by Karen Moline
“Never?” Nick asks, bemused.
“Well, hardly ever.” She kicks off her shoes, and laughs. “What are you doing to me?”
“Everything I can think of,” he says, but she doesn’t hear his confession because her head is spinning.
“You’re crazy,” she says, her voice affectionate.
“Yes,” he replies, sitting on the edge of the bed to enjoy the kind of sweet silliness he’s never seen in her before. “Is it nice?”
“Mmmm,” she says, “nice.” It takes too much energy to say any more.
“Does this make it nicer?” His hands, easing off her clothes.
“Mmmm.”
“And this?” he asks, kissing her gently, endless tiny sweet kisses as he slips off his own clothes.
“Yes,” she says. “Yes.”
I HAVE nothing to do but wait till summoned, and I sit in the hall near their door, too listless to read. There are no cameras, there was no time to hide them. Besides, Nick told me in a rare moment of introspective candor, he didn’t think he could bear watching what they might catch, not this time, some part of him acknowledging that it might be the last time.
The irony does not escape us: Everything that made him what and who he is, reinvented whole, play-acting and becoming Nick Muncie, superstar, the terrors he’d endured twisted, combed, and spun into satiny threads of perversion, loomed into fine, impregnable cloth, his armor, tortoiseshell-hard, protection as he drove himself, violently, on his speeding ascent to the top, driving mindless and determined, as I am on the Harley, on the curving path up the hill, overlooking the evanescent twinkle of the fairy lights of the city below him, undeterred—all that has shaped him, dauntless.
Until one dreary day a woman he does not know is late for lunch.
This time he’d begged for, alone together, power and passion convoluted and intermingled, will live only in memory. For all the days of careful planning, the hours bereft of Olivia that he’d fill, placated with the dreaming of it, the perfection of his scheming, had been defeated by the simple limits of technology.
I have seen enough, already.
LATER, I bring in dinner on a large tray, placing it on a table near the fireplace before trying to leave as unobtrusively as I’ve entered. When Nick motions me out into the hall while Olivia is running a bath, I know instantly that something is wrong.
“The fuckers,” he says hoarsely. “The stupid fucking pricks.”
“What?”
“I’ve got to shoot late tonight. They fucked up.” His hands through his hair. “I finally get her where I want her, and they fucked up. What if she won’t come back?”
“What are you so worried about?” I ask. “It’s not like she’s in any shape to say no to you.”
Nick slams me up against the wall, a hard thud, taking me by surprise. “Shut up,” he says savagely. “Just shut the fuck up.”
“She’s going to hear you,” I say.
Nick loosens his grip, and pulls away.
“Just ask her,” I say, shrugging off his touch and trying to keep my voice low. “She promised you a weekend, and I expect Olivia keeps her promises. It’ll be split up, that’s all.”
“It’s still fucked.” He turns to go back in.
“Don’t let her see you like this.”
It is the wrong thing to say. Nick’s eyes darken and I tense, but he remembers Olivia in the bath, and instead hurries inside to her.
“What were you arguing about?” she asks, blowing fragrant bubbles to Nick that he playfully swats away.
“Nothing, really.” His hand drops down, idly swirling the bubbles, crushing them. “You are very adorable, like this,” he says, smiling gently as he reaches down to scoop her out of the bath. Kissing her damp neck, he wraps her in towels, and carries her to the Bessarabian in front of the fire. He pampers her as if she were a child exhausted by the day’s play, rubbing her entire body with warmed oil scented with hyacinth that makes her smile, relaxed by its familiar scent.
They drink more champagne and nibble at food, without hunger, Olivia sedated into a dream state, eagerly welcoming the intense lassitude without wondering what induced it. She only wants to exist in the moment, she is his, her body melting into a soothing, sensuous languor.
Nick feels her surrender.
