The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life

by William Brandt

  “Christ,” said Sophie.

  I could well understand her frustration. She didn’t want to leave me like this. She wanted closure. Ideally I suppose she wanted me to leave her. We’d just spent forty-eight hours failing to find agreement. We’d agreed that there was no possibility of agreement. And still I wouldn’t leave her. I was a rock. I was a stone. An albatross. What was she supposed to do?

  She sighed. I knew that sigh. I jubilated. “Tonight. Then tomorrow—no fuss. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She went to the phone. She picked it up and called Rebecca and told her not to come. I could hear Rebecca begging her to reconsider. Begging her to leave me now. To leave me for dead.

  She sat on the side of the bed, her back to me as she took off her shoes, the knuckles of her spine pressing against the skin. I lay on my back. I felt completely normal and utterly at ease and safe. Tomorrow Sophie was going but it wasn’t tomorrow yet. It was tonight and tonight was forever. Then a wave of sorrow washed through me and carried me clean across the bed, right into her arms. I didn’t give her a chance, I just clamped on. I was a barnacle, a limpet, a cattle tick. I burrowed right down into her, all the way under her tobacco-and-salt-tasting skin. We wrestled. I didn’t care. She hit me. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. She clamped me between her legs and grabbed my hair. She held my face like that. I looked in her eyes. I was as open as a flower.

  “Wait,” she said, harshly. “Wait.”

  I waited.

  She sighed. “In the bathroom. In my bag.”

  This was it. First time for a long time and the last time forever. I went to the bathroom, I fumbled for the light switch. I found her toilet bag and tipped the contents out. The condoms were there: a choice of Excite Vibra SuperPlus with ribs or Stimulomatic Three Regular. Sophie keeps all sorts of stuff in her toilet bag. I sorted through. Disprin, spare batteries—needle and thread. I looked at the needle, and I looked up and caught sight of my face in the mirror. And it was there that I read the true extent of my own intentions.

  It was a sympathy fuck, pure and simple. I made the most of it. I gave it my all. I carved colors in the dark. I melted down into white-hot energy and went spiraling out and away into the blue night. I’m not sure about Sophie. She was probably doing mental crosswords.

  A little later, Sophie was asleep. I lay wide awake listening to her breathe. It was four o’clock. It was the darkest hour. I thought of Jack Lemmon in The China Syndrome, and how he died, gunned down in the back as he made for the button. I thought of the blood in his mouth, the sadness and waste, and in his eyes the desire, the living desire that never died, even when the eyes died—how, even in the process of dying, you could see the intention, you could see him reaching with his heart and mind for the switch. He never got there. I watched the numbers flip over on the clock by the bed. I didn’t miss a single one.

  Melissa touches my arm. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m fine.”

  “I’m not judging you, you know. I never judge my clients.”

  I wipe my forehead.

  “Maybe you’re not really ready to . . .”

  “Oh, what the hell. Let’s do it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. Gotta get back on that horse sometime.”

  “Okay.” She settles herself. “But first I want you to do something for me. Shake your hands. Let it all go. Shake it off the tips of your fingers.” She shakes her hands to show me, like shaking water off your hands. I shake my hands. “Now breathe deeply a few times. Relax. Let it all go. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Now. What do you like about my body?”

  “Well, obviously, I like your body.”

  “What specifically do you like about it?”

  “It’s nice.”

  “What part?”

  “Oh, all of it.”

  “But what’s your favorite part?”

  “Do we have to do this?”

  “It’ll help. It will.”

  “I . . . like your legs.”

  “Legs, huh?” She uncrosses her legs. She smiles a slinky and obviously put-on smile. “Okay, what exactly do you like about them?”

  “Um . . . your knees.”

  “Yes? What do you like about my knees?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “They’re a little fattish.”

  Her gaze is level. Her tone is calm, absolutely uninflected and nonjudgmental. “That’s what you like?”

  “That’s what I like.”

  “That’s the thing you like best about my entire body?”

  “You asked.”

  She glances briefly at the heavens. “Okay. Now, I want you to touch my knees. I want you to use your open palms and I want you to stroke my knees.”

