He was too busy trying to convince her of his innocence to do that.
“Phone’s dead,” he said, in a voice that aimed for cheery and missed by a million miles. If she’d been asked to label it, she would have gone with wind whistling through a giant hole—and that was before she’d gotten to the lying part.
Oh he was lying so hard it pained her. He had to know she’d seen. He clearly understood that his lie was meaningless. Yet he felt he had to offer it anyway just to...just to what? Hide the fact that he wanted out of this now? Suggest that his real life was calling, far sweeter than it had seemed before the awkward moment in the closet?
That sounded pretty accurate to her, until she remembered what he’d just said. He wasn’t telling her he’d gotten some important calls and needed to run right out the door this very second. He was pretending he could no longer receive them. That for all intents and purposes, all communication with the people in his world had ceased. They were gone. They were dead.
He wanted to stay.
Even though she’d bungled things and reacted weirdly to affection and thought of him as her dead husband, he wanted to stay. And now he was just waiting for her to tell him that it was okay—as though it was possible that she wouldn’t. He really thought she might question him about the lie, or suggest he find out what people wanted. She could see it in every little guilty glance he made in the phone’s direction, then even clearer in the desperate look he gave her.
Don’t make me go back there, that look said.
But that only made it easier to ask what she’d been afraid to before.
“What do you want for dinner?” she tried.
And then reveled in every inch of his obvious relief.
* * * * *
It was clear that the next step was up to her. The only problem was...she didn’t really know what that step should be. So far she’d muddled her way through the first stages of friendship without accidentally killing him, but who knew what would happen if she tried anything else? She might make assumptions, terrible assumptions—like the one she’d almost made the night before.
He’d followed her to her door when she had said she was going to bed, and for one thrilling second she’d thought he intended to come in. That he’d tired of the couch and didn’t think it a big deal to do things this way instead. But then just as she’d gone to shyly offer, he’d kissed her on the cheek and disappeared back down the stairs.
It was mortifying and maddening in equal measures—so much so that she was thinking of just asking. She could make it sound matter-of-fact, like the day before yesterday when she’d unwrapped him a spare toothbrush instead of letting him carry on cleaning his teeth with his finger. Yours is blue because you’re a boy, she’d said, and he’d laughed and she’d laughed and both of them had pretended that he wasn’t taking a bigger step here than most people did after five months of intensive dating.
It wasn’t like that.
Their relationship wasn’t like that.
Dear God, they had a relationship.
She had to try the asking thing.
“Bernie?”
“Yeah?”
She loved the way he said yeah. He always sounded so super-interested in whatever she was about to say—though here it was something of an issue. He glanced up from a book he was currently reading, locking every bit of his attention on her, and suddenly she couldn’t say.
It seemed lame anyway.
Do you think we’re dating?
What kind of person said something like that? Only a person who knew absolutely nothing about human interaction. Other normal people would simply understand when dating was happening or otherwise, and the only reason she didn’t was because she was a gigantic idiot.
“Never mind.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah...”
“Because it sounds like it might have been important.”
“It really wasn’t.”
“You’re making your important face.”
She put her hand up instinctively to see if she could feel what that was like, but had to stop midway. He was looking, and sort of smiling at the gesture. And though it wasn’t a bad smile—though it was filled with the sort of familiarity she’d always wanted to have with another person—she was too embarrassed to keep going.
Instead she settled for just asking, like a real person.
“I am? What does my important face look like?”
“It’s sort of the same as your trying to make pasta face. You get this line down the center of your forehead, and your eyes take on a kind of haunted sheen.”
“In my defense, that pasta was evil. I’m convinced it was evil.”
“I don’t disagree. Pretty sure most pasta does not explode and then disintegrate.”
She wanted to protest here, but found she couldn’t. Her memory of the previous night’s dinner was identical to his no matter how ridiculous it sounded out loud. Her pasta had exploded, and then disintegrated. They’d had to eat it with spoons.
There was nothing she could say.
She just had to steer him away from this whole topic.
“I’m really not feeling that way, though. The exploding-pasta way, I mean. I was just... I was just...”
She wished she knew what came after just. Or at least, she wished she knew it faster. That one maddening eyebrow of his was already starting to rise. Pretty soon it would be all the way up to his hairline, after which her entire lying house of cards would come tumbling down.
She needed a word. Any word. Any explanation.
“I was wondering if you wanted to watch a movie tonight,” she managed finally, and came close to patting herself on the back.
It was premature though, of course. Her triumph was always premature.
“You were making your important face over the potential watching of a movie?”
Part of her really loved his incredulity. He never forced it out the way some people did, in big guffawing waves. And it always came with that dimple in his left cheek—the one she could just about see beneath stubble that was close to turning into a beard. He was almost adorable when he was being all skeptical.
