Billie by Anna Gavalda, Jennifer Rappaport Page B

that moment. No doubt, when twenty years in the Morels suddenly bursts out of you, it must not be a very pretty sight . . .
    I ran him a superhot bath and undressed him like a little boy, and yes, I saw his cock, but no, I didn’t look at it, and I plunged him into the tub.
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    When he emerged, I was checking out a film on TV. He put on briefs and a clean T-shirt and he got into bed next to me.
    We didn’t say anything to each other, we watched the end of the film, we shut off the lamp and, in the dark, each of us waited for the other to speak.
    I couldn’t say anything because I was silently crying, so he was the one who had to do it. He caressed my hair very gently and after a long moment, he whispered:
    â€œIt’s over, Billie . . . It’s over . . . We’ll never go back there . . . Shhhh . . . It’s over . . . I’m telling you . . . ”
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    But I was still crying.
    So he hugged me.
    So I cried even more.
    So he laughed.
    So I laughed too.
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    And I got snot all over us.

 
    I cried for hours and hours.
    It was like a plug had been pulled. It was a purge. Or an emptying out. For the first time in my life since I was born, I was no longer on the defensive.
    For the first time . . .
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    For the first time, I felt that finally, everything would be okay. That finally I was safe. And everything came out at once. Everything . . . the abandonment, the hunger, the cold, the filth, the lice, my odor, the cigarette butts, the muck, the empty bottles, the shouts, the slaps, the scars, the ugliness everywhere, the bad grades, the lies, the violence, the fear, the thefts; Jason Gibaud’s parents who had prohibited me from taking a shit in their house, eating their scraps; my ass, my tits, and my mouth that had served so well as a form of currency in recent times; all those guys who had profited so much from my situation, and so badly; all those crappy jobs, and Manu who had made me believe that he really loved me a little and that I would have my own house and . . .
    And I vomited it all in tears.
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    And the more I emptied myself, the more Franck seemed to fill me up. I don’t know how to really explain it but that was the impression he gave me. The more I cried, the more he relaxed. His face became softer. He twisted a strand of my hair around my ear. He gently made fun of me. He called me Calamity Jane, or Camille the Nutcase, or Billie the Kid, and he smiled.
    He told me about my unrecognizable face, the way I had beat the neck of that poor guy with the barrel of my rifle while he was driving. He described to me Manu’s torn earlobe, dangling at the corners. He imitated the tone of my voice when I had ordered him to round up a cop and how I had swung my weapon in Manu’s face while saying, “Your gift,” and he almost laughed at certain moments. Yes, he almost laughed.
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    I didn’t understand until long after, until many secrets later, when he too began to tell me a bit about his solitary war before me, before us, that on that night, if he was so happy to see me so miserable, it was because during the time that I sobbed in his arms nonstop and on the verge of an anxiety attack, he was discovering the first good reason not to die.
    My tears, they were his fuel to keep going, and his teasing, that was just to reassure me. To prove to me that we could laugh at it all and that, besides, we were going to laugh at it all from now on since, “Look, Billie . . . look, our lives, as rotten as they are, we’re finally here in this rotten little bed . . . Hey . . . Stop crying, my darling . . . Stop crying . . . Thanks to you, we’ve gotten through the hardest part. Thanks to you we’ve escaped. Oh and then if—cry, go ahead cry . . . That will help you sleep . . . Cry, but never forget: of course, our troubles are only just beginning, but