Betty Blue

6

I woke up frowning because the road was so bumpy, and because I was cold. The wind whipped around us in the back of the pickup. It must have been six in the morning. The sun was just coming up. Betty was sleeping with her fists clenched. As luck would have it, we had gotten ourselves a ride from a guy who was hauling fertilizer, and the smell of it first thing in the morning was enough to turn my stomach. The seat next to the driver was full of packages, which is why we had to ride outside in the back. I got a sweater out of Betty’s suitcase and put it on. I also put something around her shoulders. We were going through a forest and it was cold. The tops of the trees were so high that it made me dizzy. The driver tapped on the rear window-a young guy who’d picked us up at a gas station; I’d bought him a beer. He was on his way back from some kind of county fair or something.

He offered us some coffee-I could have kissed him. I grabbed the Thermos and poured myself a few little cupfuls. I lit up my first cigarette of the day, sitting on one of the sacks, watching the road go by. I couldn’t keep from laughing. At my age it was like a new case of acne. Sure, it wasn’t anything fatal. In truth I’d left nothing at all behind me-Betty had stuffed a few shirts and my notebooks in one of the suitcases-it was just that I found the whole thing a little ridiculous. All I needed was Henry Fonda’s hat. Practical girl, she had also rescued my savings from the fire. I felt rather rich; we had easily enough to last us a month or two. I had told her, Look, why hitchhike like a couple of dopes? Why drive ourselves crazy? Let’s take the fucking train. But nothing doing, she was determined that we not spend money unnecessarily. Put out your thumb, she said. But the truth-the real truth-is that she liked it. What she wanted was to leave a pile of ashes behind her and hit the road like in the good old days. Mark the occasion. I didn’t put up a fuss. She was there, hanging on my arm, and that was all that counted, I had picked up the suitcase and stuck out my thumb, laughing.

We’d been on the road for two days, and we were covered with dust. I started missing my shower. I yawned loudly and Betty woke up. Two seconds later she jumped into my arms and rolled her tongue into my mouth. No matter how hard I might have tried, I couldn’t have thought of anything else to pray for. Looking at her, I knew she was happy. I still didn’t share her drive to conquer the world, but it didn’t matter. Things were line. The road’s not so bad when you have a beautiful girl with you.

The guy stopped for gas and we went in and bought sandwiches and beer. It was starting to get hot out again. Once in a while the truck made it up to fifty miles per hour, but even then all we could feel was the sun cooking our skin. Betty loved it-the wind, the road, the sun. I popped open the beer, my head nodding. I couldn’t help but think that if she’d have let me just buy some train tickets we’d already have been there instead of taking this fabulous detour-all because the guy had to go see his brother before going on into town, and we didn’t want to lose that great little pickup truck. He was the only one who’d take us, we weren’t about to let him go until he’d driven us all the way to town. True, we were in no hurry. We were hardly on the road to El Dorado.

We stopped in some little one-horse town. We sat in the shade and ordered cool drinks while the guy went off to see his brother. Betty went to the bathroom and I dozed in my chair. I could find absolutely no reason to worry and the world seemed as absurd as always. The town was quiet, nearly deserted.

After a while we took off again, but it wasn’t until the end of the day that we saw the lights of the city. Betty was standing up, stamping with impatience.

“Do you realize it’s been more than five years since I’ve seen her? It feels weird. To me she’ll always be just my little sister, you see…”

The guy let us off at an intersection, and by the time Betty and I had gotten out and pulled down our suitcases, there was a whole line of cars honking-guys sticking their heads out their windows. I’d forgotten that kind of atmosphere: the smell of gas leaks, the lights, the greasy sidewalks, the car noises you can never get away from. I didn’t feel particularly enthused.

We walked for a while, dragging the suitcases. They weren’t that heavy but they were awkward-there was always somebody bumping into us. The only good thing was that we could sit on them while waiting for the lights to change. Betty had stopped talking. She was like a fish that someone had just thrown back in the water. I didn’t want to spoil her fun. It wasn’t so horrible after all-even if cooling your heels waiting for the lights to change did sometimes seem like punishment.

People were in the street at that time of day-job over, heading home. All the signs lit up suddenly; they blinked like waterfalls of light as we passed under them batting our eyes and pulling in our shoulders. I truly hated all of it, but having Betty at my side made it bearable-all the crap hardly bothered me. Most of the people had hideous faces. I saw that nothing had changed.

