Betty Blue Read online

  “Come up and see for yourself. The little feet are still moving in a pool of blood.”

  He waved it off, then rolled up his magazine and looked at me through it.

  “How you doing up there?”

  “I was beat a little while ago, but now I feel it coming back, full speed.”

  “Shit,” he said. “I don’t know how you can stay out there in the sun like that. Talk about your idiot jobs…”

  He went back in with his naked girls folded under his arm and I got back to work, charged with new energy. I started painting like a madman, a smile on my lips and my jaw set.

  I stopped working a little earlier than usual. I’d already proved what I wanted to prove-no sense going overboard. The wait had gotten me excited, and it was all I could do to walk back to the house at a normal gait. I felt sparks going through my arms and legs. I was ready.

  I had barely opened the door when Betty threw herself into my arms. This got me. I hugged her. Over her shoulder I saw that the table was set with a huge bouquet of flowers in the center. It smelled good.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Is it my birthday?”

  “No,” she said. “Just a little dinner, for lovers only.”

  I kissed the nape of her neck and didn’t try to understand. I didn’t want to ask any questions-it was all too beautiful.

  “Come on,” she said. “Sit down. I’ll pour you a glass of cold wine.”

  I maneuvered around gently, still under the effects of the surprise. I looked around me, smiling. It was a fabulous little wine, just right for sipping under a setting sun. Women, I thought, they really know how to take you from Hell to Heaven. They know how it’s done.

  I poured myself another glass while she looked in the oven. She told me about her stroll through town, her back turned toward me, crouched down in front of the stove, her little yellow dress rising to the tops of her thighs, stretched to the max. I wasn’t really listening. I was watching a little bird who had just landed on the windowsill.

  “In ten minutes we eat!” she said.

  She came and sat down on my lap and we drank a toast. I ran my hand up between her legs. It was the good life. I was hoping she’d remembered to buy cigars. I started diddling around in her panties, but she stopped me. She leaned back away from me. Her eyes lit up.

  “Gosh,” she said. “Let me look at you.”

  I was in heaven. I let her caress my face without moving a muscle. She seemed to like that. I downed a few glassfuls of wine. “Now I understand why you came here to bury yourself,” she whispered. “It’s because you had something to WRITE!”

  I didn’t answer but just smiled. In truth, it wasn’t at all what she thought-I hadn’t settled in that town to write. The thought had never crossed my mind. No, I was just looking for a place that was peaceful, sunny, and away from people, because the world had been getting on my nerves and there was nothing I could do about it. Writing had come much later-maybe a year afterward, and for no real reason-as if that sort of thing happens to you automatically after a few months of solitude: a way to get through sleepless nights, the need to feel alive.

  “You know… I don’t know how to say this,” she added. “You have no idea what it does to me. I’ve never read anything like it! I’m so happy that it’s you who wrote it! Kiss me…”

  I thought she was going a little overboard, but I didn’t need to be coaxed. The evening’s temperature was just right. I slid into it as into a warm bath of cinnamon perfume. I was totally relaxed, all the way to the tips of my toes.

  Betty was radiant, witty, desirable, I felt like I had gone into outer space and was floating in a vacuum. All that was left was to batten down the hatches and land in bed. But all she was interested in was my notebooks, my BOOK-the hows and whys, this and that. I realized I had really shaken her up, broadened her horizons with what had come out of my brain, and the idea simply overjoyed me. Had I been a genie, I might have knocked her off her feet with my stare.

  I tried to calm her down but there was nothing doing. She covered me all over with her tender eyes. She caressed my writer’s hands. Her eyes shone like those of a little girl who had broken open a stone and found a diamond. I had been given the red carpet. The only slight dark spot in the picture was that I had the feeling she was mistaking me for someone else. But I told myself I might as well take advantage of my attributes-my big writer’s dick and the vast depths of my soul. Life resembled an automat-you’ve got to know how to grab the food before it passes you by right under your nose.

  Around eleven o’clock the writer started flapping his wings. Two little bottles of wine and it was all he could do to keep from falling off his chair. He was happy-ogling his girl, smiling-he no longer understood what she was saying to him and did not have the strength to ask her to repeat herself. The wine had made him drunk, the tenderness had made him drunk, well-being itself had made him drunk, but it was mostly the girl with the long black hair who was rolling her chest around in front of him who made him drunk. It wouldn’t even have taken much for her to make him want to go reread all those notebooks himself-she had given them a new dimension. In bed, he amused himself, removing her panties with his teeth. She took him in her arms and hugged him. She’d never hugged him like that-it made him feel odd. She clung to him as though they’d come through a storm, her legs hooked across his back. He went into her gently, staring into her eyes. He clutched her behind and licked her breasts, and the night moved on. They smoked a cigarette. They were drenched with sweat. After a while the girl lifted herself up on her elbow.

  “When I think that you’re out there painting houses…” she said.

  The writer had a witty comeback all ready-it was his stock-in-trade.

  “What the fuck difference does it make?” he said.

  “It’s not where you should be…”

  “Oh yeah? Where should I be?”

  “At the top,” she said.

  “You’re sweet,” he said. “But I don’t think the world is exactly tailored to my measurements.”

  She straddled the writer and took his head in her hands.

