Betty Blue

18

“Yes, Eddie, I know I’m not talking very loud, but she isn’t very far away. She’s taking a shower.”

“Yeah, okay. Well, what do you want me to do-send it?”

I moved away from the receiver a little, to make sure I still heard her splashing in the bathroom.

“No,” I whispered. “Absolutely not. If it’s not too much trouble, Eddie, I’ve been crossing out the names in the Writer’s Guide. Just mail it out to the next name on the list.”

“Anyway, it’s really too bad…”

“Yeah, well, maybe they’ve all decided to wait till I’m fifty years old.”

“And the pianos? How’s that going?”

“Not bad. We sold a third one yesterday morning.”

We said good-bye and I hung up. It was incredible that they’d turn my book down again, on this of all days. I had trouble getting this dark coincidence out of my mind-I had to shake my head to make it go away. Luckily spring had come and the sky was blue, and luckily Betty didn’t know what was up. I went to see what she was up to-it was already twenty to ten.

She was rubbing some white cream on her behind. I knew what it was-this stuff that takes hours to sink in-every time I get involved with it I have to go wash it off my hands. But girls don’t know what it is to hurry-at least I’ve never known one who did.

“Listen, you do what you want-me, I’m leaving in one minute.”

She rubbed faster.

“Well, all right, but why won’t you tell me what’s going on?

What’s got into you, anyway?”

I’d let them break my legs before she’d get one word out of me. I told her the same story as before.

“Listen,” I sighed. “We live together, you and me, right, and we try to share everything, right? So it should just be enough that I tell you I have something to show you-you should be shifting into high gear.”

“All right, I’ll get a move on it.”

“Shit, I’ll just wait for you in the car.”

I grabbed my jacket and went down. Light breeze, nice blue sky, big sun. My plan was going perfectly, with the precision of an atomic clock. I had planned on her being late, worked it into my split-second calculations. The guy had promised me that it would keep for at least two hours once out of the fridge. I glanced at my watch. We still had forty-five minutes to kill. I pushed my fist on the horn.

At ten o’clock sharp, I saw her bound out onto the sidewalk and we took off. I was playing the game with a master’s touch. I’d washed the car the night before-vacuumed the cushions and emptied the ashtrays. I wanted to assemble the day, piece by piece, nothing left to chance. Had I wanted night to fall just then, or to conjure up a layered sky, I could have done it with ease-I could have done anything I wanted.

I put my shades on to hide my shining eyes. We headed out of town. The area was fairly dry-a desert. I liked that. The earth had a beautiful color to it. It reminded me of the place we’d lived before. The bungalow episode. It seemed like it had been a thousand years since then.

I felt her squirming around next to me. Poor thing. She lit a cigarette, half smiling, half nervous.

“Jesus, this is far. Tell me what it is!”

“Patience,” I said. “Let me handle this…”

It took a while, but eventually she let herself be lulled by the monotony of the countryside, her head turned sideways against the seat. I put on some music, not too loud. There was no one on the road. I drove along at fifty-five, sixty.

We drove up a small hill covered with trees. Trees were rare in these parts-it sort of made you wonder what they were doing there. I didn’t worry about it. Everything I saw made me feel that the place was wonderful, that I was surfacing out of nowhere into somewhere. The road wound up and around. I branched off onto a small dirt road to the right. Betty sat up in her seat. Her eyes opened wide.

“What in the world are we doing here?” she whispered.

I smiled silently. The car jerked its way up the last hundred yards. I stopped under a tree. The light was perfect. I waited for the silence to return.

“Okay,” I said. “Get out.”

“So, this is where you’re going to strangle and rape me?”

“Yeah, I could.”

She opened the door.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you start by raping me.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll have to think about it.”

We found ourselves at the foot of some sloping land, empty, with gradations of color, from pale yellow to dark red. It was lovely-the last time I’d come, I’d just sat and looked. Betty stood next to me. She whistled.

“Hey, this is really beautiful…”

I savored my triumph. I leaned against the fender of the Mercedes, pinching the end of my nose.

“Come over here,” I said.

I put my arm around her neck.

“Tell me something-you see that old tree there, all the way up on the left, the one with the broken branch?”

