by Karen Moline
She never mentions Olivier.
Nick does not speak of the astonished delight glistening in Toledo’s eyes during dailies, watching Nick’s scenes shot the day before, or of the cast, pouncing on this unexpected vigor, grabbing it quickly and feeding it back, rallying around their superstar’s surprising willingness to share, to shoot and reshoot, endlessly patient during difficult technical scenes on dank cobbled streets, questioning, willing and open, to work, and then work harder even as his breath traces an aurora of steam in the chilly damp air. The work is there, all-enfolding, all-sustaining, says Faust, it is harder than Nick had ever imagined to actually be present in it, and it is satisfaction unexpected to revel in the seriousness of creation for its own sake. To Nick’s surprise he is capable, if only because he can close his eyes and see Olivia’s impassioned dance behind the canvas, the wrinkle of concentration between her eyebrows, her mental absence as she painted his face more potent than her presence.
His Gretchen is madly in love with him, melting at his touch, offering him every opportunity for a seduction he once would have welcomed but now spurns, gently, joking, flirtatiously friendly and respectful. Everyone is respectful.
If it weren’t for Olivia, I might almost be pleased, but if it weren’t for Olivia, this filming would most likely have crossed the line into the fiasco I’d feared, even though I’d always believed Nick capable of such a role, and encouraged him to play it.
If it weren’t for Olivia.
Nick does not speak of the elated late-night phone calls to the Coast by gloating executives already deep in the quicksand complications of strategic marketing for a film they’d thought would last for a week and then be yanked straight to video. We never thought he had it in him, they say, when only weeks before they’d been calling Nick’s indulgent fantasy Faust’s Folly, and yet here it is, shimmering to life before their very eyes, a real story, thrillingly told.
Nick does not speak of it.
There is a new and shifting mood in him, one that so perfectly suits the character he is playing that even Toledo does not credit himself for its gradual deepening. He sees only a gravity in Nick’s eyes that had never been there before, a somber worry, a questioning passion, elusive, ineluctible, and, were he aware of its effect, devastatingly sexy.
If I didn’t know Nick as well as I did, I might even have called it something like love.
SHE HEARS a bell ringing, disturbing her reverie. It has been ringing for quite some time, her machine is not on, she wonders why not in that brief second before she picks up the phone, she must have turned it off, yes, because Olivier is meant to be calling, and she wants to pick it up on the first ring and tell him Darling, please, please, come home, come home to me, I can’t bear it anymore, don’t leave me alone, I am going mad.
The phone has been ringing and ringing.
“Olivia,” he says.
“Is it really you?”
“Of course it is,” Olivier says, a faint echo in her ear. “Who else would call you this time of night?”
“You,” she says, “only you. But it’s your night. My day, and I should be working.”
“Is that why you let it ring so many times?” He is teasing, but she panics.
“Oh, I couldn’t paint, so I was running a bath.”
The briefest hesitation. “What is it, ma petite?”
“I just miss you too much.”
“Is there something else? Something that’s bothering you? I hear it, in your voice.”
She is sitting on the floor, gripping the receiver with both hands. Hear it. Hear it in her voice. Not possible. “Yes,” she says.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t wait for you to get back, so I’m going to get on a plane tomorrow. Well, I can’t tomorrow, I have a sitting. The day after, then. Soon,” she says, although she has only just decided. “It was going to be a surprise.”
He is amused, and pleased.
“Let’s get married, now,” she says abruptly.
“Why now?”
“I don’t know, let’s just, please. Please.”
“You are very adorable,” he says, chuckling softly at her impassioned plea, “but you know that’s not possible. Your American paperwork takes days, anyway, and I haven’t got a spare moment to myself.”
“Except at night.”
“Except at night. But I won’t allow myself to believe you’re really coming until I see you. It is too much to hope for.”
“Good. Then I’m really coming.”
“Darling, what is it?” he says. “Something else. Tell me. Tell me now.”
“I just want to see your face, that’s all, and it’s cold and dreary here, and raining all the time, and I’m sick of it.”
“Are there problems with the portrait, that actor?”
“No, of course not. I finished it weeks ago, and he was really pleased with it. At least he said so.”
“How did you do him?” His voice drowsy, sweet. “I’ve forgotten.”
“A minotaur,” she says, “standing in a maze.”
“Oh yes. A beast. Lost.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I have the flight number.”
“It’s such a long flight.”
“I don’t care. I’ll take a sketchbook.”
“Silly girl.”
“Mmm.”
“I’ll fetch you at the airport. I don’t care what I have to cancel.”
“Will you?”
“In a big black car.”
“Naughty.” She shivers. “What did you play tonight? I’ll put it on.”
“The Mozart program, but I missed the cadenza in the D minor Fantasia.”
“Because you were thinking of me.”
“Sans doute.”
“How many encores?”
“Four.”
“Only four?”
“I must be slipping.”
“Go to sleep now.”
“I will. Je t’embrasse.”
“Me too. Soon.”
“Soon,” he says, “but not soon enough.”
