Fatale - Jean-Patrick Manchette [6]
“Thank you, but no. I only smoke Virginia.” Aimée produced a pack from her bag and placed a Dunhill between her lips.
The realtor was thinking what a charming little person she was, so fragile, so feminine, and he rose and leaned across the desk, emitting a tiny high-pitched grunt, unexpected and involuntary, as his muscles stretched; and he lit Aimée’s cigarette with a silver table lighter in the form of an ancient urn.
“I shouldn’t do this,” said Aimée. “It’s a vice. But you know what they say: the only reason we don’t surrender completely to a vice is that we have so many others.”
“Oh, really? They say that? How amusing! And indeed how true!” Lindquist smiled in a bemused way.
Eventually, once they had looked over the files of several properties for sale in the vicinity and arranged to visit one the very next day, the realtor warmly urged Aimée to attend the opening of the fish market a little later. The ceremony was to be followed by cocktails, and he would be delighted to introduce Aimée to some of Bléville’s most eminent citizens.
[1] Surcouf, Jean Bart, and Duguay-Trouin were celebrated French corsairs and admirals. Turgot was an eighteenth-century French statesman and economist; Thiers was known as the Butcher of the Paris Commune; General Lyautey fought in the French colonies and later became a Fascist.—Trans.
4
AFTER leaving the real-estate office, Aimée rode back to her studio on her Raleigh along streets with such names as Kennedy, Churchill, and Wilson, and others called Magellan, Jacques Cartier, or Bougainville.[1] She stopped twice along the way, once at a pharmacy to check her weight on an automatic scale and once at a bookstore, where she bought a crime novel. In her clothes, she weighed 46.7 kilos. Without heels, she was 1.61 meters tall. On the scale was an enameled plaque bearing the message KEEP YOUR TOWN CLEAN!
As Aimée was going back to her studio apartment she noticed that a door some twenty meters farther down the corridor was ajar; peering out curiously from it was a little old lady, wearing a great deal of jewelry, who disappeared as Aimée entered her own room and closed herself in.
Once inside, Aimée drew the predominantly red plaid curtains and stripped naked. For nearly an hour she did exercises standing up and lying down on the floor, toning her muscles and making use in particular of her chest expanders. She streamed with sweat. She took out a thick piece of corkboard, placed it on the bed, and struck it repeatedly with the edge of first her right and then her left hand, likewise with each of her elbows. Setting aside the corkboard, she picked up a foam cylinder twenty centimeters long and twelve in diameter. Holding it in one hand, she adopted the lotus position. After a moment of relaxation, she kneaded it for a few minutes. Then, with both hands, she squeezed the cylinder tightly, reducing its diameter to just a few centimeters at the points where she was grasping it; she locked her muscles in this position and stayed quite still. A nervous twitch tugged at the sweaty skin at the corner of her mouth. Finally she put everything away and took a bath.
Lying in her hot bath, she opened the crime novel she had bought. She read ten pages. It took her six or seven minutes. She put the book down, masturbated, washed, and got out of the water. For a moment, in the bathroom mirror, she looked at her slim, seductive body. She dressed carefully; she aimed to please.
At four o’clock she left the Seagull Apartments and went shopping in the center of town for various items of clothing, all simple, all pretty, all rather expensive. She then proceeded to the Jules Ferry Leisure and Culture Center, on the east side of town, in the middle of a kind of municipal complex of recent vintage. There she signed up for fencing and Oriental martial-arts classes. She was directed to places where she could go to play golf, play tennis, ride horseback, and the like. Then, pedaling furiously, the young woman returned to her studio apartment and dropped off her purchases before leaving right away on