  I reach out with one hand. I can’t help noticing that it’s trembling. I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well at all. I put one hand on her knee. It’s a warm knee, it gives a little to the touch. Nice knee. Pretend it’s a pussycat. A bald pussycat. Without a tail.

  “How’s that?”

  “I can’t breathe.”

  When Sophie and I first got together the sex was great. Everything was great. We’d go for hours, days. We’d romp all night, a couple of carefree little critters, there in the tiger-striped half-light of the bedroom of my little Auckland flat, below the street lamp, as the traffic whispered and shushed past the window and the drunks called to one another in the distance. We’d go and go, head out to eat, come back, go all over again. We never did anything else. There was nothing else worth doing.

  But then, after the flush of those first rapturous, heady, four or five years, I began to wonder. And you know what they say. If you’re wondering, you ain’t doing it right. I mean, hell, really, I’ve never been what you would call a specialist. I’ve always been more of an all-rounder. You know—a bit of this, a bit of that, a cuddle, a kiss, a few shared interests, a bit of a laugh, a bit of whiteware, and Bob’s your uncle. That’s the way I’ve always seen it. But I began to wonder if that was really how Sophie saw it.

  “Sophie?” I said. We were lying awake at night in bed and it was dark and there were no points of reference. London was throbbing in the distance and all around, calling like a wounded beast. She didn’t answer at first and it was silent and scary and I began to float. I lost all points of contact. It was the scariest question you could ever ask that I was nursing in my head and I didn’t know what the future held.

  “What?” She knew. Oh, she knew.

  My head began to grow. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and less and less dense, as if it was filling with gas, and the rest of my body except my teeth disappeared and I was nothing but a great round inflated gaseous head the size of Jupiter, with teeth, floating in black space. “How is it . . . for you?”

  “How’s what?”

  I now left my body entirely and I could feel her body receding too, flying away into space at the speed of light, as I expanded still further and she expanded and we both cooled and became tenuous and partly nonexistent and I thought this is what they mean by entropy. I thought if I reached out now to touch her hand she wouldn’t be there at all. I’d pass right through her.

  “Because, I mean, for me it’s good.” I could hear the sincerity in my own voice.

  “Good.” From somewhere way out there in the darkest coldest deepest reaches of outer space she put forth a hand all the way across the universe and touched my arm, once, briefly, with a forefinger, the way you’d tap a map to show someone where you live. There, right there. X marks the spot. “Anyway, I’m tired.”

  She rolled over and I came slamming back down into my body and I rolled over too. She went to sleep and I didn’t and London howled and screamed and whistled and moaned in the distance and all around.

  “Are you okay?” My hand is still on Melissa’s knee. Melissa is looking concerned. Her eyes are large and close. What is it with
eyes? All I ever see in eyes, is eyes. I used to see whole constellations.

  “I . . .”

  “You’ve gone all pale and trembly.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t seem to . . .”

  “Hey, don’t worry. I see a lot of this sort of thing.”

  “You do?”

  “You’d be surprised. Anyway, I think that’s probably enough for today.”

  In the doorway Melissa grabs my arm. “Wait.” She ruffles my hair, then her own. She pinches her cheeks and starts jogging on the spot.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We might as well make it look like something’s been going on.”

  “Good thinking! Try star jumps.”

  Suitably tousled, we emerge on deck via the aft companionway. The crowd on deck has scattered, people standing in ones, twos and threes, looking out at the sea, the sky. Melissa pours herself another champagne. The mainland is out of sight. The sun is beating down like a stick. We’re out on blue water now: the Pacific is dark and deep as the evening sky and the swells are real swells; an endless, slow-shifting landscape of small blue hills. The bow rises and falls in long arcing swoops. Spray flies in rainbowing sheets from the bows. Ella is watching from over by the hors d’oeuvres. I take my courage in both hands.

  “Hey, follow me.” I grab Melissa by the hand and lead her forward to the bowsprit. We stand in the pulpit on the very tip of the bow. Clutching the railing, we’re ahead of the whole boat, ahead even of the bow wave, and we can look straight down between our legs to the smooth blue water, rushing past, dizzyingly fast, first close, then far away. I lean forward, into the motion of the boat, brace my legs, and for just that second as the bow plunges I’m weightless, I’m flying.

  “Look!” Melissa is pointing. In the water below are the dark rushing torpedo shapes of dolphins. Occasionally they break surface, their long muscular bodies mottled gray, black and white. She laughs. I wonder how she gets her teeth that white.

  For all I know, she’s doing it now. Somewhere, out there, across the blue sea, on a white-sand-ringed Pacific island she is right now, at this very moment, perhaps, turning into white-hot energy and they’re spiraling away, together, the two of them, into the blue night.

  Goddamnit. Ella is watching. I can see her, sitting in front of the wheelhouse, cradling Brian in her arms, watching.

  “Melissa. I’m going to kiss you.”

  “Go for it. I’ll be right behind you all the way.”

  “But no tongues.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  I lean forward, I shut my eyes, I think of Paris, and I kiss her. She’s warm, soft-but-springy, and she tastes of salt, fish and future happiness.

  I straighten up. I feel dizzy, but okay. I actually feel okay.

  “Hey, tiger.”

  “For future reference, I prefer ‘tiger’ to ‘pumpkin.’”

  “You gotta earn it.”

  I glance back at the wheelhouse. Ella is no longer watching. But Russell is.

  Later in the afternoon, the island begins to emerge. First a dark smudge, it grows to a round-shouldered peak, broadening suddenly to a woolly, bush-clad base. Another island emerges as we approach, lower but larger. Gradually the islands get closer, until we can make out cliffs, palm trees, a bright line of sand at the water’s edge. The sun is starting to drop in the sky as we slip through the pass, breakers foaming on the reef on either side, and enter the still, cyan waters of the lagoon. Everyone crowds the railings. To our right is Makulalanana, the sacred volcano: a singed bald head jutting above hunched bush-clad shoulders, dark, brooding and mysterious. Bands of sulfurous yellow and pink on the summit, lower down mottled patches of dark green and white on sooty black. To the left is the volcano’s wife, Pakulalanana: green, fertile and bush-clad.

  We glide silently between man and wife and anchor in a sheltered bay beneath the slopes of the volcano. The rattle of the anchor chain echoes from the hills. Tall, graceful palms and larger, spreading, white-trunked trees line the shore. Parrots call from the branches. A shoal of fish ruffles the surface of the lagoon.

  It looks like paradise.

  So what?

  Chapter 12

  A SEAPLANE IS APPROACHING. Flying low, it clears the shoulder of the volcano, drops into the bay, the morning sun flashing on the leading edges of the wings. It skips once, leaving a white scar in the sea, skips again, and once more, then settles to plowing a long white furrow from sea to shore.

  “Ah, that’ll be the croissants.” The elderly gentleman from the tent next door grins across at me, rubs his hands in anticipation and saunters down to the sea, accompanied by his wife.

  I’m at the open door flap of an orange tent. Behind me Melissa is dressing in orange light. I’m looking out across a perfect bay. It’s seven o’clock in the morning, maybe even earlier. The beach is still in shade, although the light is dazzling out on the water. I feel a little shaky and I’ve slept but little. There’s not a breath of wind. Behind me, smoke from the volcano rises in a vertical column. The air is heavy, hard to breathe; the waves are lifeless, as if coated with oil. The palms droop their heads. In the light of dawn they seem alien, prehistoric. We even have a couple of dinosaurs; slipping silently into the water, the elderly couple glide out to neck level, cutting a V-shaped wake. A fish jumps.

  Melissa appears behind me. “Morning, tiger. Sleep well?”

  “No, not particularly. You?”

  “Like a log.”

  The old couple wave and smile from the water. We wave back. Melissa snuggles her head on my shoulder.

  “Feel like some breakfast . . . sweetheart?”

  “Sure.”

  We stroll along the beach to the main encampment, hand in hand. I’m trying to put my memories of last night in order.

