The Extinction Club (30 page)

Her words went through me like a spear, but I tried not to let it show. “So … then what happened? What’d you do?”

“What do you think I did? I ran like a jackrabbit, I ran till my lungs almost exploded.”

“Jesus. And you … I mean, you were all right after? You got over it?”

“Well, I thought I did but my grandmother thought I didn’t and she studied psychology. I felt okay and everything, but it was around that time that I sort of … well, exploded. Became a stress eater. I don’t think there’s any connection, though, because it started before that. Whenever I got stressed out I lost control and ate tons of junk, especially cereal, right out of the box, that’s all I felt like eating, twenty-four seven. I got Earl to order different kinds and I hid them from my grandmother. But it’s not connected. I’m just telling you. In case you thought I had a gland problem or thyroid problem or something like that. I’m just a stress eater. And Déry stresses me out. And so do his sons, big time.”

“Déry’s the guy who jumped you?”

Céleste chewed a nail, didn’t answer.

“
Tell me
.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Shorten it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who Déry is.”

“He’s a wildlife officer, okay? Inspecteur Déry. A real bad-ass on the take. Both him and his son Jacques, Jr. His other son’s a biker. You’ve met him—in the winter he scares the shit out of everyone in his yellow Hummer.”

“That tailgaiting idiot? I thought you said you didn’t know—”

“I’m scared of them, all three of them, I really am, they give me the creeps. But my grandmother wasn’t scared at all and she marched into Inspecteur Déry’s office and read him the riot act. I don’t know what she said exactly but the guy never went near me again. Or his sons either. He told me I was too fat and ugly to bother with, that my face was plain as margarine, that there were lots of other girls to take my place. He was right too.”

“He wasn’t right. Don’t ever think that because it’s not true.”

“It’s what everybody says around here. That I’m like a homely little librarian headed for spinsterhood. Well, maybe not little. More like the Dandurand sisters down the road. They’re obese.”

“You’re not obese, far from it. Everybody around here is wrong, dead wrong. And anyway, librarians are cool. Very cool. And so are spinsters.”

“I’m no oil painting, that’s for sure. More like a grub hoping for some sort of metamorphosis.”

“You’re at that age, or close to it, when young women transform into beautiful swans.”

“Have you been reading Hans Christian Andersen or something?”

“Your eyes, for one, are stunning. Unique.”

“They’re green, big deal. Hardly unique. Like Anne of Green Gables, Jane Eyre, Ichabod Crane and Pinocchio.”

“But everything together … you’re a true original.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The beauty of an original is in the originality of its beauty.”

Céleste rolled her emerald eyes. “Is that supposed to be deep or something?”

“It’s from a car commercial. The point is you’re not the garden-variety kind of girl. And you’re not … homely. Not by a long shot. Everyone around here is jealous of you, that’s all. Because you’re smarter than everyone else.”

“I’d rather be beautiful than smart.”

I stared at the floor, saddened by this. Beautiful women are for men with no imagination, I wanted to say, but it’s not what she would’ve wanted to hear. “You’re both,” I said cheerily. “In equal proportions.”

Céleste closed her eyes, let her head drop. “You think just ’cause I’m young I can’t tell when a guy’s lying? I’m a goddamn human polygraph.”

White lies introduce others of a darker complexion:
my father’s words. “I’m not lying.”

“You are. You’re trying to snow me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You totally are.”

“I’m totally not.”

“Why haven’t you made a move on me then?”

“A
move
on you? You can’t be serious. You … you’re young enough to be my daughter. Maybe even granddaughter …” I faltered here, struggling with the math. “If I had a kid …”

“If you had a kid at fifteen and the kid had one at fourteen.”

“Exactly.”

“I guess it’s because you’re used to
Parisian
women. Anorexic high-society women, rich divorcées who … who’d meet you at sidewalk cafés and take Gitane cigarettes out of their alligator handbags or meet you on the Champs Élysées or some bookstall along the Seine or some famous bridge or …”

I was determined not to smile, let alone laugh, which would make her stop the tour. “Or where?”