But right now it was killing her.
“Well, no,” she said, and she was actually sweating as she did so. Every ounce of effort was going toward a valid explanation, and when one finally came to her it was like the heavens opening. “I was just worried what you would think.”
“Of what?” he asked, clearly thinking there wasn’t an answer.
But there was, ah sweet relief there was.
“Of my secret movie basement.”
“You have a secret movie basement?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what you think.”
“I think it’s weird that I’ve been here a week and you didn’t tell me about it. We watched reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond yesterday. I came close to going out for rentals—and would have, if I wasn’t deathly afraid of returning to find an old lady who tells me you’ve been dead for ten years.”
She had the almighty urge to apologize here—not only for subjecting him to unnecessary viewings of terrible sitcoms, but also for hiding something from him for no good reason. Or at least, no reason that made any sense to anyone but her. He was never going to be bothered by her weird stuff, quite clearly. There was no need to keep it all compartmentalized, and he deserved a sorry for the assumption.
Yet somehow a laugh came out instead.
God, he made the craziest things sound sane. He made them light and fun and cool, instead of the dark mess she always found herself mired in. She imagined dead husbands and stepping off her porch onto nothing, and he turned it into a B movie from the eighties that she sort of wanted to watch.
More than sort of, in truth.
She wanted to live in it, with him.
“Yeah, you can giggle, but my fear is real. It’s not just something from an old episode of The Twilight Zone that traumatized me as a child,” he said.
“Are you sure? Because that’s kind of what it sounds like.”
“I’m totally sure. The other day you touched my arm and I felt an unearthly chill.”
“I think that’s just my terrible circulation.”
“And what about that ghost sound you made?”
“I’ve never made a ghost sound.”
“You did. When the pasta exploded.”
“That was just terror and shame.”
“Well you’ve just got a rational explanation for everything, don’t you?” he asked, but she could tell something else was coming. He’d narrowed his eyes, and after a second he pointed a faux-accusatory finger. “Apart from your bizarre fear of me seeing your secret movie basement. I still don’t have a rational explanation for that.”
“Does there really need to be one?”
“There does if you have a well down there that you’re going to throw me into, and that I then try to escape from by capturing the little dog you don’t have.”
“I swear, I only do that if you don’t put the lotion on your skin.” She paused, pretending to consider. “Or is that when you get the hose again?”
“Seriously, we’re making obscure jokes about Silence of the Lambs together and you didn’t think I’d want to see your movie basement? Lead the goddamn way.”
Of course it was only after he’d expressed enormous excitement that she realized—she actually was kind of nervous about showing him. Not as nervous about asking him if they were dating, but certainly there was something there. It hummed just below the surface of her more casual thoughts, just lying in wait for the right moment. Then once they got to the basement door, the moment sprung itself on her.
She knew there was a reason not to show him, and there it was suddenly in a blinding flash of oh my fucking God. It nearly paralyzed her. She came close to just stopping with her hand up to the doorknob, and even after she’d managed to open it she couldn’t quite go through. She just stood at the top of the rickety stairs as he trotted trustingly down into the darkness.
What on earth was he going to think when he saw it?
She had every single one of his films down there. She had them all, from his early bloody bit parts in several slasher franchises, right the way through to Captain Amazing. And he couldn’t possibly fail to notice them either. If she’d scattered them around the place she might have gotten away with it, but she knew she hadn’t. She stored all her films by actor or actress, so somewhere down there he had a shelf all to himself.
Like a great and terrible testament to some obsessive insanity.
“Bernie, wait a second,” she called out, but it was too late.
He had already been sucked in by her movie collection.
“Holy Mother of God,” he said, and she understood why. Even she sometimes came down here and took a step back, the way he did when he first saw it. All you could see from the stairs were row upon row of bookshelves, each one so close to the next you could hardly see between. They seemed to gather together in the darkness, almost to the ceiling and studded with colors you could just about make out.
There was the red of 28 Days Later and the brilliant blue of Superman, just waiting in the patient darkness for him to discover them. And though she knew what else he would discover while he was in there, the thought still gave her a thrill. It made her go all warm with pride—as did the thing he then said.
“How in God’s name did you amass all of this?” he asked, in a way that suggested it was some staggering achievement. Other people gained promotions or climbed mountains. She created a film library so extensive he didn’t even wait for an answer. He was too busy disappearing between shelves that stood taller than his head, one hand trailing over the boxes as though he just couldn’t help himself.
He had to revel in them just a little bit.
Or maybe revel in them a lot.
She could hear him making sounds as he wandered farther down—small notes of surprise or awe, culminating in the kind of exclamation she adored him for.
“I cannot fully believe you have every episode of Star Trek. You have a bookcase of Star Treks, Alice, yet we have been watching the food channel. We must rectify this immediately with a marathon,” he said, and her sad little heart fluttered.
