A few years ago, back when we both had trouble making ends meet, Sophia convinced me to do this thing she’d recently learned about. That is how, in exchange for thirty euros, I gave her a pair of used cotton panties, which she then sold on a specialized website. After I pocketed the money, I tried not to think about whatever became of my underthings. I was kind of grossed out by the whole idea and refused to do it again.
But today, years later, I sometimes wonder what happened to that barely moistened panty. Did it still smell like me? Did the man who bought it still sniff it while jacking off masturbating? Had he tossed it in with all the others, making it anonymous? Or had he thrown it out after one use?
Handwritten note by me, 6/13/2009
“AURORA DELBARD”—THE SEARCH ENGINE ONLY came back with two results. Only two, and both wrong. Come to think of it, Aurora had died at a time when our private lives weren’t available for all to see on the Web and social networks.
Still, it was surprising not to find her anywhere. No class photo, no scholastic or university affiliation, no genealogical tree, nothing. Had her family or even David himself contacted one of those businesses that can erase your online existence? In any case, the result was the same: Aurora Delbard had left no virtual trace of herself or her time on earth.
This idea crossed my mind in a flash, a brief instant of exhilaration and panic, and then it was gone: What if Aurora wasn’t real? What if she was the fruit of a sick imagination? It was unthinkable. What would be their interest in inventing this woman? Why dupe me like that?
That morning, as I slipped the ring back on my finger, I had the sensation of entering into a ghost’s life, an ectoplasm with no past or shape. Worse, a purely fictional being.
The surest way of sending the ghost back to the other side, of getting it out of my life, was with my pen. When I signed the contract Armand had left for me, David’s prenup, I would be giving our union and our present life much more consistency than any memory—real or invented. But I couldn’t. Ten times that morning I had hovered the point of my pen over the places where I was to initial. Ten times I had withdrawn my hand, impeded by an invisible force whose name I knew all too well. Louie had a hold on me.
See you at the station, beautiful.
I believe in you.
I love you.
D.
I found David’s note on the breakfast table. It didn’t lift my severely low spirits. Today was the big day, however. My first television appearance. Something I had wanted for a long time, and which any girl in my place would have seen as a blessing. Yes, everything should have receded—my evenings at the Hôtel des Charmes should have vanished overnight, Louie’s voice and scent evaporated—in the face of this important and imminent event. I should have been quaking in fear, hopping with impatience, squealing with excitement. But instead, I felt switched off, my attention drawn elsewhere, far, far away from these happenings and my ambition, which was beginning to seem pathetic and vain.
I DRAGGED MY FEET, TAKING all the time in the world to meet the team that I knew awaited me on set. Moreover, I allowed myself the luxury of a detour, surprising even myself when I exited the metro at the Père Lachaise station, a business card in hand.
Avenue de la République, a wide and affluent street, stretched out from across the famous Parisian cemetery. A little road to its left, Rue du Chemin Vert, was markedly narrower and more working-class. I followed its gentle decline, the scent of kebab wafting over the sidewalk, even at this early hour, and trash cans overflowing at every step. The smell of grilled meat and garbage was nauseating. Happily, there was a light breeze.
Sandwiched between a Pakistani bazaar and a wholesale craft store, the bookstore’s bordeaux-colored facade was visible from a distance. The signage was discreet, however, and made no mention of the kind of books it sold: La Musardine. But a quick glance inside left no doubt.
I PUSHED OPEN THE DOOR and stepped inside the hushed space. It had red carpeting and well-appointed display cases, where a few customers were browsing. I had expected to find perverts in raincoats, sleazy old men, Amazons in skimpy outfits. But despite the fact that they were mostly men, the patrons seemed rather banal. The two or three couples present weren’t even acting overtly intimate, or hardly. There was a man whispering into a blushing woman’s ear, and another who let his hand wander over his girlfriend’s ample posterior. Were they planning on making love after their errand? Would they find what they needed to fulfill their fantasies here?
The thematic organization was clear: erotic literature to the left and by the entry; photography and art books to the right and near the register; in the back right, graphic novels and comics; and in the back left, essays, guides, and a few related gadgets.
My list in hand, I had no difficulty finding the first recommended books and piling them one by one into a teetering heap. Since I was in a hurry—a few lingering glances on my curves were making me uneasy—I started toward the bookseller, a charmless brunette with short hair who was slumping behind the counter. But several covers caught my attention on my way: a series called Pink Pussy. Inside, young, smiling women spread their vulvas wide open. They seemed delighted to show themselves. True to the title, their pussies were as bright and pink as possible, somewhere between an exotic flower and a fleshy butterfly.
