Damien Barnèche
My father used to tell me, if anyone asks you what your father does, say he’s a technical consultant. In actual fact, he used to receive a paycheck as a technical consultant in exchange for partnering at bridge with a guy who managed concession agreements. My grandfather bankrupted himself at the races, and for several years my father was banned from the gambling casinos. Loula listens to me while I tell her incredible stories. She’s really pretty. She gets into my car every morning, that is, into the car the movie production company provides to pick her up and bring her back. She sits in the front beside me, still a little drowsy. I have orders not to speak to her unless she addresses me, I’m supposed to respect her concentration and her exhaustion. But Loula Moreno asks me questions, she takes an interest in me, she doesn’t talk only about herself the way actresses generally do. I tell her I like movies, I work in production, but I’d prefer to be involved on the creative side. To tell the truth, I don’t have a very good idea of what I want to do. I’m the first Barnèche who’s not a gambler. Loula uses tu when she talks to me and I reply with vous, even though I’m twenty-two and she’s just barely thirty (she told me so). As the days pass, I tell her my life story. Loula Moreno is curious and observant. She was quick to notice that I’m interested in Géraldine, the assistant dresser, a little brunette with bright eyes and masses of hair. My first impression of this girl was mixed, because we were talking about music and she revealed right away that she liked the Black-Eyed Peas and Zaz. Normally that would have stopped me in my tracks. But the fact that we were in Klosterneuburg — filming had begun in Austria — may have made me more tolerant (or lamer). Especially as we very quickly discovered a mutual passion for Pim’s. We remembered that when we were little, they used to make a white chocolate/cherry Pim’s, and we found ourselves agreeing that Casino’s later version wasn’t as good. Géraldine asked me if I thought Pim’s would make a Pim’s caramel someday. I said yes, but on the condition that they make the biscuit harder or the liquid caramel very light, because it wouldn’t work with soft on soft. Géraldine said, but then it wouldn’t be a Pim’s anymore. I agreed completely. She’d never tasted Pim’s pear, which are quite rare and little known. I told her, the pear is Pim’s best product. The jam’s relatively thick, unlike the raspberry or orange jam, but you don’t notice that except for the moment you bite into it. Then it thins and spreads. The orange cookie gives itself up immediately, the pear takes its time. It melts into the biscuit. Even the wrapper is perfect, the packaging’s very chic. They haven’t made it some tacky green color, you see, the color they’ve chosen has some taupe in it. Géraldine was enthused. In the end I said, when you have your first Pim’s pear, you’ve got to look at the package while you eat it. She said, yes, yes, of course! I fell in love with her because it’s very rare to find a girl who understands that sort of thing. Loula approves. I can’t figure out whether I have a chance with Géraldine. When a girl really attracts me, I’m not the type that goes charging in blindly. I need a guarantee. In Klosterneuburg, I had the impression that she liked me. But ever since we came back, she’s been selling herself to the sound assistant. A giant prawn who greets you with the Boy Scout salute (I’m not sure whether he means it or if it’s a joke; if it’s a joke, it’s even worse). And another difficulty, one that didn’t exist in Austria, has arisen: she wears ballet shoes. Even with a dress. In college, if you leaned forward you could see a whole forest of legs ending in ballet shoes. To me, ballet shoes are a synonym for boredom and the absence of sex. Loula asked me to make a list of the things I find irritating in girls. I said such a list would extend beyond infinity. — Give it a try. I said, when a girl has a dumb hairdo. When she analyzes everything. When she’s religious. When she’s a political activist. When all her friends are girls. When she likes Justin Timberlake. When she has a blog. Loula laughed. I said, when she can’t laugh like you. One evening, there was a little party for one of the actors who had finished his last day on the shoot. Loula advised me not to let the sound assistant have the field to himself. I wound up sitting shoulder to shoulder with Géraldine at the bottom of the stairs to the basement where the sets are stored. I’d swiped a bottle of red wine, and we were drinking it from plastic cups. Especially me. I said (in the murmuring voice American TV actors use in pre-screw sequences), if I were president, there are a certain number of reforms I’d institute immediately. A European directive against hangers that are supposed to hold your trousers suspended but let them fall as soon as you turn your back. A law against tissue paper in socks (it’s called tissue paper, but it’s halfway between tissue paper and tracing paper), which is only there to make you waste time and to say to you, I’m new. A law that would protect you from being bothered by the leaflet when trying to open a box of medication. You’re groping around for your sleeping pill, your fingers close on paper, and you immediately throw the leaflet away because it’s such a pain in the ass. The pharmaceutical companies ought to be indicted for murder, given the risks they force you to run. Géraldine said, you take sleeping pills? — No, antihistamines. — What are they? I wasn’t so hammered that I couldn’t see the enormity of the problem. Not only was Géraldine not gradually collapsing against my body, charmed by the idiocies I was spouting, she also didn’t know the word
