Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  Later still, I realized that I was acting not only out of fidelity to Ivanova, but out of fidelity to her maker, Angus Mann, in spite of himself. I was protecting what he, in the error of choosing a lesser albeit more wholesome actress, would have ruined. It was such a horribly arrogant thing to think, particularly in the humiliating maelstrom of my life at the time, that I did not think it until the thought was safe to consciously acknowledge. But there it was. I knew what was best. Angus did not. Elena Ivanova was safer with me than with him and in not offering my resignation, I was protecting Angus from a savaging regret that would have hounded him for the rest of his gin-soaked days.

  I might have told Blair, in all of his secret concern, that I had actually witnessed Angus in a rental car drive past my home as the police were congregating on my driveway. That revelation would have done nothing to solve the mystery of Angus’ condition, location or intentions, but it would have been something. It would have been a bit of news to someone starving for a bit of news. But something in me wanted to hold that information close, out of the light, perhaps out of a sense that Angus would not have wanted Blair, or even me, to know that he had made the effort to find me. Whatever he was thinking, whatever he was feeling, and even if I did not understand my own motivations, his secret would be my own.

  So Blair and Stewart and I camped out in the Santa Maria and proceeded to make the movie without him, hoping that he would show up one morning and take his seat and in that eloquently taciturn way of his tell us how we were ruining his story and, indeed, all literature generally.

  In the evenings I tended to keep to myself, staying home with all of the phones off. Blair was the only person who had any consistent success in breaking through my self-imposed exile, but this was usually because he had the last best chance to convince me to accompany him to dinner or a drink as we were both leaving the set. I declined more often than I accepted, but he had a better batting average than anyone else during that time, including Simon or any of my friends.

  One Saturday, after a particularly long week of filming, Blair shut the set down early and invited me and Stewart and Stewart’s long time boyfriend Carlos and Roger Wilk, Blair’s Director of Photography, and Roger’s wife Gloria out to Blair’s boat for a sunset sail. He waited for me to decline and invent another facially implausible excuse that he had typically accepted without challenging. He swung his arm over my shoulders as we walked to the door.

  “Look, Tillyjohn, don’t make me be charming,” he said.

  I tried to keep up my resistance, but he finally wore me down, enlisting Stewart to encourage me to come. Late the following afternoon, the six of us and an assistant on loan from a downtown restaurant called The Palm, glided out of San Pedro Bay in Blair’s seventy-eight foot luxury sports yacht – the Lady Dragonfish.

  It was a calm, clear day. The dying sun on my face and the soft salt wind pulled me up onto the cushioned bow while the others congregated in the cabin over drinks and hors d’oeuvres and Blair with one hand on the throttle shouting ribald Australian jokes over his shoulder. I listened to them laugh like I was alone, eavesdropping on a party over the neighbor’s fence, only the fence was a windshield behind me and the soft low rhythmic purring of the engines that rose up around me on all sides. It was as content and comfortable as I had been in a long time.

  It had been with some reluctance that I had accepted Blair’s invitation, caving in to the pressure mostly because he had caught me without any plausible excuse and making me feel self-conscious about resisting. My isolating inclination was not personal to Blair and I had not wanted him to think it was. But I had seriously underestimated the extent to which my longing for solitude was as much a desire to be out of Los Angeles as it was a desire to be away from people generally. As I lay on my back gazing up at a cloudless sky I could feel the city shrinking away behind me, its hold and its power loosening as the Lady Dragonfish slipped across the darkening sea.

  Blair motored us west around the point and south for about half the distance to Santa Catalina Island, finally stopping in an empty patch of sea roughly in the center of a triangle whose glinting points were Avalon Bay, Santa Monica, and Cosa Mesa. An amber glow as far east as San Clemente was increasingly visible as the sun disappeared into its slot on the horizon. The boat rocked and swayed in a lapping silence. It was there, surrounded by the Pacific and its twinkling crescent shorelines, that we ate fresh lobster around a polished wooden table for eight, drinking Blair’s favorite Australian reserve and talking of movies and politics and listening to Blair recount stories of hunting with his father in the Outback.

