Vernon Subutex 2 by Virginie Despentes

Author:Virginie Despentes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

CÉLESTE CUTS THE STENCIL with scissors and positions the waves around the carp. She worked on them while studying a Hokusai drawing on the internet. They are listening to Sia. The guinea pig is squealing in his cage, he wants some cucumber and he wants it now. The giant internet TV is streaming a live feed of jellyfish rising and falling from a Canadian zoo. The customer is rolling a spliff, she rips out the innards of a cigarette filter with her teeth and replaces them with a cardboard roach. Then she takes the flint barrel from a Clipper lighter and tamps the joint. The hash, the weed, the cigarette papers, and a few crumbs of tobacco are arranged on a small pink plastic tray decorated with tiny flowers that probably came from China. She is chatting with her friend who is sitting on the sofa, resting on an electric massage mat bought from Nature & Découvertes. Wondering whether she should set it to rolling massage or shiatsu. Céleste pulls on her black gloves, the customer changes the music: “You into electropop? I’ve got a shit-hot playlist … perfect for tattooing. It’s perfect for everything.”

She says that she can hold out for two and a half hours. After that, she starts to feel the pain. Céleste is sitting on a pouffe. She doesn’t have a stool. Over time, she has crippled her back. She really should go to the swimming pool so she can relax and build up her muscles, but she can never find the time. Between the job at Rosa Bonheur and the hours she spends tattooing, she would have to set an alarm for 6:00 a.m. if she wanted to go swimming, but she gets to bed too late to do that.

Arms folded, the friend sitting on the sofa relaxes into the massage, takes a toke on the spliff, and stares up at the giant TV screen. “It’s insane to think that these are, like, real jellyfish … It’s amazing to think that things like that exist and we waste our time on random shit instead of looking at nature and animals, yeah?” Céleste is detached from the conversation, focused on what she is doing—dotwork shadows on the crests of the waves. She needs people to commission her to do big pieces so she can get a rotary tattoo machine to do the dotwork like Mike Amanita, the Russian guy who did the mandala on her shoulder. They cost two hundred euros. It’s not like it costs a fortune. But most people ask for small designs, butterflies and short quotes. She can never manage to save the money. The two friends babble incessantly, both stoned out of their gourds. The customer fidgets a little, Céleste lays a hand on her shoulder to calm her. It can be hard sometimes to concentrate with all the chatter of a hair salon. But she enjoys it— some tattoo artists insist on silence, she prefers to be surrounded by life and to have to detach herself.

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