All the Way (12 page)

The taste has gone. There's a lot of saliva and a bit of it is running down her chin, tickling her, like the pubic hairs sticking up her nose. She's got used to the smell, but it's kind of a pity that she feels as if she's cleaning his dick. She'd like him to let go of her hair, it's hurting, and her arm is stuck in some kind of judo position. She's starting to get a sore jaw. The muscles on the side of her mouth are cramping up. Clearly she doesn't use them enough, in any case not like this. It must be a matter of practice. This business does seem to require opening your mouth a lot. She tries to think about other things, like when she's at the dentist.

‘Fuck!' she hears, all of a sudden. ‘I've ended up with a robot!'

She twists her neck to look at him. Her jaw relaxes and the skin on her skull slides back into place.

‘You've really got zero imagination, haven't you? Do you actually have to be reminded to lick the penis from time to time? Run your tongue around it a bit, whatever!'

He mimes it, sticks his tongue out, stretches his neck. He looks weird, like he's in agony. A look she's already seen on Bihotz, the day he was holding his dick in his hand (or the day of the cup and ball game).

He shows her how to hold the base, her hand around it, not too hard, and every now and again to have a go at his balls underneath. He falls back on the bed, holds on to her hair and seems to feel better now.

She's got to play the part of the desirable girl, the one who knows what she's doing.
An exquisite shuddering.

That's exactly what's happening right now. Right now she is doing that to a boy. The world is alive and she is at the centre of it.

But it takes so long. She tries thinking about the river running through the bottom of the garden. About the swimming pool at night (she can hear shouts, dives, laughter. She'll go down there later). The dick is driving into her brain. Ramming the back of her skull. It really is a pretty weird situation to be in. It's difficult to think about anything else. The cramp becomes unbearable, she tries to extricate herself and he screams: ‘No! No way! No way!'

He gets up, with the thing at that strange angle and really stiff like she's seen on Bihotz. A spur. A bottle opener. He's intimidating, not so much his dick, but his angry pride. But it's true: she's behaving like a fool.

He starts from scratch again (in a daze but with precision): she's on her knees in front of him
pumping
him, he's grabbing on to her ears, his fingers digging into the back of her skull, he's slamming into her gullet and she wants to vomit, she coughs, she weeps, he yanks and pulls her, she coughs, her head is a coconut, a rattling money-box, there's nothing inside there and he cries out and something
revolting
fills her mouth.

She runs to the bathroom and spits. Rinses her mouth and breathes. In the mirror she looks awful. She fixes her hair with her fingers and tries to make her cheeks and eyelids less puffy with splashes of cold water. Her mascara has run and looks terrible. She rubs at it with the tip of her finger but that makes it worse. And the taste is still there. Something from outer space (as Bihotz would say). Slimy, sickly sweet, pervasive, appalling.

He's lying on the bed, eyes closed. ‘You're a pretty inhibited girl,' he says, with a hint of tenderness. His dick is lying in a little grey pile outside his jeans.

‘I mean, that could be kind of offensive for a guy. If you rush off to the bathroom and all that. It's gratifying for men when girls swallow. It's a nice way to finish the thing off…'

He opens his arms for her and kisses her on her hair.

‘Dope slows me down. And with the alcohol on top of that…But that's why it'll be good for you later. We'll have plenty of time.' His dick lifts up slightly, it's crazy, all by itself, like the head of a lizard.

She's finding it hard to believe that she's here, for real, lying against a boy's chest, in the hollow of his shoulder. Not the usual make-believe, not the pillow on her little bed, no, a man, a real one.

He kisses her, on the hair again. Fair enough, what with that taste in her mouth. She'd like to brush her teeth. She must have bad breath. It'd be good if they could start talking again. She can't feel the effect of the dope anymore. He must think she's stupid. He's smoking a cigarette, his eyes on the light fitting. He looks brooding and mysterious. She doesn't know what to say.

The plaster mouldings on the ceiling. The wallpaper that has the same bird pattern as the Bihotz teacups, but with a more old-fashioned,
pastel
look. A Chinese screen and claw-foot furniture. The window opens onto a small terrace.