  He was as charming then, and as relaxed, as I can remember. He was a gracious king and we were his subjects. I watched as he extracted lobster meat and described his father taking aim over his head at a charging white buffalo. It reminded me vividly of our nights on that tiny island off the Kenyan coast, sitting on the screened veranda after a day of fighting over Ivanova’s words and manner and meaning, eating nyama choma with our stained red fingers and getting hopelessly drunk on the same wine. It was Sunjata who had announced me that afternoon as Miss Tillyjohn as we had approached Blair working on the script beneath the enormous Waterberry tree at the foot of the lily-strewn pond. The name had stuck. Tillyjohn. It was his name for me. It was right then, in his own way, that Blair had claimed me.

  Dessert was a rich chocolate ganache drizzled with a raspberry sauce and sprigs of fresh mint served on the small upper deck beneath the stars where there was just enough room for a semi-circle of six folding chairs. Blair opened a fourth bottle of wine, the last thing anyone really needed. Overindulgence was like a runaway train for Blair, feeding on its own momentum; the more he drank the more he enjoyed himself and the more the situation cried out for still more alcohol. But no one protested. The first three bottles had succeeded in loosening everyone up and pulling me out of my shell. I laughed and cavorted that evening in such a genuinely carefree way that it surprised even me.

  That fourth bottle, as it turned out, was just for Blair and me, the others having found the limits of common sense somewhere in bottle three. I too should have stopped sooner, but the weightlessness I felt floating on the dark ocean – my senses numb from over-stimulation, my head empty of worry and ambivalence for the first time in many weeks – was not a feeling I wanted to end.

  “More,” I said smiling holding out my glass. “More of that.”

  Stewart and Carlos performed an acapella cantata that Carlos had written about the family politics of coming out to his traditional Mexican parents. …Interdiction’s a fiction here north of the border, where there’s a marriage restriction but love’s made to order… It was a hysterically campy number Carlos was hoping to incorporate into a musical one of his friends was producing for a gay theater company in Silver Lake. That Stewart actually had a voice to go with his lips should not have been particularly surprising, but its power and its sweetness caught me off guard just the same. Carlos embracing Stewart from behind, they finished big, sending their voices soaring out over the water like they were releasing a pair of large colorful birds back out into the wild. We all hooted and applauded and Stewart and Carlos bowed and exchanged a kiss. Roger Wilk, normally a soft-spoken, retiring sort who always looked to me less a professional and highly experienced Director of Photography than a retired dentist or a watchmaker, clumsily remarked that it was a wonder Stewart’s lips were functioning at all given the number of hours he had been kissing me on the set that week. His wife swatted him.

  “What?” protested Roger. “Tilly’s a professional. She could kill a man uninitiated in the kissing arts. She makes her own training films just so no one gets hurt.”

  I am confident that it had not been Roger’s intent to allude to the sex video that was, as we finished our desserts, making its way through the Hollywood underground smut trade. Just the same, not a person on that boat thought of anything else for the next five or seven seconds. Coming to the rescue, Blair threw his arm around me, h
is words beginning to slough into each other.

  “Roger, you know why I insisted on Tillyjohn for this part? Don’t answer, I’ll tell you. It’s not because she’s a good kisser. It’s because she brings Ivanova to fucking life. Okay? She knows Ivanova better than I do. Better than Angus fucking Angus Mann.”

  The others laughed at this, albeit nervously. Roger and Gloria exchanged glances, as did Stewart and Carlos. We were all floating out in the middle of the Pacific and the captain was three sheets to the wind.

  “Tillyjohn,” Blair said turning to face me. “You know why Roger here has been my DP in five of my last eight films? Know why I keep using him? Don’t answer, I’ll tell you. Two reasons, actually. No, three. Three reasons. One, he’s bloody brilliant. Two,” Blair reached out and clutched Gloria’s hand and drew it to his lips, “he always brings Gloria ‘round and she’s an angel. And three, because Roger always makes me look good.” Blair stood and threw his arm around his much shorter, plumper, mostly bald colleague. “In every way.”

  Roger, obviously accustomed to this side of Blair, took the remark in good humor and without any apparent offense, although Gloria, the angel, looked away. It was Stewart who suggested that it was getting late. Gloria and the others, even the loaner from The Palm who was busy stacking dishes, were all quick to agree.

  The return to the harbor was quiet. The guests separated – Roger and Gloria on one side, Stewart and Carlos on the other, myself in the stern, leaving Blair and the server up in the wheelhouse piloting us in – each of us watching the dark sea beneath us, numbed by the wine and the vibration roar of the engines. The lights of Santa Catalina’s Avalon Bay were spectral, gloaming on the water. And as the lights grew smaller and dimmer, some chambers of my heart began deflate. I could feel the mainland lights growing brighter and brighter behind me. I emptied my glass in a single indelicate swallow. My head wheeled and I had to close my eyes.

  When the Lady Dragonfish had been docked and tied up, Blair warmly bade each of his guests a good night and thanked them for coming. He seemed more clear-minded, as if the wind and the motion on the ride back had sharpened his attention and beaten back the veil of intoxication.

  “Thanks,” I said, reaching the steps. “I’m really glad I came.”

  “Hold on,” he said, pulling me aside and reaching past me to shake Carlos’ hand. “I have something for you.”

  We waited for the last of them to disembark and disappear up the dock. Blair tugged at my wrist and gave his head a slight jerk. I followed him to the stern where I had spent most of the trip back.

  “Sit, sit,” he said and I did as instructed, scooting back into one of the white lounges. He was about to sit on the adjacent lounge but stopped in mid-lowering.

  “Wine?” he asked.

  “God no,” I said. “One more drop and I shouldn’t drive. I’d have to sleep on the boat.” I had intended a joke. Blair did not laugh. He sat. Another sleek craft trolled past and we watched it go. The King’s Ransom; the letters were a ridiculously Old English script. The wake slapped up against the boat, rocking us.

  “Blair…”

  “I love you, Tillyjohn.”

  I looked at him, stunned. His features were in profile and poorly lit by the harbor lights behind us. His eyes were shot through with red from the wine. He looked old. He watched The King’s Ransom for a moment, nosing into its slip, then looked down at his hands, then at me. We rocked. I waited.

  “I wasn’t expecting to say this to you. Not tonight. Someday maybe. But not tonight. But then it just felt… I don’t know. It felt right. Out there on the water. And you looking like this. Smiling. Laughing. My god you’re beautiful when you laugh. I know we’ve had a rough go of it. Before, I mean. I was an ass. I took you for granted. It was always about me. But we’ve both been through a lot. I feel different now. Collette and I are done. That, at long last is over and I’m quite literally the poorer for it but it’s done and I’m glad it’s done and I feel like I’m ready to get on with things. You know? To get on with my life. And you … you’ve been off with Zack and that whole bloody misadventure and now you’ve been thrown clear. Sort of. I know we need to get you through the fallout. But we will. I’ll be there for you every step. No matter what happens. And then here we are, Tillyjohn. Still together, still in each other’s lives and making this beautiful movie. But wiser now. Grounded.”

  Silence washed in like another wake, rocking the boat. I waited, my heart pulling at its moorings. Pulling to get out of the path of this storm. Blair stared out at the water. I could almost hear the sloshing in his head.

  “Blair, what are you saying?”

  He closed his eyes, reached his hand into his shirt pocket. The ring was like something chiseled from a full moon.

  “I want to be your husband, Tilly. I want to marry you. I want to take care of you and father your children. I want … I want to make you happy.”

  In all of the intervening years, I have cringingly assembled a list of moments that I would like to have an opportunity to do over, so that I can change my words or my behavior. I’d like to be able to go into an empty studio and run the loops, changing this scene, that moment, this reaction, those words until my past behavior is compatible with my current standards and sensibilities. Everyone’s life could benefit greatly from an uncompromising editor. We are all too rough and undisciplined and sloppy; excessive in our ways. But, then again, it is only the unedited work that holds any truth. In any event, I blame my reaction on the alcohol, my general edginess in those days, and the left field shock of Blair’s proposal.

