Malcolm and Juliet

by Bernard Beckett

  The problem was with the opportunity that lay ahead of her. It was an absolutely brilliant opportunity, more brilliant even than the last one. And as Charlotte knew only too well, nothing hurt quite so badly as screwing up a brilliant opportunity.

  If she closed her eyes and imagined the perfect start to a relationship, this was it: two perfectionists going about their craft, drawn to each other, kept apart by the camera, and the side of it they had chosen.

  Charlotte had spent an unhealthy amount of time trying to figure out why her last attempt at winning Malcolm’s heart had failed so miserably. Eventually she had settled on the classic shy boy explanation. Beneath the deceptive cool of Malcolm’s framing eye there lurked a deep uncertainty. Maybe he’d never been with a girl before. Maybe, like so many creative geniuses, he struggled with the detail of everyday existence. That being the case, the yacht story had been all wrong. It had frightened him.

  So she’d come up with a solution. Tonight she would match his under-confidence. She would manufacture a character of understated wit and fashionable self-doubt. Her flirting would be quiet and cautious, so that he would hardly realise it was happening. Then, when he finally did realise, it would be too late.

  Best Laid Tables

  ‘Well it’s too late to change your mind now,’ Juliet said, taking Malcolm by the arm and steering him and his camera back towards the doorway of the near empty restaurant. Near empty wasn’t a good sign. It was 7.30, Friday evening, and the footpaths in this neighbourhood, the city’s feeding trough, were bustling. Two doors down a queue was forming outside another eating establishment.

  Not at the Merry Mediterranean. It hadn’t seen a queue in a long while. Here ‘deserted’ was part of the decor; a lack of custom blending in neatly with the fly-shit-spattered, hanging velvet lampshades and the desperate warning gasps of the goldfish in the filthy tank at the entrance.

  As Malcolm resisted the pull of his indefatigable friend, it all came back to him, details that really should have surfaced at the planning stage. The cockroaches that had led to his taking swabs of the table surface, the swearing match his father had had with the small, hairy owner, the stomach cramps that had lasted another three days. No, filming here was a bad idea, made worse by the uncertain surge of an empty 40 watt evening. And Charlotte would think he’d chosen it especially, and so another dream would sag and then slowly peel from the soggy walls of his secret life.

  ‘Forget it. It was a stupid idea. The light in there is impossible, and how’s it going to look on film anyway? Cheap and desperate. Who wants to watch cheap and desperate?’

  ‘Half the country, if the ratings can be believed,’ Juliet responded, her jaw set in a tight line of defiance, but Malcolm’s drooping confidence would not be diverted.

  ‘And the atmosphere’s all wrong for this sort of thing. You can’t get romance in a place like that.’

  ‘It looks...sort of...mysterious.’

  ‘Did I tell you there were traces of rat poison in the food last time we ate here?’

  ‘So we don’t eat off the tables.’

  ‘No, in the meat. Think about that. How do you get traces of rat poison in meat?’

  ‘Look here, Malcolm.’ Juliet took him by both shoulders and backed him up against the door. With the camera bag over one shoulder and the tripod in his hand, he was in no position to resist. ‘This is what’s known as a last chance. Brian and Kevin and Charlotte have all said yes, the table is booked, the owner has given us permission and in twenty minutes we start filming. I am going to be witty, charming, and damned sexy, and you my friend are going to capture every second of it. So, unless you have a clever way of finding a thousand dollars in the next sixty seconds, we’re going inside. Do you understand?’

  Malcolm, despite the dazzling glare of humiliation’s approaching headlights, had no choice but to turn and manouevre his way through the spring-hinged door.

  Inside, fear gave way to cold hard fact. Malcolm counted eleven tables. Only two of them were occupied, the first by a couple whose decline matched the building’s. She, 140 kilos and rising, was dressed in a loud floral print, matched by the plastic beads about her neck and the pink lipstick of her surprisingly small mouth. He, with his back to the door, appeared miniature by comparison. His hair had left him some time ago and he was stooped over his menu, like a man attempting to deny the world through an act of sheer concentration. Malcolm couldn’t blame him.

