Billie (14 page)

You, you don't give a damn, you're already dead, but as for me, I still have a chance, I'll have you know.

I know how to load a weapon and shoot down a timid animal. So, as far as I'm concerned, I won't have a single worry about my future without him.

Not a one.

 

That's it. Everything's been said.

Now I can amuse myself a bit again and tell you about our super vacation . . .

I
t all began at a bar in a luxury hotel.

For years, when it comes to Franck and me, almost everything has begun at a bar in a luxury hotel.

Since we work like dogs, we tend to end up in quiet places where everything is order and beauty, rich, calm, and pleasurable.

I no longer faint when I see the drink prices on the menu because I no longer look at them.

I rarely sleep more than six hours a night and can no longer afford to be cheap.

I make it possible for people to deliver pleasure (to themselves) by sending very pretty flowers (to themselves) six days out of seven from eleven
A.M.
until nine
P.M.
, and to reward myself for having become this priceless treasure of good deeds, I sprawl in the spongy armchairs on the seventh day and offer to my poor friend, the repairer of tiaras and diadems of queens turned to dust, cocktails that are worth a thousand times more than the skin on my ass.

I love it.

I have a score to settle with my past and I'm paying cash on the barrelhead in a five-star luxury hotel. So it all balances out.

 

I no longer remember what hotel we were at nor what we were drinking, but it must have been really enjoyable since I ended up giving in to his whim.

Franck was interested in a ravishing young man who was leaving to go hiking with his “friends” (already, I didn't like the word . . . ) and their children in the Cévennes and who had suggested that he join them.

The scenery would be sublime, the food more natural than nature, the skies beyond compare, and the pack donkeys just too sweet.

And it would do them good to walk a bit, to get some exercise, to get some fresh air and all that.

Fine.

Franck wanted to go fuck out in the open in a healthy, familial, zoophilous atmosphere, why not?

“No,” he said, getting annoyed. “You don't get it. It's not what you think. That guy there, I really have the feeling he's the one for me and I'm not going with him to have sex but because I'm romantic.”

Fine.

I've already seen a few men who were the one for him go by; what's one more jackass? I stopped snickering.

 

As if things weren't bad enough, he wanted me to accompany him on his man-hunting expedition. Like a chaperone. Like a maid of honor. Like, to show his bona fides and that he had the best intentions. Like, to show he had a family . . .

 

Oh boy, I said.

Me?

Walk?

In those big clodhoppers that weigh a ton?

And a sun hat on my head?

With a flask?

And one of those waterproof fluorescent jackets?

And a fanny pack?

And mosquitoes?

And people I don't even know?

And donkeys that I wouldn't even know how to keep on a leash?

Oh boy, I concluded. Zero chance of that happening!

 

But in the end, I said yes anyway.

Francky knows what to do to soften me up and the cocktails did the rest. Plus it was a part of the hotel-room-and-hunting-expedition deal: we rarely ask favors of each other, but those that are really important to us, we don't even have to ask each other.

And then I thought: it would be off-season in my little boutique and it would do me good to take it easy for a few days. So, okay, you're on: we went to the Au Vieux Campeur sporting goods store the following Monday and I was soon wearing a type of Moon Boot in undressed calfskin leather on my feet.

It was all way too beautiful . . .

I had decided to approach this adventure like a joke and I started there, in the store. I was a totally annoying customer, trying on everything without making up my mind for hours.

Franck wanted a jackass; he would have one.

 

To be honest, I was very happy to go on vacation with him. For years we were like two ships passing in the night, and I missed him. I missed us.

Also, it was exactly ten years after our Alfred de Musset rehearsals and I liked that. The thought of getting his goat for a week among the sheep was a nice anniversary gift.

Ten years. Ten years since we had drooled over love. And, in my case, I have no illusions: that was already the greatest love story I will ever know . . .

I
n retrospect, there was already trouble brewing with this hiking trip as soon as we arrived for our rendezvous at the Gare de Lyon.

That's right. Arthur may have been the one for my Francky, but I had the distinct impression that it was me, rather, whom he was trying to excite on the platform.

Ha, ha, I snickered beneath my sun hat, bad choice, my fey little darling, bad choice . . .

Fine.

I acted like I was frigid and said nothing.

First of all, one can swing both ways, the train doesn't go in only one direction; and second, I was in old-maid mode at that moment of my life.

I was too behind in my bookkeeping to allow myself to flirt with the first tease who came along. So they could sort it out between themselves, Franck and Arthur. I was staying out of it.

Shit, is this a vacation or what?

So, good friend that I am, I quickly discouraged little Arthur in his Ray-Ban aviators and let the boys have two seats next to each other facing forward on the train.

And I slept the whole trip.

Seriously, the thought of traipsing across rocky terrain with those clodhoppers on my feet was already wearing me out.

 

Then we were taken to a super lodge that was super family-friendly with plenty of other super bobos who were super excited to hike with super donkeys that were super small and super chunks of bread and super cheese and then, right away, I shut down and became defensive again.

Hey, not like when I was a kid, okay? No, no! It had nothing to do with that! It was simple: I was accompanying Franck and that's it. I hadn't come to be subjected to all that conviviality.

I was a businesswoman who did business all year long and now I especially needed to unplug from human relationships. And especially the nice ones.

I wasn't in a huff; I was just taking a break.

It was just too much of a family vibe for me to handle all at once, and I already knew I didn't have what it took to guarantee that I would share in the general enthusiasm.

You Franck, me Billie. Me come with you, you don't ask for more.

 

Since he loved me and knew me well, he left me alone.

We slept in the same tent, and the second evening, he admitted that he had told everyone not to get upset if I was so taciturn . . . that it was because I was getting over a big heartbreak . . .

