She decides to make herself something to eat; the act of cooking might help her to think. She cleans and chops up a few mushrooms, fries them lightly in the pan before adding two eggs that she has beaten with a fork. While the omelette is cooking, she switches on the television. She channels several times before coming across the faces of two adolescent girls. The first has her hair in braids. The second one’s teeth are covered in a complex piece of metal equipment. The two girls, both white, are chewing gum in near unison. They’re answering the camera in English with heavy American accents, their voices are dubbed. Listening to them, she eventually gathers what the report is about, the pressure American teenage girls feel to give their boyfriends blowjobs. If you don’t do it, says one of the girls, it’s like your reputation suffers, you know. The other says, and afterwards the boys won’t talk to you, everyone does it, it’s nothing special. Images follow of pupils settling down at their desks then of a busy school playground. A quick shot of a boy and girl having an inaudible conversation, neither one touching or looking at the other, but both clearly very engaged. Back to the two girls. Oh I’ve never slept with a boy, one says laughing, and it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. The other says, when you suck them off they’re happy, that way they don’t want anything else. She switches off the television. She doesn’t know what to make of what she has just heard.
Like all adolescents, she had tried to define her own identity through defiance or conformity. To choose a way of behaving by imitating an admired group or individual is a way to avoid one’s own contradictions. But whatever escape mechanism is chosen, it’s open to abuse. As adults, we forget. She has forgotten. The rite of passage has only come back to her in small chunks. It has taken her several years to piece together what really happened.
All human beings end up believing in the uniqueness of the events that traumatised them. So we try to hide our scars in order to evolve beyond what they made of us, even if we never stop dwelling on them. Others must have lived through the same thing she did, but she isn’t aware of having met any of them; nor has she tried to seek them out. Marion is the only person she has ever confided in, her sole second-hand witness. For that same reason, they broke off all contact. What Marion remembers is only a distorted echo of what she was told. As for herself, she has only her own version of events and at times doubts that the experience was real. At such moments, she tells herself the incident is one of those personal myths invented to justify excesses and wild behavior. It would be wrong to keep talking about it at her age; it would serve no purpose. And talk about it to whom? The person concerned? He would claim she was lying; after all these years, he would manage to destabilize her. She smells something burning. She rushes to the kitchen, where the omelette has turned into a blackened mass. Angrily, she shuts off the stove and tosses the frying pan into the sink before turning on the cold water. Steam whooshes into her face. She goes to the living room to fetch her things and leaves the apartment.
A métro takes her to Les Halles. She goes down into the station, gets on the train, gets off the train, and leaves the station in a kind of trance. She is now sitting on a bench, opposite a merry-go-round turning to the doleful strains of an accordion. Parents are placing small, anxious-looking tots on horses that have coats of white varnish, false bulging eyes, muzzles frozen in a cruel rictus held by two leather straps. Some of the children are fastened to their mounts as a precaution. The adults step back while an attendant in a tracksuit comes round to make sure the kids have paid. The machine shifts into motion. On a bench next to hers is a couple. Sitting slightly apart. Neither one of them is talking. Their attentive eyes follow one of the children then freeze on the spot where the child vanishes from sight for a few seconds before they retrieve him visually on the other side to make sure he hasn’t fallen off or run away. The man and the woman each raise a hand in the direction of their offspring, whose face becomes progressively more hesitant with each turn. By the tenth revolution the face passing before them is red and tense. The two little hands are still gripping the golden rod, the child is petrified. Powerless and seized by panic, the man and woman look on as the supposed fun turns to torture. Do something, says the woman, still trying not to look at her companion. He shrugs his shoulders. The merry-go-round has to keep turning until the end. Only then can the woman rush forward, arms outstretched, to rescue her poor little boy, who bursts into tears in her arms. Look, darling, none of the other children are crying. She gets up from the bench just as the couple begin to quarrel.
She is heading towards Place Carrée. It sounds as if someone is calling to her from a few yards behind. The voice grows louder, more insistent, forces her to turn round. Seeing that he has managed to get her attention, the man steps closer, even as she continues walking. He is of North African origin, his voice is slightly hoarse, his breath smells of tobacco. He wants to know if she’ll have a coffee with him. Without looking at him she shakes her head and goes on walking. He shuffles quickly alongside her to keep the expression on her face in check. It’s my birthday, I’m forty today. Happy birthday. She quickens her pace, but he doesn’t give up. I never thought I’d make it this far. The apparent sincerity of the declaration causes her to turn her head. He has black eyes, several days’ stubble. He wanted to do something out of the ordinary on his birthday, invite a stranger for a coffee. She has an appointment, she can’t stop. Please. His persistence eventually forces a smile out of her, but she keeps walking. Why me? The question slipped out. By asking it, she’s created an opening and will find that much harder to get rid of him. But as with Renée, she couldn’t help wanting to know why, out of all the dozens of women he has seen, she is the one he has decided to approach. Because she doubts he could have put on a similar act for others before her. I saw you by the merry-go-round, you looked a little sad. She wants to believe that he’s telling her the truth. She slows down. Ten minutes then, but that’s all.
They sit down at a table at the nearest outdoor café, in the same way you’d slip into the nearest hotel — never mind the number of stars, the price of the rooms — so as not to let the moment pass. Despite its banality, their brief exchange has had an effect on her; the world around her no longer seems quite the same. Influenced by the presence of the unknown, her senses are picking up new signals. His name is Momo, and he empties two sachets of sugar into his coffee. He doesn’t ask her name. He lives around here, he’s unemployed. ’Cos finding another job at forty is tough. There’s too much racism in France. Not that he’s criticising France, but even so. The young people who live in the suburbs take things a bit far, but they’re not given a chance, you gotta see what happens when they go for an interview. OK, so he’s not that young any more, but he knows tons of people like him, younger people, and they go out and try. But after ten shots they give up. And then they start pissing people off, ’cos they feel like they’re not wanted. Sure, there’re always some real trouble-makers, but there’s not only them. She finds it hard to keep listening because she doesn’t have any particular opinion on the matter. The story is already starting to go wrong; they’ve got off to a bad start. He fixes her with a stare as she watches his hand creep across the surface of the table. You’re not bad for a woman. She wishes he hadn’t said that; suddenly she sees the world as it was before. Are you embarrassed? Grimacing, she shakes her head. Do you have a boyfriend? She wishes she were no longer there; she knows now that he hasn’t picked her out from the crowd and that she is sitting with him only because she has been naïve enough to accept. She hesitates. “Yes” would work to her advantage but she doesn’t want to use cowardice as a shield. No, and I don’t want one. Momo sniggers. That’s not true, a woman always needs a man. She finds generalizations tiresome, even if they have a reassuring effect. All she has to do is to get a man, any man, and keep him, so long as he has the word “man” written on him in big letters. If you don’t show a man you need him, he won’t stay with you. Barely ten minutes since they met, and he’s already giving her advice. Just because she’s the only one to have accepted, he thinks that gives him the right to say what he likes. Is he saying that to her personally, she feels like asking, or is this his usual charm routine? She holds her tongue: if she starts attaching too much importance to what he says, she could be there for ages. She tells Momo that the ten minutes are up and that she has to go now. Please, it’s my birthday. I’ll buy you another coffee. Either this man is desperate or she’s giving the impression that she needs him. She is about to leave when she feels a hand on her shoulder.