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out if she was dressed all trashy like this is my thing, or if she actually thought it looked good.
Later, after many more drinks, he asked her, “But why do you dress like such a slut?” Rolling her eyes she responded, “Listen, darling, you can feed me all the lies in the world, what I know is that all men adore this. Whether or not it’s absurd is besides the point, what matters is that it works every time.”
Three drinks later, she was telling him her life story: “I live with him, honestly he’s nice. That’s kind of the problem, I feel like I’m sleeping in honey. It’s fine, it’s sweet, but it’s sticky, and besides, I’ve had better. Anyway, it’s temporary, as soon as I find a way to make money I’ll get a room, even a shitty one. Sometimes, when he’s there, I go out for a walk, I look up at the apartments with balconies, huge windows, and yards in the middle of the city . . .”
And it was true, later on he’d see, when he was walking with her she would often stop, extend her arm to point out a window, “One day, I’ll live there,” and her eyes would light up, she was so sure of it, she knew how to be patient.
She kept talking, wasn’t hard to listen to. “Starting out, it’s like I’m expected to clean toilets without batting an eye. That’s the only way I can be here, on the alert, but the first chance I get, I’ll jump at it. It’ll take the time it takes.”
She chewed her bottom lip while she spoke, he noticed sometimes, asking himself if he was imagining the tears of rage that rose in her eyes.
She must not have been a regular drinker because she couldn’t control herself at all, was in a daze, her eyes staring off into space.
“Why did you come to Paris?”
“To be an actress.”
“In porn?”
It came out on its own, but you had to admit she looked the part. She just wrinkled her eyes, like she had swallowed something bitter. He stuttered, a vague hope of redeeming himself, “I really didn’t say that to hurt you, I know a lot of girls who—”
“I don’t give a shit about the girls you know, and I don’t give a shit what you think of me. I’m not so naive that I don’t know what I look like. And I’m not so naive to wait for someone to tell me what I’m capable or not capable of doing either. Time will tell where I end up. And I’ll laugh at all those people who took me for an idiot. I’ll show them.”
She stood up straight as she spoke, her entire chest stuck out against the world, and then she slouched all at once, comically, self-consciously.
“But anyway, I’m also not so naive to think I’m the only girl to say that.”
She kept quiet for a moment.
“Let’s have one more?”
“Won’t your man be worried?”
“Yeah. We were supposed to spend a wonderful afternoon together, watching dubbed action movies and smoking the disgusting pot he gets in the shitty part of town. The kids rip him off, I’m too scared to tell him. But honestly, we’re smoking henna. Anyway, you’re right, I have to get going.”
“You want another or not?”
“Just a quick one.”
The next morning, he got up to puke and she was on the sofa. He didn’t really remember how she’d ended up in his living room. They had coffee, it was comfortable. She stayed with him until she found an apartment. They became friends almost inadvertently, by virtue of always being happy to see each other and always wanting to.
Three months ago, Nicolas—who was meeting someone near Claudine’s place—went by to see if she was there. “Buy me a coffee?”
He found her overjoyed. “You know Duvon, the producer? He’s down for the record, I have to call him as soon as the demo’s ready. Listen, I think he’s really into it. The guy really wants to give me a shot. I’ve been telling you about it for a while now, haven’t I?”
He turned his eyes away from the TV screen where a guy—filmed from the ceiling for no apparent reason except to make it look shitty—approached another guy in the bathroom to shoot him in the head, calling him “my angel.”
“The demo?”
“Yeah. I lied, I told him it was almost ready. I thought of your tracks, you know, the two I really like . . .”
“Not to throw a wrench in things but . . . Claudine, you can’t sing, we’ve already tried.”
Together they had tried anything and everything to get noticed. Wasted effort. Years piled up, ambitions dampened. More than anything else, what they learned was what to ask for from the social worker, what papers to falsify to get a certain kind of assistance, how not to get audited.
“I don’t plan on singing.”
Nicolas was flipping through the channels, stopped on a commercial where a completely crazy-looking girl illuminated by green lights was on her knees in front of a keyhole, eyeing a couple. An already-outdated image.
“Just tell me up front what you’re planning to do, I’ll never guess.”
Behind him, Claudine put a cassette in the player and, before starting it, explained, “We’ll send your stuff to my sister, and she’ll plop her voice on top of the track . . . like she’s taking a big shit.”
“Your sister sings?”
“She’s not bad. I’ll play something for you.”
“You have one of her songs?”
She rubbed the back of her neck like she did when something was bothering her.
“I sent her your stuff, that we had worked on, you and me, for her to give me a couple ideas. But she made her suggestions too complicated for me to replicate on purpose. I already told you how much of a bitch she is.”
“You could have had me listen, so we—”
“No, she sings too well, it pisses me off. But I don’t have a choice now.”
She had chosen between tact and ambition a long time ago.
That was the fundamental difference between Claudine and the world. Like everyone else, she was calculated, egotistical, shit-talking, petty, jealous, a fraud, a liar. But unlike everyone else, she owned it—without cynicism, with a disarming nature that made her irreproachable. When someone criticized her, she would rub her neck. “Calm down, I’m not the Virgin Mary, I’m not a hero, I’m not a role model. I do what I can, at least that’s something.”
She pressed play.
After listening, he only asked, “Is it possible for her to change the lyrics?”
“No way. Nothing’s possible with her, she’s absolutely determined to be a pain in the ass.”
“But she’ll come here to finish production?”
“No way. She despises Paris. Which is for the best, because I despise her.”
“You really look that much alike?”
“Don’t you remember? I showed you a photo.”
“But even now you—”
“We’re twins, we look alike. It’s not that complicated.”
Nicolas admitted, “I really like her voice, we can make a lot of pretty things with it.”
“Singing is the only thing she’s good for. Lucky for her she knows how.”
After that, as is often the case, nothing happened as expected.
“If you’re not the one singing, what will you do?” Nicolas asked.
“I’ll do the music videos, the interviews, the photos. I’ll meet tons of people and then I’ll start acting