Betty’s sister, Lisa, lived in a calmer part of town, in a little white two-story house with a twenty-by-twenty-foot terrace overlooking a vacant lot. She opened the door with a chicken wing in her hand. It made me hungry. Betty and Lisa kissed each other exuberantly and Betty introduced us. I eyed a piece of baked-to-a turn chicken skin hanging off the wing. Hi Lisa, I said. A Doberman pinscher came out of the house, whipping the night with its tail. That’s Bongo, she said, patting the animal’s head. Bongo looked at me, then at his mistress, and finally at the chicken wing, which he ate. I always knew the world was a mean joke.

Although Lisa lived alone with Bongo in the most total mess I’d ever seen, the house itself was somehow very pleasant. Full of colors, with things hanging all over the place as if they’d been forgotten there. Lisa wore a short kimono. She had nice legs, but otherwise Betty had her beat hand over fist, even though she was five or six years older. I drifted onto the conch while the girls talked, taking a drink and a few munchies with mee.

I must have been more tired than I thought-the first glass of sherry went right into my bloodstream. My head started spinning-I almost stepped on the dog when I stood up to go to the bathroom. I splashed some water on my face. I had a three-day beard and eyes circled with dust. I felt rubber-legged, sort of a street-angel-blitzed-on-two-fingers-of-rotgut thing.

When I came back Bongo was finishing the chicken and Betty was recounting the end of our trip. Lisa clapped her hands.

“Perfect timing!” she said. “The upstairs has been free for a week!”

Betty seemed staggered. She put her glass down slowly.

“What? You mean there’s nobody upstairs and you’d rent us the apartment?”

“Sure. Might as well have you take it.”

“Oh Lord, I’m dreaming,” Betty said. “This is fabulous!”

She bounded over to me and kneeled down in front of my chair. I wondered if she hadn’t actually covered herself with spangles.

“See, what did I tell you?” she said. “See what can happen?

If this isn’t some kind of luck I don’t know what is.”

“What’s going on, exactly?” I asked.

Betty squashed her breasts into my knees.

“What’s going on, honey, is that we haven’t even been in town one hour and we’ve already found a sensational apartment that has fallen into our laps straight from heaven!”

“Ask if it has a big bed,” I said.

She pinched my thigh and we raised our glasses. I didn’t say anything, but I was willing to admit that we were, in fact, off to a good start. After all, maybe she was right-maybe an easier world was really about to open its arms to us. I started feeling good.

The bottle hadn’t gone too far. I told them. Don’t worry, and I went out-down to the corner with my nose in the air, my hands in my pockets. I’d spotted some stores farther down the street.

I went into the grocer’s-Good evening, everyone, I said. The guy was alone behind the cash register, an old man with suspenders. I got some champagne, some cookies, and a can of food for the dog. The old man added it up without looking at me, nearly asleep.

“You know,” I said. ‘“We’ll likely be seeing a lot of each other. I’ve just moved into the neighborhood…”

The good news did not stir him. He handed me the bill, yawning. I paid up.

“You’re really a lucky guy,” I joked. “I’m going to be dropping a bundle in here every month…”

He gave me a smile-visibly forced-and waited for me to split. His face had a pained expression on it, like most of the people on the street. It made me feel like a leper. I thought for a second, then went back and got a second bottle. I threw the money at him and left.

The girls welcomed me back with cries of joy. While the champagne ran I opened the can of dog food: two pounds of bright pink mush bathed in jelly. Bongo looked at me with his head cocked. I knew it was wise to get on the good side of these animals. I saw that I had already scored a point.

Next we went to see the apartment. We climbed the stairway that led to the second floor, laughed when Lisa took a few minutes to get the key to turn.

“Usually this door is locked, but from now on we can just leave it open. Gosh, I’m so happy about this! Sometimes I get kind of lonely, you know…”

There was a bedroom, a room with a kitchen in the corner, and the little terrace. In short-paradise. There was a closet that had been turned into a shower. While the girls made the bed, I went out onto the terrace and leaned over the balcony. Bongo did likewise. Standing on his hind legs, he was almost as tall as me. The balcony looked out onto some deserted land, closed off by a fence. You could see houses on the other side, some hills farther on, then a blackness, darker than night. I heard them laughing and squealing in the bedroom. I smoked a cigarette and let it go all through me. I winked at Bongo.

Later, between the sheets, Betty squeezed herself against me and immediately went to sleep. I looked at the ceiling. I didn’t know where I was anymore, but I didn’t rack my brain about it. I did some deep breathing. Little by little I drifted into sleep, all the time feeling like I was slowly waking up.