Lunch

by Karen Moline

His heart in his eyes as he looks at her. “Sometimes.”

  “So you fought for this movie.”

  “That’s an understatement.” He leans back and relaxes. “Jamie helped. He can be a fool sometimes, but a worthy one, and he battled for me and believed I could pull it off, even though McAllister and the studios were ready to croak.” He grins saucily. “For that reason alone it was worth the aggravation. But the knives are out, sharper than ever. It’s so pathetically predictable. I should let you see what ­people—­my estimable colleagues and so-­called friends who hate my guts and want nothing more than to see me flop big-­time because I pull in so much more than they do and am such a bastard about it—­are saying about my pathetic attempt at ‘acting.’ ”

  “Well,” she says, “I think you can do it.” She cannot meet his gaze, she does not know what to do now with Nick, earnest and truthful, Nick so unbelievably charming, so sweetly candid and articulate with words of poetry falling from his lips, so suddenly unlike the image she’d formed of him, the image she made herself believe because being alone with him is dangerous and wrong. There is something palpably shimmering before her eyes, she sees it, mocking, taunting her that she has already succumbed to the magic of his seductiveness, whispering to her that his sweetness may be true right here, right now, but what lies hidden under that honeyed candy coating is equally true and vividly blazing, out of control as it has been, unchecked, for years, twisted and implacable.

  “If I can it’s because of you,” he says.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Having watched you lose yourself in your painting is making me try harder to lose myself in my acting.” His voice is harsher, sad. “I need to do it.”

  She looks down at her fingers, stubborn stains spreckled across her nails, clasped tightly around the stem of her glass.

  “Not just to prove something,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “You know why.”

  “Yes.” She looks up at him with tears standing in her eyes. “But I don’t want this to happen. I don’t even really like you. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Come with me.”

  She sits unsmiling, still as if etched in granite, barely breathing, her eyes luminous, wavering.

  Don’t do it, I would have willed her silently, telepathic, if I had been there instead of here, in my little room at Porchester Square, waiting for the inevitable. Don’t do it. Don’t believe him. You don’t know what he can do.

  Don’t, I would have said, stunned at myself in this unaccustomed role of protector, not procurer. Don’t, please, this time it’s for real, I can’t help you, I can’t help myself. But even as the words would have died on my lips I’d have seen her as she is now, unheeding, her ears roaring, she doesn’t hear me because she does not want to know.

  At least not yet.

  She rises so suddenly that even Nick is surprised, she tucks her purse under her arm, blows a kiss to Jean-­Michel, whose eyes she knew were upon her, makes a minute adjustment to her jacket, and strides out.

  Nick leisurely pulls out two fifty-­pound notes and leaves them on the table, gets up and slowly follows, nonchalant, relaxed and smiling as he acknowledges his fans while every muscle in his body is screaming to run, run fast, run after her and catch her before she slips away forever.

  This time she is waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

  He is careful not to touch her, fearful, worrying that any brush of his fingers will make her bolt, a frightened filly, fearful that if a taxi doesn’t come as one does as if summoned by some benevolent goddess she’ll disappear into the rain, fearful that traffic will move so slowly that she will push down the door handle and leap out, dodging other cars, elusive, no more real to him than a shadow obscured by fog.

  That is all he can think, that she will leave him as they sit, not touching, mute, staring out the windows until at last the taxi stops at the fat white pillars of Porchester Square.

  The keys are in his fingers. She is behind him, please, be there, they are in, inside his secret house, the carpet thickly cushioning, the walls creamy smooth, prints of flowers found in the market on Portobello Road hanging in ascending rows, sedate in their frames, the balustrades polished, gleaming, a faint whiff of lemon oil, her footsteps soft behind him, Eurydice, if he could paint her she would be his Eurydice, and if he turns back to look she will disappear forever.

  He unlocks the door and pushes it open.

  Oh, she says as she sees it when he switches on the light and turns down the dimmer, activating the cameras, the muted glory of the hours I have spent, the sumptuous luxury of a room made solely for pleasure, hothouse peonies in a blown glass vase, iridescent. She looks at Nick with eyes full of bewildered doubt and delight, fingering the velvet petals that have dropped on the table. It is too much to believe.

  “Nobody has been here but me,” he says, leaning back against the door that closes with barely a click, instantly locked. “And M, of course. He found this for me. It’s the only place where I can hide from the world. Everyone always knows where I am—­on the set, at the Savoy, walking down the street, eating lunch. If I didn’t have this place to disappear in I think I’d go mad.”

  She cannot move. They are alone, for the first time, truly alone. The room is tranquil, the light softly glowing, the heavy drapes pulled against the dull gray of thickening clouds, traffic a dim hum, the ormolu clock on the mantel calmly ticking as loud as her heart. No one else knows where they can be found, alone together in a golden room.

