Less Than Three

by Jess Whitecroft

  “You made me very uncomfortable,” I told Nadia. “So…um…good job. I think.”

  “You should feel uncomfortable,” she said, winding her lovely apricot hair back into a messy bun. She’d let it slip loose in the middle of the scene where Madame de Tourvel is ‘taken ill,’ – that is to say, worn down with the effort of resisting Valmont. “What he does to that woman is disgusting. He barges into her life unannounced and attempts to ruin everything she holds dear just because he’s bored.” She looked at me and softened it with a smile. “Sorry, Valmont – but you’re an absolute shit.”

  “Great,” I said. “‘Absolute shit.’ I really thought I had a handle on this character, and I haven’t.”

  She sipped her water and sat back, legs crossed, assessing me. Her eyes were the colour of absinthe. “Have you ever imposed yourself on a woman?” she said.

  “What? What kind of a question is that? You mean rape?”

  “No. That’s the extreme end of it, but there are degrees. Have you ever told yourself that she’s not interested in you now, but she will be, once you figure out how to get her? That you’ll wear her down with persistence?”

  For some reason the first image that popped into my head was John Cusak holding a boombox over his head under a window. “Isn’t that the essence of romantic comedy?”

  “No. It’s the essence of sexual harassment. If a woman says ‘no’, whether it’s to coffee or sex, men need to respect that.”

  “Okay,” I said, fumbling for a more recent example. “But what about The Notebook?”

  “What about it?”

  “Ryan Gosling, right? He climbs up on the Ferris wheel and tells her he’ll let go if she doesn’t agree to go out with him.”

  She laughed. “‘If you don’t love me I’ll kill myself.’ Wait – doesn’t Valmont literally try that tack in the play?” She flipped through her script. “Yep…there we go. Act Two, Scene Eleven – ‘I must have you or die.’”

  “Women said that was romantic when Ryan Gosling did it.”

  “Yeah, all four billion of us,” said Nadia. “I didn’t. And I’m willing to bet I’m not alone in thinking it was insane and creepy.” She waved to Rupa, who was in conference with Poppy and Gemma – our Cecile – on the other side of the room. “Ru?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Ryan Gosling. In The Notebook.”

  “What about him?”

  “The bit where he’s hanging from the Ferris wheel. Romantic?”

  Rupa shook her head. “Psychotic, more like.”

  “Yeah, that was fucking mental,” said Poppy.

  Nadia turned back to me. “See?”

  “Great,” I said. “So I have to pull off a move that not even Ryan Gosling can make look romantic?”

  “Have you considered just going for straight-up sinister?”

  I shook my head. “No. That’s John Malkovich, and I don’t want to be John Malkovich. He was too sinister. No, I need to get into Valmont’s head. Figure out what drives him.”

  “Reputation, reputation, reputation,” said Poppy, coming over to grab her bag. “He’s a narcissist, bro. That’s how they roll.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Nope,” said Poppy. “It’s all about him, all the time. I was reading the novel the other night, and there’s this great line where he sees that Tourvel has been crying all night, and his reaction is ‘I hope she slept as badly as I did.’ That’s his first flicker of love for the woman, and that’s how it expresses itself – a) it puts me out of joint, and b) I hope it fucking hurts her.”

  “So you’re saying I should read the novel?” I said.

  “I’m reading it,” said Nadia. “And so is Gemma.”

  “Did you girls start a book club without me?”

  Poppy laughed. “There’s our Valmont. Me me me me. Are you coming, Nadia?”

  “Yep,” she said, gathering up her things and putting paid to my offer of a drink. How many times had I missed out on the opportunity now?

  “Wait,” I said. “There has to be more to him than that.”

  “And what if there isn’t?” said Nadia. “What if he’s just…a void? An eighteenth century Patrick Bateman?”

