Exactly!Standing in his glow induces a pleasant melting sensation, an awakening to a new kind of tenderness. A new quality of being alive.
“Well,” Viola asks. “Are you all right?”
“Right now?” He smiles, playing at really considering the question, at taking stock. “Yeah, I’m just fine, thanks.”
“When did you start smoking again?” The question slips out softly, an admission of a one-sided intimacy.
“I never stopped smoking,” he says, furrowing. “You, on the other hand, have never smoked a cigarette in your life.”
She reddens. Is she so transparent? Was it the Sugar Lilies? Or something about how she’s doing it, clutching the cigarette between her second and third finger, like she’s seen in the movies? He is looking directly at her for the first time since they began talking, a look that threatens to become more than a look.
“I’m worried I’m going to say something rude, now,” he says. “They’ve been plying me with drinks.”
“It’s our highest-value currency, students,” she says. “You should be honored.”
“I’m honored, yes,” he murmurs, his eyes swimming. “No, I was going to comment on your hair. You were hiding it, before, you had it all up. I haven’t seen that much hair in a decade at least.”
Her mother’s hair.Unruly, impossible to coerce, but lustrous, rippling around her face, cascading down her back. She realizes, looking at his face, all question marks, that through some combination of humor and beauty, knowing and not knowing, she has enchanted him. That the night is hers.
“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t realize I needed to disclose, about my hair.”
“I can understand it would be impractical. You know, running with all of that.”
“Certainly.”
The problem with Orson is that she has grown familiar with the scripted version of him, the one-woman man, pining after andoccasionally dying for the singular object of his affections. Has she been naive to dream of romance with someone who has been described as a “notorious bon vivant” inVanity Fair? Even now, as he is extending his fingers into her hair with the expertise of someone who has encountered curls before, who knows not to manhandle them or pat them inanely, but to entwine his fingers inside and clutch, she wonders whether she should disclose to him that no one has ever touched her hair like this before. Whether it would make a difference. Whether it would guarantee her any greater chance of forever, or at least not just a single night.
“Sorry,” he says. “Don’t let me get carried away. There are spies everywhere.” He isn’t wrong. Only a couple of tables away the editor ofThe Tabis watching them ravenously, waiting for a story to unfold. “I do feel out of sorts in this town. Like everyone’s brains are whirring twenty times faster than mine. Though maybe that’s the scotch.”
“I’m sure it’s the scotch,” she says, and it’s clear this particular arrow of kindness strikes his heart.
“I should probably get out of here. You students all get a bit funny after midnight. But I owe you a drink,” he says. “You’re welcome to come for a nightcap if you like. The hotel bar has these great nuts. Spicy. Moreish.”
She understands the offer. She has read the script. In ordinary circumstances, she has heard, the game is to be withholding, to make yourself desirable through unavailability. But these are not ordinary circumstances.
Sebastian
Resorting to cannibalism
Orson catches the name that flashes up on her phone, and something sparks in him, some glimmer of recognition. Viola. Sebastian.Does he remember?Is she going to be forced into it here, disclosing the fact of herself?Fuck.No time to find out. Behind her the door is swinging open and Maitland is stumbling out into the street.
“I should probably make sure he gets home,” she says, fearing the rapid shift of parameters, not wanting to know where she stands. “But it has really been nice to meet you.”
Before he can reply, she is turning and greeting again her professor, guiding him away toward the dim lights of the taxi rank. Whether Orson waits and watches her or pinballs off into the hungry harem, she will never know. It doesn’t matter. There is nothing more precious than the fact that it might have happened, nothing more important than leaving while the moment is still perfect.
1989
One thirty in the afternoon, get it on—quickly! Before the school bus comes back and the streets are full again with the ricochet of children, before your boss opens the door to the break room and says,bit late for lunch. Try not to fumble with the remote (whichever one it is these days), or get caught by the dark reflection of yourself in the dead screen. Hurry, the world is springing to life, the familiar synthesizer: This isLife and Times! Dissolve; feel your own problems grow trivial against the melodrama, against the height of what a human can feel.
Here they come, just as you knew they would, those known and beautiful faces of Cedardale. That bartender, in particular, has really become one to watch, ever since the love triangle and now his strange moody drives out of town that he claims not to remember. He’s filled out, too, turned into quite the dish. Even now as he is pouring a drink for Margie Ludlow, there is a new potential about him, as though he might hit someone. You wonder whether something might happen between the two of them, and didn’t you read about it last week inSoap Opera Digest? Yes, make no mistake, something is going on.
MARGIE
You really haven’t been yourself lately, Joe.
JOE
How do you mean?