Was I still under the influence of the night before? Had Louie and the Vine really gotten so far under my skin? I couldn’t stop turning the pages, fascinated by such openness. I wondered if I could pose like that, too, and what pleasure I would derive if ever confronted with one of these perfect, open, and humid clefts. Would I arm myself with a hard and oblong toy to insert inside?
The pyramid of books in my arms tumbled, drawing me out of my daydream. Two dozen eyes stared at me, reproaching, mocking. I mumbled an apology and stooped to pick everything up without letting my skirt ride up my heinie. I hurried to pay for my purchases, red with shame, my cheeks and voice flustered like the little girl I thought I had outgrown.
BACK ON THE METRO, I felt calm again. Still, I did not dare open the dark plastic bag printed with golden drops. One humiliation was enough for the moment, especially since the evening’s challenge probably had more in store for me.
“You’re late, but it’s no big deal . . .”
David had charged into my office without so much as a hello.
“For now, all I care is that you are at your best. Did you have breakfast, at least?”
Hearing him speak and feeling his eyes sizing me up, I felt like a yearling on the morning of its first race. All that was missing was a tap on the muzzle and knead of the rump to evaluate my chances of winning or losing. Is that what he had seen in me when we’d first met, at that formal dinner: his station’s next gem, a diamond in the rough that he could fashion as he pleased and whom he would make into his jewel?
“Yes, yes, I’m fine . . . I ate.”
“Dried fruit? Did you have some dried fruit?”
He was circling me, sizing me up, clearly concerned about how his filly would perform. He was as nervous as a cyclist’s dope-pushing trainer before a race.
“No, but I’ll be fine. I promise.”
I did not want to imagine what would happen if I disappointed him.
“Right . . . I know you’re going to tear it up!”
The youngster expression fit him like a kilt on an undertaker. But he didn’t care. He was high on his own adrenaline; he was all revved up, before the racing flag was even waved.
And if I proved as lackluster as I suspected I would onscreen, there was no doubt I could expect a fate similar to Aurora’s. Would he push me to the same extremes? Would my name also disappear into a digital hell, never to be seen again?
He kissed my neck with tenderness, sweeping away all my dark thoughts. He buried his nose into my hair, his hand stroking my half-bare shoulder. So long as he did not speak of the prenup, so long as he continued to see me as his new goddess, I could abandon myself to his muddled caresses.
“I want you,” he whispered into my ear.
I bent my neck to escape his kisses, which were becoming more and more insistent.
“Not here . . .”
“Why? Are you afraid the boss will walk in on us?”
He chuckled at his own joke, self-satisfied, as usual. Everything he touched supposedly turned to gold. And it always had. He won at everything. Except with Aurora . . .
“Oh, sorry . . .”
Fred’s blue eyes were at the door, staring at us in surprise. A familiar look of anger crossed his brow. But he contained himself, unlike David:
“What do you want? What are you doing here?”
I realized that the two men had never met. And while Fred had to know what his employer, the big boss at BTV, looked like, the same did not go for David, for whom this unshaven young man in jeans and a T-shirt could only belong to the ranks of the hoi polloi in his company. The expendable masses, for him, and he treated them as such.
“I . . .”
Was I supposed to introduce them? And if so, which parts of our respective histories was I to discuss? I figured Fred was afraid I would tell David about how he had started at the station; that would explain his silence.
“ ‘I ’ what? Leave us alone!”
“Darling . . . ,” I intervened, “this is Fred Morino. He’s the sound guy for the show. I suppose everyone is waiting for me on set?”
I shot Fred a meaningful look.
“That’s right.” He nodded, suppressing his rage.
“Oh . . . Very good.”
David never lost face, never, no matter his interlocutor. So he straightened, more annoyed than angry, and scolded Fred in a paternalistic tone:
“But next time knock—I don’t care if it’s an emergency.”
He pointed to the door of my office, which had been wide open when Fred first appeared. His gesture was so obvious that it could not be confused.
And to think I had added my ex to the guest list for our wedding. Would the master of the house kick him out of the reception before he got the chance to show his invitation?
“I have to go,” I said lightly, following the technician.