  Time stills, and stops, until Nick takes two large strides to Olivia and touches her, finally, his hands on her, her warm flesh, perfumed with bergamot, unleashing the furious passion that has been gnawing his bones, kissing her breathless and easing her over to the bed, his hands, finally, free to touch her as he wishes, the petals falling from her hands, scattered randomly in her hair.

  “I don’t want to,” she tries to say, tears streaming down her cheeks, unaware. “I don’t want to.”

  He kisses their salt sweetness. “I know I know I know.” He runs his fingers over her lips, brushing across them till she bites him to stop. “Don’t say anything,” he says, “just kiss me. Kiss me.”

  “I don’t want to,” she says again, it is all she can say, trying, vainly, to twist her head away from Nick. “Let me go let me go let me go.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says, his lips in her hair, “it doesn’t matter because I have never wanted anyone as much as I want you, never ever ever, and I’m not going to let you go. Ever.”

  Tears still falling, rolling into her ears. She closes her eyes.

  “There is nothing here but me and you,” he says.

  And the camcorders, silently whirring, preserving the most tender outpourings of his heart for the endless pleasure of the perpetual rewind.

  DURING

  Chapter 8

  Lunchtime, and only then, Olivia says. Her voice has tightened again, she is fighting him with rules, regretful, guilty. Not every day, and never on weekends. An hour stolen, maybe two, when she can dash across the park and into the flat, and then leave, fleeing back to safety. If she can. In the secrecy of this hideaway, never at her studio. Never call her at the studio, the machine is on all the time, of course he knows that already, she never answers the phone when she is working, and will not pick it up now even if she hears his voice. She will leave a message on the machine he’d installed in his suite at the Savoy. That’s all. Take it or leave it.

  Nick takes it, accepting with such alacrity that I must bite my inner cheek to prevent a spasm of surprise from flitting across my face. Oh yes, how lucky he is scheduled for night shoots, how convenient his call for makeup at three, the weekends are for sleeping off exhaustion, this is a sign, don’t tell me it’s not. Oh yes, I can see the wheels of mischief already rolling in devious pleasure, let her pretend the control of her time is t
he control of his mind. Let her pretend that the parameters of what has been her life will not be breached. Let her pretend that this tempestuous hunger is satiable with snatched moments and bites of lunch.

  Once a week will become twice, twice thrice, he is thinking. The clock smashed, an hour stretched. Languorous lingering. The afternoon shadows deepening when Nick finally pulls himself away to dash into the awaiting fury, later than he’s ever been, me feeding him lines unrehearsed as we speed through traffic into the life of fantasy that is the only reality he has ever truly understood.

  The game is on, he thinks, a crown of laurel already encircling the fervid imaginings of the victor, king of pleasure.

  He does not reckon with Olivia.

  PERHAPS IF she had called him sooner Nick would have taken longer to lapse into this rage of frustration. Eighteen, Nick says, eighteen days and she hasn’t called. His fever of impatience infects the set. He can’t slip into character. He is overacting. He sulks, locking himself in his trailer between scenes. He calls in to the machine every hour. Silence. He screams at Toledo. Toledo screams back. Producers appear, publicists. Cajoling, pleading lectures. Even the great Nick Muncie is replaceable, they are muttering, even if this project is his brainchild. I hope they are not bluffing. Nick needs to think he can be fired.

  Only one time together, and it is already spinning out of control.

  We are all waiting for Nick to come out, a molten lump of self-­pity, and I knock on his trailer door yet again. “Fuck off,” he shouts. I kick in the door, fed up.

  “I think I’ll bring her on the set,” I say. “She’d like this a lot. Very impressive.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You know, you might find a more creative outlet for this temporary setback, one that Olivia might even respect.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your work, you fool. What you do. What she does, is doing this very moment. Using your frustration. Creating something more important than your own deluded image. And then when she sees this film, when she sees you, she’ll know.”

  He slumps down, runs his hands through his hair, a flicker of hope. He has never looked better in his life. “Do you believe that?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you’re wrong, I’ll kill you.”

  “You’ll kill yourself first.”

  He apologizes to Toledo, effusive, he apologizes to the crew, abashed. He begs forgiveness. Nerves, he explains. He wants to do his best. He’s counting on them for advice and support. Where’s the best pub, let’s all go and have a drink. My treat.

  No one begs better than Nick. Dark mutinous mutterings dissolve into mindless, pleased nattering. Film brothers bound by a humbled oath of fealty.

  How could these worthy working souls possibly understand that this pledge was the first heartfelt, selfless plea that Nick had uttered on a set in more years than I could count.

  It is Olivia’s doing.

  When we arrive, weary beyond talking, to the Savoy, the usual messages are neatly stacked on the table, square white notes. Nick ignores them, heading for the machine’s blinking yellow light. Tomorrow, he hears her say. Noon.

  Nick looks at me, quietly jubilant, and shaky. Nick does not get shaky.

  “She must be a witch,” he says.

  “She isn’t a witch,” I say, “she’s a woman. Treat her like one. There is time enough.”

  Time enough.

  “There is all the time in the world,” he says.

  NICK SITS in one of the Regency chairs, staring at the peonies, lush and blowsy. A fat round petal drifts down to lie like a swan’s feather on the polished surface. He fingers it, velvet. Like Olivia’s cheeks.

  He is hours early.

  He appears calm, sitting so still and trying not to smoke because he knows she hates it, his legs crossed, his feet bare. The boots kicked off into the corner the only sign of impatience. An impediment.

  The buzzer sounds. Nick nearly jumps out of his skin to let her in. He opens the door and returns to the chair, the petal still in his fingers.

  She walks in, closes the door, leans against it, drops her bag.

  The cameras are whirring.

  Nick smiles. “Do you like my flowers?” He pulls one out and offers it to her.

  Its beauty is quite irresistible. Or perhaps it is that Nick is holding it. When she takes it, Nick stands up. She backs away, skittish, as he knew she would. He circles around to her, pulling another bloom into his hand, careful to keep his distance as she stands deliberating, glancing at the door and gauging how long it would take to fling it open and run, panting, run far away to the safety of the life she thought she knew. She does not realize her back is now up against the wall, hitting her mark exactly, right where Nick wants it.

  He always knows the best angles for the camera.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” she says.

  “You said that last time.”

  “But it’s what I feel.”

  “You’re still here, though, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. Let me do it for you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Then why are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you are, so let me.”

  “Let you what?”

  “Touch you.”

  He is closer. She begins to tremble.

  “Let me.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “You do.”

  “No.”

  She is whispering now. I can barely hear her.

  “Let me,” Nick says.

  “It won’t work.”

  “It will.”

  “It will end in tears.”

  “I won’t let it.”

  The pulse in her throat is throbbing wildly. The very relentlessness of his longing has eased his features into a deceptive, reassuring calm. She is puzzled, wary, unaware of the desperate eagerness hidden behind a facade etched by years of experienced seductions.

  He has never waited so long for any woman in his life.

  The peony brushes gently across her throat, a feather caress. The shock thrills through her veins. She is pushing back into the wall as her knees buckle. Stand up, she tells herself, go. You let yourself do it once already, that’s enough, you don’t need any more, you don’t want this, not from Nick, not what he wants to take. Go now, while there’s still a chance.

  “Don’t move,” he says, reading her mind.

  “I can’t,” she says. The flower swaying back and forth against her flesh, back and forth.

  “I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to,” Nick says.

  He is so close.

  “Nick,” she says. Pleading.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes wide, her voice a faint whisper.

  “Afraid of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Afraid of what I might do to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Afraid that you might like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like it too much?”

  “Yes.” Yes yes yes.

  “Do you want me?” he asks. A curl of her hair wrapped around his finger.

  “No.”

  “Do you want me?”

  “No, no. I can’t.”

  “Yes, yes, you can. Say yes.” His lips on her pulse, she is burning. “Yes. Say yes.”

  “No.”

  “Say yes.” His lips on her chin.

  “No.”

  “Say yes.” His lips on her cheeks.

  She twists her head. He pulls it close. His eyes, unblinking. “Do you
want me?”

  She cannot speak.

  “ ‘I want you.’ Say it.”

  She cannot speak.

  His lips in her hair. “You came because you want me. Say it. Say it.”

  Her head is swimming. He is too close. Her body is alive, every pore magnified. Time stills. She sees nothing but his face, she feels his breath in her hair. His hand buried in her hair, caressing. His lips on her throat. She is dying. There is no breath left in her body. She is drowning. She cannot move.

  “Say you want me. Say it.”

  She says it.

  He sees her, a tremor flits across her face, her parted lips, her cheeks flushed with fear and desire. One hand in her hair, his finger tracing a line from her ear toward her eyes, around them, down her nose, the curve of her lips, her chin tilted up.

  “You are mine,” he says. “Mine.”

  Now she is more afraid, trembling, alight. She dares not touch him. She will explode.

  He takes her hand, kisses it, licking the palm whose scratch had healed many weeks before. He places this palm on his cheek.

  Mine.

  “Touch me,” he says.

  She leans harder into the wall without realizing it. He is so close. She puts up her hand, an unconscious gesture, fending him off, but he touches it, so gentle, tracing a path across his face with her finger as he had just done to hers.

  “Say it,” he says. “Say ‘I want you.’ ”

  She closes her eyes.

  “Say it say it say it.”

  “I want you,” she says, barely a whisper.

  “Again.”

  She can’t. Her heart has swelled so much she can no longer inhale, the breath has left her body.

  Nick has not moved, but there is a shift in the very air because he has grown with the inexorable power he has over her, that has brought her here despite her frantic efforts to push him out of her thoughts. He stands now, giantlike, looming over her, his prey, helpless, he is huge, she tries to blink him away, back to where she can see him, but there is a film dancing in front of her eyes, and her legs can no longer hold her up because she cannot breathe, she is drowning against the wall, all she hears is the roaring of the sea she is drowning in. He is so close, immense, his palm cupping her cheek. He has not moved.