For the first time, He’s invited me to dinner at a friend’s. I take His invitation as being tantamount to a promotion, and spend the three days before the dinner, when I’m not working, on the female fripperies that have become indispensable to the way I present myself: I wander the streets at lunchtime in search of the right dress, between visits to the hairdresser, the beautician, the manicurist, and so on.
By seven o’clock on Thursday I feel ready, my fingernails and toenails are impeccably manicured, I’ve sacrificed the hour I usually spend every day with my beloved mare to have my hair done at Leonor Greyl, and I’ve even found a little backless dress at Calvin Klein, black lace on a flesh-colored background, which He ought to like.
I feel totally feminine, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m worried about a tricky case I have to plead tomorrow, I’d be ready to throw all caution to the winds. I wait for Him to call, my heart pounding. As the time passes, I feel more and more wound up.
He doesn’t call until nine. He asks me to meet Him there, because He’s late and doesn’t have time to come and pick me up or to wait for me.
So be it. I’ll just have to overcome the embarrassment I’m going to feel when I don’t arrive on His arm.
I’d never have imagined an apartment like this existed in the rue des Saints-Pères. At the end of a courtyard, there’s a kind of art gallery, with immaculately white walls. At the entrance, a huge flat screen showing a silent video, repeated ad infinitum, of a woman dancer who sits speaking inaudible words, passing her hand through her jet-black hair, apparently losing her temper, to judge by the fierce way her lips are moving, while her whole upper body remains stiff and impassive and taut, greeting the young girls as they come in. Yes, there are a lot of young girls here: hardly more than children, only just into puberty, and already so tall and long and sure of the promise of their barely formed breasts. Bare midriffs, hair cut short or flowing over their shoulders, jeans clinging to their bony hips, feet bare or in flip-flops, a whole head taller than me, no eye makeup, pink lips. Too young to be friends of my little sisters’ and too old to envy me anything, and very real to these successful men in their forties who are all on the prowl, full of confidence in the power that money brings and the attractions of showbiz dinners, weekends in Essaouria, jetting off for an afternoon in Deauville, an evening at Jimmy’s, a night at the Normandy.
At sixteen, I was studying for my exams, and dreaming of myself as a heroine out of Matzneff, but these girls are learning English and dreaming of a future as the idol of some jet-setter.
In the middle of the pop art canvases and Calder-style mobiles and all the other sculptural beauties of iron and skin, I feel as if I’m drowning in a vast white ocean. It’s like a diagram of order and disorder, this formal French garden invaded by foliage and other things that are starting to blossom. I feel about as much at ease as my Great Pyrenees dog would feel in a show reserved for greyhounds.
Carried along by this stream of anorexic adolescents, who sway their hips as they come and go, I don’t see Him among the guests and feel somewhat at a loss, aware that I’m not attracting anyone’s attention, except perhaps by being overdressed and oversophisticated, the only explanation for which is that I’m in my thirties—twice the age of these unreal young madams.
The other thing that would allow even a blind person to pick me out from the crowd is that I seem to be the only real Parisienne.
All the men here seem to have developed a sudden passion for Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Polish, and Czech—I’m bluffing, of course, I can’t tell any of these languages apart!
It suddenly comes home to me how I must have exasperated all the wives of my husband’s friends, how arrogant I must have been without realizing it, a very young girl madly in love with a man in his fifties. All those dinners I went to wearing a miniskirt, with my hair down my back and lots of eyeliner like Brigitte Bardot, flaunting my cleavage, greeting the female guests, all of them old enough to be my mother, with an insulting “Hello, madame.” Now I understand the hate I felt in their eyes, and my husband’s pride as he showed off his young law-student wife.
“Here you are at last. I didn’t think you were coming.” His solemn voice makes me jump. It’s Him! Him! Him!
“But I was here! I’ve been looking for you for an hour, it was horrible, there are so many people here and I don’t know anyone. Oh, if only you knew how happy I am to see you!”
