All the Way (11 page)

‘I feel pretty shit,' says Delphine, who has turned red, and looks fatter than Solange has ever noticed. ‘Do you want to go for a walk?'

Right now I'm dancing.

‘Come on, my boyfriend gave me some dope.'

This is the moment to absorb the fact that Delphine
smokes
, and that she has a
boyfriend
. The moment to observe Delphine rolling a
joint
. On the terrace opposite the rose garden and the tennis courts. Under the dazzling white moon. Using a cassette case to mix and cut the tobacco.

You're so introverted. But we had a good talk last time, didn't we. I told you everything.
(That she was going out with a fireman.)

Delphine seems bored. ‘Food and sex are two things that shouldn't exist,' she declares.

Right, so she's already done it. The concierge's daughter smokes and has already done it.

‘What do you think I've got to look forward to?'

Delphine asks her, passing her the joint.

What should she say? Is it a real question, like in a horoscope? Or just a statement: nothing? She takes a drag and it's good, better than her Kools, and the effect is a bit stronger.

‘Like even you,' Delphine continues, ‘you'll have more than I will. You can tell straight away. The proof is, like, you don't even know what I mean.'

And from this perspective, in the evening light, in front of this fabulous garden, Delphine is almost beautiful, deep, unusual (if you ignore the ‘like even you' and the ‘like, you don't even', in fact if you ignore what comes out of her mouth).

Christian and Rose are kissing on a couch. It's disgusting. Being jealous would be really humiliating. A total waste of time, for a feeling
that is just not worth it
, that is completely degrading.

Look nonchalant. Like an air hostess.

A degrading feeling, quite simply
degrading.

Lætitia is kissing a guy too. She's wearing a dress. The girl's wearing a dress. Full and flowing, with a belt made of big gold chains. She (Solange) would look like a grandmother if she wore it, but Lætitia looks amazingly hot in it. So weird. Her legs are as thin as her arms, and she's wearing opaque stockings, they're perfect, and the guy's arm is going up and down them. You can't tell if his hand is at the top, at the bottom, in front, behind, it's winding around, it's grazing the bare part of her thigh. The music (someone has put Sade back on) is coming out of those fingers playing on those stockings.
Stockings
, the girl's wearing stockings, which are staying up by themselves, a black band on a white thigh under a black dress, appearing, disappearing, white, black, thigh, dress, the hand moves onto the band of lace, the girl gets up followed by the guy with his wandering fingers and wild eyes, they disappear into the rolling shadows.

‘They're going to fuck,' someone says in her ear. A guy who drags on a joint and passes it to her. ‘Every party she goes upstairs with someone. There are
so many
bedrooms up there.'

He's older than her. More like Year Ten or Eleven. Black eyelashes and green eyes. She takes a drag of the joint and steps back a bit (nonchalantly). The glow of the dress is still floating in the shadows, the flash of the chains on the big belt, the hand of the suitor tracing curves and crowning her, Lætitia, the happy one, the princess upstairs who devours them all with kisses.

‘Do you know what they call her?'

Lætitia d'Urbide?

‘Yeah…' He inhales deeply on the joint and holds his breath, like you're supposed to.

I don't know. Læti?

He laughs. He laughs with his mouth open, without a sound, for a long time. As if she's said something cute. ‘Cheap Carpet.' He expels it with the smoke. It's like there's a shifting meaning in what he's saying: not so much the nickname, which is striking, as the inventiveness of the village kids, these hicks with such funny ways of behaving.

She can see the carpet outlet next to Milord's. She wants to be back there. Under the flashing light. No. Actually, no. She wants to be where she is. With the guy collapsed on this couch.

Why Cheap Carpet?

The boy lets out a groan which is in fact a concentrated laugh, the sort of laugh that would emerge if he became detached from his body (she imagines, surprised by her own thought process).

