This short story confused me a bit. I had to reread it a few times to understand who was who and such. From what I understood, this story is told through the French narrator, Alexi (who for a while i assumed was male). Her partner in crime, Juliette, is in love with Alexi but seems to be more in love with the idea of love, though Alexi feels no remorse in thinking of her as a whore (though she used to love her). They are both undercover spies of some sort that deal with proving cheating spouses. The story starts off with their latest client Mrs Clara Carshalton (Mrs pointing to the fact that she's married), a normal boring middle aged English woman who travels all the way to France everyday to eat at a Cafe and meets with a woman named Elaine Kopfker. They claim to be best friends but the falseness of their interaction shows how distant they are from one another.
I thought it was odd when Alexi explains the ending relationship between Juliette and herself and says "You come at the wrong time, reader - the end of a love affair - to hear any fair words of Juliette" because Alexi (or the writer) is the one that has the control over when the reader is introduced in the timeline to begin with. Its odd because its almost like Alexi is blaming or critiquing the reader. This is a random tangent, but this reminded me of a part in the book "Book of Daniel" by EL Doctorow, when the main character is writing about his life, particularly when he is about to sexually abuse his wife, and he addresses the reader, saying something like Do you really need to read this? Is this not sacred? in a way blaming the reader for reading about such an intimate moment, though through out the book it is obvious that he is writing out his life story for his dissertation (we get glimpses at him at the library).
Another interesting thing is how reluctant Alexi is of claiming a gender, "...she is still unsure whether to address me as Madame or Monsieur (it is Alexi, Alexi)" (2). However, "The Boy" or Cleopatra (which is a women, fyi) is defined by his gender. Cleopatra seems to be competition, for Juliette as well as Clara, suspecting Clara of having an affair with Cleopatra, this hot Arab guy who we find out later is having another affair other than Clara.
Juliette blackmails Clara and wants to blackmail Cleopatra for having a love affair, but Alexi angrily points out that there is no way to blackmail an unmarried "beautiful" boy (constantly calling him beautiful - does she have a thing for him as well?). Juliette is successful in getting some money out of Clara, but things quickly change when Juliette tells Alexi that Clara wants her to kill the boy for 40,000 francs because she finds out he is having another affair. Alexi calls her a whore (Juliette had an affair with the boy) and realizing she could never kill the boy for any amount of money, he follows her. This part is somewhat confusing, from what i can tell Cleo either is having an affair while Juliette walks in or that Alexi sees that Juliette is having an affair with the boy, either way she is wearing gloves and he isn't so it would be easier for her to kill Clara and have the fingerprints do the talking instead of killing this "beautiful" boy.
Of course, Ms Kopfker gave a good "performance" for the news camera about how she didn't know anything even though they were the "closest of friends" (i would not be surprised if she didn't) and Juliette collected 80,000 francs.
The end after the note to Alexi makes me believe that Cleo had to have been some type of celebrity, and that no matter what little school girls will always love and idolize him because of his good looks. I don't know what to make of the claim "All over dingy newspaper that didnt deserve it...." maybe that media constantly take what isn't theirs (photos of unwilling people).
Anyways, its a kind of messed up interesting story. Cheers!
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