Betty Blue

10

The next morning I woke up relatively early. I got out of bed quietly and let her sleep. I went downstairs. Lisa had already left for work, but Eddie was there, eating breakfast with his newspaper spread out in front of him. He was wearing a red kimono with a white bird on each side. It was very refreshing.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “There you are. How you doing?”

“Hi,” I said.

I sat down across from him and poured myself a cup of coffee. Bongo came over and put his head in my lap.

“So?” he asked. “What’s she doing? Sleeping?”

“Of course she’s sleeping. What do you think?”

He grabbed his paper, folded it in eight, and tossed it in the corner. He leaned over the table a little.

“Um, do you have any idea what was with her last night? You got any thoughts…?”

“Shit, didn’t you ever lose your temper? You read the papers-the world’s covered with blood and you’re making a big deal out of it because she roughed up some fucking crazy woman who I should have strangled myself before the whole thing even started!”

He put his hand over his face. He kept smiling, but it was obvious that something was on his mind. I calmly drank my coffee.

“Yeah, well, let’s just say she had me pretty freaked out,” he said.

“She was exhausted, for crying out loud! It’s not so hard to understand!”

“Yeah, well, I was watching her when she tipped over the table. I’m telling you, you should have seen her. It was scary.”

“Sure, she’s not the kind of girl who lets people walk all over her. You know how she is…”

“If you want my advice, you ought to take her on a vacation as soon as the money from your books comes in.”

“I don’t believe- Look, will you lay off that? I haven’t written books, I have written a book, one. It’s something I did once in my life and I’m not even sure I’ll ever be able to do it again. At this very moment there’s possibly some guy sitting in his office thumbing through my manuscript, but that doesn’t mean it’ll ever get published. So you see, I’m not exactly counting my money yet.”

“Shit… I thought…”

“Yeah, well, you were wrong. It happened that Betty came across it one day by accident, and ever since she’s got it into her head that I’m some kind of genius and she won’t get off it. Eddie, look at me. Ever since then I haven’t been able to write a single line, you hear me? This is where we are, Eddie. We’re here, sitting around waiting to hear. I know that’s all she thinks about from morning till night. The whole thing makes her edgy, you understand?”

“Well, why don’t you write in the afternoon? You have the time…”

“Don’t make me laugh. Time isn’t the problem.”

“Then what is it? You’re not comfortable here?”

“No, it isn’t that,” I said.

“Then what is it?”

“How the hell do I know? Maybe I have to wait for divine intervention, how am I supposed to know?”

It took a few days for the last vestiges of the episode to disappear completely. Every night I knocked out most of the work at the pizzeria-handling three-quarters of the customers, running around like a maniac. I made a beeline for every pain in the ass or troublemaker I saw walk in the door. I didn’t let Betty get near them. By closing time I was pale as a ghost. Betty would tell me, You’re crazy, you haven’t even had time to smoke a cigarette and I stand around twiddling my thumbs.

“I just feel like hustling a little, that’s all.”

“I think you’re just scared I’m going to bite another customer…”

“That’s nonsense, Betty. You don’t believe that.”

“Anyway, I’m not tired. Want to walk home?”

“Sure, good idea!”

We waved to Eddie in his posh sedan, and he took off slowly into the night. I felt like I’d fallen victim to an illusion. I felt like my legs had been sawed off, and it was a hefty little hike back to the house. I bucked myself up by thinking how much farther it would be to walk to Heaven. I shoved my hands in my pockets, turned up my collar, and off I went-the genius-brain empty and feet sore, but somehow I made it. It intrigued me how she thought that being a waiter was better than being a plumber. It didn’t keep me up nights, though. It seemed like with her you had to learn everything over again. Still, I had nothing better to do.

One morning when I woke up she wasn’t there. It was past noon and I’d slept like a log. I drank my coffee standing up, looking out the window onto the street. It was nice out-the sunlight very white-but I felt a cold draft coming through the pane. I went to take a look downstairs, but no one was there except Bongo, asleep by the door. I asked him how he was doing, then went back upstairs. The silence in the house confused me. I went to take a shower. It was only when I came out that I noticed the envelope on the table.

It had been opened. The return address was printed on it with curlicues-the name of a publisher. My name was on it too, typewritten much smaller in the lower right-hand corner. So here we are, I told myself, the first response. I grabbed the piece of paper folded inside.