  ‘Oh look dear, cameras!’ Her voice was high and loud and shook its way across the room. She waved at Malcolm and then laughed at her cleverness. The man, who Malcolm now thought may have been dead, did not move.

  The second occupied table was covered with papers. A boy who looked too young for university sat amongst it, pen in one hand, calculator in the other, his face screwed in distaste or puzzlement. It would take more than a child prodigy to rescue this place’s accounts.

  At the entrance to the kitchen hovered a waiter, who seemed from his slouch to be trying to fade into the decor, but was defeated in this by the nature of his hair. It was bright red and shot out from his head in an angry and tangled mane, defiantly untamed by gravity. Despite being somewhere in his pimple years, he had an only slightly less aggressive spouting of hair appearing at the neck of his collar.

  He looked at Malcolm and Juliet as they entered, spending considerably longer on Juliet, Malcolm was sure. Uncertainty clouded his gaze, just for a moment, then he straightened himself and stepped forward.

  ‘Oh, hi. You must be the TV people.’

  ‘Well, not TV exactly—’

  ‘That’s us,’ Juliet interrupted. ‘Which table?’

  ‘Um, over here. Four people right?’

  His voice was higher than Malcolm had expected, given all the hair, and his smile a little uneasy, for someone who worked in the hospitality industry. Perhaps he was new, or just didn’t get much practice— he wouldn’t, working here. He indicated with his hand a table in the darkest corner of the room, set beneath a gold-framed print of the Côte D’Azur. The artist had seen past the sparkling beauty of the scene, right into its shallow, polluted heart.

  ‘Fucken wonderful,’ Malcolm muttered, when the waiter had sloped back to his starting position.

  ‘Just set up your camera and leave the rest to me,’ Juliet replied, giving his cheek a warm peck of encouragement.

  ‘Oh look, David,’ came the large woman’s voice. ‘Lovebirds.’

  Malcolm tried to block it all out and concentrated on the set-up of his camera. The light was poor but not impossible and, if he was careful with his pan, some of the more depressing features could be hidden from view. He had already decided that close-up would be the order of the day, with a moving camera and fast editing to create the illusion of energy.

  Brian and Kevin were the first to arrive. Brian advanced ahead of his friend, a bottle of wine in his hand, his hair still wet from the shower, aftershave surrounding him like a low-rent force field. His shirt and tie were conservative, more after-match function than romantic conquest, and the smile he sent Juliet’s way was oddly uncertain. What is it about Juliet? Malcolm wondered. And why have I never noticed this before?

  Behind Brian, Kevin shifted nervously from one foot to the other, as if his underwear were riding too high.

  ‘Juliet,’ Brian began. ‘You look great. Doesn’t she look great, Kevin?’

  ‘Oh yeah, you look sexy,’ Kevin added, with little conviction. Malcolm zoomed in on his face. There was something going on there. He would pick it up at editing.

  ‘Here, I brought some wine,’ Brian announced, to no one in particular. He turned to face the camera. ‘Ah, are we already filming?’

  ‘Just act as though I’m not here,’ Malcolm told him. ‘And never look straight at the camera.’

  ‘Oh right. Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Kevin added, looking directly into the lens. The boys sat down, Kevin next to Juliet, Brian across from her. Malcolm held the focus on her face and waited for one of
them to speak. So did the others. Silence hung in the air, wrapped in the smell of unfiltered cigarettes and grease traps in need of emptying. There was no point pretending any more. This was going to be a disaster.

  ‘So, what are we eating?’ Brian asked. Malcolm began to zoom in on the cover of the now raised menu but quickly thought better of it.

  ‘We should wait for Charlotte,’ Juliet said.

  ‘Hey, looks all right,’ Brian continued. ‘Stuffed chicken breast. That’d do you, Kev. You’re a bit of a breast man, aren’t you?’

  Kevin shrugged with embarrassment. Behind the camera Malcolm tried to look on the bright side. They still had all the other footage. The restaurant scene didn’t have to be that big a part. Just a couple of interesting moments would be enough. He moved his head around the side of the camera and waited for Juliet to turn his way.

  ‘Say something interesting,’ he mouthed, but from the expression on her face, it seemed her lip-reading skills were rusty. ‘Crank it up,’ Malcolm mouthed again, this time miming the action of a crank handle for good measure, but her puzzlement only grew.

