Pub du Mont

Pub du Mont is the bar Billie visits with Daphné on a night meant to distract her from Pierre. Its crowded dance floor briefly offers other people and other possibilities, but the evening turns when Billie calls Pierre from the bar and leaves with directions to his home. The place becomes the hinge between an attempted escape from desire and a decision to pursue it.

Setting and Arrival

Billie and Daphné head out to drink strong beverages mixed with pineapple juice, using the large fluorescent slush straws Billie collects. Daphné arrives already dancing behind the wheel. In the car, the friends joke that their green and red outfits make them look like a Christmas candy cane, though they are out of season. With the windows down despite the cold on their fingers and cheeks, they sing loudly to music, making up English-sounding lyrics they do not know.

Their plan is to dance at the bar beside the brasserie. Billie hopes Pierre will stay home or work too late to go dancing afterward, and asks Daphné to promise that he will not be there. The outing is therefore shaped from the start by Pierre’s possible presence: Billie wants distance from him, but cannot stop organizing the night around whether she might see him.

The Bar and the Failed Distraction

Once inside, Billie and Daphné find the bar packed with people who seem excited, cheerful, and attractive. Billie notices the men and, now that the ice has been broken, looks at their backsides. The moment suggests a new willingness to look beyond Pierre, but it does not last. She soon becomes bored with everyone around her, without knowing why, and reaches into her handbag for her phone.

Billie has already received a message from Pierre saying that he misses her. Although part of her wants to answer, see him, and touch him, she has tried to push him from her mind. At Pub du Mont, that effort gives way: she calls because she wants to hear his voice, which she compares to a river that makes her feel as if she is on a roller coaster. The bar’s crowd cannot compete with the force of that attachment.

The Call and Departure

Pierre answers at once, greeting her by her full name and asking where she is and what she is doing. Billie tells him she is at Pub du Mont with Daphné, drinking strong drinks mixed with pineapple juice; she admits they are not especially good, though they make the pair dance, and playfully asks whether he wants a sip. Pierre invites her to come to his place instead, saying that he wants to see her green eyes and legs. Billie feels a strong shiver and recognizes that she wants to make love with him for real.

After they hang up, her anger and sadness seem to recede as excitement returns to her chest. She tells Daphné what the conversation was about. Daphné cups Billie’s face in her cold hands, looks into her excited green eyes, and warns her to take care of both her body and her fragile heart. She writes the route to Pierre’s home on a cardboard coaster and slips it into Billie’s pocket. Billie kisses Daphné’s left cheek, then retrieves a plastic bottle from Daphné’s car because she wants to numb herself further for the long walk. Pierre lives high on the mountain, and Billie leaves the bar intending to go there.

Narrative Significance

Pub du Mont is more than a backdrop for dancing: it stages the failure of Billie’s attempted distraction. The crowded room initially makes other people newly visible to her, yet boredom drives her back to Pierre through the phone. The night’s movement—from cold air, loud music, and playful companionship to the private intensity of the call and a solitary uphill walk—makes the bar the threshold between avoidance and renewed intimacy. Daphné’s practical directions and protective warning remain with Billie as she acts on her desire.