The response said no. Sorry, no. “I like your ideas,” the guy explained. “But your style is unreadable. You deliberately place yourself outside the literary sphere.” I stood there for a moment trying to understand what he was saying-what ideas he was talking about-but I couldn’t figure it out. I put the letter back in the envelope and decided to shave.

I don’t know why, but when I saw myself in the mirror I thought of Betty. I started feeling low. It was obviously she who had opened the letter. I could see her there, ripping it open, her heart pounding, covered with hopeful goose-pimples-then the guy offering his regrets and the world coming down all around her.

“Shit! No…” I said.

I leaned on the sink and closed my eyes. Where had she gone this time?… Tell me, what could possibly be going through her head now? I could see her running through the streets. I had this image of her, stuck in my head like an ice pick-her bumping into people, cars screeching to a halt, her running blindly into the street, wilder and wilder, her face twisted and terrifying. It was my fault-me and my book, me and that ridiculous whatever-it-was that popped out of my brain. All those nights, forging and sharpening the blade, only to have it come back and stab me in the gut. How did it happen? Why are we always the source of our own misery?

I felt my blood turning to ink-felt myself going off the edge, hung over a roasting pit spitting flames, ten years older. Then she walked in, fresh, pert-a queen with a cold nose.

“Ooooh,” she said. “Damn, it’s cold out there. Hey, what’s the matter with you? What’s with the scowling?”

“Nothing… I just got up. I didn’t hear you come up the stairs.”

“You’re going deaf in your old age.”

“Right. The worst is that it’s all downhill…”

I was trying to be witty, but the truth is I was disconcerted. I was so sure the bad news would have her moaning and groaning that I couldn’t handle her easygoing attitude, so carefree. I sat down randomly in a chair. I leaned backward to get a beer out of the icebox. Maybe a miracle had occurred-why not?-maybe on the million-to-one chance that she’d take it in good spirits we’d picked the winning number. The beer hit me like a bottle of amphetamines. I felt my mouth start to twist itself into a half-smile, half-snarl.

“You have a nice walk?” I said. “Tell me, did you have a nice walk?”

“Great. I jogged a little to warm up. Hey, feel my ears, they’re frozen!” There was of course another hypothesis: she was playing with me. Jesus, I said to myself, shit, SHIT-she must have read the letter. What the hell was she trying to pull? What’s she waiting for? When is she going to dissolve in tears and start throwing the furniture out the window? I just didn’t get it.

I felt her ears, but I didn’t know why. She smelled like fresh air, cold outdoor air. I stood there holding her ears.

“See? They’re frozen, aren’t they?”

I let go of them. I grabbed her hips instead. I pressed my forehead into her belly. A ray of light came through the window and landed on my cheek. She stroked my head. I went to kiss her hand. It was then that I saw her fingers were bright red. It was so odd that I jumped back.

“What in the world…?”

She looked at the ceiling and sniffled.

“It’s nothing… It’s… it’s red paint.”

Something like an alarm went off in my brain. Somewhere a Cheshire cat was grinning. I felt the motor starting to go out of control, but I didn’t put on the brakes.

“Paint? You were painting this morning?”

Her eyes lit up with a glow, her face congealing into a little smile.

“Yeah. I was,” she said in a clear voice. “I decided to get a little exercise…”

I had a flash, like a hallucination. It half strangled me.

“Fuck, Betty… you didn’t…”

She gave me a huge smile, but it was bitter.

“Yes I did. Sure I did.”

I looked at the floor, shaking my head. I saw stars.

“No, I don’t believe it,” I said. “I don’t believe it…”

“What’s the problem? Don’t you like red?”

“Why would you go and do something like…”

“How should I know? I just did. It makes me feel better.”

I stood up and walked around the table gesticulating.

“So every time a publisher rejects my book you’re going to go bombard his building with red paint, is that it?”

“Yeah, something like that. I wish you’d have been there to see the look on their faces.”

“But that’s crazy!”

A chill of anger and admiration went up my spine. She tossed her hair and laughed.

“You got to let the good times roll a little. You have no idea how much good it did me.”

She took her jacket off and undid the scarf that circled her neck like a multicolored snake.

