It is early enough that nothing else exists beyond the carpeted south-facing bedroom. She is not thinking about the shoot that Orson is leaving for later, nor the maddening coursework that she is ignoring, nor her brother arriving that afternoon. Not the paparazzi who may or may not be camped outside. Not the unknown, inaccessible layers of Orson’s past, or the person he is when he is not with her.
You’re a prisoner to your own success, she tells him sometimes.
It’s true, he says.That’s the problem, when you belong to everybody.
His hand drifts back to catch her thigh, and he breathes: “Don’t be awake.”
“I can’t help it,” she says. “I’m savoring this.”
“Okay fine,” he says, turning and wrapping himself around her ribs, brushing under her rumpled silk top, his eyes still shut with sleep and his hot breath—somehow both pleasant and unbearable—in her face. “I’ll let you be awake. But you are making scran.”
“You are the worst,” she says, by which she means,I love you. “What is in there?”
“Sausages, eggs. Half of a tomato—no, a full tomato.”
“As much as a full tomato.”
“Times are hard around here, Viola,” he mumbles, pressing his nose into her stomach, and she thinks unpleasantly that it will be hard to make time for the gym this week, with her brother here.
“Bread?”
For a minute she thinks he may have fallen back asleep. “No bread,” he says.
“I’ll get delivered.”
“Faster if we just run out.”
“Please.”
Sebastian
Bawt tickets
he had texted, and her heart burst alive. The fact is rushing in—My God, he’s coming. Here. To see me.To see her life, the truth of it, with all his brotherness and stubbornness and conspiracy.
“You have that face,” he says.
“What face?”
“Your worried face. I’m only gone a few days.”
“It’s not that.”
“Your brother?”
“It’s going to be fine.”
“I thought you were excited.”
“I am,” she says, which is a part of the truth, and slips away, calling back. “Order the bread!”
The stainless-steel refrigerator opens with a satisfying pop, offering its insides. She loves cooking in his house, making use of Orson’s otherwise neglected kitchen, knowing that every few days Marina will scrub all the mess away. Sometimes the house feels like the set of a sitcom, where everything gets reset at the start of each episode. Too easy to be real.
Sweet, meaty aromas twist from the oven, oily vegetablescaramelizing, wafting (she hopes) to the bedroom, an incantation to stay, to let this moment—this Before—stretch forever. Sizzle, flip, taste, salt. Search: what to do with visitors in London. Bookmark a few results. Mozart is playing on Radio 3, a chamber piece she could once name. Eggs crack onto a pan, hands behind her, lips on the back of her ear.
“Scran.”
“Two seconds!” She can feel him watching her hungrily as she plates, cracks pepper, and tosses fat sea salt flakes on top. “Greedy,” she says, grinning.
