The ball ran wildly around the wheel.
The suspense built. Her heart beat like a drum. She was intoxicated by this protracted fever. The slot machines were disappointing because they let you win too easily. Better the emotions provoked by a high-risk game. The lower the chances of winning, the more delectable the wait. What better container for your emotions than danger? With every game, she risked losing her money, her honor, her social standing. With a mere move of the hand, she put the fragile balance of her life at risk, but far from going to her head, this awareness of risk made her savor each pure emotion with greater intensity. For as long as the ball rolled, she was no longer fifty-five, she no longer lived alone, she no longer pined after lost loves, but was the center of the universe. The stakes became cosmic: her will on one side, chance on the other. She was sticking her tongue out at fate. She was going to prove, not that randomness didn’t exist, but that her will, her intelligence, and her perseverance would triumph over blind forces. Sex would never make her feel like this. Making love was a paltry game, lower even than the slot machines.
“Rien de va plus!”
Everything was going swimmingly well. She was killing boredom, feeling more alive than she had all day. After a few somersaults, the ball fell into its final pocket.
“Five black!” the croupier announced.
Missed. Too bad. She would carry on. The difficulty lay not in betting, but in stopping.
6
Faustina edged her way between the cars, checked the license plate, took the oyster knife from her bag, glanced around to make sure nobody could see her, crouched, and plunged the blade into the back right-hand tire. Then she slid across and repeated her action on the left-hand tire. Finally, she stood up majestically, pretended that she had picked up an object from the blacktop, and stepped back onto the sidewalk.
Now Dany was stuck. He wouldn’t be able to leave at ten o’clock like the other evening, and she would have him to herself all night. Calmer now, she went back up to her apartment.
When she heard his amber voice, she quivered with pleasure; in the living room, barefoot, his shirt sleeves rolled up, ear glued to his phone, Dany, who was originally from the West Indies, was dealing with a case before finishing his working day.
She looked at him affectionately. As long as he was at her place, she adored him. On the other hand, as soon as he was elsewhere, she dismissed his profession, criticized him for being obsessed with it, suspected him of making awful male chauvinist remarks about her to his colleagues, feared that he was seeing former mistresses, and, perhaps even worse, fumed at the thought that when he slept alone at his place he forgot all about her. In other words, when he walked out of her door, she felt no curiosity about the rest of his life, only hatred.
Once he had hung up, she sat down on his lap and wrapped her arms around him. “Damsel in distress needs rescuing,” she murmured.
He responded to her caresses. She increased her sensual pressure. Their lips searched for each other. The phone rang again.
“We’re closed!” Faustina exclaimed comically, like a baker lowering a shutter.
Dany leaned over to see who was calling.
“No!” she commanded.
“Don’t be a child.”
“I said no!”
“Faustina, I have to answer this.”
Since she was holding him tight, he used his strength to free himself, unceremoniously set her back on her feet, and irritably grabbed the phone.
She was furious. He hadn’t just pushed her away, he had dominated her by force. Up until now, she had known the strength of his grip only in lovemaking; now this brute was using it against her. That was pure violence.
I hate him! Instantly, she had but a single aim: to make him suffer, now, right away.
For the moment, Dany was talking to a colleague about a current tricky case, avoiding Faustina’s proximity, keenly aware of the hostile vibes she was sending out.
She went back to the kitchen, composed herself, prepared an aperitif, and came back calmly with a tray.
From the corner of her eye, she saw that Dany had noticed the change. When he hung up, he turned to her.
“Sometimes, in my job, there are emergencies. That was something I really needed to sort out.”
“Oh, yes. Your job, your amazing job.”
“Why are you being sarcastic?”
“Whenever you bring it up, it feels as if I don’t have a job, and that the rest of us mortals who don’t have the great honor of being Maître Dany Davon of the Brussels Bar are just wallowing in our own mediocrity.”
“I was simply reminding you that I have certain responsibilities.”
She snatched Dany’s phone and held it over the vase of tulips. “And I don’t?” With these words, she let the phone drop into the water.
Furious, Dany rushed to pull it out. “You’re twisted!”
He retrieved his phone, wiped it with a place mat, and rushed to the bathroom to get the excess water out with the hair dryer. Faustina watched him with a smile that implied: You’ve no idea how ridiculous you look.
When he had finished, he tried, his whole body tense, to switch on the phone. Miraculously, it was working. Relieved, Dany sat down on the edge of the bathtub. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“Or else?”
He sighed. “What is it you want?”
Faustina was astonished. She had expected an escalation of violence, the kind of fight where she knew she could be formidable, where exasperation and bad faith provided her with a never-ending stream of responses, but his asking her so simply what it was she wanted threw her.
Since he was waiting calmly for her answer, she realized she had to provide one. She hesitated, then stammered, “You pushed me away.”
“Only temporarily, Faustina. Just long enough to answer the phone.”