HER HEELS on the cobblestones of the mews, walking past the car dealer, the pub where normal people are having a pint and a sandwich, gossiping during their lunch break, her heels dragging as she walks up Queens Gate to the park, past the Albert Memorial, up the paths by the neatly tended shrubs and flower beds, past the Watts statue, brushing her gloved hand along the horse’s hoof for luck, and knowing she would not find it as the wind whips her hair, past the American students trying to throw a Frisbee, past the obelisk, past the fat man walking his corgi, “Come along, you little nipper,” he says, nodding to her in greeting, past the pond, looking across it to the Henry Moore sculpture, a gleaming white beacon.
Where are you going, she imagines she hears it whisper, and why are you going there?
It is not me, not my true self going there, she tells herself, letting him touch me this way, wanting him to, the fear and pleasure jumbled so helplessly and intoxicatingly together, craving that recklessness dragging me down to places I don’t want to go.
She can acknowledge it in her painting, she realizes as she walks out of the Lancaster Gate and past the tube station, her pace slowing as she heads up Queensway, past the kebab stands and pinched faces of hurrying shoppers. She wants it there, in her work, there where she can control it.
Still her feet keep moving, taking her past the baths where she should be lying, sweating the shameful duplicity out of her body, seeping in fat drops from her pores, trickling down her body and away, far away, there she should be lying, instead of in the arms of her lover, waiting impatiently for her in his gilded flat just around the corner.
EACH TIME she is a little later, she who so hated to be kept waiting. The relentless sweep of the hands on her watch, blithely ticking, another minute gone,
her wishing it by, wanting and not wanting, loathing the knowledge that her footsteps might slow at the familiar sight of Porchester Square, yet they will always take her up the stairs, and through the door.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she says as soon as she walks in.
Nick is lying on the bed, reading a script, smoking, and he looks at her, his instinctive response to her petulance making his expression go vacantly wary.
“Then why are you?” he says, careful to keep his voice low and perfectly conversational. “You could’ve called, to cancel. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I know. But there’s something I want to say.”
“Then say it.”
“I can’t when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re so maddeningly fucking calm.”
“What do you want me to do, when you come bursting in like this?” His eyes begin to sparkle with the pleasure of a fight as he stubs out his cigarette and stretches languorously before sitting up.
She still does not know him well enough, or perhaps chooses to delude herself, I cannot decide which, to realize how one tiny chink is all he needs, a hole in the dike, one tiny crack, to sidle in wherever he wants to go, his strength taking sustenance from weakness, the slightest hint of it swelling him, empowered, a snake swallowing a rabbit, engorged with gluttony.
“Last time you came here—when was it, oh, just a scant few days ago—you were in a bad mood too, weren’t you? It’s becoming a regular habit. You’re almost always late, and you’re usually in a snit about it. It’s not like you to be so cranky.”
“So now you know what I’m like?” she mutters, her eyes straying to the bed, the covers rumpled from Nick’s lounging. The silken drapery cords are linked around the bedposts, where he’d left them, where he always leaves them, taunting reminders. He sees her eyes upon them, and smiles, wickedly.
“Have a drink,” he says, motioning to the champagne. “It’ll calm your nerves.”
“There’s only one thing that’ll calm my nerves.” She turns to the door, but he is too quick, blocking her path. She cringes, waiting for him to pounce, but he stands there, his face a cipher, watching her, assessing all the possibilities.
“At least take off your coat, and then you can tell me what you came to say,” he says, his voice mild, blandly reassuring. He eases her coat and scarf off, draping them over one of the chairs, careful not to touch her. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Want some tea?”
She shakes her head and sits down on the other chair. He sits on the edge of the bed, nonchalant. The role of the sympathetic, docile suitor fits him as sleekly as his jeans. It is a part he has played many times before.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
She takes a deep breath.
“It’s guilt, isn’t it?” he says, not wanting to hear anything he can’t say first. “You shouldn’t make yourself feel so guilty.”
“How do you know what I feel, or don’t?”
“Okay, maybe I don’t know. I’m imagining,” he says. “Even someone of my limited education can recognize a guilty conscience when he sees one. It’s written all over your face.”
She flushes. “I don’t believe you,” she says, unconvinced.
“Then don’t. We believe only what we want to believe, anyway, you and me, Olivia.” This is not like Nick, to speak of such things, but he is clever, far more clever than she thinks at snapping up her confusion. He has encouraged this anger in her, preferring it to the calmer disposition that exists outside this flat, for it is the perfect counterpoint to his temperament. He baits it, eagerly awaiting it only to subdue it, conquering her and her desperate moans. Just when this anger is about to overcome her saner instincts he transforms himself into a sympathetic ear, a loving brother, a trusted friend.
I shift the camera as he gets up and goes around to the back of her chair and starts massaging her shoulders. I have to move, stretch my legs, do something. Nick is enjoying his performance far too much.
Olivia shivers when he touches her, but does not pull away. “You’re one solid lump,” he says, probing her clenched muscles. “Relax. Close your eyes. Calm down.”
“Nick,” she says.
“Yes.”
“I can’t—”
“I know.” His fingers sure and strong, soothing away her tension. “Just relax.”
The room is silent, the sounds of the street muffled into indistinct mumblings of noise, a child shouting, a siren, the heavy rumble of a truck. It is warmer outside than usual, the sun shining, and I forgot to light the fire.
“Lie down,” he says, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “I want to rub your back.”
“No—”
“Lie down,” he says, sweetly insistent, pulling her up and propelling her to the bed, pushing the comforter out of the way. “It will make you feel better.”
She thought she had the energy to fight him today, to say this is the last time, and mean it, but she hasn’t, she can’t when he is being nice. I have long thought that men who know when to be nice, these skillful practitioners of seduction and elicitors of orgasms who transfer their niceness into the bedroom, these men who are so skilled at sex are in truth those creatures who cannot love. It is all put into the act itself, so that their niceness is never selfless, but a shiny mirror meant only to reflect their performance. Only then can they bask in its glory, distill it into all their other, equally meaningless acts, their smooth hellos and busy days and vapid, useless nights.
Nice, from them, is easy.
Nice, from Nick, is irresistible.
He pulls off Olivia’s boots, and her socks, eases her sweater over her head, unhooks her bra, not touching her jeans, and covers her bare back with the comforter. “Don’t move,” he says, and unlocks the trunk, rummaging for the bottle of scented oil I’d put in there weeks before. Then he quickly unbuttons his shirt, takes it off, and throws it in the corner.
He rubs the oil between his palms, to warm it, then bends over to the ripe warmth of Olivia’s skin, glowing white, delicious. He wants to sink his teeth into the divine taste of it, but instead he is calmly massaging her neck.
“Yummy,” she says, “this oil. Where’d you get it?”
“M got it. Elixir of Life, it’s called.”
He feels her chuckle softly, relaxing further, gentled, his hands steady, pushing the comforter away, concentrating, up and down her spine, her arms, back to her neck, stealing down again.
She turns her head to the side. “Who lives here?” she asks him.
“What do you mean?”
“Alderson, Andrews, Fairley, and Scott. The names, on the buzzers.”
“Sounds like a law firm.”
“Mmm, it does. But I never hear anybody. The building seems so empty.”
“I guess it does,” he says, his voice so steady and even you’d never presume that he was lying through his teeth, “but I never much thought about it. It’s not like I spend so much time here, or you.” Her muscles tense reflexively, and he rubs it away. “It’s one of the reasons I like this flat so much, the quiet, I mean. The privacy. Nobody knows who I am here, and nobody wants to know. I haven’t been chased down the street once. Must be slipping.”
“Do you get chased so much?” She turns her head to the other side. “That’s a stupid thing to say. Of course you do.”
He looks up at the mirror, and me, and smiles.
“Flip over,” he says even as he eases her over, then stretches across the bed to turn down the light. “Give me your hand.” He takes it, sitting at her side, not touching any other part of her body. “Hands are the nicest.” He is thorough, his motions firm, assured, lingering over the paint specks freckling her fingers.
She opens her eyes to watch him, absorbed in his task, concentrating, his features almost boyish, and
he is pretending that the heat of her gaze is not burning a dull throb deep in him. He shifts to her other hand, then, slowly, his fingers move up her arm, over her shoulders, down to her breasts, swirling, dulcet fingers, her nipples are hard and he won’t touch them, he ignores her desire, moving down to her ribs, her belly, unbuckling her jeans, easing them off, leaving her panties on, rubbing more oil between his palms, rubbing it, lavender and rosemary and geranium, smoothly into her heels, the soles of her feet, her ankles, her calves, her knees, up her thighs, soothing her into lazy tranquillity.
Her anger, the long despair of her walk across the park, has disappeared, dissipated into the silence of the room, absorbed into the brocade and gilt, sunk into the luxurious comforter, tranquilized by his knowing fingers. The familiar ache replaces it, not leaving her, the aching burden of pleasure and the aching burden of guilt.
I see it all so clearly on her face.
She’s not ready to say what she came to say. That’s why she’s here, why she didn’t call, why her feet dragged her across the park. She still wants it, I see the desire shining in her eyes like molten silver, a sword’s edge, flashing in sunlight. I see it transformed by a blink into remorse and a biting sense of shame for her greedy grasp of the pleasure Nick gives her. She knows it’s not just what he’s given to her painting, she still wants him, here, in the flat, her body wants him, awoken from a long slumber, his body taking her relentlessly, she will let him devour her whole as long as he doesn’t stop, not here, not now, not yet.
Every relationship needs a touch of madness. I see it so clearly every time I look in the mirror, my own desire reflected back to me, coolly mocking.
“Feeling better?” Nick says.
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go home?”
Her eyes fly open. “That’s a trick question.”
“Sorry,” he says, caressing her thighs, “forgive me.” His hands straying closer. “Is this okay?” She nods, helpless now, and closes her eyes. “Tell me when to stop.” His fingers on her, stroking the crazy, infuriating ache, pulling down her panties, calm, deliberate, in ever-narrowing circles, her arms on his, gripping him, pushing him in closer.