Billie (17 page)

“No. He would never have married her.”

“Yes, he would have.”

“No.”

“Absolutely.”

“Absolutely not. Guys like that, they don't marry crappy little goose-girls. I know you want to believe it because you're a big romantic from the time of the troubadours, but you're kidding yourself. I come from the same social class as Rosette and I can tell you that at the last minute, he would have taken off . . . He would have had business in Paris or some such excuse . . . Plus his father would never have allowed it. There were still 6,000 écus at stake, I'll remind you.”

“He'd have done it.”

“No.”

“Yes. He'd have married her.”

“For what reason?”

“As a nice gesture.”

“A nice gesture, my ass. He would have jumped her bones and left her flat with her bastard child, her chickens, and her turkeys.

“You're such a cynic . . . ”

“Yes . . . ”

“Why?”

“Because I know life better than you do.”

“Oh, spare me . . . Stop . . . You're not going to start that again . . .

“I'll stop.”

Silence.

 

“Billie?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to marry me?”

“Excuse me?”

Even the donkey stopped in his tracks.

“Do you want us to get married?”

Uh, never mind, he was just taking a crap . . .

“Why are you talking bullshit?”

“I'm not joking. I've never been more serious in my life.”

“But . . . uh . . . ”

“Uh, what?”

“Well, we're not exactly on the same team, you know . . . ”

“What are you referring to?”

“Well, you know . . . ”

“Tell me. Who was the girl who explained to me once that true love has nothing to do with the anatomical chart?”

“I don't know. A little pain in the ass who always wanted to have the last word, I guess.”

“Billie . . . ”

“Yes?”

“Let's get married . . . The whole world keeps pestering us with their marriage for all, their protests against marriage for all, their counter-protests for all, their hate for all, their prejudices for all, their good feelings for all . . . So why not us? Why not us?”

The idiot was really serious . . .

 

“And why would we do what other people do?”

“Because one night, I don't know if you remember . . . it was a really long time ago . . . One night, you made me promise never to abandon you because you would only do stupid things without me . . . And I tried, you know . . . I really tried to honor my promise . . . But I wasn't strong enough to succeed. If I was just four steps behind you, you would go crazy again . . . So I would like to marry you so that you'll have fewer little problems in the future . . . We wouldn't tell anyone and it wouldn't changed anything about how we live today, but we would know. We would be aware that this connection exists between us, and we would know it forever.”

 

He was speaking as if I remembered that night . . .

So, he didn't just sleep either . . .

 

“You know very well that I'll always do stupid things . . . ”

“No, that's just it. I'm hoping that it will calm you down a bit.”

“What will?”

“Finally having a little bit of family all to yourself.”

 

Silence.

 

“Say yes, Billie . . . Look, I can't get down on one knee because I'm in too much pain but imagine me doing it . . . Imagine the scene . . . With your little donkey as witness . . . I've been paddling along with you for ten years now and today, I really want to reach the shore . . . ”

“For starters, why do you want to marry
me
?”

“Because you're the most beautiful human being I've ever met and will ever meet and I would like it to be you whom I call first if something happens to me too.”

“Oh really? Really, well yeah, so . . . ” I sighed. “If we're just talking about picking up the phone, count me in . . . Happy to oblige.”

 

Say, little star, your fellow stars look like they're in party mode, but hey . . . go easy with those pills, my little sweetie, because you're really flying high there . . .

 

Silence.

 

Silence in the sun and beneath the blue sky.

 

“So? Why is she smiling stupidly like that, the little Billie?” He said mockingly. “Is she thinking about her wedding night?”

 

But . . . ooooh . . . uh . . . I wasn't smilingly stupidly at all. On the contrary, I was smiling quite gracefully.

I was smiling because I wasn't wrong.

Uh no . . .

 

I was really pleased with myself because I was right again: A good story, especially a love story, always ends with marriage, and singing, dancing, a tambourine, and so on.

Ah yes . . .

 

La, la, li li . . . la la . . .

Dearest Henri Bertaud du Chazaud––many thanks.

Born in Paris in 1970, Anna Gavalda's first published work was the critically acclaimed collection of short stories
I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere
, which sold over half a million copies in her native France
 
and was published in the US by Riverhead in 2003. She is also the author of
Someone I Loved
and the international bestseller
Hunting and Gathering
(Riverhead, 2007), which was made into a film starring Audrey Tatou and Daniel Auteil. Gavalda lives in Paris.