by Adam Foulds
He followed her bare shoulders to a small circular pond with flowers and candles floating in it.
“Very nice,” he said. “But who do you have to fuck around here to get a proper drink?”
“Don’t think that’s on the cards,” she said.
“Which bit?”
“Come on. Philip is giving me that look of please get me out of this conversation.”
A number of similar and beautiful women appeared in a line towards a door. An announcement was made in Arabic and English that the evening was about to begin inside. The women, the models, were deployed like traffic cones to guide the guests into the hall.
Seated at the table for A Paper Fortune, surveying the room, hearing the chinking noises of organized catering behind a door, seeing the large screen behind the podium with its festival logo and the burst of flowers on either side, Henry prepared himself for hours of ceremonial boredom. And this time the event would unfold with the comfortless clarity of forced sobriety. Still, it should be shorter than the television awards he had sat through, long evenings of tedium and misbehaviour and one, when he had been nominated, of adrenalin and misery, seeing his face appear on the screen for one hot minute, composing his face to applaud when the winner stood up beaming, strenuously kissed his beautiful wife and ran up the stairs to make his speech.
On Henry’s right was Tom, reading the menu card thoroughly. Beyond him, Laura sat, out of conversational reach, sipping a glass of water. On Henry’s left, Philip Townsend arranged himself for detached observation, his legs crossed, his large hands holding his knees. “Look out,” he said. “Time to Sheikh Yerbouti.”
A Qatari man, holding his cloak with one hand and papers in the other, climbed to the podium and waited through a burst of fanfaring music and a swirl of animated logo on the screen behind. When he spoke, Henry was fascinated by the gutturals and glottal stops, the harsh, commanding sound of his Arabic. The effect was dispelled when he translated the warm, bland words of greeting into English tinged with an American accent. Other speeches followed, a VT package with many swooping, overhead shots of Doha filmed either from a helicopter or a drone, the flying logo again, clips from the festival’s films. It was over sooner than Henry had feared. The end released applause around the room, a sound of relief, prolonged for courtesy. Before it was over, the waiters were flowing between the tables to deliver something the menu card called a cappuccino of bouillon, a thin, salty heat that was soon spooned away—but already the waiters were returning to remove the cups and deliver a chef’s version of the now familiar Arabic hors d’oeuvres. The noise of talk and clattering ceramics made it hard to hear across the table. Henry gave up trying to join in Laura’s conversation with Tom. The back of the director’s head confronted Henry who could hear the shape of his words but not what they were, likewise the rapid tune of Laura’s replies. He turned to Philip, who was staring across the room. Henry followed the line of his gaze to find a handsome waiter smiling back.
“Have you pulled already?” Henry asked him.
“So vulgar,” Philip said. “But you might be right. Further research necessary, as they say.” He beckoned the waiter over.
“So bloody easy for you people,” Henry said. “It’s just not fair.”
Henry ate flavoured rice and cubes of lamb while the waiter bent his ear close to Philip’s moving lips, to anyone observing apparently taking an order. The waiter straightened and nodded, looked around him and left.
“All done,” Philip said. “Boredom and thoughts of death evaded for another night.”
“Just taking it one day at a time, taking it where you can find it.”
After the main course, Tom announced, “I’m going out for a cigarette.”
“Have you got a spare?” Henry asked him.
“I can probably loan you one. Probably my last chance to smoke with a future A-lister.”
“Great.”
They stood up and walked through the diners, the suits and dresses, the hairstyles and jewellery and faces, and out through a heavy door which, closing behind them, bottled the noise of the room. They were away in another dimension, escaped. They followed the corridor to the exit and found it attended by one of the traffic cone models, alone, pacing a few steps back and forth with her long arms folded, half dancing, dipping and swinging her feet. When she saw them she was still suddenly and smiled a wide professional smile. Henry said to her, “Is this the way out?”
“It certainly is,” she replied.
“You’re American,” he said.
“You’re observant. And I know who you are, Dr. McAlister.”
“Real name’s Henry.”
“Well, it’s just through here, Henry.”
Tom, ignored, went impatiently through the door while Henry lingered.
“What’s your name?”
“Virginia. I’m Virginia. But I’m from Kentucky.”
“Virginia from Kentucky. We’re just going out for a cigarette.”
“Those things’ll kill you, you know.”
“I do. But tobacco’s one of my five a day, so … I’ll catch you later or he’ll be finished before I get a smoke.”
On the terrace, Tom said, “You just can’t help yourself. Just oozing charm.”
“I was just being friendly. I was being polite. Now give us a fag.”
Tom reached into his jacket and pulled out a packet of Benson and Hedges.
“Thank you kindly.”
The paper cylinder with its dry fragrance. The bobbling flame from his lighter. The first drag. The large warm night around them. “God, I’m full of food,” Henry said. “It’s gonna be a horrible purge when I get back.”
“Go to the gym at the hotel. Burn it off.”
“But I’m on me holidays.”
Tom inhaled, exhaled a blue plume upwards towards the stars.
“So you and Laura seemed deep in conversation,” Henry said.
“We were. It’s my desperation getting the better of me.”
“Out of your league, mate. Out of everybody’s league.”
“No, not her. Her boyfriend. You know she goes out with Josh Rappaport, the writer. You know him?”
“Think I met him once.” Curly hair, black-framed glasses, the sly kind of self-confidence that masquerades as witty self-deprecation.
“His hit rate is just, you know. He’s just a phenomenal writer, I think. And he has an unattached screenplay sitting in his drawer, I happen to know, and I want it bad.”