It was now or never to sway my hips, bat my eyelashes, pucker my lips into a heart. In other words, play up my feminine charms as though I were in a Z-list movie. Perhaps it would help mitigate David’s reaction after the evening’s imminent disaster.
“I’ll be thinking about what you said earlier,” I purred . . .
I FOUND FRED IN THE corridor, and we hurried to slip away. I was as embarrassed as he. The incongruity of the situation had not only been torture; it also had lifted the curtain on a vitiated part of my relationship with David. God knows I had wanted it all, the perfect man, a life of power and comfort, privileges to make daily life invulnerable. But I could not forget who I was. I could not leave the girl from Nanterre or those who had grown up with her outside an open door . . . I could not be inside and out at the same time.
I refrained from sharing my nerves with Fred, the involuntary cause and collateral victim of this maelstrom.
“Nobody told you to come and get me, did they?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I found something interesting while messing with Louie’s phone line.”
“What is it?”
“A list of all of his calls over the past three months.”
“And?” I said impatiently. “He orders a call girl every day at six o’clock?”
“Not really, no.” He suppressed a smile.
“Who does he call, then?”
“I know you’re not going to believe me, but there is no doubt about the number. I recognized it immediately.”
“Shit, Fred! Tell me!” I growled, teeth gnashing.
“He calls your mom. Maude. It’s your house number.”
My gaze wandered over the office landscape, in which an army of journalists was preparing for the news update at noon. Then it rested on him again, stunned.
“My mom? Are you sure?”
HE RATTLED OFF HER HOME phone number without hesitating.
“This week alone, he’s called her three times,” he read off a sticky note in his hand.
I remembered all the presents he had given her, those outrageous rewards for my horizontal services.
“And do they speak for a long time?”
“Kind of, yeah. Monday, twenty-two minutes. Wednesday, only eleven minutes. And yesterday, eighteen, with a little thirty-second interruption—he must have put her on hold.”
That was much longer than a courtesy call or a basic verification—verification of what, by the way? They were real conversations.
“She couldn’t have answered and then put the phone down without saying anything?”
It was not necessarily an absurd idea. Not more than my real-fake lover, real-fake brother-in-law, calling my mother to chat like two old friends.
“No, I don’t think so. Phones that sophisticated automatically time-out so the line won’t be busy for no reason. If no one is talking, it will cut out after one or two minutes. Not twenty.”
The one thing Fred’s technical expertise could not tell me was the nature of their conversations. And the identity Louie was disguising himself under to get to my mother. Was he pretending to be his brother? Or maybe Armand, under the pretext of needing information for the wedding preparations?
“When did you say he started calling her?”
“I didn’t. It’s been going on since late April.”
Or shortly after I’d first met David, when our relationship was still a secret . . . and well before Louie had sent any presents to my mom—as far as I knew, in any case. What had been the nebulous pretext under which he had first entered into contact with her? And why had she agreed to converse with this faceless interlocutor?
AFTER A BRIEF SNACK WITH the voluble Albane, the afternoon unfolded like a dream, with all manner of activities that I performed like a robot.
Two p.m., Chloe had said: Rehearsal on set with Stan, our director, who would lead me through the blocking for the show. The bucolic set had been put together in haste. The only part of Chris’s work that they had managed to salvage was the logo, which was printed on a large cardboard sign in the background and lighted to stand out.
Four p.m.: Practice reading the cue cards Albane’s team had made for me. I was glad to learn that she had been sure not to make me into one of those petulant bimbos like the ones so favored by our competitors’ shows. My script was sober, concise, succinct but not too much, fairly close to what I would have written myself if David’s confidence in me had extended to that task, too.
Five p.m.: Meet my two guests—a star bookseller who was going to give his list of must-reads for the beach and a professional dancer who would give us a demonstration of a “killer move” for summer—and chitchat “informally.”
Six p.m.: Tea and biscuits, followed by what seemed to me like an endless session of primping, wardrobe, hair, and makeup. I felt like a cream puff getting bigger and bigger.
This doll caked in foundation, this porcelain being about to go out into the spotlight wearing a floral dress . . . Was this really me?
“Pretend you’re twelve years old and playing television host with your girlfriends,” Albane said, dispensing some last-minute advice.
“At twelve I wanted to be Marie Curie or Françoise Giroud, but okay . . .”
“You know what I mean: act the part. All the big people in TV today were once kids making faces in a mirror. The rest will come later, with practice.”