  I stood abruptly in recoil, backing up toward the railing as if the cold brilliant stone in his palm were burning my face.

  “Blair… I … I … No. We can’t. I can’t. No, no, no.”

  He stood, hands outstretched as if to catch me; his face watching something horrific in slow motion.

  “I do love you, Tillyjohn. I…”

  “No. Blair. You don’t. You want me. There’s a big fucking difference.”

  “No. I’m telling you, I have loved you since… since Mombasa. I…”

  “Don’t. Just stop. Blair. Please. We have been many things to each other. You’re my friend. My benefactor. My supporter and protector. You are my director. We have been collaborators. And fuck buddies. And hardly any of that I regret…”

  “Hardly any?” he blurted.

  “All of it. I mean, shit, none of it, Blair. I regret none of it. Okay? But you have never loved me. I mean, not love-love. Not marriage love. At first I was a sexy little plaything and now I like to think maybe you respect my ability as an actor, but…”

  Blair’s hand closed slowly around the ring and it was like the moon was slipping into a cloud. His eyes began to harden in the humiliation and his jaw flexed as he spoke.

  “Don’t tell me what I feel. I know what I feel, because I’m the one goddamned feeling it.”

  “Don’t be mad, Blair. Oh god, I’m so sorry. I don’t want to hurt… I’m not trying to make you feel…”

  “No, fuck that. Fuck that. Just come out and say that you don’t love me. Tell me to my face that even though I could give you the world and that you would never want for anything ever again, homes, boats, starring roles, fucking jewelry, you do not want my hand in marriage. Let’s just get it over with so that we can put an end to this.”

  “Blair…”

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re… you could be my father.”

  “What?! My age? Is that what’s got you all tied up in knots? Didn’t seem to bother you balling in the back seat of the limo. That why you think I’m paying your legal fees? I wasn’t trying to be fucking fatherly.”

  “That’s not…”

  “Daddy didn’t seem to get in the way of Rufus fucking Einemann.”

  “I never loved Rufus.”

  “And you never loved me. Say it.”

  “I don’t want…”

  “Say it!”

  The old tempestuous
Blair that had been absent for so long now fully inhabited his furious, reddened expression. His eyes held me, demanding the answer that would cut him the deepest. I obliged.

  “I never loved you, Blair. I always …”

  “Don’t tell me you’re still wet for Zack West, that faggy degenerate Kike.”

  “Hey…”

  “Oh, what, did I insult your boyfriend? I’ve seen that fucking video so many times my eyes bleed just thinking about it and I still can’t fathom what you see in the guy. How can you go down on that piece of …”

  “Blair!” I shouted, feeling fresh rage race my own humiliation to the fore. “Just shut the fuck up about Zack. He has nothing to do with you. With us.”

  “The moaning and the grunting and the way you close your eyes as he’s banging you from behind. I mean it’s really a fucking priceless piece of work.”

  I crossed my arms and balled my fists, glowering at him and trying to plot my escape. I wanted off of that boat like anyone wants to be alone before they vomit. I could feel the grief in me, old and terrible, stirring in its heavy hidden pools, entering my bloodstream, collapsing history.

  “You should get the little gold man just for that performance alone. It’s quite literally unforgettable. I can’t get it out of my fucking head. It’s the last thing I see when I go to sleep and it’s still there when I wake up. Are you planning on visiting him in prison? Will you love him any less when he’s getting’ it up his clacker from his cellmate?”

  “I never loved Zack,” I said, speaking that truth for the first time as the rising tide of bile breached all of the levees that I had spent a lifetime constructing and pushed it within conscious reach. Floating nearby in the detritus was the image of Collette Gaines and the sickening realization that the other woman who had spelled her end was me. My father’s face bobbed into view with a popping bubble, his expression at once consoling Collette Gaines and accusing me.