Then she has the revolting thought that you can get it on the cheap with Lætitia. Cheap Læti. Or that the boys are using her as a doormat. As carpet. Lying on her, walking on her, crushing her, delousing themselves on her like monkeys.

‘She's got hairs on her breasts,' says the boy. ‘Cheap Carpet does.' His mouth open in silent laughter, as if he was holding up the nickname like a museum relic, a scalp or something.

She pictures her own breasts. She had never thought about this problem—no, phew, she does not have hairy breasts. At least she's avoided this defect. She laughs.

He takes the joint back from her and their fingers touch.

‘Where are you from?'

Time is behaving strangely. It speeds up and then slows down. Lætitia and the guy have just left the room, but she (Solange) has had time (eternity or fixed time) to have more thoughts than during her whole life so far, time to think that she has thought more things.

From the coast.

‘That's weird, I've never seen you there. What's your name?' He passes the joint back to her, moistened with his saliva.

She is about to say Charlotte. Or Sandra. Or Jennifer.

Solange. What's yours?

His name is Arnaud. He's from the coast too.

Time loops again. Or pauses. Or
rewinds
.
Let's Dance
, that song again.

‘I'm right into those freaky states where your mind is either really sharp, or completely spacey…' says the boy. ‘I don't know which I prefer,' he continues, squashed up against her. ‘A sharp mind is cool because all your senses are on total alert. But it kills you, it's so tiring. When you're high, a bit sleepy, it's good too, and you kind of experience things differently, I don't know, that's always when I'm able to really see things, problems, political problems, you totally understand them because you see the big picture, like from above, like the perspective aliens would have, you're outside everything and totally calm, as if nothing affected you; like a meeting of the student council but you wouldn't be at high school anymore, you would have passed your final year ages ago and you would understand everything, all the ins and outs. It diffuses everything, absolutely everything. It diffuses problems. And it's more interesting than alcohol. And you feel a lot less alone.'

I feel alone, too.

‘At your age it's normal. I used to be such an egomaniac, I was less mellow than I am now. Because you can only define yourself in relation to others. In the beginning you have no consciousness, so no defined character, nothing about you is determined. Sartre said that. When you think about it, it's pretty amazing, totally amazing…'

That means that when I was tormenting myself, worrying who I
was
(she begins, surprised to know that she was tormenting herself),
and believing that I alone knew who I was, I mean alone
in my head, in fact that was all stupid…

‘You can only define yourself in relation to others. That's the bottom line. Sartre said it. It's a fundamentally political thing.'

It's natural. It's the instinctive approach.

‘I don't believe in instinct at all. What do your parents do?'

They died in an aeroplane crash.

‘Listen, just be yourself. That's the best thing. Be yourself, in relation to others. Actually, it's your best
bet
anyhow, even in relation to others. We're always making choices, whatever happens. You can always choose, you are completely free. Everything that happens involves choices.'

I'd like to go to the USA. The Clèves Rotary Club is offering
a one-year scholarship, all expenses paid, except the price of the trip. I've given it some serious thought. But right now I'm in a daze. I'm
off my face. We always react in the same way to particular situations,
don't we? I mean each one of us does. It's natural, right? Freedom is
so fantastic.

‘Actually it can backfire. Like, you always need an audience when you put on your own show, but needing an audience is not just for show, it's
real
. Otherwise you get crushed by despair. Someone, Hegel, said that there are two parameters in consciousness: time—chronology—and space—got it? space—and twelve squares, twelve categories in which you can put ideas, and that's how we gain access to knowledge.'

That really doesn't suit me
(she argues, her head full of arcs and squares).
That's old school. It's too restrictive. For me the
mind is completely limitless.

‘No way. The mind has limitations. But you have to learn to use it one hundred per cent. It's fantastic. When you think about it. That means that telepathy…I mean, if we used our minds one hundred per cent, we could even speak to each other without words. Total comprehension. From one to one. It'd be perfect. We are awfully limited. Awfully limited. It's awful.'