It is time without end, countless dreamy hours of pleasure. He is unswervingly determined to overwhelm Olivia with a tender, solicitous passion she has never felt from him before, not an hour ago, not the other times when he’d try to be nice, not ever has she felt this sweetness of spirit and easy tenderness. He is as recklessly plagued with a need to serve only her, to do only as she wishes, to be kind. This is what she’ll remember, he is thinking, this, only this, our undeniable hunger, a passion too unbearably magnificent to deny or live without, a physical addiction, this will make her change her mind and come with me, how can she not.
They doze only to wake in each other’s arms, limbs entangled, she is nothing but sensation robbing her of all other thoughts. Drifting blissfully replete, she closes her eyes to sleep and is awakened moments later, or is it hours, it doesn’t matter, his mouth is on hers, honeyed kisses, she wakes with him inside her, or if she turns closer to find him lost in dreams she slowly arouses him into wakefulness.
They rarely speak, no more than murmured endearments, or shared quiet laughter.
Their lust for each other’s bodies is more heated than the fire crackling at their feet, their fervor insatiable as if their lovemaking could somehow slow the inexorable sweep of the hands on my Rolex, as if the world outside had died, swallowed into the cold gray rain, swept out to sea, devoured as he is devouring her, drowning, only they exist, only this, this room, this fire, his face next to hers, nothing else, because this is the end.
Olivia believes it is the end.
SHE AWAKENS to unaccustomed brightness. Nick has gone, his face set in sullen lines of displeasure, unwilling to tear himself away, raw, exposed, leaving only because he has no choice. He is picked up by a faceless driver sent in a studio limo, and falls asleep on the way to the set, exhausted and sore, gladdened, actually, that his fatigue will force him to concentrate. Jamie notices the haggard lines on Nick’s face and his snappish temper, and wisely says nothing, thankful that the unexpected reshoots are uncomplicated and short.
I have untaped the shades and pulled open the drapes, revealing a dull gray day like the one preceding it, dreamy hours that for them have already disappeared into the haze of remembrance.
When she comes out of the bath Olivia notices a pile of clothes on the bed: beautifully embroidered silk underthings, a white poet’s shirt and black Levi’s, a pair of black Noconas, stiff and new, scaled down to the smallness of her feet, a black leather belt with an intricate buckle of hammered silver. Last is a thick black leather motorcycle jacket identical to his.
He has pictured her, a thousand times, putting on the Nick, and now he is not there to see it. She has no choice. She looks around for her clothes, but I have folded them neatly and placed them in the Daimler. There is nothing else there for her to wear.
I drive her home in the same strained silence, Olivia lost in thought. Lost.
She is remembering their last conversation, Nick murmuring to her in the dark.
“Olivia,” he’d said, his voice a caress, his lips nibbling on her ear, “you won’t believe this, but I have to leave you soon. Too soon.” Still kissing him, she thinks she is dreaming the implausibility of these words. “I have to work. They screwed up, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” he is saying, and she still does not understand. He sighs, and a sudden flood of surprised adrenaline punctures her lulled state of intoxication. She pulls away to prop herself up on her elbows to stare at Nick in amazement, at the calm distress in his features masking the angry discouragement beneath. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I wanted to tell y
ou earlier, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to ruin this.” His hands through his hair, his eyes imploring. “It’s not fair. This is supposed to be our time together.”
“Yes, it is,” she says slowly. No longer dreaming, she can feel the fears she’d tried to dampen return to rise off her like the hot steam hissing whenever she’d dropped a ladleful of water onto the rocks in the sauna at the baths.
“I wanted our weekend together,” Nick says. “Two days and two nights, you and me, and nothing else. As you said. As you promised.”
He is trying too hard, here in her arms, and she finds it unnerving, from Nick. There’s something he’s not telling her, there’s—
“What do you want me to say to you?” she asks.
“Say you understand, and you’re sorry, and you’ll see me on Sunday night.” Don’t be like this, Olivia, don’t be your everyday self, he begs her silently, a fervent wish, I want you here for me, I want you molded, docile, into a creature I can have, and manage, and master, I could have done it if we’d had the time together as we planned, without this interruption, this horrid intrusion of my life jinxing all my schemes, but I will make you whether you want to or not—
“But I can’t,” she says. “I thought we would . . .”