  My head was immediately full of the opening toilette scene of Dangerous Liaisons, mashed up with the droning narration of American Psycho, where Bateman describes his morning routine and his million and one beauty products. It was worryingly apt. “I’m not doing that,” I said. “For a start I don’t have time to get that buff…”

  “Oh my God, Christian Bale’s body…”

  “…ri-dic-ulous,” Nadia singsonged. “Gotta go.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “See you later.”

  “Good luck with your eighteenth century fuckboy,” said Poppy, and laughed, and they wandered off, talking about Christian Bale had gone from Bateman buff to skeletal in The Machinist, then butched up again for Batman – and how all that yo-yo dieting couldn’t be healthy.

  Rupa came over. She pulled up a chair and looked at me with a decisiveness that made my stomach flip. I was sure I was about to get fired.

  “Okay,” she said. “This is probably a personal question, but are you planning on growing a beard?”

  I hadn’t shaved in five days. I was planning on growing my sideburns out, and maybe getting some highlights. Anything to avoid looking like Simon: it was my way of telling him that I wasn’t going to impersonate him any more. “Why? Do you hate it?”

  “It’s…it’s not really period appropriate. You’re about a hundred years too early for the era of the Charles Darwin style hedge beard.”

  Hedge beard. I wished. I’d never been able to grow a good beard, but it was worth looking slightly homeless if it meant my brother would sac up and go out with his own fucking boyfriend for a change. “I’ll shave,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said Rupa. “It was giving me anxiety.”

  “No problem.” I was going to need a distinctive haircut, I thought. Or maybe a tattoo. Something permanent that Simon wouldn’t or couldn’t copy. “Although, you know – Alan Rickman. I’m just saying…he played a bearded Valmont.”

  Rupa got up from her chair. “Are you Alan Rickman?”

  “No.”

  “There you go then.”

  I sighed and got up. “Just…bear with me, okay? I’m going through some drama with my brother and I’m trying not to look like him.”

  She frowned. “Why do I feel an irresistible urge to unpack that sentence?”

  “We’re twins,” I said. “Identical. He shaves, I grow a beard. That’s how it’s always been, ever since we were old enough to realise we were annoyed by adults dressing us up like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

  She laughed. “That’s so weird,” she said.

  “Why? Don’t people usually do that with twins?”

  “No, not that,” she said. “It was that first audition. When you came in and I was like ‘Nope, no way,’ but then all the others were worse, and my original Valmont fell off a balcony…”

  “Wow. Thanks,” I said. Nothing like feeling valued by your director.

  “…no, no. I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “But you weren’t great, to be honest. And then you showed up to that second audition and it was like…like you were a completely different person.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know. Steadier. A lot less tryhard.” She giggled. “If I’d known you had a twin at the time…”

  “What? You would have thought we’d pulled the old switcheroo?” I said. “Yeah, not bloody likely. Simon’s an orthopaedic surgeon. And he’s about as good at acting as I am at operating on people’s spines.” She was giving me that look. The one that said ‘I want to acknowledge your brother’s impressive achievements, but I feel that doing so will draw attention to the yawning chasm between them and yours.’ Nice. So she did understand tact, after all. “Wait,” I said, as she walked away. “Do you really think I’m a tryhard?”

  Rupa just laughe
d. That was a yes, then.

  I turned my phone back on. After the first time I’d learned not to leave it on in rehearsals. I nearly fell over backwards when I saw I had a callback for an advertising job, playing a harassed young father wrangling a baby. I’d lied and said I worked with children all the time, but how complicated could a baby be, for God’s sake? All I had to do was hold a baby and look tired. I was about to celebrate when I saw another text, from Simon this time.

  Rob wants to have dinner with me. What do I do?

  I stared at it for a long moment, composing replies in my head. Eat? Sit opposite him at a restaurant and put food in your face hole. That’s generally how having dinner with someone works.

  I didn’t send any of them, though. I wandered off towards the Tube station already dreading how this was going to go: I’d get home, Simon would be in the throes of a socially awkward nervous breakdown and would beg me to shave, put on a polyester shirt and do it for him. Again. Yeah, well – no more. The girls and their theatrical book club had given me an idea.