Perhaps that's true, but it's probably false. How is it limited?

‘Well, for example, right now, you think you're talking to me, but perhaps you're not. Perhaps you imagine that you're talking to me, but in reality I'm not listening to you. Whereas we could be talking directly, one to one. You see, it's better to experience the other, even if it makes you miserable, than to stay in your own personal safety zone. The main thing is to have flaws. Not just a clean and cosy little conscience.'

Definitely.

‘Most people are drama queens, egomaniacs, but you just have to get through that stage and in the end it teaches you a good lesson. When people tell you, “Stop being a fuckwit,” you might feel worse, but it does you good. In the long run. My father said it to me, stop being a fuckwit, and it was the best thing he could have done for me. Because all of a sudden you feel like an idiot. A few slaps—to say, “get over it, you don't have any real problems”—it does you good. Even if you don't have any parents, like you.' (She'd forgotten her parents were
dead.
)

‘You can never go back to what you were before. You can't regret experiences. You want to stay yourself, sure, but you can't go backwards. An experience is an experience. For good. You can't forget that you have learned things, not so much what you have learned but the very fact that you have learned. A girl like Cheap Carpet knows nothing about otherness…You can't go back to square one. Forget your little ego and face up to life, well, you know what I mean. You can't
dis-evolve
. Really.'

She has never spoken so well with anyone.

They climb a staircase with landings the size of whole rooms, the size of her bedroom (her two bedrooms: the one at her house and the one at Bihotz's house) (she's like a kid with divorced parents) (it's absolutely the first time she's thought that).

‘You have an amazing arse,' the boy whispers into her neck.

Her skirt is slipping, it's so awkward.

She'd like to take back the stuff about her parents being dead because it's another huge lie and, as well as that, one day she'll have to introduce this boy to them (her parents) (and even to Bihotz) (no, not to Bihotz).

Up a step, another step, she pretends to trip, he holds her, he holds on to her, she gives a little gasp, drawing air in between her teeth, like Marilyn.

‘Did you see that?'

On the landing there's an enormous painting with orange, yellow and red stripes that don't represent anything but look good.

‘Her father owns all the vineyards north of here,' says the boy with a big sweep of his arm that includes the entire geographical world. ‘He spends his whole life buying paintings, in the United States and everywhere, and the rest of the time he smokes in his smoking room and drinks.'

An old man passes them on the landing. A king.

Wow
, she says.

The Earth is spinning on the end of Arnaud's hand. The staircase continues upwards.

And Lætitia is coming down, alone. Her lover is right now lying in a
pool of blood
. A little clinking of her gold chain belt. She's smoking, with an expression of disdain, her eyelids half-closed, her long legs set in slow motion in front of her, her patent-leather Doc Martens preceding her down the stairs step by step, as if the exertion has finally convinced her of the vanity of this world.

And, stock-still on the staircase, he's looking at her.

But she's the one he kisses. Solange. He hiccups as he squeezes her. He sticks his tongue in her mouth.

There's a huge stained-glass window on the final landing, a seascape lit by the moon, with the real garden, under maritime pines, visible behind it, in shades of blue, as if Clèves was turning into the sea, and the whole world was immersed in a marvellous connectedness.

The door they're leaning on opens behind them. They fall into a bedroom, laughing, their bodies entwined, he's holding her, he pushes her head down. He's pushing really hard, he's struggling with his fly and her head, to unzip and to hold her, time is doing one of its shadowy loops again, there's some rubbing of fabric and skin and then everything becomes clear: his dick is in her mouth. From the pumping action he's doing with her, she understands that she has to raise and lower her head. It's a bit lumpy down there, it smells bad and it tastes acidic.

He groans. Is she hurting him? She relaxes her jaw.

‘Suck, for fuck's sake.' He sounds distressed.

She clamps her jaw again and tries to cope with putting pressure on his dick, as well as suction, a vacuum, that seems to be what he wants, like when you suck your thumb but bigger.