“Would what?”
“Would be together. And then . . .”
“Then.”
“Nick.” Her voice, sad. “Don’t.”
She’d never have come with him, he can’t deny it any longer. He feels a sharp jolt of hatred stab his heart, savagely. He’ll make her change her mind, oh yes he will. He’ll do what he hadn’t dared, no one can stop him, he’ll make her—
Even in the dark, Olivia sees that look, glimmering, that terrifying emptiness of annihilation, that gaping black void she’d hoped desperately never to see again. She will do anything, say anything, to make it go away.
“Okay,” she says. “Just tell me what to do.”
Nick’s face clears instantly, and he smiles, grateful. “M will fetch you, don’t worry.” He sighs. “I’m really sorry. Forgive me. Say you forgive me,” he says, kissing her with such impassioned desperation that she has no choice but to say it, and then say it again.
“WHAT IS it, M—is something else wrong?” Olivia is asking me as I stand in the mews, just outside her studio, holding a small white box. She does not know I have already placed a larger, matching box, packed and sealed by Nick, on the bed in the flat.
I am not supposed to be here. Nick would kill me if he knew I’d sneaked away on this secret errand, but I had to do it, I couldn’t sit still with the foreboding, I had to move, driving badly, the bike whining the protest my voice could not.
“Here,” I say, extending the box, my voice echoing loudly in my ears because I keep the visor of my helmet lowered. I don’t want her to see my face.
“What’s this?” she says.
“It’s for you. To wear.”
“To wear when?”
“Tomorrow.”
All she can see is her face reflected, distorted, in my visor.
“He’s got some nasty game planned, hasn’t he?” she asks. “He’s not going to give up without a fight.”
I say nothing, frozen in habitual blankness. She pushes up the visor, before I can stop her.
“I like to see the people I talk to,” she says. “You’re hiding something.”
“No.”
Her eyes scan my face.
“Are you my friend, M?”
The question surprises me. “Yes,” I say, “I hope so.”
“Then you know.”
“Know.”
“You do, don’t you?”
And so does she. Nick will deny it, but he is despairing, an unaccustomed feeling that sits badly on his heart. He asked, and asked again, for him an act of unbearable surrender, and she refused him. Soon he will be shooting the final scenes of Faust to applause and tears, I will dismantle the secret gilded flat, erasing all traces of what he did there, we must leave, this is not our home. There is no reason to stay.
No reason except Olivia.
The tickets are sitting in slick blue envelopes atop a pile of scripts McAllister has been couriering over with mounting impatience, and the inevitable cannot be postponed much longer.
“Yes,” I say.
“Can I trust you?”
I want to get down on my knees and clasp my arms around her legs, bury my head in her enveloping warmth like a child begging his mother to save him. I want her to bend down to me, her hair falling in my face, and tell me it’s all right, hush, don’t worry, everything’s all right, I’m here, I won’t leave you, hush.
She hasn’t moved. Nor have I, the little box still outstretched in my hands. I’ve never known a woman to manage such stillness.
“Olivier’s tour is going to Australia in two weeks. I’m meeting him there.”
I nod, the knotted dread in the pit of my stomach growing, monstrous, global, a horrible knot of pain.
“For how long?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter. Forever.”
A neighbor walks by with her shopping, curious, sensible shoes clacking, round shapes in her string bag, apples, oranges, a leek, bright colors, round shapes, the spots of color on her cheeks, round, the buttons on her woolen coat, round, shiny.
Olivia gone, round, sweet Olivia gone, the color of her hair, the life of her, lunchtimes in the flat, watching her, all gone. Unthinkable.
“I wanted to say this to you in the car the other day, but I just . . . I couldn’t,” she says, her eyes boring a hole through my heart. “I have to go to him. Olivier, I mean. And if I don’t go now . . .”