“Yes.”

“And there-you see that big rock on the right, the one that looks like a guy curled up in fetal position?”

I felt her starting to get excited, as if I’d lit a wick in her brain.

“Yes, of course I see it. Obviously…”

“And the cabin in the middle, you see that too? Isn’t it cute?”

I was making her jump like a piece of popcorn. I’d set a fire under her. She dug her nails into my arm, nodding her head.

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at…”

“I love this place,” I said. “Don’t you?”

She ran her hand through her hair. Her bracelets rang out like a cascade of coins. I watched her hair fall back onto her lambskin collar. She smiled.

“Yes, it’s like everything’s in place here-like nothing’s missing. I don’t know if that’s what you wanted to show me, but you’re right-it’s great here.”

I glanced at my watch. The moment had come.

“Right,” I said. “Well… it’s yours!”

She didn’t say anything. I took the papers out of my pocket and held them out to her.

“Your land goes from the old tree to the rock that looks like a guy curled up, and comes down to here. The door of the cabin locks with a key.”

When she finally made the connection, she let out a joyful moan. She went to throw herself into my arms. I held her off with one raised finger.

“Just one more minute,” I said.

I went and opened the trunk of the car. If the guy hadn’t lied to me, it was still in time. I unwrapped the strawberry cream pie. I stuck my finger into it. The son of a bitch was just right. I brought it to Betty. She turned completely red.

“Happy birthday!” I said. “We have to eat it right away. Here’s to your thirtieth year.”

I didn’t wait to see her sway. I set the pie down on the hood of the car and grabbed her in my arms.

“Now come here and see what’s in the trunk,” I said.

I’d done everything the night before-filled it with provisions from the supermarket. I’d managed to switch a few price tags on the fancy items.

“There’s enough here for three days,” I said. “That is, if you’d like to invite me to your house.”

She leaned against the car and pulled me to her. It lasted five minutes. It would have gone longer, if I hadn’t pulled myself away-if I hadn’t stayed lucid.

“We’re not going to let a strawberry cream pie melt away, are we? That would be stupid!”

It took two trips to get it all up to the cabin. The land was really sloped, and the sun was already hot. Betty ran all over the place, picking up strange pebbles or standing with her hand shielding her eyes, looking at the horizon. “Jesus, I just can’t believe it,” she kept saying.

As for me, I knew I’d scored big-my all-time-high game. It was a little nothing of a cabin, yet there she was, running her fingers along the windowsills, biting her lip, and turning in circles. I wasn’t allowed to drop my ashes on the floor either. Soon, I thought, we’ll be playing house, making make-believe dinner. That’s exactly what we did. It was real champagne we poured into the paper cups, though.

“When I think…” she said. “When I think that I’ve had to wait thirty years for someone to give me a present like this…!”

I winked at her. I was pleased with myself. The guy figured he’d unloaded his little piece of desert for a hefty sum, and I felt I’d bought a little bit of paradise for a song. I’d been working on the whole thing for a week now, figuring out every detail. Bob was the one who’d put me onto it. We took a quick trip one day to look at it, and my mind was made up immediately. I’d told him, You know, Bob, at first I was just going to buy her a plant, but I realized it would be too small for her, I want to buy her a stretch of mountains or something-a branch of the sea… You wouldn’t know where I could find something like that, would you?

I put the champagne back in the ice chest to cool, and we went out for a walk. By the time we got back, it was just perfect. While she was laying out the comforter, I went down to the car to get the radio, and a stack of magazines I had piled up on the backseat. Once touched by civilization, it’s hard to leave it completely behind. I filled my pockets with packs of cigarettes and went back up, sucking on a stem as I walked.

We spent some time getting settled, then had a drink outside on a rock. It was hot. I half closed my eyes to the setting sun. I cut the pure air of the bourbon with a handful of black olives. They were the kind I liked best, with the pit that comes away clean from the meat with an air of calm. I lay down on one elbow. It was then that I perceived a sparkling in the ground. Under the angled sun, the earth had taken to scintillating like a princess’s gown. God Almighty, this is too much, I said, yawning-this is really wild.

