Apocalypse Baby. Виржини Депант

The kids eat outside the school, don’t they? I’m going to go around there when classes finish, to try and question a couple of them.”

      I feel like reminding her that I arranged with her to do the things I can’t do, not the ones I can carry out perfectly well. I pretend to be immensely busy, checking the calendar to see when I’ve got a spare moment.

      “And you want me to come with you, is that it? I was going to . . .”

      “But you’re at home, aren’t you?”

      “No, I already said.”

      “Because I’m not far away from Pyrénées metro. If you’re ready, I can be downstairs from you in ten minutes, I’m in my car.”

      “Look, I’m not at home. I just said. I can get to Belleville metro in, ooh, let’s say fifteen minutes?”

      I GET THERE a little late. (It’s one stop from Pyrénées.) I look at all the drivers halting at the lights before I see her, watching me, sitting still, on the terrace of the Folies café. When she sees me coming over, she consents to get up and join me. She holds out her hand to greet me, I wonder whether she thinks I’m going to give her some infectious disease or whether at her age she doesn’t know that these days girls kiss each other hello. Or else just say hi. She’s double-parked her car, with a doctor’s permit slipped under the windshield, but that isn’t the oddest thing: she’s driving an old red Mercedes, must date from before I was born. Perfect for a private eye, eh? Nobody would ever notice a car like that, would they?

      “I usually take the metro; the traffic’s so awful in Paris.” That’s all I find to say, to sound a bit sulky, to show that I’m not the sort of girl who’s going to be mollified by the luxuriously shabby beige leather of the seats. Cigarette in mouth, she pulls away without a word, stops at the lights, and smiles at two little African girls with cornrows who are holding hands to cross the road. They have identical white socks pulled up tight over their calves. The Hyena looks happy. I wonder if she’s on Prozac. That’s what I tell myself about anyone I find a bit too dynamic. A GPS is clamped to the windshield but it’s not switched on.

      I can’t manage to stay silent for long, we don’t know each other well enough to sit side by side without speaking.

      “You don’t bother looking for a parking place then.”

      “There are plenty of parking lots, we can put it on expenses.”

      “As a freelancer, do you get lots of expenses?”

      “Why?”

      “I dunno. Just that I’m on a wage, and they check things carefully.”

      She charitably chooses not to point out that we’re not operating in the same league. “I’m hungry. We’ll stop and have a bite near the school, I know a good Italian place around there.”

      We’ve left Chinatown, and drive past the high-rises of Télégraphe. The district is poorer, less commercial.

      “You said you’d prefer me to wait before seeing her father?”

      “Yep. I’ve got a contact going in there today. She’s going to call me, she had an appointment with him for late morning. I saw that there was a Wi-Fi code mentioned in the file but that you hadn’t copied Valentine’s hard drive. I thought it could interest us though. I asked for the hard drives of the whole family.”

      “You’ve got someone who can get into their building and hack their systems?”

      “Look, we have the code, we go in, we don’t hack anyone. I also asked for photos of the whole apartment. So I won’t need to go with you. I want to see what it looks like.”

      “What do we do about the interviews at the school?”

      “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. But I’d like you to be there, you never know . . .”

      “As your assistant? Great.”

      “Look, kid, chill out, can’t you? You haven’t got the slightest idea how to run an inquiry, so just be a good girl, follow my lead, and do what I say. If you don’t like it, you can get out right now, and deal with your own problems. Okay? This cheapskate inquiry of yours, all right, I’ll do it. But if you’ve got self-esteem issues, just sort them out yourself.”

      She says all this without getting angry. I think she’s even hiding a smile by the end, seeing the look on my face. We’re blocked by a delivery truck that’s created a small traffic jam. I sulk and look out of the window. Some morons are hooting their horns behind us. Three young girls cross the road. Parisian style on the cheap. Slim, long-legged, fashionable little furry boots, big busts, and big tote bags with fringes. Cut-price copies of authentically rich sluts from the Marais, the kind who put on a tarty look but make you think of ads for perfume, not of little working-class girls from the projects.

      The Hyena leans out of her window. She gives an admiring wolf whistle. The girls turn around, looking blasé, but they can’t conceal a movement of surprise—or shock—when they see it comes from our car. The Hyena gives them a thumbs up, to show she thinks they look good, and also sees fit to insist, yelling, “Hiya girls! Love the look!”

      They hurry on and don’t burst into nervous giggles until they’re about a hundred feet away. The Hyena adjusts her dark glasses in the mirror, shrugs, and notes, with magnanimity, “They weren’t that marvelous, but hey, it cheers them up, doesn’t it?”

      “They were very young, that’s what struck me.”

      As if that was the problem.

      “I like girls. I like girls too much. Of course I prefer dykes, but I like all girls.”

      “Don’t you think they might feel insulted getting whistled at in the street?

      “Insulted? No, they’re hets, they’re used to being treated like dogs, they think it’s normal. But it’s a nice change to hear it from a superb specimen like me. Even if they don’t realize it, it lights up a tiny utopian candle in their poor little heads, after being smothered by heterocentrist macho awfulness.”

      “How do you know they’re straight? Is it written on their faces or what?”

      “Of course. I can spot a dyke from behind at five hundred feet. I’ve got radar. We all do. How do you think we’d ever find someone to have sex with if we didn’t have a sixth sense to spot each other?”

      “Sorry. I didn’t know you needed a sixth sense for sexual orientation.”

      Finally, we get past the delivery van, and she glances rapidly at me before pronouncing, still with a smile, “Jeez, it must be really tough being you.”

      THE MINUTE YOU get inside the door of Valentine’s posh school, you’re suffocated by that typical atmosphere of factories for turning out kids. A mixture of boredom and rebelliousness. I’ve gotten used to waiting outside school gates, but I’ve never before had occasion to go inside. The headmistress comes to fetch us, and we go along the main corridor, where the classroom doors are still open. The sight of all the tables lined up, the blackboards, and the maps hanging on the walls suddenly makes me want to cry. The only memory I have of my school is looking at my watch. How long till the end of the lesson, how long till the end of the day. Even my work, which often bores me, has never made me feel so cooped up. And yet I’m pierced with nostalgia, with that sadistic and seductive pull that is so typical of it. I’d be hard put to find a rational explanation: there’s nothing about my high school years that I miss. I was an average student, I didn’t have any close friendships, I didn’t have a crush on any teacher. Blank years of deep boredom. So who knows why tears come to my eyes when I see that they’re still writing in chalk on a big blackboard.

      The headmistress is obese, affable, and competent. She’s wearing a black-and-orange outfit and makes the fabric ripple every time she moves. The Hyena has put on a denim jacket to cover up the tattoos on her arms, but doesn’t take off her dark glasses during the interview. She has introduced