Bye Bye Blondie Read Free

times on the roller towel to get a clean stretch. She plunges her face into the clean cotton fabric, it feels soft, like new. She stays like that for a bit.
    Then she goes into a stall, and closes the slightly twisted bolt. A very clean hole, the size of an old five-franc coin, has been drilled in the door. At about knee height. More-or-less surrealist graffiti covers the walls from top to bottom. She’s always liked one of them, a little palm tree up to the right of the door. Whoever drew it took some trouble,using different colored felt pens. Among all the death threats, revenge slogans, and drawings of private parts, somebody stood on tiptoe to draw a little palm tree.
    Back in the bar, she looks around for L’Est Républicain , the local paper, and sees it clutched in the pink false fingernails of the woman sitting at the bar. Classic slut. Another regular. Always lots of makeup, come-hither eyes. She’s fat, dark-haired, no great looker, but not letting on she knows that. Gloria has to make do with a TV listing lying around for no particular reason. She leafs through it as she sips her second whiskey. It falls open at a two-page spread: Eric Muyr, his life, his mad period, his achievements, and his shitty new show . . . someone has drawn spots on his nose and given him a little Hitler mustache. He doesn’t look like himself, either in real life or in the photo , she thinks. At this point, a hand laden with heavy rings, pharaohs and skulls, bangs down on the table between the presenter’s eyebrows.
    â€œThere’s an article in L’Est as well, about that wuss you’re looking at.”
    Looking up, she sees Michel and gives him a big smile—he pulls a face.
    â€œI won’t ask how you’re doing . . .”
    â€œNo, don’t bother. What article?”
    â€œA whole two pages on the local hero, his amazing success, his fantastic pioneering new TV show . . . just a game show, as if that’s anything to write home about.”
    â€œActually I met him in town just now . . .”
    â€œNo!”
    He takes off his leather jacket, pulls up a chair, and sits down. Leaning toward her, he listens to her story attentively, eager to pick up the scoop of the day.
    â€œI was crossing the road and he nearly ran me over, well his driver did . . . then he got out of the car—yeah, wuss is the word for it, so pleased with himself, I didn’t even shout at him, I was so stunned to see him. Mind-boggling.”
    Michel frowns and waits for her to go on. Gloria realizes that he’s wrongly connecting her disheveled appearance with this chance encounter. She reassures him.
    â€œOh, no, that’s not why I look like death warmed up.
    Nothing to do with it. Tell you what though, I surprised myself: it really did nothing for me, bumping into Mr. TV Celebrity . . . If he thinks he’s going to impress us all . . .”
    â€œSo, the red eyes . . . that’s because of Lucas?”
    Even hearing his name hurts, and she knows from experience that the first days won’t be the worst. The most intense perhaps—spectacularly so, in fact. But the worst will come later, when the sharp pain of a breakup recedes a little, leaving behind a sense of loss, a familiar ache, the lucid and unbearable consciousness of something irredeemably lost, gone . . . She repeats her mantra: Change your ways, Gloria, stop suffering, you don’t need this . But it doesn’t work. There are some people who torture themselves more than others. And in this category, she knows she’s a world-beater.
    Michel brings out his rolling kit, but Gloria flicks her packet of Russian cigarettes under his nose. He thanks her and takes one. He has rings on every finger, the same ones since last century, Egyptian scarabs, skulls, and precious stones. His nails are always black. She has no idea why. Perhaps he fixes cars on the sly? Dismantles engines when everyone’s back is turned . . .