Betty had adopted a more classic position-a lotus-type thing, her back straight and her regard turned inward. She’s going to split her jeans, I thought. I couldn’t remember if I’d brought along another pair for her to change into. We watched a small bird pass by overhead. I was starting to drown in my bourbon. Who could ever hold it against me for getting a little drunk on her thirtieth birthday?

“It’s weird to have bought something like this,” she said. “It seems impossible.”

“The papers are in order, don’t worry.”

“No, I mean to buy something that comes all together like this, with its land, its smells, its little noises, the light-everything.”

I peacefully bit into a piece of smoked chicken.

“Yeah, well, that’s the way it is,” I said. “Everything here is yours.”

“You mean the sunset hanging there in the treetops is mine?”

“Unquestionably.”

“You mean the silence, and the little breeze going down the hill-I own it?”

“Yes. You got the keys right there in your hand…”

“Well, he must have been crazy, the guy who sold you all this!”

I didn’t answer. I drew a line of mayonnaise across my chicken leg. There were also those who would think it was crazy to have bought a place like that. I bit into the middle of my leg. The world seemed to cut itself tragically in two.

After dinner, she decided to make a fire. I wanted to help, but realized that I was incapable of moving. I excused myself, saying it was better that I not try anything foolish in the dark-crossing the terrain, for example-lest I be found later in the bottom of a ravine. She stood up, smiling.

“You know, men aren’t the only ones who know how to make fires.”

“No, but in general they’re the only ones who know how to put them out.”

It was almost totally dark out-I had trouble seeing anything. I stretched out full-length, my cheek against the rock. Through the darkness, I heard the cracking of small pieces of wood in the dark. It was soothing. I also heard mosquitoes. I don’t know why, but when she lit the fire, my strength came back. I managed to stand up. My mouth was dry.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Thing in the car,” I said.

The glow of the fire stayed in my eyes. I couldn’t see anything, but I remembered that the terrain was difficult. I did the soldier’s step and proceeded through the darkness lifting my feet high off the ground. Though I almost took one or two nosedives, all in all I did pretty well. I stopped for a moment halfway down just to savor the joy of being drunk and still standing. I felt the sweat run down my back. When I had first decided to stand up, I had thought myself a fool-part of me had wanted to stay plastered on the ground. The other part won out. Now I realized that I’d done the right thing. I’d been right to make myself get up on my feet. You never regret going the extra mile. It always lifts your spirits.

I sniffled once, softly, then went off again on my little stroll, my hands out in front and my heart light. I believe it was a small round pebble that made me fall. I believe it sincerely-otherwise, why would my foot have shot out in front of me like an arrow, why would the image of a bag of marbles exploding in all directions suddenly have come into my head? I experienced a moment of horrible lucidity before slamming into the earth. My body ignited. I started rolling down the hill in a sort of secondary state-just this side of comatose.

The journey ended right in front of the car’s left front tire, into which I smashed my head. I didn’t hurt anything. I stayed there on the ground for a minute, trying to comprehend what had happened. When you’re sixty such things are unforgiving-when you’re thirty-five they’re sort of laughable. Through the darkness, I saw the car door handle sparkling above my head. I grabbed it and pulled myself up. It was a major effort to remember what I had come down there to get-as if a jar of glue had been spilled on my head. Something to do with mosquitoes… yes… right… the Bug Bomb! I knew I’d thought of everything!

I got the can out of the glove compartment. I pretended not to see myself in the rearview mirror-I just passed a hand through my hair. I stayed there for a while, sitting in the front seat with my legs outside, watching the fire burning up top, the cabin dancing behind it as if it were sitting on top of the world. I tried not to think of what I still had to do.

At least I knew I couldn’t get lost. All I had to do was head for the light. Still, I felt like I was at the bottom of the Himalayas.

We woke up the next day around noon. I got up to make coffee. While the water was heating, I went into Betty’s purse to look for some aspirin. Inside, I found other bottles.

“What’s all this?” I asked. “These pills?”

She lifted her head up, then put it back down.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just for when I can’t sleep,”

“What do you mean, for when you can’t sleep?”

“It’s nothing, really. I don’t take them very often.”

I was annoyed with myself for having found them. I didn’t feel like talking about it. She wasn’t a little girl, after all, she already knew anything I might have told her. I let the bottles fall, one by one, back into her purse. I took two aspirin. I tried to get a little music on the radio. I tried to be easygoing. One of my arms was all scratched, and I had a bump on my head. I didn’t feel like fooling around.

That afternoon Betty decided to clear out a little of the land in front of the house-get a little exercise. I think she was planning to plant a few things the next time we came up. She dug out the grass with an old iron bar we’d picked up on one of our walks. It made a lot of dust. Seeing this, I moved off by myself and started reading. It was nice out. I had to struggle to keep from falling asleep on my rock. These days nine out of ten books are boring-I was ashamed of myself for doing nothing while all those others were out there writing like idiots. This shook me up, surprised me. I went to get a beer. On the way I stopped to mop off Betty’s forehead.

“Everything okay, honey? Making progress?”

“Hey, get me one, too!”

I got two beers and noticed that the stock was getting dangerously low. It didn’t get to me, though. I understood a long time ago that perfection is not of this world-all you can do is make the most of what you have. You realize this when you look in the mirror.

I said, Cheers, and we lifted our beer cans. The dust had settled. We’d been together almost a year now, and I’d learned how to answer the door when opportunity knocked. I didn’t want to end up empty-handed at the age of thirty-five, wondering if it was all worth it. I wouldn’t have liked that much. It would have been depressing-the kind of thing that makes you walk the streets at night.

“I just got an idea about how to have less garbage to take out,” I said.

I threw my empty can down the slope and we watched it fall.

It made it almost all the way to the car.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Not bad. Not great for the landscape, though.”

“Noted, my sweet.”

I made myself useful by doing the dishes from lunch. We climbed up the hill to see the sun before it went down-stretched the old legs a little. There was a light breeze.

“I dreamed last night that they published your book,” she said.

“Don’t start.”

She took my arm without another word, and we stood there surveying the countryside in silence. I watched a car go down the road in the distance, its headlights on. Suddenly it just disappeared. It took me a minute or two to unlock my jaw.

“What say we eat?”

When we got back, there was a badger furrowing in our garbage can. I’d never seen such a big one. We were about thirty yards from it. I took out my knife.

“Don’t move,” I said.

“Be careful.”

I lifted the blade above my head, then tore up the hill screaming at the top of my lungs. I tried to remember how you go about slaying a bear, but by the time I got there, the badger had slunk off into the night. I was glad it was him and not me. I threw a rock at him for good measure, to see his reaction.

This little episode gave me an appetite-I could have eaten a horse. I made some pasta with cream sauce. The day had completely exhausted me. There was no particular reason for this. It isn’t really so incredible that a guy should feel exhausted when he sees all the people who throw themselves out the window-or those who might as well. It’s quite normal, in a way. I didn’t worry about it.

After we ate, I smoked a cigarette and dozed off while Betty brushed her hair. I passed out cold. In the middle of the night I opened my eyes again. The badger was just outside the window-we stared at each other. His eyes gleamed like black pearls. I closed mine.

When we woke up the next morning the sky was cloudy. It got worse in the afternoon. We watched the clouds come, filling up every inch of sky. It was our last day. We pouted. It seemed like the land had suddenly shrunk. There was no more sound, as if all the birds and insects hopping through the grass had simply evaporated. The wind came up. We heard faraway thunder.

When it started raining we headed back inside the house. Betty made tea. I watched the earth steam outside, as the sky got blacker and blacker. It was one hell of a storm-the heart of it was less than a mile away. Bolts of lightning split the sky. Betty started to get scared.

“Want to play Scrabble?” I suggested.

“No, not really.”

Each time there was a clap of thunder, she froze stiff, her head tucked into her shoulders. Torrents of water pounded down on the roof. We had to talk loud to be heard.

“Anyway, the rain isn’t so bad, as long as we’re safe inside, and the tea’s still hot,” I said.

“Jesus, you call this rain? It’s a deluge!”