If only she could be Lætitia d'Urbide, a bit older. And stay with him in the chateau. They would have horses down by the river, tennis matches with guests. They would
disappear
together and he would
possess
her, and she would put her dress back on, he would tie the ribbons, perhaps tightening her corset, his knee pressed into her waist like she saw in a film, one last kiss in her unfastened hair, followed by a long embrace at the top of the stairs, she's leaning back, he's so proud of her, the master of her heart and soul, and he would marry her, the most beautiful girl of all, beaming in front of the swooning guests.

He stands up to get dressed and she realises in horror that she was rubbing herself against his thigh. But he starts telling her something: ‘I was right up the front, pogo-dancing, I could touch the stage, there were girls fainting everywhere, it was totally crazy. We were so squashed that we didn't even realise the girls had fainted and were still standing up, can you believe it? The crowd was holding them up and it was like they were dancing and we were passing them over our heads to the roadies and then there was even a disabled guy in his wheelchair being handed over our heads, it was so cool of them to do it.'

She has the same taste as him in music, exactly the same. She must go to the Cure concert in Bordeaux. But she'd better get with it, that's precisely what he's talking about—the concert was last week.

‘You've read the lyrics of Robert Smith's songs, haven't you? I mean you've
read
them? That combination of cynicism and edgy sensitivity. He really
feels
things. You don't realise unless you've read his lyrics, but it's even more complex than that: he's hiding his own feelings otherwise it's too painful. Cynicism is polite despair, it's cool, and it's totally the essence of Robert Smith.'

She doesn't dare mention Michael Jackson. Is Michael Jackson actually that cool after all? She'd really like him to go and get her something to drink, something strong, but would that be going too far?

He's rolling another joint.

Arnaud.
Arnaud.
She sighs as she whispers the ‘r'
.

‘You look sort of wistful.'

He undoes the buttons on her Polo shirt, one by one.

She tries to look
wistful
, it's cute the way he said that.

‘I hope you understand that none of this commits us to anything.'

Of course. Absolutely. She's so cool, open-minded.

‘I wouldn't want you to suffer.'

He says it as if they were in a soap opera, and she realises that it's funny and that they are in this together. He takes off her Polo shirt, her father's Lacoste Polo (fortunately there are no stains on it or she'd be shot).

He kisses her on the neck and grabs her breasts. She hopes they're big enough,
big enough to fill the hands of an
honest man
. She tries to pull him closer to her so he can kiss her neck again and pummel her breasts less. She breathes in deeply and then there's some kind of misunderstanding and he pushes on her head, holds her down, under the sea, under water. She can feel her tears welling like a huge wave of
cynicism
, the dick is cold and sticky, soft and full of wrinkles, he moves his abdomen impatiently and she gets going, she chews a bit (like the fatty bits on the chicken) and it expands, it really is a pretty wacky thing, it fills her mouth like an inflating balloon.

Tenderly, he tells her she's a little doggy. The word immediately sticks itself between her legs and she starts to get wet. Perhaps he's saying it in his sort of off-hand way, projecting the word from his mouth—in any case it sticks there like a muzzle.

‘You've got potential,' Arnaud says, puffing. ‘You're improving every minute. Stop, you'll make me
come
.'

And he turns her over, repositioning her with assurance, an assurance that lets a bounding puppy-dog loose in her underpants, until it hits her, and there's no doubt about it—he wants to do it. He lifts up her mother's Prince of Wales check skirt and sticks his dick in there.

She doesn't want to. Not like that. Not
back to front
. She wants to see his face, talk to him, see him. She struggles, she's drowning, she's in free fall.

He turns her back the right way. He takes her in his arms and strokes her hair. Says it's okay, that he's not going to rape her. He guides her hand to his dick and, with his hand over her hand, he sets up a sliding rhythm.

‘It's okay if you're a virgin. You don't have to pretend. I'm the one who popped d'Urbide's cherry, and I have to say she really got off on it. She came, all right.' He takes a deep breath. ‘On the other hand'—he relights the joint on the bedside table—‘there are plenty of ways to stay a virgin, if that's what's bothering you.'

