Rose Royal

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After her second pastis, Marie-Jeanne started to grow impatient. The idea that she had come all this way for nothing drove her crazy. She needed to work, at least enough to pay for her gas, and in the end she fell back on Rose.

“Come on, I’ll trim your ends. Half-price.”

“No, no way.”

“Seriously, look, they’re splitting.”

“Leave my hair alone. I don’t want you wrecking it with your scissors.”

“Just a quick trim. It’ll only take a few seconds.”

Rose kept saying no, but soon she found herself sitting in the middle of the room facing a full-length mirror that Marie-Jeanne lugged around with her everywhere she went, a towel over her shoulders, while her friend’s hands fluttered around her head.

“You’re cutting it too short . . .”

“Don’t worry. You won’t even notice the difference.”

There was no point arguing. While she waited Rose eyed her reflection and felt the same fast-fading surprise as always. She was not particularly vain and did not suffer from the melancholy that afflicted women for whom aging came as a sort of betrayal. But she did keep an image of herself somewhere deep inside, and the mirror’s contradiction of this came, each time, as an unpleasant reality check. Marie-Jeanne kept working confidently, indifferently, while the drinkers who had briefly shown an interest in the spectacle soon went back to their conversations. Rose was left alone with the mirror’s observations on the passing of time. The idea amused her and she smiled to herself. After all, she was proud of her own unflinching gaze, her ability to stare at her reflection without telling herself lies, without pretending or denying the facts or dreaming up consolations like so many of the women she knew. At least she could be glad about one thing. The trials she’d been through had rewarded her with the unquestionable gift of her own resilience. Rose was a strong woman now. You only had to see the way she handled herself with men.

The last guy she’d gone out with for any length of time was luckier than he realized; he’d had a narrow escape. A balding man in his forties, Thierry worked for an energy services company and divided his spare time between his blended family, his Netflix subscription, and his local cycling club, which had been planning a hypothetical ride up to the Col du Galibier for the past two years. He was a quiet, considerate man. Not particularly good-looking but at least he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Or so she’d thought until one night when he was watching the news and Rose was talking on the phone and he’d told her to shut her mouth because he couldn’t hear what the anchorman was saying. After that they’d got into a muddled dispute, with the TV blaring in the background, and at one point Rose had sensed that Thierry was close to raising his hand to her. She’d recognized that tension in his face, the ugliness of men whose arguments have run dry. It was always the same old story. You touched the nerve of his pride and his fist came down on you. In the end Thierry had just stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

After he’d left, Rose had not been able to do anything for a while. But she hadn’t cried. Then she’d got in the car and driven up to the Plateau de Brabois to take her mind off things. It was a clear night and the cold, bracing air had made her feel better. She’d made her decision. The next day she would buy a small revolver from an American website, a .38 caliber, five rounds, 650 euros. It was a lot of money, and that in itself told a story.

After an eleven-day wait, the gun was delivered to a nearby pickup point. She tore off the bubble-wrap and was stunned by the object’s almost supernatural beauty. It was silver and black, plump and incredibly solid. She watched YouTube videos on how to handle the gun, then took it out to some woods on the edge of town. The first shot made her heart pound like a first date. Even after that, she barely got used to it. Rose had not been an especially good shot and had made no real attempt to improve. She’d just made sure that she could keep her hand still when she fired it. The main thing was that she wouldn’t look ridiculous pointing that thing at a man’s face. Fear had to switch sides.

For weeks she’d waited for Thierry to yell at her again. It was exciting. She imagined his face, his barking, and then the look in his eyes when she aimed the revolver’s black muzzle at him. We’d see where the balance of power was then. She’d known her share of bastards, thugs, and morons. Very few of them had dared to really hit her. But all of them—because they were stronger than her, always angry, and because they felt they had the right—had made her submit to their will. The revolver would enable her to put a stop to this cycle. She was determined. She’d pull the trigger if she had to.

With Thierry, however, nothing had happened. One day he’d just stopped coming around, stopped calling her. After two months of being together, he simply vanished from her life. Another bastard, then, but not the kind that deserved to die.

Since then, she had taken the .38 with her everywhere, a heavy weight in her purse, a helpful presence, a true companion. Through watching more videos, she’d also learned to clean it. Sometimes, at night in her kitchen, she would stare at it cradled in her white hands. She’d bought it secondhand and she wondered if it had ever been fired before. She wondered if that tough, squat, bulldoglike object had ever killed a man. She picked it up and pointed it at the glass oven door, which offered her a thrilling glimpse of her reflection: a homicidal woman. She squeezed the trigger, her index finger trembled, then the hammer rose and snapped shut again with a cold, metallic click. A delicious frisson ran through her shoulders, throat, and breasts. This acquisition undoubtedly marked a turning point in her life. She wondered what had taken her so long, because she had a history of ambiguous relationships with men that went way back. To her father, if she really thought about it. Love had been mixed with fear from the beginning. She’d fooled around with her cousins and then, at about thirteen, her body had started to change: first her legs, then her ass, her tits, the whole shebang. After that, her existence had really been centered on boys. She’d never tried to keep count, but she certainly hadn’t been bored. She’d sought boys out and submitted to them, both at once.

Years later, when Rose ate lunch with her parents on Saturdays, it had been strange to hear her mother say things like That Humbert girl’s been with every man in town, or She’s like a woman possessed, that one. If only she’d known . . . Rose ate a bit more gratin and thought about those long-lost dates, in the backseats of freezing cars or lying on the ground near the soccer field amid the mingled odors of earth and wet grass. She remembered wandering hands, stolen pleasures, burning desires. And stupid pricks who didn’t understand that no means no. Back then she’d always blamed herself. If she wanted to get it on, she had to pay for the pleasure in the currency of risk. On two different occasions she’d got a smack for her troubles and the guy had pulled down her panties and done his business quickly, unpleasant but brief. Afterward he’d dropped her at home, they’d both said bye, she hadn’t made a fuss. Alone in her room, Rose hadn’t thought, I’ve been raped. She hadn’t thought anything at all. She’d cried into her pillow and groggily fallen asleep without even removing her makeup. A week later her thoughts had moved on. And yet it remained there constantly, like tinnitus, an endless humming sound.

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From Rose Royal by Nicolas Mathieu. Used with the permission of the publisher, Other Press. Copyright © 2020 by Nicolas Mathieu.

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