“I understand.”
“Nick can’t know. He’ll try to stop me. If you—”
“I won’t tell him.”
“I’m asking too much,” she says, her features softening. “It’s not fair to you.”
“I’d do anything for you.” I hadn’t meant to say that.
Her face changes. “Oh, M,” she says, one of her fingers, paint-speckled, tracing my scars with the briefest caress. No one has ever dared touch me like that. I jerk my head back, my cheek smarting as if it had been slapped.
“I’m sorry,” she says, running her fingers through her hair, and returns to herself. “I never know what to say to you. You certainly don’t make it easy.”
I attempt a wan grin, and she sighs. We are still facing each other, the box in my hands, outside in the cold, waiting, she is waiting for instructions, the door ajar, opening just a crack into the haven inside.
“Tomorrow,” I say, “at the flat. Be ready for the Daimler to come at five.” I hand her the box.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see. I don’t know anything about women’s things.”
She laughs. “But you do know what Nick likes, don’t you? Go on, then. I’ll be there. And I won’t be late.”
She pries off the top to see an exquisite small crucifix studded with diamond-cut rubies, identical to the heart he’s already given her, only larger, on a slender gold chain.
“This is beautiful,” she says, her eyes somber as she lifts it out to catch the light, sparkling gems lit as if on fire, then slips it on where it will hang, coldly beautiful against her skin like gleaming drops of blood dangling between her breasts.
What will she do with it when Nick is gone, I wonder, quite wildly, will she wear it, will she hide it, will she give it to Annette?
I can’t imagine her showing it to Olivier.
I can’t imagine her gone.
“Is this a bribe?” she says, finally, trying to tease away her anxiety. “Is Nick afraid I’ll run away and hide?”
“Just wear it tomorrow. Please.”
“You don’t say please very often, do you?”
I
nearly smile. “No,” I say, “I leave it to Nick.”
“You leave too much to him,” she says, and turns into her house, ready to nudge the door shut behind her.
“Olivia,” I say, and she opens the door a wide crack, curious. “Listen to me. He loves you, in his way, he does love you.” She cannot imagine the bitterness I am struggling to hide from my voice. “Whatever happens, he won’t hurt you. I won’t let him.”
I watch the color drain out of her face, and curse my clumsiness. I hadn’t meant to scare her. Not like this.
“I asked for this,” she says, slowly. “It should’ve ended long ago, but I couldn’t. It serves me right.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “It happened, that’s all. No one asks for Nick.”
“But we’ve got him, don’t we?” she says. “Or rather, he’s got us.” With that she shuts the door.
I walk back to my bike, my hands shaking, shaking too much for me to drive.
I sit there, in the calm of the mews, on my bike, until the rain starts.
SHE BARELY sleeps, dreaming of black shapes, masks, she is lost, running in the shifting maze she has painted, there is a panting noise behind her, terrifying, and she awakens with a cry. Seconds ticking, her clock, maddeningly calm, oblivious to her distress.
She lies under the thick comforter in her bed, waiting for dawn. Finally, when she can stand it no longer, she gets up, tidies up her already spotless studio, and tries to sketch, but it is useless, the hours crawling. She tears off her smock and throws it down in a crumpled heap, goes downstairs to change into a baggy sweatshirt, jeans, and scruffy boots, masses her hair under a beret, puts on Olivier’s ratty tweed overcoat that smells of oils and peat smoke from their last trip to the country, and walks out into the sharp afternoon air to hail a taxi.
She does not trust her feet to walk her across the park.
The flat is heavily silent in midafternoon. Even the peonies are drooping, petals in a heap on the table I polish diligently with lemon oil after Dulcie swipes a few cursory flicks of a dustcloth over it. Olivia’s nervousness charges the sleepy air into wakefulness, expectant, puzzled, especially when she sees the large white box on the bed, her name written in Nick’s slanting black script on a thick cream card taped to the top. She opens the envelope to read:
