Bye Bye Blondie Read Free Page B

delicate features, a long neck and a rather nearsighted gaze, so she reminds you a bit of a giraffe. She looks down her nose at you, she’s totally full of herself and really, really dumb, which would be quite funny if she wasn’t around so much. Envious, super competitive, always ready to complain. Aggressive, but in a very feminine way, roundabout and insidious. The remarks she makes are usually wounding, but not openly so: the punch in the jaw that she seems to be asking for the whole time wouldn’t look justified to a bystander.
    In Gloria’s view, this girl is only hanging around because she regards them all as provincial hicks, among whom she can easily shine. Reigning, even if it’s only over pigs and chickens, is still reigning—the sad duty of a slightly shopworn princess.
    Gloria and Vanessa exchange smiles of overwhelming hypocrisy every time they meet. Broad, murderous smiles.
    For the moment though, everyone finds this bimbo really nice , interesting, and charming. With her determined little expression and her calculating ways. Gloria knows she just has to wait. The Vanessas of this world don’t last long. You’ve got to have a bit more upstairs to be a girl that people really remember.
    But in the twenty years she’s known Michel, it’s the first time things have taken this unwelcome turn. He’s never stayed so long with a girlfriend without covertly starting to find fault with her. He falls in love often, quickly puts the girl on a pedestal—but it has an eject button.
    You need to watch it , Gloria tells herself anxiously, because people can change, when you least expect it. You know them so well, you’re used to them, you don’t spot when the day comes they can’t take it anymore, you don’t necessarily realize . But now, apparently, Michel is fed up with being on his own. So he’s closed down a section of his brain, the one that tells him what this girl is like: a château-bottled bitch.
    Gloria, chin on hand, elbow on the table, is humming a France Gall song: “ Laisse tomber les filles, laisse tomber les filles / un jour c’est toi qu’on laissera ” (“Give up on the chicks, give up on the chicks / Next time around you’ll be in the fix”).
    Michel finishes his beer, elbow in the air, flexes his neck with ease, stands up, and takes Gloria’s glass with his own.
    â€œSame again?” She nods with a sniff, she’s in no position to refuse.
    Then he stops, saying nothing, gazing out at the street, and searches for words, before saying without looking her in the eye, “You’re sure you don’t want to try . . .”
    â€œA shrink? Are you nuts?”
    â€œYou can’t carry on like this.”
    â€œYes I can.”
    She pretends to think it’s funny, but her eyes are stinging and she’d like to put her head on the table and cry, or bash her forehead in. She swallows, forces herself to reject the thoughts that arise, and looks once more at the TV listing. She’s choking with rage, her heart is pounding irregularly. Once more, that image, very clear in her head: someone puts a barrel of a gun to the back of her neck and pulls the trigger. A release.
    She’d like to go back in time three months, to the days when Lucas used to follow her in the street after every fight, when he didn’t want to let her go, when he loved her at whatever the cost. When she felt herself desired.She’d like to go back three months and sleep with him tonight, have him feel for her feet with his in his sleep, as he used to.
    Michel sits down again and asks: “So what was it about this time?”
    â€œHe installed AOL on my computer.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œI’d asked him not to.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œI trashed the place.”
    â€œReally? I mean you just saw he’d installed AOL and you smashed everything up?”
    â€œExactly. I picked up the computer