Army Leave, IV

All the girls with their buggy fish eyes and their small chests who don't think of anything more than last night's party.

All the girls that wrote their addresses in Sharpie on his arm in the schoolbus while they were pretending to sleep. And those that cry in front of their parents while they take them away towards our family 4-L.

And me . . . . I just get seasick.

I remember Marie quite well. One night, she told the others that she had surprised a young couple making out at the beach and that she heard the sound of the girl's bathing suit that clicked.

How did it go? I asked her just to make her uncomfortable.

And she, looking me right in the eyes, pulled her underwear through her dress and let it go.

Clac.

Like that, she responded, still looking at me.

I was eleven years old.

Marie

You speak and I remember. Clac.

As the night went on, the less I wanted to talk about the army. The less I saw her, the more I wanted to touch her.

I drank too much. My mom threw me nasty looks.

I went outside to the garden with two or three friends from tech school. We talked about cassettes that we meant to lend each other and cars that we would never be able to buy. Michael had installed a great stereo in his 106.

Almost ten thousand francs just to listen to techno...

I sat down on the iron bench. The one that my mother had asked me to repaint all these years. She said that it reminded her of the Tuileries garden.

I smoked a cigarette and looked at the stars. I didn't recognize too many. Whenever I get the chance, I look for them. I recognize four.

Another thing from Glenans books that I didn't retain.

I saw her coming from far away. She was smiling at me. I looked at her teeth and the shape of her earrings.

Sitting next to me, she said:
- May I?

I didn't say anything because I got another stomachache.

- Is it true that you really don't remember me?
- No, it's not true.
- You remember?
- Yes.
- What do you remember?
- I remember that you were ten years old, that you were one meter twenty-nine centimeters high, that you weighed twenty-six kilos and that you had had the mumps the year before, I remember the doctor's visit. I remember that you lived at Choisy-le-Roi and at the time it cost me forty-two francs to come see you by train. I remember that your mother was named Catherine and that your father was Jacques. I remember that you had a turtle named Candy and your best friend was a guinea pig named Anthony. I remember that you had a green bathing suit with white stars and that your mother made you a robe with your name embroidered at the top. I remember that you cried one mroning because you didn't get any mail. I remember that you glued sequins to your face the night of the party and that with Rebecca, you made a musical with the music from Grease . . .
- Oh la la, I can't believe what a good memory you have!

She was even more beautiful when she smiled. She bent backwards. She rubbed her hands against her arms to warm up.
- Here, I told her as I took off my large sweater.
- Thanks . . . but what about you? Are you going to be cold?
- Don't worry about me.

She looked at me in a different way. No other girl would have understood what she understood at that moment.

- What else do you remember?
- I remember that you told me one night behind the Sailboat Hangar that you thought my brother was a show-off . . .
- Yes, I did say that, and you told me that it wasn't true.
- Because it isn't true. Mar does a lot of things easily but he doesn't show off. He does them, that's all.
- You always defended your brother.
- Yeah, he's my brother. Besides, you find more faults with him now, don't you?

She got up and asked me if she could keep my sweater.

I smiled at her as well. In spite of the swamp of misery that I was dealing with, I was happier than ever before.

My mother came up while I was smiling like a big simpleton. She told me that she was going to sleep at my grandmother's house, that the girls had to sleep in the first room and the boys in the second . . .

- Mom, we're not kids anymore, it's fine . . .
- And don't forget to make sure that the dogs are inside before shutting the door and that you . . .
- Okay, Mom.
- You make me worry, you all drank like fish and you, you look completely smashed . . .
- You don't say "smashed" in this case, Mom, you'd say "gone". You see, I'm completely gone. . .

She got up and shrugged her shoulders.
- At least put something on your back, you're going to catch your death of cold.