  You see, I could have downloaded a copy of Dangerous Liaisons there and then. I could, but I didn’t, because I had a spot of Valmont-worthy sabotage in mind.

  I took the Tube to Russell Square and headed off to the bookshop. Rob was there, preoccupied, talking into an ancient landline phone. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, but I ducked behind a shelf, waiting for him to finish his conversation.

  “…yes, with the Tenniel illustrations. Both books. It’s a beautiful set…uh…yeah. 1907.” I heard a page turn. “That was the year the British copyright expired, I believe – lots of editions published that year…uh huh. If you want to come in and take a look we’re open Monday to Friday, nine to five. Four on Saturday…okay. Great. Bye now.”

  He put down the phone. I slipped out from behind the shelf and approached the desk. He was wearing red today, a tight Spiderman t-shirt that hugged a couple of modest but defined biceps. “Hi,” he said. “Can I help you?”

  “Choderlos de Laclos,” I said.

  “Ah. Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”

  “How did you know?”

  Rob shrugged. “It was his only novel,” he said, stepping out from behind the counter. “French or English?”

  “Oh…um…English. Definitely English.”

  He gave me a furtive look, like he was trying to figure out where he’d seen me before, while I tried very hard to look like someone who didn’t know what his lips tasted like or how his beard tickled. Now, that was a good beard – properly thick, shiny and like he’d meant to grow it, instead of the ‘I can’t be bothered to shave’ stage that I could never get past.

  “Any particular edition?” he said, as he led the way between the shelves. His waist looked almost child sized in that tight t-shirt. “There’s an annotated one – Collins classics, I think – which is quite popular.” He showed me the books. I reached out for the first copy I saw and he shook his head.

  “Oh, don’t get that one,” he said. “The translation is awful.” He looked too long and hard at me, and blushed pink at the roots of his beard. “I’m sorry, this is going to sound really weird, but are you Nathan?”

  I laughed. He wasn’t all that faceblind after all. “And you must be Rob.”

  “Oh,” he said. “You know.”

  “Yes. He talks about you a lot.”

  He looked pleased and took my hand. His grip was firm, but his hand was as soft and bony as a girl’s.

  “He talks about you a lot, too,” he said. “So this wasn’t coincidence? You being here?”

  “Afraid not. I’m very nosy. Although I am in the market for a good translation of Laclos.”

  “Here,” he said, taking one from the shelf. The cover was that famous painting of a girl in a yellow dress, reading a book. Fragonard, I think. “This one. It doesn’t translate the titles.”

  “The titles?”

  “Yeah. The other one you picked up translated all the titles into English. Like they switched Count for Comte and Marchioness for Marquise.”

  “Ugh. Why would you do that? It’s obviously a book about the French aristocracy.”

  “I know,” he said. “Plus ‘Marchioness’ sounds like some fat old Barbara Cartland style creature who lives in a faded satin boudoir that smells of Chanel and dog hair. ‘The Marchioness’ doesn’t sound nearly as capable of evil as ‘La Marquise’, does she?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “‘Vicomte’ is a wicked rogue. Whereas a viscount—”

  “—is a Drones club hangover,” I said, warming to his theme. “Who passes the day in a haze of brandy and impatiently waits for Daddy to snuff it.”

  He let out a honk of laughter.

  “Do you really think Valmont is a wicked rogue?” I said, realising I’d forgotten to react like someone who had never heard that laugh before. Oh well. Maybe he’d think I was being polite.

  “Of course he is,” said Rob. “He seduces a wife from her husband, ruins a convent girl and is generally an all round bastard. Actually he’s far worse than a rogue. He’s more of a…”

  “Sociopath? Multiple rapist?”

  “Well, yeah. Hot, though.”

  “Hot?” I said, trying not to look too flattered.

  “Smoking,” said Rob. “He’s have to be, to get away with the horrible things he does. He’d have to be hotter than Satan, and twice as charming. I think that was why I could never get along with the John Malkovich version.”

  “Too sinister?”

