LITMIR.BIZ

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before the women of the house proclaimed their British leanings, he turned his medical volunteering into a stable job at a hospital in Thailand, half a world away from the father who could not help but mention that he thought Benoît was too sharp to be a generalist for coughs and sneezes. Over time, the mother and sister and brother became less family and more painted figurines, shrunk and motionless, from a childhood Aimée had too abruptly outgrown. And so, she and her father grew closer together as if it had always been just the two of them in their family unit.

      *

      Her father tried his best to cultivate the girl, whom he promised himself would be different from Sylvie and by-God nothing like his wife.

      *

      He had gotten them front-row seats at the theatre for a show starring the French film actress Fanny Ardant, which was getting some buzz in the papers. Aimée was 13, her thin blond hair brushed and tucked behind her ears.

      *

      One woman came on stage wearing a white satin nightie, barefoot. It was Fanny Ardant. The public sat up in their seats. The famous actress took a breath and said, in her velvet voice, “I was young once.”

      From the other side of the stage a younger woman came out, also wearing a white satin nightie, also barefoot. Her dark hair was brushed out like Fanny Ardant’s and her face held a resemblance to the actress’s sagely luscious features. The younger woman came forth and stopped at Fanny Ardant’s level. Looking out into the audience with an invigorated glare, the younger actress proclaimed, in a broad voice, “I was old once.”

      *

      The stage was so high, and the perspective so sharp, and both actresses’ matching nighties so short, that young Aimée spent the whole play inadvertently glancing up the two sets of thighs above her, between them to the end point, then blinking hurriedly away.

      After the show, young Aimée kept mispronouncing the leading actress’s name. Her father corrected Aimée—Fanny Ardant, Arhdaen—but Aimée kept saying Arendt so her father had to explain that “Arendt” was someone else’s last name, Hannah Arendt, the Jewish philosopher and theorist. Then he felt that he should explain Arendt’s essay “On Violence,” and why it was such an important gesture to question the relationship between violence and power, and the quintessence of defining terms like power, strength, force, authority, and violence. “Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together,” whereas strength is individual, force is contextual, and authority is vested and carried. “Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience.” Immediate and immediately unsustainable. So what is violence, her father asked 13-year-old Aimée. She glanced up blankly at her father, then back over to her right, where the stage had been and the actresses’ matching pair of thighs became one.

      *

      The following weeks her father got increasingly agitated because he was trying to educate Aimée further on Arendt’s ideas, but kept accidently referring to her as Hannah Ardant and his mind snapping immediately to that film with Fanny Ardant alongside Gérard Depardieu, Truffaut’s La femme d’à côté, The Woman Next Door. In the film, Bernard (Gérard) is living happily with his wife in Grenoble until a new couple moves in next door. His new neighbor’s wife (played by Fanny) turns out to be a past lover of his.

      Aimée, who had by this point been mispronouncing both the actress and the philosopher’s names out of nervousness, began to stutter in addition. Her father switched to his role as the doctor; though he was not a speech therapist, he felt that cases of dyslexia and speech impediments were analogous to ghost pains of phantom limbs, and he just had to make his daughter understand her own body—that her tongue, her mouth, her throat operated in full function within each pronunciation. His diagnosis was that Aimée’s oratory mechanics still somehow felt the attachment of previously pronounced sounds to those she was currently trying to voice.

      *

      Aimée was sent to her room to recite the name “Fanny Ardant” clearly and coherently 100 times before bed.

      Night after night she said the actress’s name 100 times like a bedtime prayer, and by her 14th birthday her stutter was gone.

      *

      When Aimée was 16, she heard about a new club that had just opened on Boulevard Poissonnière, near the Rex cinema. Like a struck match, the word spread quickly, girls, ladies, dykes, cunts … It wasn’t shy or hidden like most places one crawled into to be gay between their walls. It was unapologetic, loud, messy, the place to be for girls who liked girls, and boys who liked boys if they came with a girl, and punks and actors and musicians and anyone who wanted to dance hard. Wednesdays was rock, Thursdays electro, Fridays more experimental, and Saturdays Girls Only.

       Le Pulp.

      A couple of Saturday evenings she passed by it, not daring to go in, veering into the metro station right in front and going home. But then her father prescribed himself some sleeping medication and Aimée began to sneak out.

      *

      The entry way had a large slab of black-painted wood hanging off two metal chains, with the cut-out letters in a dirty, scraped pink, yelling out PULP. There was no entry fee, part of the motto, anyone was welcome—well, any girl or any boy accompanied by a girl.

      Inside, it was murky with people, wallpaper peeling off the walls, armchairs in cherry-red imitation leather with a couple of slashes across the cushion, and the dance floor with its scuffed floorboards.

      A tall girl leaned into Aimée and asked if she wanted codeine and Aimée yelled over the music, “No thanks,” but the girl shrugged and yelled back, “No, I asked if you had any …”

      Aimée walked away and got onto the dance floor. She found a shadowy spot and began to dance, glancing around her at flashes of faces, rounded cheeks, sloped noses, dark eyelashes, frizzy hair, straight bangs, short crops, red lips, purple lips, plain lips, mouths slightly open or pinned shut or exhaling cigarette smoke.

      She was scanning the room for a girl she’d like to kiss.

      *

      She went as many nights as she could. Kissing, groping, hoping for the next song, the next drink, the next cigarette, and the next touch.

      *

      It was electro night and the bodies were jumping with their heads hooked down and their hair swinging over their faces. Hips and elbows. Hands in the air, cutting through the lights.

      At the bar, a guy in a dark-green T-shirt was arguing with the bar woman. Aimée stepped to the side, waiting to order. The bar woman leaned over the counter.

      “Out there,” she pointed to the door, “the world’s yours. Dick around all you want. But these 100 meters squared in here, they’re ours. So if you hear my cunt say No, it’s NO. End of story. Enjoy your night.” She stamped her palms on the counter and turned to Aimée. “What can I get you, darling?”

      *

      Aimée had been stuck on a girl name Céline with eyes the color of absinthe and mean-looking lips protruding into the flashing lights. She had kissed her and they had fondled each other on the dance floor but Céline seemed to be neither interested nor disinterested, which made 16-year-old Aimée desperate for her attention.

      *

      Aimée had reached the tautness of her longing. She lay in bed masturbating, thinking of Céline, when her hand froze and her breath cut off.

      She had a vision of the Seine, pushing dully forward, the top skin wrinkling over itself, the skylight a pinkish white, the water like mud. Aimée exhaled and got out of bed. Without deciding, she pulled on her jeans, clipped on her one sexy black lace bra from H&M, pulled over a loose gray sweater, and snuck out. She thought she was going to the Seine to jump in. She went to Le Pulp instead.

      Céline was on the dance floor, moving her body like

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