He shoves his hand into her hair. She applies herself to the pumping, now that she knows how to do it. She's got the rhythm, come on, I'll get you going, her skirt pushed up to her waist, his hand whacking at her bare breasts and sliding down between her legs where it's so wet now, little doggy, inflamed by the words, she keeps pumping, she pictures herself doing it, she sees both of them in this bedroom, her soggy underpants jammed between her buttocks, her twisted mouth and sweaty face slapped up against pubic hair and balls, back and forth, she's pumping him well. She'd like him to move his hand further down but it's annoying that either his arm is too short or she's too far away or something's stuck and yet it seems possible, she imagines, she has the feeling that all he'd have to do is to
finger
her and then she'd—‘Ahh, you fat fucking bitch!'—the ‘itch' bursts out of him in a piercing trill and she leaps away and the stuff spurts in the air and falls on her mother's skirt—shit.

She's not really
fat
. There are plenty of people fatter than her, like Delphine or even Rose, and anyway he is too—he's a bit like Bihotz in the belly department. Or was he saying it as a joke?

‘That wasn't very nice of you,' he announces. He takes a drag of the joint, crushes the butt on the lampshade base and disappears into the bathroom.

She pulls the sheet back over herself and tries to rub out the burn mark on the lamp with some spit on her thumb. She listens to him having a long piss. The intimacy of gurgling urine. She fantasises again about the young bridegroom who, after sealing the secret pact, descends the staircase and casually greets the guests. His whole life in front of him to lie with her and lie with her again, while also looking after his horses, and coming up to find her again tomorrow and the day after and forever. She's only got a few seconds to rub herself, the flesh of her fingers on the flesh of her cunt, in a swift circular motion she is both the lord and lady at the same time and she pushes right inside her cunt, her belly flat on the bed, her thighs quivering, she
comes
in one huge surge.

Arnaud. She pretends to be asleep. She hears him going downstairs.

In the bathroom she examines herself in profile. How can she serve him up these fried eggs; he must know plenty of other better ones, and her areolas are ugly. Cheap Carpet's are much more attractive, even Delphine's are bigger. You probably have to
go all the way
before they grow.

She's not sure whether to go home to her place or to Bihotz's. Where will she have fewer questions to deal with? But when she gave her telephone number to Arnaud she got confused (the dead parents), and gave him Bihotz's number (
my tutor
) to memorise (Arnaud didn't have a pencil).

‘What time did you go to bed?' Bihotz asks. He looks deep into her eyes as if a tunnel led right inside her, from the eye sockets to her
vagina
where her
cherry
is still in place.

One-fifteen.

Like those shutters that can block the viewfinder on telescopes.

‘How's Delphine's mother?'

Yeah, she's good.

‘So you saw that she's not the girl who lives in the chateau?'

Yeah, I got that.

He stops and she can finally get back to the movie in her head. Arnaud. His sly look. A pact. A silent agreement. Arnaud. The way he said it:
Stop, you'll make me come.

She'd happily go to bed now but Bihotz will think that's odd, for a girl who went to sleep early last night. So she stays there, watching ‘Stade 2' on TV, while he fondles Lulu.

You've got potential.
‘Potential', that's in the future, which means he wants to see her again. And the way he moved, the firm grasp of his hand, a bit too firm but so much the
man in control
. Her breathing is getting shorter and she's wet between her legs. A future as a
courtesan
. Lounging under chandeliers and tapestries.

Carl Lewis is on his mark for the hundred metres. Carl Lewis runs so fast that it's already finished. Bihotz says the white guys will never have a chance. (But ever since she made up her mind about all that—the planet spinning pointlessly in empty space—politics does not interest her.)

She looks at the telephone as if it's a completely new object, a gateway, an antechamber to another world, with wall hangings and Chinese screens. She tries to remember if its ring is a ‘dring' or a ‘bli bli'. ‘Bli bli' is the phone at her house, the new touch-tone telephone. She tries to hypnotise this one, the rotary-dial phone.