  “Totally. He’s far too threatening. Now the Colin Firth version…” Rob smiled dreamily. “Now he was a charmer. There’s that wonderful scene where he dances with the three different women – the Marquise, his aunt and Madame de Tourvel – and he dances differently with every one. It’s such a perfect illustration of his chameleon nature.” He mistook my amused expression for contempt. “What? Don’t tell me you’re a Malkovich man?”

  “Nope,” I said. “I’m a hopeless Alan Rickman fanboy. One of my greatest theatrical regrets – that I was born too late to see him play Valmont on the stage.”

  “Oh, of course. Simon said – you’re an actor. How glamorous.”

  “It’s not. It’s a lot of sitting around in sweaty rehearsal rooms being bored, mostly. That and you spend most of your time surrounded by other actors, which is not great, because we’re mostly awful people.”

  He laughed. “I’m sure you’re not.”

  “We are. Sean Penn, for example.”

  Rob scrunched his nose. “Oh, yeah. He is quite terrible.”

  “Johnny Depp?”

  “Mm. Yeah. Haven’t been able to look at him in the same way since the divorce from Amber, sorry to say,” he said, and gave me a long, mock serious look. “So does this mean you’re sitting alone in your mansion, smoking huge piles of weed and pretending to be a pirate?”

  “I wish,” I said. “No. I’m living in my brother’s spare room and slinging cocktails in Covent Garden. Oh, and acting, I suppose.”

  “Are you working on anything at the moment?”

  I patted the book in my hands. “Valmont, actually.”

  “Wow. Big role.”

  “Huge role. He’s in every scene of the play but one. It’s a lot of heavy lifting.”

  “Are you up to it?” he said, and there was the question.

  “Honestly? I have no idea.”

  My phone burped. Simon again. Just one word. Thoughts?

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s Simon. He keeps texting me.”

  Rob looked sweetly exasperated. “I know this is cheeky, being as I’ve just met you,” he said. “But can you ask him if he’s thought any more about dinner? I’m starting to think he’s not into me.”

  “No, he’s into you,” I said. “Trust me.”

  “Then why is he…?” He shook his head.

  “Twitchy? Strange? Emotionally constipated? Obsessed with vertebrae?”

  He laughed. “Is that normal?”

  �
��For Simon? Totally.” An evil idea suddenly occurred to me. “He has no idea I’m here, by the way. Let’s get a picture.”

  Rob, who seemed delighted at the prospect of mischief, wound an arm around me and poked out his tongue while we took a couple of selfies. I texted the best one to Simon with a single word caption. Thoughts?

  “He’ll die when he sees this,” I said.

  Simon didn’t die, although he wasn’t very happy about the whole situation.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” he said, much later, when we were at home.

  I looked up from the pile of junk I’d been sorting, one of the many things that had come out of my bedroom. This one was a bunch of old family photos that should have been in an album, but Simon had never found time to do it. There were so many of the two of us as babies – matching sweaters, matching hats, the two of us at a carnival, dressed up as Dr Seuss characters – Thing One and Thing Two.

  “I was thinking ‘I need a copy of Laclos and I need my brother to stop asking me to impersonate him.’” I said. “Two birds, one stone.”

  Simon looked at me in desperation. “Why?”

  “So he knows you have a twin now. It’s the only way there are ever going to be less than three people in this relationship.”

  He took a moment to digest this, and – as usual – fixated on entirely the wrong thing. “Fewer than,” he said. “I feel sure that should be ‘fewer than three.’”

  “Whatever, pedant. No more impressions. The game is well and truly up, and should never have gone this far. I should not know how your boyfriend’s beard tickles when he kisses you. Now either help me with these pictures or fuck off and text him.”

  He hated looking at photographs of himself, but he sat down next to me and started to thumb through them. One was a picture where we couldn’t have been more than a month old, two pink, sausage shaped creatures in matching white onesies, tiny red fists furled and eyes scrunched shut. The only difference was in size, and you wouldn’t have seen it unless you were looking for it: my onesie looked slightly looser at the neck than his.