I answered that it was good he told them that, seeing as I was always more or less getting over a big heartbreak, and a few seconds of smiles later, I couldn't stop myself from adding that it was even the story of my life, wasn't it? And then we giggled in our sleeping bags to make it seem like I was just too much of a hoot.

 

I adored sleeping in that little tent with him (I had done a good job dividing up the tasks: I threw the tent in the air (2 seconds) and he folded it back up (2 hours)), I took out my flask of hooch and we told each other lots of things. We said bad things about the group, we snickered, we giggled, we were nasty, we recounted our lives to each other, the little bits of each other's soap opera that we had missed, our laurels, our purchase orders, our stories of work, rings, clients, and bracelets.

Franck also imitated for me certain hiking chants that were even more ridiculous than the others and I laughed like a hyena.

I laughed so much that at times our tent was on the verge of flying away. The others must have thought I'd gotten over my big heartbreak really quickly . . .

Oh, I didn't give a damn.

I don't give a damn about others . . . I only like the people I like.

And my dog.

 

At one point, we were separated into three groups—something about fragile trails—and we joined up again with some “newcomers” which included a prim and proper family, with their hair neatly clipped about the ears.

 

Despite the fact that the boy and two little girls were very well behaved, their parents acted like lunatics, always ready to apply the principles they'd read about in the Great Infallible Teachers series. (Infallible, hot damn, I finally got that word right! 10 points! 10 points for Billie who speaks proper!)

They still had their Anti-Gay Marriage stickers on their backpacks and asked me and Franck if we were engaged and if we were getting married soon.

Poor, poor wretches.

Franck, busy with the food, didn't hear the question, so I answered that we were brother and sister.

Oh yeah . . . I wanted to continue to howl with laughter every night in my little yurt with the little squirt without them coming to drop a bucket of cold water on our backs.

 

We walked behind them and with my chin I indicated the infamous sticker to Franck to make him laugh, but he was a bit perturbed and didn't react.

His Arthur had run off with another group of Invisibles where there was a little twenty-year-old Selena who was unbelievably stupid but whose image made too pretty a reflection in Arthur's mirrored sunglasses and that made Franck a bit disappointed in life . . . “Don't worry,” I said to him poking him in the ribs: “You have me . . . ” and since that didn't soothe him, I took out my first aid kit:

“What advice will you give me on the day when I see that you no longer love me?” I asked him.

“I'll tell you to take a lover,” he retaliated.

“And what will I do when my lover no longer loves me?” I continued to press him.

“You'll take another one.”

“And how long will this go on for?”

“Until your hair turns gray, and mine white,” he said smiling.

And we were at it again. After that, he perked up.

Long live Alfred!

 

We didn't have a donkey because we didn't have kids.

The Crewcut family did have kids so they had a little gray, ridiculously cute donkey who was called Donkster. (Super original.) I was afraid of him, but I liked him all the same.

(As for Franck, the way these anti-gay-marriage types saw it, he was so far from having a husband or a family or children or dignity or respect or forgiveness or paradise that a donkey wasn't even worth thinking about.)

 

Donkster . . .

I called him my little Dollster and every now and then I secretly slipped him stuff to eat.

Mr. Crewcut gave me a dirty look since the rules clearly specified that the animals should
never
be fed while they are working.

It was the number one rule, which Mr. Rent-A-Donkey made very clear: you can give them as much food as you want when they have their saddles off, but otherwise not a blade of grass. Otherwise . . . otherwise, I don't remember . . . otherwise it throws off their GPS, I think.

When I finished an apple, was I going to throw the core to the ants when there was this sweet little Donkster who had been ogling it for fifteen minutes?

I don't do such dumb things.

 

Trouble was brewing between Mr. Crewcut and me.

I no like the way he spoke to his wife (like she was an idiot), and I no like the way he spoke to his children (like they were idiots). (When I get angry, I speak like that, okay?) (Once the Morels are bred in the bone, they remain in one's mouth.) (Alas.)

He kept sniffing at Franck because he was beginning to doubt that he was a real man, as they say, and that really riled me up. His way of sniffing his ass as though Franck were a dog; it really disgusted me.

Plus he had a real gift for ruining all the nice moments. If the little girl picked a flower to give to her mommy, it was a big deal because it was an endangered species. If the kid wanted to look through the binoculars, he had to wait because his hands were too dirty. If he was hungry, the answer was no, he couldn't eat now, because it wasn't snack time. If he wanted to lead the donkey, the answer was no because he might let it escape. If he wanted to skip stones, he would never succeed because he didn't put enough effort into it. (Effort . . . To put effort into skipping stones . . . what an asshole . . . )

If the other little one went behind the donkey again, she might get kicked, which could kill her. (My Dollster . . . what nonsense . . . ). If the wife said the view was beautiful, he answered that it was better on the other side of the hill; if she took a photo of her kids, he predicted it would come out badly since it was backlit and if she agreed to carry the little girl, he raised his eyes to the sky, reminding her that it wasn't a good idea to give in to their every little whim.

Okay.

I slowed down and to cool myself off, I acted like someone who was really interested in the flora and fauna.

Go have your tantrum far from my donkey, you dirty little kapo. I'm looking at the grasses I will put in my bouquets . . .

 

When it came time to picnic, he sat next to Franck to make like they were pals and he asked straight out if we wanted to have kids, too.

Francky threw me a look that said: please, don't get involved, and he answered with an evasive bit of bullshit to put an end to the discussion.

 

While we were arranging our bags on Dollster's back, he whispered in my ear:

“Hey, Billie, don't make trouble with that guy. One of my work colleagues whom I like a lot is in the other group and I don't want a scandal, okay? Like you, I'm on vacation.”