Actually, she was right. The storm was getting dangerously close. I suddenly knew that it was coming right for us-was out to get us. We sat down in the corner of the room, on the comforter. It felt like there was some huge creature beating himself against the house, trying to tear it out of the ground. Every so often the lighting from his eyes glared outside the windows. Betty drew her knees up to her chest and put her hands over her ears. Just perfect.

I was giving her a back rub, when a giant drop fell on my hand. I looked up-the ceiling was dripping like a sponge. We looked around us-the walls were wet. There were small puddles under the windows, and a tide of mud was trying to ooze in under the door. The house had turned into hell; surrounded by lightning, shaken by thunder. Instinctively, I put my head down. I knew that anything I might do would be futile. None of that Man-and-God-are-equals crap. I apologized for ever having thought such a thing.

When a drop fell on her head, Betty jumped. She glanced with horror at the ceiling, as if she’d just seen the devil himself. She pulled the comforter up over her knees.

“No… please, no…” she whimpered.

The storm had moved off by a few hundred yards, but the rain was coming even harder. The noise was infernal. She started crying.

As far as the roof was concerned, all was lost. I quickly estimated the number of leaks at around sixty. It was easy to see the turn things were taking. The floor was shining like a lake. I looked at Betty and stood up. To try to calm her down would be a waste of time. The only thing to do was get her out of there as quickly as possible, soaking or not. I grabbed a few essential items and put them in a bag. I buttoned my jacket up tight, then went to her. I got her on her feet without hesitation-without fear of breaking her. I lifted her chin up to look at me.

“We’re going to get a little wet,” I said. “But I think we’ll live through it.”

I gave her a look that could split concrete.

“Right?” I added.

I put the comforter over her head and pushed her toward the door, realizing at the last minute that I’d forgotten my transistor radio. I shoved it into one of the plastic bags from the supermarket and made a hole in the bottom for the handle. Betty hadn’t moved an inch. I opened the door.

We could barely see the car at the bottom of the hill through the curtain of rain. It seemed impossible to get to. The thunder galloped over us in waves-we couldn’t even see the sky. The noise was deafening. I leaned over to her.

“RUN FOR THE CAR!” I shouted.

I didn’t exactly expect her to take off like a rocket. I lifted her up and set her outside. I went to lock the cabin door, and by the time I turned back around she was already a fourth of the way down the hill.

It was like being under a shower, with both faucets going full blast. I stuffed the keys into my pocket, took a deep breath, and off I went. I hoped to avoid making the trip on my back this time-the ground was really slippery, covered by an inch of water.

No longer having a dry hair on my head, nor a dry anything else that might be considered as part of my body, I paid attention not to confuse speed with progress. I threw myself into the water works, the dogs of Hell barking at my heels, but I watched carefully where I put my feet.

Betty was way ahead of me-I saw her silver comforter zigzag toward the car like a sheet of aluminum. One more second and she’s home free, I said to myself. At that very moment, I slipped. I threw my left hand behind me and cushioned the fall. I threw my right hand out in front of me and managed to keep from falling forward. The transistor radio went sailing into a rock.

A huge hole appeared, with multicolored wires sticking out of it. I screamed. I swore. The thunder smothered my voice. I threw the radio out as far as I could, grimacing in impotent rage. I was disgusted. After that I didn’t hurry-nothing else could touch me.

I sat down behind the wheel of the ear. I put on the windshield wipers. Betty was sniffling, but she seemed to be doing better. She rubbed her head with a towel.

“I can’t say that I’ve seen many storms like this one,” I said.

Which was true-and this one had cost me a pretty penny. Still, I didn’t lose sight of the fact that we’d come out of it all right, with limited damage. Instead of answering me, she stared out the window. I leaned over to see what she was looking at. You could just barely make out the cabin on top of the hill, the rivulets of mud running down the slope. Good-bye, little lines of colored soil, and earth that glitters like diamond powder-good-bye to all that. What was left looked more like the mouth of a sewer, spewing out long streams of shit. I didn’t say a word. I started the car.

We rolled into town at nightfall. The rain had let up a little.

We came to a red light. Betty sneezed.

“How come we never have any luck?” she asked.

“Because we’re just a couple of poor unfortunates,” I snickered.