With a spontaneous burst of tenderness—maybe a bit calculated all the same—I hug Him, within sight of as many onlookers as possible.
“Let’s keep calm, shall we?” He says, restraining my enthusiasm.
I immediately let go of Him and drown myself in champagne, which a kind man, who must have spotted my confusion, comes and serves me as my glass empties. I’m grateful to him and thank him with a smile, which, while it may not be the prettiest here, is certainly the most sincere.
But He’s still by my side. I inquire about the briefs He’s been working on, the cases He’s won lately. How easy it is to talk to a man about himself, about his own talent, his own success.
Our host, His friend, joins Him, I hear them evaluating the vital statistics and the photographic prospects of the evanescent beauties fluttering through this incredible apartment.
The image of my son keeps coming back to me in flashes, his reproachful look when I left him in his babysitter’s arms to come to this party. He could be in my arms, I would read him stories and he’d whisper his first sentences, his first declarations of love, “Mommy, love Mommy, baby love Mommy,” repeating back to me the words I’ve said so often myself when I kiss him before he goes to sleep at night, I’d bury my face in his neck and shoulders and stomach and devour him with kisses, except I’m here at a trendy party full of men displaying the power of money and appearances, and young, slender, fragile foreign girls, each of them determined to find a Pygmalion with the means to take her under his wing and teach her all about Paris and Gucci and Rossi and all those things.
I turn, and He’s already gone. The buffet is piled high with big Moroccan salads and tempting pastillas. People are taking their places at little round tables, which are supposed to be welcoming.
I can’t see Him, maybe He’s in the garden, or maybe He’s gone to wash His hands, or shut Himself up somewhere to make a phone call. His friend, noticing how disappointed I look, hands me a plate of pastilla—he’s realized I’m not one of those who’ve made a solemn vow of starvation—and invites me to sit at a table. Not daring to decline his courteous proposition, I do as he says, but keep my eyes open for Him.
Doing my best to put the extraterrestrials around me off the scent, I try to engage the girl on my left in conversation. She answers in a language I don’t understand a word of and smiles regretfully.
I try for a moment to convince myself that in my real life, which isn’t this one, I’m extremely privileged: I have a profession that excites me, people who listen to me and pay me to think, an apartment all to myself where I can sleep, a family I can count on.
On my left, a man I’m obliged out of politeness to refer to as getting on in years is trying, in perfect English, to convince a feline redhead of the attractions of Gstaad, where he’d really like to take her next weekend, but she says it sounds too cold, brrrr, she’d prefer the Virgin Islands. The conversation is none of my business. He’s still not here, where is He, He couldn’t possibly have left the party without telling me, He may be a devil but He’s well-bred, where is He?
Time’s passing and He still hasn’t come back, and by now I’ve eaten the whole pastilla. There’s no longer even any champagne left, the kind man, my only ally, has made a point of coming and apologizing, I’m clearly very popular with the waiter, I really would have done anything, endured anything, but I wouldn’t dare just leave like that, why is He doing this to me?
But just as He vanished, He reappears.
“There’s a projection room next door, they were showing a film with Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro, very interesting. Come to the buffet with me, I’m hungry.” As He piles mechoui and cumin-flavored carrots onto his plate, He says: “The only interesting woman here, sexually speaking, is the one from Mauritius sitting on the sofa behind you. Let’s go and join her.”
And He sits down next to the girl. She’s dark, with exceptionally fine features that could have been drawn with a pencil. Her legs are so long she must look like a goddess when she walks—fortunately, she remains seated and spares me the sight. He asks her about her family, wonders what mix of ancestors could have produced such an exceptional creature, asks her what languages she speaks, how did she come to Europe, doesn’t she feel cold in winter, how can she bear the arrogance of all these white men who surely haven’t missed the opportunity of making her acquaintance, how can she live in this superficial civilization where money makes the world go ’round, how can she manage without the snorkel-free dives, the sea urchins scooped from the rock and eaten raw, the golden sands, the coconut milk?