Did he really want to watch Star Trek with her? And a whole marathon too—that would take so much time. He’d have to be here for an entire month to get it done, and oh that month sounded like heaven. There would be huddling under blankets, popcorn and party food, falling asleep halfway through episodes of Voyager—all the things she’d been promised by people talking about TV watching on Tumblr.
But best to play it cool.
“Sure, if you want.”
“Seriously? You’re amazing.”
“Well, I do my best.”
“You succeed—look at all these great fucking movies. Fright Night, Starman, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Terminator...you love all of these?”
He sounded incredulous, she thought. And she knew why. They were such old movies for someone like her to love. They were weird, she was sure, for someone like her. But she couldn’t tell him why she loved these weird old things. She couldn’t tell him about watching with her mother, because then she’d have to talk about all of that stuff. So instead she went with something light and noncommittal.
“I wouldn’t have them if I didn’t,” she said, and he seemed to fall silent then. She could still see him at the end of the third row, looking and looking with eyes as wonder-filled as his voice, but the comments came to an abrupt stop. They came to so abrupt a stop that it worried her a little. Had he guessed why she liked stuff like that? Was he going to ask? And even worse...
Had he seen her secret shame?
She didn’t think he was in the right place, but it had been so long since she watched anything of his she couldn’t be sure. She just had to follow him in some vain hope of heading him off at the pass—a feat that got more futile as time went on. Just as she was sure she’d reached him he would disappear around another corner, until she started to feel lost in her own library. She rounded an L-shaped section, expecting to see him on the other side, but he wasn’t there anymore.
Somehow she’d created an impossible labyrinth, with walls that slid suddenly sideways and corridors that took you to nowhere. Next thing she knew there’d be staircases on the ceiling, and Holden floating upside down above her head.
She had to ask.
“Hey, where are you?”
“Over here, by the random movie section,” he said, and relief flooded through her. He hadn’t worked it out yet. He wasn’t even close, in fact. After a second he added more, in so bemused a tone she could have kissed him. She could have kept him like that forever, in a permanent state of blissful ignorance. “None of these are in order.”
“I don’t need any kind of order,” she said, and for one glorious moment he seemed satisfied with that. She saw him through the gaps between boxes, finding this movie and that movie like unearthing buried treasure, just having fun with the idea of everything being a big jumble.
But eventually he was compelled to mention the problem.
“How do you ever find anything, though?” he asked, and she had to think fast.
Unfortunately, thinking fast was not her strong suit.
“Oh...well...they kind of are. All the Star Treks are together, all the sitcoms are together, all the horror is together and so on.”
“Yeah but there’s no alphabetical.”
She saw him glancing up and up, as though searching for the elusive ABCs.
She hated to disappoint him. She hated it so much.
“I don’t like alphabetical,” she said, but knew that wouldn’t be the end of the matter. He had hold of the end of the string now, and was pulling and pulling on it. And when it finally came free, there was laughter in his voice. He sounded so amused, which was somehow much worse than contempt.
“Wait...are these in order of actor?”
“Um...se
e the thing about that is—”
“They are in order of actor. You’ve got ten movies here starring James Spader.” He laughed, oh God he laughed. “You like James Spader, huh? Got a little crush on him?”
“That could possibly be the case.”
“Have a thing for smart redheads, maybe?”
“Well I do sort—”
“Guess that explains why you’re not into me.”
She thought she’d misheard, for a second. His tone was not the tone she was used to, all bright with amusement and affection. It was a touch darker, as if he’d just tasted something bitter. And the actual words...surely he couldn’t mean what she thought he meant? But before she could even ask about it or make it better, he’d already moved on to some other flummoxing, unfathomable point.
“Oh my God, Alan Rickman? That...is a really hard standard to meet. I can’t even do a British accent, as you probably know if you’ve seen my completely excruciating attempt at a period drama.” She held her breath, knowing what was coming. He’d moved a little farther to the left now, so couldn’t really fail to see it—though she somehow hoped he wouldn’t. She hoped she hoped she hoped and all in vain. “Christ you have seen it. And you’ve also seen the one with killer spiders...great, that should have given you a wonderful impression of my ability to fail at acting. Man you’ve got quite a few here you...”
He neither came to an abrupt stop nor trailed off, yet both said the same thing pretty clearly. The burning light of realization was upon him, so hot it was melting her at the same time. Why had she brought him down here? Why? Why?
This was probably the worst way to explain what he then grasped.
“You seem to have a section of my movies.” He hesitated, waiting for clarification that she was never going to give. If it was going to be done, he had to do it himself. He had to do it himself in this really weird hollow voice that made her heart sink about three feet. “Do you have a crush on me, Alice?”
Beyond Repair (Deeper Than Desire) Page 8