It wasn’t very reassuring, but maybe it would take the wind out of my detractors’ sails. There was no doubt they would lambaste me for my inexperience. So goes the world. Everyone is so quick to forget their own faux pas, and eager to trip up anyone new whose youth might outshine them.
SEVEN-THIRTY P.M.: A WHOLE HOUR to wait. I pretended I needed to be alone so that I could wander the deserted halls of the nineteenth floor in my floral dress, primped and proper, looking for an escape that I would never dare take. Fate led me by an office that had recently been vacated. alice simoncini, read the white plastic sign that was still posted to the right of the door. I lowered the handle: it was open. The only thing that struck me in the soulless space was the lingering odor. I detected the beautiful blonde’s perfume, floral and sweet, and a hint of other, more acidic notes. Was it the smell of love? The bouquet created by their respective sexes? How many times had she and Chris cavorted in here, just a few paces from David’s office? I tried to imagine the two of them, the tall, flaccid body of her lover with his buttocks pressed against the bay window, grasping at her vagina with an excited hand, drooling his desire on her delicate neck, and so proud of his prey.
One should never surprise one’s friends when they are in the midst of making love . . .
Before Sophia, my best friend was Sabina. People thought we were twins we looked so alike; it was even troubling for us. We spent hours together looking at ourselves in the mirror, hunting down our differences. The only trait that distinguished us was her pair of bright blue eyes. It was an advantage over me, in terms of seduction, and she used it to the best of her abilities, attracting the hottest boys in high school.
One Wednesday afternoon she invited me over to her house. I got there fifteen minutes early, thinking I’d find her watching TV or reading one of her vampire books—“They’re so sexy!”—that she loved so much. The door to the parental home was open. So was the one to her room. For good reason, since at this time of day in the middle of the week, she was supposed to be alone at the house. But that was not the case. From the staircase, I heard moaning—almost meowing—that told me what was going on upstairs. But I couldn’t resist the temptation. I tiptoed up the steps and peered into her bedroom, admiring Sabina’s prowess for the entire quarter hour before we were supposed to meet. Her way of arching her rump to the point of breaking her back while the boy was going down on her. It seemed totally indecent to me back then. Her shocking use of language, in which he was reduced to his “cock,” and she called herself a “bitch,” a “whore,” and “the biggest slut in school.” The voracious way she swallowed her partner’s member, all the way down to its hilt. The hyena’s cry at the moment of ecstasy . . .
I left without making a sound, no questions asked. I was still a virgin, and the scene had ultimately been disturbing. I didn’t speak to her for the rest of the year. She probably guessed the reason behind my sudden coldness but never dared address the issue head-on. I’ve thought of that image of my friend, fucking like an animal, raw, on numerous occasions while pleasuring myself. It is also the last memory I have of her.
Handwritten note by me, 6/13/2009
Where are you? Luc, Stan, and I are going over a few last-minute details. We’re waiting for you. Get your butt down here, you diva!
Albane’s text message brought me back into the present. And as she would have said herself, I got my tush downstairs in double time. As soon as I arrived, I could feel that particular tension that precedes the launch of a new program. David himself was present, an extraordinary occurrence judging from the terrified and excited murmur of the troupe.
Meanwhile, one absence had not gone unnoticed: Louie, I was told, had not been seen in the building all day.
I pretended to watch the eight o’clock news with my team, who were acting like a bunch of schoolkids—to lower the stress, I imagined. As for me, my mind was far away from Barlet Tower.
Where could he be? At the Hôtel des Charmes? Haunting Mademoiselle Mars’s old house, ambling through the construction site? Or at home in front of his television, waiting like any other viewer for the fateful hour of my televised doom?
WHAT FOLLOWED WAS A COLORFUL nightmare in pop culture, replete with forced laughter and artificial enthusiasm. As Albane had intimated, I was to be something of a ridiculous mime whom everyone pretended to take seriously, though my delivery was too supercharged to be intelligible . . . Not to mention my one hundred fifty “So, nows.”
The script prepared by the editorial team burned in my hands. My eyes glued themselves to it as a kind of crutch for my stress. And I could not listen to a single word of the reports off set. I even missed a few cues, despite Stan’s reminders in my earpiece and the red light on the camera.
“Breathe, it’s not a race!” the director whispered several times into my hearing device. “At this pace, we’ll be done in a half hour. Stay cool!”
Five minutes before the end, during Louie’s spot, the last one, I got a touch-up on my makeup and a bathroom break. After that all I had left was a brief conclusion to read off the teleprompter, and this ordeal would finally be over.