Meanwhile I keep asking myself why I’m here. I feel less and less at ease, I’m sure this girl isn’t for me, He isn’t going to share her. Why humiliate me like this? Why bring me into this world? I don’t belong in it, I find it perfectly ridiculous, and it doesn’t want anything to do with me, with my normal body, my thirty-odd years, my studies, my bourgeois upbringing, the things I’m interested in.
To get up and leave would be an insult, I don’t dare, I’m too afraid of losing Him, infinitely afraid that He’ll never call me again. But why is He doing this to me? Why has He made me come? Maybe it’s a test, to see how much I can tolerate, how far my submissiveness will go.
I say nothing and stay where I am, listening in silence, as if I weren’t here. I just don’t want to leave Him to her, not yet, that would be too easy. I want Him to leave with me on His arm, I want her to know He’s mine, at least a little bit mine.
Their conversation continues, I’ve never heard Him talk so much, or seem so interested. Is this His usual method of seduction?
Will He blindfold her, too, one day, and whisper in her ear the thrilling words that enslaved me?
Does she even know who she’s dealing with, who she has the honor of talking to, how painful it is for me to watch Him seduce her? I thought I knew that I wasn’t allowed to be jealous, I thought I knew that I have no exclusive rights to Him, but now, suddenly, I feel a kind of diffuse pain spreading through my body. All I want is for Him to get up and take me away from here, anywhere, just so that He can order me to suck Him and make Him come. He could stick all the dildos in the world inside me, ask me for anything, just as long as we’re away from here, away from her, because it turns me on to see Him get a hard-on, because I’m ready for anything just to make sure His desire is only for me.
But He doesn’t look at me, it’s as if I’m not even here, as if I no longer exist. I’m just an onlooker at my own downfall, usurped by a black bombshell with raised breasts that challenge the world with their arrogance. The pain is sharper now, it’s going right through me, I’ve drunk too much champagne again, but what else can I do?
Their words, their laughter, are torture to me, I’m overwhelmed by my own powerlessness. All at once I come to a decision, and immediately stand up.
“Good night. I have to go, it’s a little late, you know how it is, the babysitter.”
She does know how it is, and shows a touch of female solidarity, though it turns out badly for me.
“I have to go, too. I have a casting call tomorrow morning. I live in the rue Saint-Honoré. Could either of you give me a lift?”
“Of course,” He cries. “Let’s go!”
And here was I secretly hoping, only a moment ago, for something to happen, a tussle on the stairs, in a doorway, in the car, just one single contact, just one touch, anything to give me back my old status, make me feel I’m alive again.
But we’re already in the hall, and He’s looking for His coat and the Burberry she’s asked for. I get my leather raincoat and put it on by myself and open the door myself and find myself on the threshold. He doesn’t even see me, hasn’t realized that I’m leaving, that I’ve already left, He only has eyes for that incredible black body that is coming closer to His, I mutter an inaudible “good night” and run down the stairs alone and find myself in the street, where I walk up and down the sidewalk looking for my car. I feel sick, there’s a real pain penetrating me, spreading through my body, working its way deep inside, gradually blackening my heart and my soul and every one of my intestines, because I’m His, I feel like His thing, like a neglected animal, left in a highway rest area while its owner drives off, unconcerned, far into the distance, but why must He insult me like this?
My eyes blur, blinded with tears. The pain cuts deep into me like a blade. I start the windshield wipers of my car even though it isn’t raining. I want to sleep. I want to vomit.
I return alone to my big, cold apartment, thank my son’s babysitter, and look for my husband. As usual he isn’t here, he’s away traveling. Why? Why? I need him so much, his presence, his proximity, his smell in the bedroom, the contact of his skin in the bed, but the bed has been desperately empty for nearly three weeks.
I tiptoe back into my baby’s room, as I do every night, and lean over the side of his cot and kiss him and tell him I love him more than anyone, I love his gentle breathing and his tiny nose and his closed eyes and his collection of dummies.
I can’t bear to be without him. I lift him up and take him to my bed. I’m going to sleep by his side, cradled in his little arms.