Bye Bye Blondie Read Online Free PDF Page A

screen. Clean-shaven, dark blue suit, full of health and well-being. He’s presenting a totally stupid game show, one that Gloria has never been able to understand. He teases the contestants, who all blush pink with pleasure before they make fools of themselves in front of the whole of France, giving ridiculous answers to dopey questions.
    When she’s at home, Gloria zaps it off as soon as it comes on. It’s an acquired reflex. It doesn’t make her feel in any way happy to have known in flesh and blood someone who’s on TV. She thinks it just shouldn’t happen. There are the little people on screen in one world, and then there’s the big, real people in the other. If everyone stays in their place, it’s fine—if not, it creates confusion. She doesn’t dare ask Véro to switch channels, seeing that she seems to like the show.
    Gloria comments, making her voice sound impressed: “Well, get him, great, isn’t it, the older he gets, the younger he looks. Nice to have lots of dough.”
    â€œApparently they have loads of makeup on for the cameras. What did he look like for real?”
    â€œGood-looking. Ghastly.”
    â€œYou don’t like him?”
    â€œCouldn’t care less. But I like to trash the people on TV. Good way to let off steam, eh?”
    â€œAnd you slept with him?” asks Véro, right away. Gloria takes advantage of the moment to show off.
    â€œYeah, course. Mind you, in those days I slept with anyone at the drop of a hat, they had to run to get away from me.”
    Eric carries on hosting the show on the small screen, Véronique is staring at him, absolutely glued to it, as if the fact that someone she knows actually went out with him makes the program fantastic. Gloria drinks some tea, burns her tongue, makes a face and adds, “He wasn’t as bad as all that. At least he was interested. Not like some guys who make a song and dance to get you into bed, and say, ‘Okay for you?’ after three pathetic little pokes.”
    Gloria follows Véro into the kitchen, spliff in hand. That familiar lump in her throat. She’s trying to resist calling Lucas. She wants to tell him how sorry she is, how ashamed. She’s lonely, she’d like him to say he loves her and wants her back. Only that’s not what he would say. He’d say, “I’ve had it up to here,” he’d say, “I can’t take anymore of this.” He’d say he was sorry, and would sound sincerely exhausted. And in less than two seconds, she’d have started snarling hysterically that she’d find him and kill him. She knows herself of old. So she’s not going to call him, the same way you’re not going to pick up a cigarette when you’ve just decided to give it up.
    Be patient with the pain, suffer in silence, grit your teeth, wait .
    Gloria unfolds an IKEA chair, such a weird color green, whoever designed it ought to be caught and questioned: Why did you make it that color? The tablecloth has a pattern of fruit. Everything in this house is pretty, it looks grown-up and at the same time definitely feminine. It actually says “respectable housewife,” the kitchen is so well kept, everything in its place. Colored magnets on the fridge, pinned to photos of holidays, Christmas parties, friends laughing with their noses pressed up against the camera, red-eyed like rabbits.
    The frozen vegetables are hissing in the frying pan, and the microwave is humming to warm up some mini pizzas. Between comfort and despair, Gloria is gently getting drowsy.
    Lucas had taken fright. Too many tantrums, too many mornings when she would get up quietly to go and cry, lying in the empty bath, and end up on the bathroom floor, hitting herself and covering her stomach or her face with scratches. She liked to bang her head against the wall as well, scaring herself with the violence of the blows. It gave her a weird feeling inside her