  “Now, that…” she said, “that’s what we’re going to find out.”

  He paid no heed to what she had just said. He was a writer, not a fortune-teller.

  5

  The owner showed up the next day just as we were taking a nap. I went out to meet him on the doorstep. It was obvious that he was looking for trouble. The heat hadn’t spared him on his way over-he was livid. Betty was still in bed so I didn’t ask him to come in. I even pushed him outside, casually, and maybe that’s what got him mad-maybe he wanted to come in and wash his face.

  “You must be kidding,” he snarled. “What is it, you get up at ten in the morning and at four in the afternoon? Is the job keeping you awake?”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “But I work till sunset every night. That racks up quite a few hours…”

  “I see. You have an answer for everything, right?”

  “You’re making a mistake,” I said.

  I had barely finished my sentence when Betty showed up.

  She’d thrown on one of my T-shirts, pulling it down to cover her behind. She gave the owner a look that could kill.

  “What right do you have to talk to him that way?” she asked.

  “Betty, please…” I said.

  “No realIy,” she went on. “Who do you think…?”

  The guy stood there with his mouth open. He looked at Betty, tugging at her T-shirt, her nipples pointy and thighs long and naked. His eyes were popping out of his head. He mopped his face with his handkerchief.

  “Listen, I’m not talking to you,” he said.

  “Lucky for you. But just who do you think you are talking to?”

  “I’m talking to my employee.”

  She burst out laughing.

  “Your employee? You poor old wasted slob… you happen to be talking to the greatest writer of his generation. You get it…?”

  �
�Betty, don’t you think you’re going a bit too…”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” said the owner.

  I saw Betty go pale. Furious, she let go of the T-shirt and it snapped up ten inches. You could see her every hair on her crotch. The guy’s eyes were glued. It took Betty a few seconds to figure out what was going on.

  “What the hell are you looking at?” she growled.

  The man was hypnotized, he stood there biting his lip. She gave him a push and he backed down a few steps from the porch.

  “What’s the matter, you never seen a woman before? You going to have a stroke?”

  She ran after him, bare-assed, and gave him another push. The guy stumbled and almost fell, just barely righting himself. He flushed.

  “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a sex maniac,” she said.

  The scene was so unbelievable and Betty so sexy that I couldn’t even move. I stood on the porch with my mouth open. The owner was green with rage-he beat a hasty retreat, set off against a blue sky. I couldn’t keep from laughing, especially when he fell on his face.

  He got back up quickly and took a last look at me.

  “Take my advice-get rid of that girl!” he yelled.

  Betty was still threatening to go after him, so he turned tail and ran, slapping at his suit coat, making little dust clouds in the air as he went.

  She walked past me and went into the house without a word, still trembling with anger. I knew better than to get close to her-it was obvious. I would wait until the storm blew over by itself. At that moment even the writer wasn’t up to the task. The scenery had changed again-once more I found myself in the middle of a crummy little nowhere. I heard her inside kicking the walls. It was time to go back to work.

  All afternoon I spied on her from the top of my ladder. If I stood on tiptoe I could see over the roof of number two and into my windows. I rubbernecked without shame, safe at fifty yards. I wondered how much time it would take for a girl in her state to cool down. I saw a few of my boxes sail back out the window, but not the one with the notebooks-not that one. Haha, I thought: HAHA.

  Naturally I didn’t get too far on the job. I wasn’t into it. I worked halfheartedly. The day plodded along. She was sitting at the table again, her head in her hands. I couldn’t figure out if this was good or bad. The old fart had gotten what he deserved. Had I?

  The owner’s threats spun around in my head, but it didn’t get me down, I imagined myself taking him to the cleaner’s-or the authorities. I just felt a little tired, like when you catch a chill. I also had miles of painting to do. I was finishing off my can of paint when I saw Betty go out onto the porch. I ducked down behind the roof. When I looked again, she was going up the alley and around the corner.

  I wondered where she was going. It got me thinking. I went over all possible answers as I whitewashed the wall. It turned out I didn’t even have the time to get worried-one minute later she was back. I hadn’t even seen her come-I saw her through the windows going back and forth, bustling around inside the house. I couldn’t see too well what she was doing-it seemed like she was shaking something in front of her.

  What do you know, I said to myself, she’s cleaning. Must be tidying up the house to calm her nerves. I knew she’d make it shine like a new penny.

  I worked for another little while, my soul at peace. The sun set, and I rinsed out my paintbrushes conscientiously. It had cooled off. Before I went home I had a beer with the eyeglasses salesman. The sky was an unbelievable red. I lit a cigarette and headed for the house, watching my feet as they walked along. Ten yards before I got there I looked up. Betty was standing in front of the porch. I stopped. Next to her were her two suitcases, and she was looking at me with incredible intensity. I couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing holding my Coleman lamp, lit. The sunset made her hair burn-she was ferociously beautiful. Something smelled like gas. I knew she was going to throw the lamp into the house. For a tenth of a second the idea appealed to me, then I saw her arm describe a semicircle in the air and the lamp flew into the sky like a shooting star.

  The house went up like the Hindenburg-a free sample of Hell. She picked up her suitcases. The flames welled up in the windows.

  “Well, are you coming?” she asked. “Let’s go.”

  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…”
r />   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.