“I’d love some coffee,” she said. “Darn, look at my hands. Got to wash them.”

I went to the window and lifted the curtain with my finger.

“Hey, you sure no one’s after you? You weren’t followed?”

“No, they were pretty stunned. No one even had time to lift his ass off the chair.”

“Next time the cops will be out there surrounding the house. I can see it now…”

“Jesus, you always expect the worst.”

“Yeah, it’s true. I must be sick in the head. You go out and paint half the town crimson and I shouldn’t worry…”

“Listen,” she sighed. “You’ve got to get at least a minimum of justice in this world. You know? I’m not going to spend my life getting pissed off and not reacting.”

The story made the last page of the next day’s newspaper. Witnesses said they’d seen a “madwoman with two paint-bombs suddenly appear.” The end of the article said that the act of terrorism had not yet been claimed by any particular activist group. I tore out the article and put it in my wallet. I put the paper back in the pile while the guy at the newsstand had his back turned-there was nothing else interesting in it. I bought some cigarettes and gum, then left.

Betty was waiting for me across the street at a sidewalk café, drinking a cup of hot chocolate. The weather was clear and crisp. She looked into the sun and closed her eyes, her hands in her pockets and her collar turned up. She was so beautiful that I slowed down, walking toward her. This was something that would never leave me. It made me smile in the morning sun as if I’d just somewhere, somehow hit the jackpot.

“Take your time,” I told her. “We can go whenever you’re ready.”

She leaned over to kiss me on the lips, then went back to her hot chocolate. We were in no hurry. We’d decided to do a little window-shopping, buy what we needed to keep our teeth from chattering too much in the winter. The streets were already full of wolf, wildcat, silver fox, and red cheeks-a sure sign that temperatures were going down, and that the fur sellers were making shitloads of money.

We walked arm in arm for about an hour, not finding what we wanted, not really knowing what it was. All the salesgirls heaved sighs of relief when we left, then set about refolding the mountains of clothes we’d taken down off the racks.

The last place we went was this big department store. One step inside the doors and I thought we’d landed in a box of chocolates left out in the sun too long. I gritted my teeth to keep the perfume-music from coming in through my mouth. It’s unhealthy to breathe that stuff, something I’m not into. I didn’t say anything, though-I cut my losses with some chewing gum and followed Betty to the women’s department.

There weren’t many people, and I was the only guy there. I hung out for a while in lingerie, looking at a few of the items they had lit up-familiarizing myself with the latest zipping and hooking devices. It might have been a little voyage among the clouds, if it hadn’t been for the saleswoman, a sort of troll about fifty years old, with hot flushes and burn marks on her forehead from so many permanents. The kind who’s been laid maybe twice in her whole fucking life and does her best to forget it ever happened. Every time I stuck my hand in a basket of panties, or dared to stretch an elastic, she gave me the evil eye, but I never let go of my special industrial-strength smile. By the time she finally came up to me she was as red as the blood of Jesus.

“Tell me,” she said. “What is it exactly you’re looking for? Perhaps I can help you.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “I want to buy some underpants for my mother. I want the kind you can see the hairs through…”

She let out a ridiculous moan, but I didn’t see what happened next because Betty came and grabbed me by the arm.

“What the hell are you up to?” she asked. “Come on, I want to try on some things.”

She was carrying an armload of brightly colored clothes. On our way to the fitting room I got a glimpse of a price tag dangling from the bunch. I just about fell on my face-a belly-flop, like a tree struck by lightning. Then I just laughed.

“Hey,” I said. “You get a load of that? Must be some mistake. That’s two weeks’ salary…”

“Whose?” she said.

I cooled my heels outside the fitting room like someone left on a desert island-bare head and broken legs. I didn’t feel well. I didn’t have enough money to pay for half of what she’d taken. The poor dear-she wasn’t aware of what she was doing. I wondered how I was going to console her, except with a pale smile. Obviously the world was not yet our oyster. I heard Betty breathing and moving around behind the curtain.

“How’s it going?” I said. “You know you really don’t have to worry-girls like you, they look great in anything.”

She pulled the curtain back sharply, and what I saw made me choke. I put my hand over my mouth. She’d put on all the clothes at once, in layers. She looked like a two-hundred-pound fat-lady, with hollow cheeks and a very determined look.