“You’re doing great!” Albane said encouragingly while I made my way to the restroom. “Slow down a little, though. Let your guests talk. You’ll always have time to cut things short at the end if they go on too long.”
Alone in the bathroom stall, my bladder was about to explode, but I could not release even a drop. I tried to suppress the strong desire to empty my stomach.
I didn’t want to leave. Never. I wanted to stay in my little floral dress, smelling pee in this warm, protected world. Here there was no husband, no lover, no viewers to laugh at me.
“ . . . No, I started by accident, I didn’t really have a choice . . .”
I caught more or less intelligible scraps of sound from the speakers on set:
“I don’t mean to pry, but do you ever feel any pleasure when you’re with these men?”
“Yes, of course. Rather often, in fact . . . It’s not just a job.”
It was true. Being a Hotelle was not just a job. I could attest to that.
Prudence, even fear, should have kept me where I was. And yet I left the bathroom, curious to hear what this girl had to say. Her voice, which had been distorted to protect her identity, had a cadence that was not unfamiliar. When I got back to the set, where two dozen screens featured the same masked face, I thought I might collapse and vomit all over the technicians.
I recognized the mask: it was an exact replica of the one Louie had given me once before.
But there was something even more familiar: the broad gestures, the shoulder-length chocolate curls, and that direct way of speaking . . .
“I mean, it’s not just about the sex. Not at all!” the modified voice twanged. “We talk, we discuss our lives. Sometimes there’s a connection . . .”
The only words to come out of my mouth, in a thin and desperate voice that only I could hear:
“Fuck, Sophia . . . No. Not you.”
Her face white with stupor when Louie had introduced himself to us on our jog in Bois de Vincennes.
Her sincere interest, her bawdy laughter, when I had told her about the trap in which Louie had been ensnaring me day after day: “Will you introduce me to him?! . . . I love that kind of playfulness in a man!” Her obsession with my Ten-Times-a-Day, which she had been sure to mention would have suited her far more than me.
One by one, these memories resurfaced, tearing the mask from the woman everyone saw on the screen.
Why had she put on such an act? And above all, what had been her price for betrayal? Just enough to make ends meet, perhaps. A couple of big bills like the ones he had slipped me at the gallery or for my erotic shopping at the Musardine bookstore. Or maybe—and this thought killed me more than anything—they were lovers? Did they make fun of me, of my gullibility, when they were between the sheets? Did they have a laugh over my virginal awkwardness, my silly trepidation, when they rolled on top of each other in boundless ecstasy, the perfect couple in their unquenchable thirst for passion?
Since when had he possessed her?
“Back on in thirty,” Stan cried from somewhere in my vicinity.
“Elle! Elle, you okay?”
Albane’s voice did not penetrate the thick cocoon that was weaving itself around me. Was I okay? How could I answer that?
Her hand squeezed the nape of my neck, but it wasn’t I who shuddered at her touch.
“Elle! Elle, crap! Are you with me?”
No, sweet Albane, I haven’t been with you for several long, long minutes now. I had lost all contact with reality. Mine was a long, cold sob that engulfed me like an icy cloak. A giant Eskimo in the middle of the studio. I saw the world outside through a foggy porthole. Everything was muffled. Nothing could get through to me.
“Back on in twenty! Girls, get your butts on stage . . . Now!”
“Shit, I don’t know what’s gotten into her . . . ,” Albane stammered, panicked. “We’ve lost her. Call the doc!”
On the monitors, Sophia was answering the interviewer’s—Louie’s—last question:
“I hear you call yourselves Hotelles, is that right?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Can you explain for our viewers in two words what that means?”
“Well, ‘Hotelle’ is a portmanteau word. First, there’s the adjective ‘hot,’ I think that’s fairly clear . . .”
“It is!”
Another desperate call from Stan:
“Back on in ten! What do we do?”
“Go to credits! Whatever!” Albane bellowed. “I don’t care!”
Through my tears, the mask was melting.
“ . . . And then there’s ‘Elle,’ which is the name of one of the original girls. Our mascot, if you will . . .”
“That’s very pretty. And how about you, do you feel more hot or more like Elle?”
“Oh, I’m definitely hot!” She burst out laughing. “Elle . . . I’m not an Elle. I have a friend who’s Elle . . .”
JINGLE. SHOT OF THE SET. Without me.
Credits.