  ‘Excuse me a sec,’ she told the boys and walked over to the camera.

  ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

  ‘This is boring,’ Malcolm whispered back.

  ‘It isn’t easy. Brian’s mentally defective and Kevin’s just wasting oxygen.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea.’

  ‘It’ll get better when Charlotte arrives.’

  ‘You have to say something interesting. There’s meant to be flirting remember.’

  ‘I’d like to see you try.’

  ‘Go on.’

  They looked back to the table, where the two boys were staring hard their way.

  ‘So, what looks good then?’ Juliet asked, sitting back down.

  ‘You do,’ Brian replied.

  ‘Thank you Brian.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  And again silence settled on the table, thick and uninspiring as fog.

  ‘So then, um,’ Juliet tried, and the effort showed as wrinkles at the point where her cheeks tried to force her eyes to join in the smile. ‘Has anyone here ever been blackmailed?’

  ‘What?’ Brian’s eyes immediately tightened with suspicion and Kevin’s by now customary squirming went into overdrive. Yes, thought Malcolm as he swooped from one face to the other, yes, you’re onto something.

  ‘You know,’ Juliet replied. ‘Has anyone ever threatened you with a dark and dirty secret?’

  ‘I don’t have any secrets,’ Brian told her, but his voice had changed, as if he was trying on an accent he was unsure of. ‘Never done anything I’m not proud of. What have you heard?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Juliet replied. ‘I was just saying.’

  Brian stared at her hard, as if there was a message in her face, if only he could read it. And the camera stared at Brian, and Malcolm stared at the viewfinder and, for the first time that evening, he smiled.

  ‘How about you Kevin?’ Juliet asked. ‘Any little secrets you’d like to share?’

  Where Brian had bristled at the question, Kevin visibly blushed and melted into his embarrassment so that, even with the expensive microphone Malcolm had hired, he was not sure the reply would be recorded.

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘That sounds like a maybe to me,’ Juliet pressed. Kevin slid about in his seat and for a moment looked as if he was seriously considering disappearing beneath the table. He was saved by the arrival of the woman mountain, who had walked their way with a plate of steaming food.

  ‘Hello darlings,’ she beamed, lingering for a moment on the camera. ‘I thought you might be having trouble ordering. This is my personal favourite. We come here all the time.’

  She offered for their inspection what appeared to be some sort of stew, oozing over a drowned layer of rice, and half a burnt pita bread balanced decoratively on one side.

  ‘It tastes better than it looks,’ she assured them, although the smell lent no support to her opinion. ‘Of course, I don’t suppose your mind is really on the food tonight is it?’ She turned her attention to Juliet. ‘Which one are you with dear?’

  ‘She’s with me,’ Brian informed the woman. ‘Here comes Kevin’s date now.’

  ‘Oh, my, well that’s all very sweet, isn’t it. Be good.’ She stood her ground long enough to look Charlotte up and down, then returned to her inert companion.

  ‘Hi,’ Charlotte greeted them. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Kev’s Mum,’ Brian quipped.

  ‘Was not.’

  ‘Hi, Malcolm.’ She gave the camera a little smile that kicked at Malcolm’s heart.

  ‘Don’t look at the camera,’ he told her. ‘Just pretend I’m not here.’ Life could be so unfair.

  ‘Oh, all right then. Have we ordered?’

  ‘We were waiting for you.’

  ‘Sorry I’m late. Last minute attack of nerves.’ And again she looked at Malcolm and smiled, and this time he chose not to reprimand her. He could always edit it out later, or save it on a special file.

  ‘So, can I take your orders then?’ The redhead had ghosted up behind them and stood waiting, notepaper in hand and his eyes flicking to Juliet whenever he thought she wasn’t watching. Malcolm watched and filmed.

  ‘Do you have anything that isn’t even a little bit like what she’s eating?’ Juliet asked, pointing to the other table.

  ‘It’s all on the menu,’ he replied. ‘But most of it’s a bit crap, to be honest. It’s nicer across the road, you should have gone there.’