“Jesus fucking Christ… no…” I said.

I closed the curtain quickly and looked around to see if anybody had seen us. Now I was breathing through my mouth. The curtain opened again immediately.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “In thirty seconds we’re outside.”

“Betty, please. I’m really not into this. We’re going to get caught, I can feel it…”

“Hahaha,” she said. “Us? Caught?”

She gave me a fevered look and grabbed my arm.

“All right, let’s go,” she said. “Try and look a little less nervous.”

Off we went. I felt like we were walking through rice paddies with Viet Cong hidden in the trees all around us. I was sure we were being watched. I wanted to scream: SHOW YOUR SELVES, YOU BASTARDS! LET’S HAVE IT OUT ONCE AND FOR ALL! It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other, with some invisible claw tearing at my guts. The closer we got to the exit, the higher the tension mounted. Betty’s ears were red, and mine were whistling. Sweet suffering Christ, I said to myself, two or three more yards and we’re home free.

Outside, the light seemed supercharged. I was seized by nervous laughter. Betty reached for the door. In the end it was all rather exhilarating. I was close on her heels, ready to take off like a shot, when I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder. That’s it, I’m dead, I thought-it’s over. I saw myself lying in the gutter in a pool of blood.

“STOP! DON’T MOVE!” the hand said.

Betty was out the door like a jet plane.

“Don’t stop! Lose him!” she advised me.

Like an idiot I turned around. I don’t know why. A taste for defeat sleeps somewhere in us all. The guy had two arms, two legs, and a badge. He thought I was going to follow Betty’s advice. He was wrong. I was actually in a state of shock. For me the war was over-I had half a mind to start citing the Geneva Convention. Still, the bastard took matters into his own hands: he gave me a good one, right in the eye.

My head exploded. I flapped my arms and fell backward against the door. It opened, and I landed on the street on my back, my legs tangled together. I lay there looking at the sky for a second, before the guy’s head appeared over me like a mushroom cloud. I could see out of only one eye-the film started turning at high speed. He leaned over and grabbed me by the lapel.

“Get up,” he said.

A few people had stopped on the sidewalk. Free show. I hung on to the guy’s arm as he lifted me up. I was planning to make a gallant last stand-a surprise kick in the balls, perhaps-but it turned out I didn’t have to. This fat girl came at him, with her foot to the floor in a head-on collision while he was still half bent-over. I fell backward again and the guy plastered himself like a pancake against the door of a parked car. A ray of sunlight shone on me. The fat chick put her hand out.

“You’re not my type,” I said.

“We’ll see about that,” she said. “Let’s get out of here, quick.”

I got up and took off behind her, her long black hair waving in the wind like a Jolly Roger.

“Hey, Betty… is that you?” I asked. “Is that you? Hey, Betty…”

I opened a beer and sat down in a chair while she got the ice pack ready and took all the clothes off. My eye looked like a sea anemone with the flu. I’d had it up to here with her bullshit.

“I’ve had it up to here with this bullshit,” I said.

She came over with the ice pack. She sat down on my lap and put it on my eye.

“I know why you’re upset,” she said. “It’s because you got beat up.”

“Don’t make me laugh. I didn’t get beat up. I let him have a free shot, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s not the end of the world. It hardly shows. It`s just a little swollen around the edges.”

“Right, just a little swollen around the edges, she says. Barely even red…”

I looked at her with the one eye I had left. She smiled. Yes, exactly, she smiled-and against that I was defenseless. The world became insignificant. She disarmed the slightest attack. I could carry on all I wanted for show, but the poison had already reached my brain. What was this little dried-out, shriveled-up world next to her? What was anything worth next to her hair, her lungs, her knees, and all that went with it-could I ever need anything else? Wasn’t what I had something enormous, alive? It was only thanks to her that I didn’t feel like a total piece of shit. I was willing to pay any price for that. It wasn’t that I’d reduced the whole world down to Betty-it was that I just didn’t care about the rest. She smiled, and my anger disappeared like a wet footprint in the burning sun. It would always amaze me.

She put on one of the things she’d stolen and circled around me, posing.

“So… what do you think? How do I look?”

I finished my beer first. Then I sent her a valentine.

“I just wish I could see you out of both eyes,” I whispered.