  I remember climbing down the side of the Cocksucker into the motorboat. As we approach the shore I can make out orange tents ranged along the beach, sheltering just under the leafy fringe of the bush. There must be about fifty of them. We glide closer, across tiny turquoise ripples. The water is unbelievably clear. It’s as if the boat is flying above sand, rocks, stones. Here and there are patches of coral. Blue, pink, red. A school of transparent fish scatter.

  There’s a pair of totem poles stuck upright in the beach, looming larger as we approach—stylized human figures, a male and a female, with feather headdresses and round staring eyes. There’s a banner slung between them, and now I can read the words on it: ABANDON ALL INHIBITIONS YE WHO ENTER HERE.

  “Fuck off!” The boat lurches violently. Drunken Denise has just tried to jump out. Ramon and Ken grin, but they’re looking a little tense.

  Very close now. I notice something in the water: a bunch of black dots grouped near the beach. Heads. There are twenty of them, lolling neck deep in the shallows, chins just clear of the tiny wavelets. An arm’s length from each head is a glass of champagne. The heads give an ironic cheer as the boatman cuts the motor. We glide the last few feet and then the bow crunches on sand and we all lurch forward.

  I climb over the gunwale and wade ashore with the others. The sand is as fine as talcum powder and we sink in right up to our ankles. The water is body temperature. You can hardly feel it at all. We walk right between the two totems and up the beach to where tables and chairs are arranged under the broad spreading trees. Staff are running. There’s a scent of perfume and food and wine and the clink of glasses. Music is playing. A champagne cork pops.

  Charles is waiting for us. He stands on a chair, with Karl on one side to steady him. “Ladies and Jellybeans, welcome one and all to Camp Paradise. You’ll find that no effort has been spared to ensure your total comfort and pleasure at all times.” He pauses to allow the cheers to die down. “Our policy here is to provide twenty-four-hour food and drink. If at any moment of the day or night you feel hungry, thirsty, dizzy, bored, sober, flatulent, hungover or lonely, you have only to make your way to the bar/buffet area where staff are waiting to serve you in any way possible.”
More cheers. “Accommodation is under canvas but you’ll find that the luxury tenting we have provided is . . . luxurious. Your luggage is waiting for you in your tent. Finally, while it is our policy at Camp Paradise to cater for all reasonable needs . . . please remember that unreasonable ones take precedence at all times.”

  Tents are allotted. We’re in number twenty-five. We start along the beach, to unpack before dinner. The sun is falling, heading for a small gap of clear sea between the neighboring island and the end of the isthmus. Everything is going red. The clouds are going crazy. The sun is falling so fast I’m waiting for the splash.

  There’s a pregnant woman in a black bathing suit wading toward shore. She’s sheltered by a huge straw sunhat, stabilized with a silk scarf, and swathed in a huge wet silk sheet that trails behind her in the water as she comes. Her belly is a perfect sphere, like a beach ball. Her head is down as she approaches, a loose twist of wet black hair falling across her collarbone, one arm swinging, an empty glass in her hand, her sharp shinbones cutting the water like catamaran hulls. It’s a picture all right: the sea, the islands, the heat, the setting sun, the light on the waves. The woman lifts her head. She’s all cheekbone. She’s wearing a tight almost-smile behind her chunky black sunglasses, a let’s-get-this-over-with sort of smile.

  I remember her being taller. How can I have forgotten how tall she is?

  “Frederick.” She doesn’t remove her sunglasses.

  “Oh, Sophie, hi.” I sound as if I’m on helium. “I didn’t know if you’d be here.”

  The shiny black surfaces of her sunglasses swing around. They lock onto Melissa. They scan, down and up. I happen to know that the eyes behind the glasses are light brown. She’s a pale person, that’s the look. Pale skin, black hair. She used to be more into earth tones. This holiday is going to cost her a fortune in sunblock. I should grab Melissa’s hand. I should reach right over now and grab Melissa’s hand, nice and casual, and say, “Oh and this is Melissa by the way.”

  Can’t move. Can’t even lift my arms.

  “You must be Sophie, right? I’m Melissa.”