“That’s not how I took it.”
“You should have. Why do you think I’m here? To push you away? To tell you I don’t want to see you anymore?”
Faustina realized how illogical her behavior had been; as usual, she swapped personalities on the spot. She threw herself in his arms and whispered in an emotional voice, “You’re important to me. I was shocked when you used force against me.”
He was filled with pride, happy with the turn things were taking. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
“So you see, that means I was controlling myself.”
To prove he was right, he lifted her, and she not only let him, but did her best to seem as heavy as possible. He carried her into the sitting room, laid her gently on the couch, and started kissing her.
Faustina immediately forgot what had just happened, her anger, her resentment, and moved her body against his. They made love.
Two hours later, they were eating seafood from a narrow folding table that Faustina had slid out onto her balcony.
The royal-blue night sky gently bathed the trees on the square. The birdsong was soft now, sleepy, lulling, deeper and less shrill than during the day.
Dany was sensually swallowing oysters. Every time he sucked in their contents, he would stare at Faustina.
“Why are you making that face?” Faustina asked, laughing.
“There’s something so female about oysters. Their texture, their fragrance, their feel. It’s as though I’m eating you.”
He sucked in the last oyster greedily.
Faustina quivered as if it was she who had just slipped through his lips.
He poured her more white wine. “Beware of sex, Faustina: it’s a drug.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A drug means pleasure, highs, lows, withdrawal pains, and then starting all over again. If we continue fucking as well as this, we’ll become addicted.”
Continue fucking, continue fucking . . . she thought.
What else does he expect us to do?
“If we continue fucking like this,” he went on, “we’ll end up being hysterical on the days when we go without.”
Faustina thought about her own sensations: on the few occasions when their professional lives had prevented them from being together, she had been unbearably high-strung, and felt true pain. She shook her head. “So the only solution would be to fuck badly.”
“Obviously. Except that I couldn’t do that with you.”
“Neither could I.”
They took deep breaths of the fragrant night air. They had both just achieved the highest peak of romanticism they could ever hope to reach; to avoid falling into silliness, they exchanged conspiratorial looks.
“Have you ever experienced this feeling of addiction before?” Faustina asked.
He smiled. “I’m thirty-eight years old, Faustina. I wasn’t a virgin when we met.”
“Oh, I think you were a virgin, because you’d never known me.”
“Fair enough. But even though it’s true that I’ve never known anything as powerful as I have with you, during my . . . shall we say . . . ordinary experiences, I have taken the drug before.”
Faustina accepted the explanation, since it established her superiority. All of a sudden, she had no qualms about surprising him even more. “If the only harm the drug causes is dependency, then why not take it?”
He laughed, delighted. “I’m up for it.”
They clinked glasses.
“I don’t believe there should be any boundaries in sex,” Faustina confessed.
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“Well, that sex was invented to break boundaries: modesty, decency, propriety.”
He gazed at for a long time, then exclaimed fervently, “What you say is brilliant!” He hesitated, as if on the threshold of a powerful emotion. “This isn’t all just words, is it?”
“Excuse me?” she said, taking offense.
“I’ve rarely met a woman who puts her money where her mouth is in a situation like this. You know, we men dream of a woman who’d see sex the way we do, as a perpetual celebration, pleasure at its purest, a joy shared with others, powerful and innocent.”
“It’s as if my words were coming out of your mouth.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
His eyelids flickered and his swollen lips trembled. “Faustina, I don’t dare take you at your word.”
“You can.”
“And you would follow me in my sexual obsessions?”
“Of course!”
Faustina’s heart was pounding. Never had she seen Dany so passionate, so vibrant, so wholly absorbed with her. There and then, she felt she was becoming the important woman, the essential woman in his life, the one who would give him what none of the fools before her had been able to give him.
“Well?” she insisted, encouraging him.
“Well, I’d like to show men how beautiful you are, how good, how far above everybody else. Can you understand that? I’d get a real kick from being proud of you. I want them to know that you’re the empress.”
She swallowed, delighted with this role. “I’m game.”
“Great. Have you ever been to Mille Chandelles?”
“Mille Chandelles?”
“The best swingers’ club in Europe.”
He leaned toward her, his mouth open, his eyes glistening and attentive. For a moment, she imagined the two of them there, with Dany showing everyone how much he cared about her . . . She quivered. Then she wondered what her mother would say in a similar situation. “No, of course not.” Poor thing . . . Her mother was no longer a woman, just a widow. Her thoughts whirling in her head, she wondered which of her friends would dare say yes to such a request. None. They were either stuck or they were possessive. So Faustina saw this as an opportunity to be unique. If she declined, she would prove to be as oafish as her predecessors; if she embraced the risk, she would secure Dany.
“I’m game.”
7
How can you stand having a mother who’s crazy?” Claudine asked her son.
“I didn’t get to choose,” Ludovic replied slowly.
