He steps away, and she doesn’t have it in her to hold on to him. Too little time, too little intimacy. In less than an hour, she has ruined everything. First prize for disappointment, the clear winner. She should have known that she wouldn’t be up to the task. And yet she thought she had prepared herself. Tell him that there are good reasons to justify her behavior but that she doesn’t know how to explain them. A whole string of insults come to mind — opportunist, nasty coward, cheap asshole, pickup artist. But using them against him wouldn’t help her case. If he thinks he’s easy to get close to, if only he knew how much patience she’s needed. He must be comparing her to Ange and, it goes without saying, she doesn’t stand a chance. She would like to tell him that he shouldn’t think like that. Ange is Ange; she has her wings, she knows how to fly, light and charming. She, on the other hand, has no wings. She has a voice which she uses correctly only when addressing strangers. She has never asked to take Ange’s place. She has never asked for anything. Besides, it was he who phoned her. She isn’t even sure what she wants. If only she could be certain that he was like the others, she would know how to back off and leave him alone. But she thinks of him in a way that she has never thought of anyone else before.
They walk down into the métro. Music is coming up from below. You hear it? He nods. At the bottom of the steps, a rolypoly little man is sitting at a miniature keyboard. His thick fingers pound the keys of the instrument, which emits more or less harmonious metallic squeaks. They pause to watch the unusual spectacle. She recognizes the piece: Für Elise. E — D—E — D—E — B—D — C—A — C—E — A—B, with a rock beat. She used to play it and always detested it. Just then, he takes hold of her arm and turns her towards him. She senses that he wants to say something serious to her. But the sight of him standing in front of her like that, embarrassed, with that awful music in the background as the little man presses on, improvising some grotesque tune, gives her a fit of giggles. Taken aback, he lets go of her. His arms drop to his sides. Again an unexpected turn. Do I make you laugh? She shakes her head, as if trying to get rid of the silly idea that has wormed its way into her. Explain before he takes offence and gives up on her for good. It’s the piano, I used to play it when I was little. He doesn’t understand. He looks at the little man, who is more pathetic than funny. He no longer feels desire for her, she can sense it; he no longer knows the reasons that prompted him to come for her. You ought to go, Ange will be waiting. She spoke without hostility or bitterness, with an assurance that stood in stark contrast to her retreat just moments earlier. Soon, they will have put an end to this shaky adventure, which they wrongly believed they had wanted to embark on. And suddenly she thinks she knows what he wants to say to her: Ange is the one I love. Ange’s beauty, her assurance, her straightforwardness, and he would compromise his relationship with such a woman! All she can ever be for him is a fantasy, a solitary, bewildered creature who arouses his curiosity. It was out of pity that he arranged to meet her, at once flattered and sensing a responsibility for the interest she showed in him. He confused his willingness to do something for her with some amorous feeling.
She doesn’t dare touch him. The energy that flowed between them has been cut, replaced by a mass of isolating air which their hands can no longer penetrate. It feels as if she has been dropped into a void, without warning. She sees him turning things over in his mind, searching for the right reasons. Now, yes, she is ready to kiss him, but she doesn’t dare. She thinks about rolling around on the floor, faking an epileptic fit or a faint. Then he would have no choice but to stay and look after her. The ground is right there; all she has to do is throw herself down. Whether she faints for real or not hardly matters, he could never be certain that she faked it. Truth or lie: in moments of urgency, you no longer make the distinction. As soon as he turns his back on her, she will be overcome by despair, and yet another disappointment will be added to her collection. She has to stand up for herself. Why should she allow him to leave her like that, as if she had the plague, just because she wouldn’t let him plant his lips on hers? She isn’t quite sure what the symptoms of an epileptic fit are. Better the faint, then. She just has to let the muscles in her knees and neck go limp and collapse in a heap. She will probably get hurt a little if he doesn’t catch her in time. Too bad about the bruises. She closes her eyes, he opens his mouth. But he doesn’t have the courage to tell her; nor she to let herself fall. See you later, they finally intone in unison. His face tense, he strides off towards the turnstiles. She remains where she is, both hands clutching the hem of her jacket.
Then come two weeks of forced daily grind. Without her knowledge, a piece of lead has been inserted into her chest. At times she looks for the operation scars on her upper torso, but the skin is taut, unblemished. Her outer layer is intact; the damage is on the inside. Every gesture is an ordeal, a conscious effort to convince herself that eating, going out, working, sleeping are in fact necessary for her to go on living. She doesn’t want anything. She’d like to stay on her sofa staring out the window, like old people in a rest home who have nothing but their past to mull over. Her existence is a succession of moments at home and moments at the office, interspersed with brief trips outside, a cycle that goes on and on for the simple reason that she doesn’t know what to replace it with. She spends the weekend in pajamas, listening non-stop to “A Lucky Guy” by Rickie Lee Jones and gulping down cornflakes straight from the packet.
Two evenings in a row, she forgets to switch on the light before sitting down on the sofa. The telephone doesn’t ring. But she no longer pays attention to that either. She doesn’t talk much any more. She just moves her head a little when her co-workers say hello; not even their disapproving looks bother her. There is only one thing she forbids herself to do: to foul up when announcing the trains. Her voice remains constant, a limpid stream that betrays none of her anxieties. During those brief moments when she is speaking into the microphone, she is leaving her leaden body behind and merging with the vibrating air that emanates from her throat.
Later on, she can’t remember any of her thoughts from this period.
After a week of this dry routine, she wakes up one morning with the sensation that the lead inside her has broken up into several pieces and migrated to different parts of her body. The heaviness is still there, but it seems more evenly distributed now. In order to make this new state last, she knows that she has to keep herself busy. Reorganize her clothes in the wardrobe, put the magazines in order on the shelves, rearrange the bottles of cleaning products in the cupboard under the sink. She makes sure that she always has something to do, scrupulously makes her bed and does the dishes, scrubs the bathtub twice a day, tidies up, washes herself meticulously, reads the posters in the métro. Whenever she inadvertently gets bogged down, she replays the scene on the Île Saint-Louis. Pinpoint the exact instant when they began to draw apart. She goes back to a second or two before the fatal moment, when she wasn’t able to let herself be kissed. The sequence is always the same: there is that incredible, almost palpable tension between them. She realizes what is coming, panics, talks, the tourist boat goes by, and then it’s over. She would like to erase what happened next. The shame of it! Even twelve-year-old girls know how to stick their tongue into a boy’s mouth and move it around while breathing through their nose. Nestor Karma had warned her: details count. The kiss had to be precisely that. She blames herself for her behavior until eventually she convinces herself that it couldn’t have been any other way. She writes It wasn’t my fault on a piece of paper, which she tapes to the back of the toilet door.