Three Women in a Mirror (4 page)

Halfway down the steps to the basement she began to feel better; she was leaving the noise behind to enter a world where there was nothing but memories, muffled echoes through the walls. She'd left the glaring, noisy, merciless set behind, she was going deeper now, into the cottony, secret foundation of the discotheque. Here she would find a different atmosphere, a labyrinth of walls, corridors, dampness, the smell of bodies, and darkness.

There, in the red light that simplified faces, she saw the usual people: Bob, Robbie, Tom, Priscilla, Drew, Scott, Ted, Lance. She stopped right by Buddy: he had white skin, but the clothes and hair of a black man, with baggy pants and a colored shirt and dreadlocks:

“Buddy, do you have some dessert for me?”

“Sure do. Some meringue.”

“Perfect.”

“How much are you offering?”

She pulled a bill out of her bustier.

“A hundred dollars.”

He handed her an envelope.

“Here.”

She didn't thank him, because she knew he was cheating her. She went off with her pouch of cocaine and locked herself in the women's restroom.

She took a mirror and a straw from the tiny handbag hanging from a golden handcuff on her left arm. She lined up the powder, then inhaled it.

“Ah!”

David could show up at any minute; now she'd have the energy to deal with him. What a relief, she had just rescued her next adventure.

Walking back down the corridor, she worked it out: she had slept with almost all the boys who stood there leaning against the wall with cell phones in their hands. Now that she felt better, Anny smiled at them as she walked by. Fewer than half of them responded. Inwardly this made her angry:
They won't even say hi, yet they're happy to fuck me. What scumbags . . .
Not one of them had kept her. Not one of them had fought for her. Why not?

She stumbled into something on the floor—a girl throwing up—and caught herself on the first solid thing that came to hand. It was Tom, a dark-haired boy with a three-day beard, well-groomed in a naturally hairy way; he claimed to be a meditation teacher, which was a way of having multiple affairs with women. Anny had added to his collection for a night or two.

“Hey, Tom, just who I wanted to see. Am I a good lay?”

He let out a whistle, as if he'd just been given a math problem.

“Don't go complicating your life, Anny.”

“Which means?”

“You're an easy lay.”

He rubbed his cheeks: he'd just solved a really tricky equation. She insisted, “What grade would you give me?”

“Average.”

“No better than that?”

“Average is already not bad.”

“Neither good nor bad. Why aren't you giving me higher?”

“Because you don't really like it, babe.”

He emphasized his words. When he saw her uncomprehending grimace, he went on, “You behave like a bitch but you're not one. You act like you want it, but you don't really like it. You don't enjoy your own body; you don't enjoy the guys you go with. You've got your habits, that's all.”

“Habits?”

“The habit of sleeping around. The habit of never saying no. But that doesn't mean you're a good lay.”

“Asshole! Did you ever think that you might be the one who's average? Or even less than that?”

“Well, I don't mean to brag, but that's not what I've heard . . . ”

As far as he was concerned the conversation was over, and he walked away. Anny bit her lips: she knew that Tom had a reputation among the girls as an incomparable lover, and that was the very reason she had hit on him.

I mustn't sleep with David too soon. I have to hold out! Resist!

That was all she came away with from her confrontation with Tom.

She thought about going back to the dance floor, but worried that the energy the drug had given her might wear off if she danced. Shouldn't she be thinking, rather, about what she was going to say to David?

Determined to behave differently than on other days—or nights—she headed to the bar and sat quietly for an hour on her stool, drumming into her head,
Don't sleep with him tonight, don't sleep with him on the first night, or the second, or the third.
Convinced she'd acquired a new virtue, she knocked back one gin and tonic after the other, feeling more exalted with every passing moment.

So by the time David came and stood in front of her, she was so wasted that she could not help but burst out laughing.

“Oh, David, I can't believe it. I was thinking about you and, presto, there you are! I must have a gift, some sort of witchcraft I didn't know I had.”

“I think, mainly, it was because you told me to meet you here.”

She gasped, as if he'd said something infinitely spiritual.

“Sit down and have a drink.”

“Don't mind if I do.”

“You're so funny, David.”

“Do you come here often?”

Reminding herself of her plan—not to act like a fast girl—she replied, with aplomb: “No, it's the second time.”

He nodded.

“Where do you usually go?”

“I stay at home. I'm not really a party girl. These places are a waste of time, don't you think? Besides, what is there for me here?”

“Boys?”

“I have plenty of opportunities to meet men; you're proof of that,” she added, a touch too cleverly.

“Drugs?”

“Hmm. Rarely.”

“Alcohol.”

“You got it.”

Even though she was drunk, she was lucid enough not to try and hide the fact she'd been drinking. He narrowed his eyes and said, “So you don't go out much?”

“Rarely.”

He smiled; he was no fool.

“That's not what the papers say.”

He meant the magazines that had been reporting lavishly on Anny's depraved pranks since she was fifteen years old—showing her at the entrance to a club looking disheveled, or detailing her arrest for possession of illegal substances, or cataloging the boys who'd dropped her because they finally had to admit they couldn't keep up with a tireless reveler like her.

She gave a hoarse laugh.

“Don't be naïve, David. Even if you're new to the job, you must have learned the alphabet. Between shoots I have to provide them with gossip. Not a word of truth in any of it. It's all staged. All those stories have me playing a role—my publicist, Johanna, dreamt them up: people have to talk about me.”

“They skin you alive—”

“Yes, but at least they're talking about me!” she exclaimed, annoyed that he hadn't believed her, when she was sure she'd been convincing. “If I had gotten a PhD in physics at the age of sixteen, or was going around distributing vaccines for lepers, or going on hunger strikes to try and get Barack Obama canonized, not a single rag would take the slightest interest in me, none of the female readers would identify with me, and the male readers wouldn't even look at my legs! If they said nice things about me . . . it would be bullshit! It would never have worked.”

She got carried away. He didn't seem to mind; on the contrary, he laughed wholeheartedly.

“The real Anny,” she said impatiently, “is in hiding. She protects herself. No one knows her. The only person who will find out who she is, is the man who will love her. He'll be the only one, the first and the last.”

She burst into tears and hid her face in her hands, leaning forward on her stool. As she did this, she had a feeling of déjà vu; she realized she had just recited a scene from
The Girl at the Bar Across the Street
, a melodrama she'd been in when she was sixteen. She stopped immediately. For sure,
The Girl at the Bar Across the Street
had been a flop; but she could not be sure that David hadn't seen it. If he realized that she was feeding him leftovers, he'd be on his guard. Moreover, the critics at the time had said that weeping and sobbing didn't really suit her, and even she hadn't liked her image on screen, with her red eyelids and swollen nose.

She wiped her tears and gave a short laugh.

“Fooled you, didn't I. The one about the girl next door with the bleeding heart; it's been part of my repertoire for a good while now.”

“I almost bought it.”

Reassured, he leaned right over to her on his stool, without falling; she had to admire his sense of balance. She'd never have been able to pull off such a stunt. The water drinker ran his fleshy lips along her neck, up to her ear, bit her earlobe, then murmured suggestively, “I want you.”

She thought for a moment, disturbed, remembering her new resolution: to say no.

“Come here,” she said, taking him by the hand.

He followed her, thinking she was leading him to a quiet spot. At the end of an endless metal staircase they came out onto a walkway that overlooked the room, a sort of caged-in corridor used by electricians and sound technicians.

“Why here?”

“David, let's pretend we're in a film from the fifties. You know, the sort where a playboy in a tuxedo meets a woman in a gold lamé sheath.”

“Have you seen your dress?” he said, pointing to the ribbon wrapped around her butt. “It must have shrunk in the wash.”

“Please, try to be a little romantic. Aren't you romantic, David?”

He sighed and frowned.