antihistamine. And there was, furthermore, her disapproving tone regarding sleeping pills, a tone that betrayed a rigid personality and new age tendencies. I said, allergy medicine. — You have allergies? — Asthma. — Asthma? What was her problem, why did she repeat everything like that? I took a swig straight from the bottle, put on a doleful voice, and said, and hay fever, and other kinds of allergies. And then I kissed her. She let me. I tipped her over onto the stairs, against the wall of the warehouse, and began feeling her up all over. She wriggled and said something I didn’t understand, and that irritated me. I said, what, rubbing myself against her the whole time, what? What did you say? She repeated it, she said, not here, not here, Damien! She tried to push me away the way girls do, half yes, half no, I stuck my head under her T-shirt, she wasn’t wearing a bra, I caught a nipple between my lips, I heard incomprehensible moans, I stroked her thighs, her buttocks, I slid my fingers under her panties, I tried to guide her hand to my cock, and all of a sudden she totally arched her back, she thrust me away with her arms, her legs, kicking in all directions and crying out, stop, stop! I found myself flattened against the opposite wall, and in front of me there was a red-faced, infuriated girl. She said, you’re crazy! I said, what did I do? — Are you kidding? — I’m sorry, I thought you … you didn’t seem to have anything against … —Not here. Not like that. — What does that mean, not like that? — Not so brutally, she said. Not without preliminaries. A woman needs preliminaries, nobody ever taught you that? She tried to fix her hair, she repeated the same gesture ten times in an effort to gather all the strands behind her head. I thought, preliminaries, what a dreadful word. I said, leave your hair alone, it looks good when it’s a mess. — Messy hair is exactly what I don’t want. I drained the bottle to the dregs and said, disgusting rotgut. — Then why are you drinking it? — Come kiss me. — No. They’d put on some music upstairs, but I couldn’t make out what it was. I put out a hand like a beggar and said, come on. — No. She fixed her hair in a chignon and stood up. I lay sprawled, my head pressed against the wall. Nothing was happening, absolutely nothing. She stood there before me, her arms dangling at her sides. I slouched on the steps, crushing the plastic cup in one hand. So that was what it was to be young, to have years ahead of you. In other words, nothing. A deep abyss. But not an abyss you fall into. It’s above you, in front of you. My father was right to live in a world of cards. Géraldine crouched down next to me. I was starting to get a headache. She asked, are you all right? — Yes. — What are you thinking about? — Nothing. — Yes you are. Tell me. — Nothing, believe me. I waited until I calmed down a little and kissed her without touching anything else. I stood up, straightened my clothes, and said, I’m going back up. She got up at once. I’m going back up too, she said, are you mad? — No. They were getting on my nerves, those equivocations of hers. That soppy voice she had all of a sudden. I climbed the stairs two at a time, I could sense her hurrying to keep up with me. Just before we got to the top, she said, Damien? — What? — Nothing. Up on the ground floor, the party was in full swing, people were dancing. Loula Moreno, of course, had already left. The following day, in the car, I gave her a general description of the evening. Loula asked, how did you part? — I took the car and went home. — How did you say good-bye? — See you, see you, a peck on the cheek. Zero, Loula said. Zero, I repeated. The sun was barely up, the weather was crappy. I’d turned on everything you can turn on in a car, windshield wipers, defogger, defroster, multidirectional heat. I said, in real life I have a scooter. Loula nodded. — I was on roller skates when my friends were riding bicycles, on a bicycle when they had scooters, and now on a scooter when they’re driving cars. I’m a boy who knows how to keep in step. I said, there’s a very well-known method for getting women, everybody knows it, it’s not to say a word. The guys girls like are silent types who make faces. Me, I don’t think I’m good-looking enough or intriguing enough to keep quiet. I talk too much, I babble incoherently, I want to be funny all the time. Even with you, I want to be funny. A lot of times, after a barrage of jokes and nonsense, I get gloomy and angry at myself. Especially when they fall flat, I hunker down, I become sinister for fifteen minutes or so. Then I’m my old jolly self again. The whole seduction song-and-dance is a pain in the ass. Loula asked, what kind of scooter do you have? — A Yamaha Xenter 125. Do you know a lot about scooters? — For a while I had a Vespa. Pink, like the one in Roman Holiday. I said, I can just picture you. You must have been really cute. Wasn’t that movie in black and white? She reflected and then said, ah, yes, it’s true, it was. But the scooter seemed pink. Maybe it wasn’t pink, after all.