“Or in the Louvre or Luxembourg Gardens or at the Flore or the Dôme or the Récamier, wearing dashing capes or foulards with …”

I waited.

“…
fancy logos
.”

I furrowed my brow, wanting her to know that I was giving this due and proper consideration.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me,” she warned.

“I’m not laughing.”

“I want a cigarette, Nile. Now. You’re torturing me. I want a carton of Gitane. Or Gauloise. Like your old girlfriends used to smoke.”

“My girlfriends in Paris, or rather girlfriend singular, didn’t smoke.”

“Oh please. Don’t make me laugh. Every woman in Paris smokes.”

I let this pass.

Céleste let out a long sigh. “So it’s because I’m ugly and overweight that you’re not hitting on me? Because my teeth
are all crooked and my eyes are all bloodshot and I’ve got more scars on me than a practice corpse?”

I began to pace back and forth, thoughts muddled, tongue-tied, a headache derailing my train. It is tact that is golden, not silence. “I repeat, you are not ugly. And your teeth are … eccentric. Which is a good thing, it makes you different, interesting.”

“
Eccentric? Interesting?
”

“Yes. And you are not overweight—”

“What am I? Pleasantly plump?”

“Not even. Not anymore.” From a hundred and plenty, she’d gone to a hundred and a hair. And she was getting prettier and prettier as her bruises faded, her hair grew out, her skin regained its lustre.

“You know what they used to call Gran and me? Ten-ton and two-ton. The whale and the baby hippo.”

“What’s wrong with whales and hippos? Fabulous animals, both.”

“Oh, so I guess it was all meant as a compliment. Silly me.”

“You’ve probably lost thirty pounds in the last month. Or more.”

“Gee, maybe I’ll write a book.
How to Lose 30 Pounds in 30 Days—I Did It and So Can You!
”

“You’re going to have men crawling all over you, wait and see. You’ll probably marry some future Nobelist. Or be one yourself. After getting your PhD, your second one, after finding the key to universal field theory or something. Or becoming a famous painter. Or sculptor. Or poet.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes you will.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes you will.”

“No I won’t.”

And so on. Like the conversations I used to have with Brooklyn when she was eight.

“Why would I ever get married?” she said. “So I can have a car, get fatter and raise lazy surly kids?”

She had a point. “It’s not always like that.”

“Besides, I’m not interested in universal field theory.”

“You’re not? What’re you interested in?”

“I’m not interested in anything. Not anymore. And I’m not that smart, okay? And I never was. It was an idea my grandmother had, that’s all. To make me as smart as she was. Because I hated going to school, because I hated everybody there because nobody would go near me and I had no clue about what they were talking about and everybody was fatsophobic. So I got interested in animals instead and tried to save them and all it did was get Gran killed and me nearly killed and you next in line and now all I want to do is kill myself.”

In the afternoon I took a long thoughtful shower, with a mind as clogged as the shower head. Instead of gushing, it trickled, and its proper mix of hot and cold was hard to compound. While brooding over Céleste, I saw a pair of hands washing themselves against a green medicinal cross with
Sauberkeit!
underneath, a word from the institution that used to braid its way through my open-eyed dreams. As I was drying myself, the sound of kitchen cupboard doors slamming distracted me, displacing the word and cross. I wrapped the towel around me, tiptoed down the hall and peeked round the door.

Céleste was sitting at the table in front of a bowl of soup, a plate of peas, and a family-size bottle of Diet Coke. She was holding up a box of Count Chocula, with its buck-toothed vampire on the front panel, and looking into the chrome mirror of a toaster. “Who do I see in here?” she said, with what I took to be a vampirish voice. “A girl who’s pretty in a way. In a way that doesn’t hit you over the head. She’s probably had a rough life.” She set the box down, picked up a soda biscuit and licked it absently, like an infant learning to eat. Then nibbled it with a rapid movement of her front teeth, like a squirrel.