  ‘Can I just have this thing here, with the salad please,’ Charlotte asked. It was her nose he liked best, Malcolm decided. It had a lot of personality, for a nose. It seemed to take the lead in forming the face’s expressions, and looked just as good in close-up.

  ‘I’ll have the chicken breast,’ Brian said. ‘And so will Kev.’

  Kevin, who didn’t appear to have fully recovered from his earlier embarrassment, mumbled his assent.

  ‘And you?’ the waiter asked Juliet.

  ‘I don’t know. You choose. Whatever you think’s least crap.’

  ‘Probably the burger. It’s hard to ruin a burger.’

  The waiter walked away and it was immediately apparent that any hope of conversation had walked off with him. Malcolm tried to be patient; he reasoned that they were nervous, and would soon relax. But reason soon gave way to frustration. It wasn’t as if Juliet wasn’t trying. No matter what she said, however, the response from the others was the same. Brian was stuck between suspicion and self-consciousness, breaking out only for the odd showing of inappropriateness. Kevin followed Brian’s lead, stumbling from one embarrassed mistake to the next and even Charlotte, whom Malcolm couldn’t imagine ever being boring, was playing a peculiarly low-key hand, spending most of her time with her mouth shut and her eyes down. Malcolm had seen church services with more sexual undertone. He hit pause on the camera and walked towards the table.

  ‘Look guys, this really isn’t working out. I know it’s meant to be fly-on-the-wall stuff and we asked you to just act naturally, but, well you’re being more than natural. You’re being boring. It’s okay to pretend a little bit. It’s meant to be about sex, remember. You’re meant to be interested in each other.’

  ‘That’s not really fair,’ Brian protested. ‘I’ve been having a go, with my foot, underneath the table. You just couldn’t see it.’

  ‘But we’re meant to see it, aren’t we? That’s sort of the point of a documentary.’

  ‘I’m just too subtle for you, that’s all,’ Brian pouted.

  ‘Just try to be more lively, okay,’ Malcolm pleaded. ‘Think of all the old people who’ll be watching. We’re teenagers. They expect us to shock them.’

  Malcolm returned to his viewfinder and waited to see what effect his words would have. Brows furrowed in concentration, mouths opened and closed with indecision, and the pressure rose to the point where there was danger of nosebleeds. S
urprisingly, it was Kevin who finally took the plunge.

  ‘So, ah, Charlotte,’ he said, reddening at the sound of his own voice and the pregnant silence that followed. ‘Would you like to have sex with me?’

  Jaws dropped, carefully held expressions slipped right away. On the other side of the room the sounds of chewing were suspended.

  ‘Go Kev,’ Brian muttered. Malcolm closed in on Charlotte’s reply, torn between the film-maker’s instinct for action, and his own heartsick desire that she decline.

  ‘Well actually Kevin, I’m saving myself for someone rather special.’ And with that Charlotte turned again directly to the camera and gave an unmistakable smile. Malcolm felt his throat turn dry and he gulped down a pained lungful of unspeakable excitement. Juliet, whose eye was still firmly on the television prize, took the opportunity to crank the tension up a notch.

  ‘Actually Charlotte, I wouldn’t bother with Malcolm if I was you. Our attempts at sex haven’t been all that successful.’

  How could she say that, there, to everyone? Setting loose his most horrible secret, to mutate and spread with the speed of a virus.

  ‘You and him?’ Brian’s disbelief was plain. ‘Well fuck me.’

  ‘Actually Kevin,’ Charlotte paused, while the offering of a tear formed in her eye. Again the table fell silent. For all his devastation, Malcolm had to admit this had the makings of great television. ‘Actually, I think I have changed my mind. Yes, I would be delighted to have sex with you. Right now in fact. Where shall we go?’

  ‘Here Kev boy,’ Brian offered, digging his hand into his pocket and producing a key. ‘It’s for the caravan. I don’t suppose I’m going to be needing it.’

  Charlotte stood and Kevin followed suit, and the two of them walked slowly, nervously, towards the door.

  ‘How could you do that?’ Malcolm demanded of Juliet. ‘How could you tell everybody?’

  ‘Think about it Malcolm,’ she replied. ‘Come on, you know what you have to do now?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take the camera and follow them.’