Tired, hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot, weary from concentrating, Ludovic had just spent four hours on his mother’s bills and accounts. Usually, Claudine was merely confused, impecunious, late with paying her bills, but this time she had made some serious errors. Discouraged, he massaged his forehead.
“Seriously, Mom, how could you sign that agreement to sell? Your little apartment building’s worth a lot more! And its three rents gave you enough to live on!”
Claudine cheerfully raised her head. “It was a bit silly, wasn’t it?”
“It was damned stupid. I can’t make it right this time. That crook has well and truly tricked you.”
“I’m just a woman on her own, you know, a poor woman with no support. When your father was around . . . ”
Ludovic knew the rest . . . In the past, Claudine wouldn’t have made a mistake because she hadn’t been allowed to take any initiative. Her husband managed everything—the household, the family, money matters—like an absolute despot. At the time, she would complain about it, cry in her room, and dream of a different life. But now she sounded as though she missed that hell.
“The lawyer let you do it?”
“Yes.”
“Maître Demeulemester?”
“No, his assistant. He’s gone to Thailand for three months.”
“I can’t believe it! A lawyer who abandons his clients and goes off on vacation for three months!”
“He has cancer, Ludovic, and his chemo failed. All the treatment did was turn his skin the color of cardboard and make him lose the few hairs he still had on his head.”
Ludovic looked at his mother, who had suddenly become eloquent and passionate, her eyes gleaming as she spoke of disasters. She had the terrible habit of loving misfortune, finding out everything she could about it, collecting every detail. She became more interested in people as soon as they got sick than when they were well. She would quibble about going out with a friend, but was immediately available if that friend was taken to the hospital. It was easier to invite her to a funeral than to a dinner party. Other people’s vulnerability, even their death throes, made her feel stronger and more alive. She drew energy from it like a carrion bird. Ludovic took care to stop the inevitable monologue before it started. “Mom, why didn’t you tell me before?”
“About Maître Demeulemester’s cancer?”
“No, about the sale of your little apartment building!”
“I didn’t get the chance. You’re always so busy.”
“You see me every day. You talk to me several times a day!”
“That’s what you think.”
“It’s the truth!”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Well done! Now I’m faced with a financial tragedy, and it’s too late to do anything about it! You worry me, you know.”
Claudine was delighted with that word. She loved to worry her son, it was a way of taking over his life; this way, she knew that when he left her to go home, his thoughts would be with her.
“I’m scared you’re going to make more blunders, Mom.”
Claudine assumed the expression of a guilty child. The important thing was not to object.
“I don’t know what to do with you anymore,” Ludovic muttered, to himself as much as to her.
Claudine’s face lit up. “You could demand that I be placed under supervision.”
Ludovic looked at her in alarm: it was the solution he didn’t dare resort to, out of fear of offending her or depressing her, and here she was, asking for it herself. And cheerfully at that!
“Yes,” Claudine went on. “That way, I wouldn’t do anything without your si
gnature. Wouldn’t that be perfect?”
“But—”
“What?”
“You’re only fifty-eight, Mom. People usually take that kind of step when—”
“People take measures like that when they’re useful. You seem to be saying that I—that you—need them.”
Ludovic nodded gravely and warily. He put the papers away in the files he had prepared, accepted a fresh cup of tea, chatted about trivial matters, then left the family home. Even though he had hated his late father, blaming him for abusing his power and treating his mother like a child, he was now reassessing his interpretation of the past: maybe his father hadn’t been the only one at fault, maybe Claudine called for that kind of behavior. She required a force outside herself, she refused to act as an adult, almost asked to be treated like a child.
Ludovic cut across the square, where some young North Africans were playing soccer.
What Ludovic found confusing wasn’t registering just how immature his mother was, but exonerating a father he had labeled a “bastard.” This novelty disturbed the image of the family he had built up for himself. His father, a brute, a monster who beat his wife and two children, had never before been entitled to extenuating circumstances; not even his death had led to his being idealized. Yet now Ludovic was discovering in Claudine a tendency to trigger violence: she knowingly made blunders so that he would have to redefine her, she pushed his boundaries, forced him to fly off the handle and dominate her. The fact was, she drove those around her to be tyrannical toward her.
Ludovic was ill at ease. What if he was wrong? What if it wasn’t his mother who generated harsh behavior but he who was reacting aggressively? Had he inherited his father’s temperament? Was he, by some genetic predisposition, reproducing the attitudes of the man he had hated?
He stopped on Place Brugmann, walked into an American-style restaurant decorated like an old Cadillac, sat down on a turquoise imitation-leather banquette, and ordered a burger with cheddar and fries. The Coke helped clear his head. He had to admit that there was nothing more revolting than Coke—it looked like gasoline and tasted molecular—but what bliss! As a child, whenever he sneaked out of the house, he’d have lunch in an American fast-food joint, just like an adult; now he stuffed himself, feeling like a child.