I walked quickly past the door and was halfway up the stairs when she yelled out, with her mouth full, “Nile? Can I talk to you for a sec? Nile?”

Back down the stairs and into the kitchen. “What’s up?”

She swallowed. “Still like me?”

The question caught me off guard. “Of course I do. Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

I nodded, not knowing what to say. “Okay. So I’ll just … let you finish your … lunch.” I took a step toward the stairs.

“You’re not going to leave me, right?”

“No, of course not.”

“You kidnapped me, I mean rescued me, so now you’re stuck with me, right?”

“Right.”

“I wasn’t serious about … you know. I mean, I was serious about not being smart and wanting to kill myself. But I wasn’t serious about the other things. I’ve never … you know.”

“Never what?”

“I’ve never drank alcohol before.”

“Never
drunk
alcohol before. But I thought you said … I thought you said you liked whisky.”

“My grandmother did, I can’t stand the stuff. And I’ve never done crystal meth either—or any other drugs. I smoked grass once when I was like, ten, and got so paranoid I thought a tree was trying to strangle me. And I’ve never made love to an older man, or a younger man or … well, anybody. I’m sorry for lying. It’s my third-worst fault according to my grandmother.”

“What are the first two?”

“And I’m sorry for asking why you haven’t tried to hit on me. Did I say anything else? Stupid, I mean?”

“I think that just about covers it.”

“We could just, like, delete the stupid stuff, right? Or rewind?”

“Okay.”

“I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.”

I nodded.

“Pals forgive pals, right?”

“Right.”

“I was just sort of, you know, being like a duck.”

“A duck?”

“A female duck. They always hit on the first male closest to them. You’re the only half-decent male in my postal code. Which isn’t saying a lot. No offence.”

I stopped to think about this.

“It’s just, you know, social pressure,” she added. “Something called
l’hypersexualisation des jeunes
. You may have heard about the phenomenon.”

I had seen it first-hand with Brooklyn, who was tossing her hair and wiggling her hips like Shania Twain at seven, plucking her eyebrows at nine, wearing kid-sized thong underwear at ten. When I made the daring suggestion that she spend some time reading good books or jumping rope
instead of watching music videos, she asked what jumping rope was.

“You mean how advertisers are brainwashing young girls?” I said. “Sexualized marketing targeting younger and younger audiences?”

Instead of eating the peas on her plate, Céleste was rolling them around the racetrack of the rim. “It’s all part of the shifting sexual tectonics.”

The shifting sexual tectonics? “I see.”

“But I’ve decided that men are a waste of time. And sex too.”

“Good call.”

“I understand how it’s being packaged and sold, and it leaves me cold.”

I nodded. Geniuses always have trouble in the sex department.

“Besides, as Aristotle said, copulation makes all animals sad.”

How would he know that, I wondered. “You’ve read Aristotle?”

“And Spinoza associated desire with disconnected thinking.”

I nodded again, knowingly.

“No, I’ve not read Aristotle, or Spinoza either. These are just things I’ve picked up and can rattle off. Like a parrot. Or trained seal.”

Was this exaggeration, self-deprecation?

“But Nile, I am not your daughter, and don’t ever think I am, okay?”

“Okay. Can I be like, a godfather?”

Céleste put her head on the table as if it were to be chopped off. “A fairy godfather, just what I always wanted.”

“How about an uncle, then, an honorary uncle?”

She propped her head lazily up on an elbow. “No.”

I was an only child and used to badger my mother about bringing a sister back from the hospital. “How about a brother then, a wayward orphan brother?”

She thought this over with a fresh saltine sticking out of her mouth, while absentmindedly flicking peas across the table like marbles. «
À la limite
, » she said grudgingly, crunching the words along with the cracker. She swallowed. “Oh, and one other thing before you go.”