“This place you asked me to meet you isn't exactly romantic.”

She shrugged and waved her hand, pointing vaguely to the huge warehouse converted into a club.

“You can make this place whatever you want it to be. All you have to do is use your imagination. Take that cable over there, for example.”

“So?”

“Well, it can be a vine, if I want it to. And the discotheque can be a jungle.”

“Sure,” he said, hypocritically. “Me Tarzan, you Jane. Already your outfit would be more suitable. Let's remove a few more details.”

He walked over to her, swaggering, lifted up her shirt to show her torso, then placed his burning palms against her skin. She shuddered, about to embrace him, then forced herself to respect her vows of discretion.

“You see?” she said ecstatically, stepping back and pulling her shirt back down.

In a flash she climbed over the railing, grabbed hold of the cable hanging from the column, and launched herself into the void, with an ape-man's cry:

“Ah . . . hi ho hi ha . . . ah, ah, ah, ah!”

Light as air, she swung over the dance floor, rid of all her fears. She was free of everything—her past, her failings, her own self. She felt heroic. David would admire her, for sure.

Swinging ever wider and farther, she came nearer and nearer to the disco ball. She shouted out, full of enthusiasm.

Suddenly aware of her voice and her moving shadow, the dancers looked up. They slowed their movements. Everyone paused to wonder what that girl in boots was doing up there hanging from a cable. Was this some new attraction?

The music stopped. The silence left the patrons in a stupor.

They could hear Anny's euphoric exclamations as she commented hysterically on her swinging to and fro: they realized that this was no show, but a drunken woman's perilous fantasy.

It was clear to everyone—except Anny—that if she continued her swinging movement she would soon crash into the ceiling lamp.

“Quick! Call the fire department,” screamed the barman.

Anny waved to him. “Yoohoo!”

Her acrobatics caused the cable to jerk, making a collision inevitable. When she saw her beloved globe coming closer, Anny cried out, like a mother to a beloved child, “Oh, my disco ball! My dear, sweet favorite disco ball!”

She hit it, gave out the yelp of a rodeo rider unleashing her lasso, and flung her arms around it.

The audience held its breath.

The ball creaked, seemed to resist, then with a sharp snap tore loose from the ceiling, taking Anny with it.

Fortunately the dancers had all backed away.

The ball crashed onto the dance floor.

The first rescuers thought, as they ran up, that her groaning and the faint quivering of her body, with her back on the floor, were the painful moans of a dying woman. When they leaned closer they saw that Anny, amid the thousands of shards of mirror, was still laughing irrepressibly, shattered.

When she reached the edge of the forest, Anne no longer hesitated.
She would walk.

And then walk some more.

Where the woods grew thinner she would run. She would jump across the streams. Avoid the farms. She would hide if the birdsong was interrupted by human noise. She would pause among the bushes, hold her breath. She would not tremble at the sound of rabbits hopping or squirrels scurrying. She would hide from the charge of the wild boar. She would wait for the poacher to leave. Then she would continue her cavalcade, trusting the ground, because her eyes did not have time to look where her feet were going.

The farther she ran, carried more by instinct than thought, the lighter her body felt; her legs seemed to fly, no longer touching the ground. Leaves and branches did not impede her, but seemed to vanish, merely brushing her face. The nettles spared her as she went by.

Neither tired nor fearful, the young girl made her way, convinced the forest was her accomplice. How long had she been wandering? There was no way of knowing, particularly as her energy seemed only to be increasing; with every step she took closer to Bruges, she felt freer, and her calm was returning.

What good fortune!

The broken mirror was a sign that her marriage was not meant to be. Because the wedding chamber had been smashed into shards of glass, and the image of her fiancé had shattered, Anne had managed to escape misfortune.

What a relief; while hurrying down the wooden staircase not a single creaking sound had betrayed her. And her relief had been confirmed the moment she was out the door, breathing the country air around Saint-André, and feeling the joyful mud splashing beneath her toes.