing is the thought that one second ago they were dancing on the other side of the club. They can’t have flown here.
“Please, Federico, not now. Not with Svevo around.”
“I beg you, I’m going crazy. Can’t you see what you’ve done to me?”