Henry dragged hard on his cigarette. It was interesting the way you could tell physically that some people were second-rate. Tom with his pale neck, his small hands and imprecise gestures, smoking with little popping noises of his lips, desiring this script he wouldn’t get to see, was second-rate. Henry felt a very focused hatred of Tom and the sound of his voice (still talking about this script) that protected him momentarily from his misery. Laura was out of his reach. The better life, the better person he could be, unobtainable. Of course she was going out with someone like Josh Rappaport. Of course she wouldn’t be interested in Henry who was just another actor, after all. Without her saying a word, Henry felt summarized and judged. Henry was not good enough.
“Shall we go back in?” he said.
“I suppose we must.”
Opening the door of the banqueting room and stepping in, Henry was overwhelmed by a gale of trivial sound, clattered plates and loud, blended voices. The waiters swirled among the seated guests whose carefully composed looks were now loosening a little, heated, moderately disarranged. Henry sat back down and leaned behind Tom’s chair to Laura.
“So your partner’s Josh Rappaport?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Must be nice for you. A writer like that. Like having an oil well in your garden.”
Laura laughed. “That’s one way of looking
at it. Still waiting for him to write me a big part.”
There was a plate of dessert in front of Henry, a rectangle of some sort of mousse, a long line of caramel, dots of some other sauce, a crisp made from fruit. Henry demolished its pretty geometry with the side of his spoon.
After the plates were cleared and the coffee delivered, there was more activity at the podium. The evening was not over yet, as Henry would have known if he’d read with any attention the emails he’d been sent and the festival pack in his hotel room. They were a short walk away from the cinema where the opening film of the festival, The Singing Dunes, would be shown.
Henry drank his coffee. He had no steady estimation of himself. As the crowd rose and dispersed, he felt himself miserable and shrivelled and separate among them, Laura rising out of her dress at a great and final distance. The only thing for it was to go on and play his role with García and become so successful that it almost didn’t matter. How many of these people at this backwater festival had ever met Miguel García? The future was clear and obvious. The present counted for nothing—it crumbled away in the movement around him of many irrelevant people.
They were all outside for a moment, improbable in their outfits, the women holding parts of their clothing that were insecure in the breeze or would trail along the ground. They walked along a path marked by flames in glass jars and the standing models. Henry sought Virginia’s face on top of one of the tall and narrow bodies but didn’t find her until they were inside the next building.
“Hey, Virginia,” he said.
“Hello, Doctor.”
“Will you be here later?”
“It’s in my job description.”
“Can I come out and find you a bit later?”
“I’m not allowed to move.”
“Perfect.”
“Enjoy the film.”
“I may come out during the film.”
“Okay.”
Long minutes of settling in the cinema preceded more bombastic festival idents, this time booming through a full Dolby sound system. Henry’s sense of recognition as the title sequence unfolded became a memory of the billboard he had seen on the way from the airport. That felt like a long time ago, although it was hardly more than a day.
The Singing Dunes clearly had artistic ambitions. It opened with long, moodily composed shots of sand dunes, a fine spittle of sand flying from their tops, resonating with a strange thrumming sound. Differently shadowed forms, natural sculptures, formed over geological eons, Henry was absorbed by them although, still irritable, he thought that “singing” was going a bit far. They buzzed with a meaningless noise, the by-product of physical circumstances. Henry found watching them relaxing, a relief, clean, empty, sombre and strange. But then a new shot: an indistinct shape seen through the gelatinous distortions of heat haze got larger and came into focus, a horseman getting closer, thundering past the camera. An epic romance began. The horsemen multiplied. There were battles and revenge sworn and sunsets and shy, beautiful women, a whole human preposterousness laid over the dead landscape. A truly foreign sensibility was at work that looked naïve to Henry, earnest heavy-handedness made the dramatic turning points emphatic, the score was surging and orchestral. Henry got up as if to use the bathroom and muttered apologies as he edged out of his row.
Virginia wasn’t where he’d last seen her. He asked another of the girls where she was.
“Who is she?” she asked.
“You’re Russian,” he said.
“I’m Ukrainian.”
“Okay. Sorry. Virginia. She’s an American girl.”
“Yes. I think she is this way.” She pointed along the sloping corridor. “I am the guard.” She smiled. “Everyone else is in the big room.”
Henry jogged up the corridor to the foyer where he found several of the models sitting on gold-painted chairs, chatting, looking at their phones. They looked up at him as he entered. “Hey. Hi,” he said. “I’m looking …” Virginia stood up.
“Over here,” she said and beckoned with a scooping hand. He jogged over. It was like a game played around the house at Christmas, like hide and seek. They stood close to the wall for privacy, speaking quietly, their faces close together.
“So when the cars come afterwards,” Henry said, “you just get into mine with me. We’ll go together. There’s a bar with actual drink drinks at my hotel.”
“Are you, sir, offering me alcohol?”
“I am.”
“I could get into trouble. I mean actual trouble for, like, abandoning my post or whatever.”
“You won’t. I’ll take the blame. We’ll say you were helping me with a medical emergency.”
“What emergency?”
“Fatal attraction.”
She laughed. “That’s so ridiculous.” Henry laughed, too, lighthearted, genuinely amused by their conspiracy by the patterned wallpaper.
“Great. Excellent. I’ll see you when this bullshit’s over, then.”
Henry put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, then hurried back down to the cinema.
*
“Holy shit. Your hotel is so much grander than ours.”
“We’re talent. We’re the hot cultural commodity.”
“And we’re flight attendants is what it feels like.”
“Still, I bet yours is better than what the Bangladeshis and Nepalis are in, the guys building this place. They live in actual labour camps apparently.”
“That’s no good.”
“I know. Check out those chandeliers.”
Virginia looked up into the vast hotel atrium. She said, “I’m not sure you really care about the workers.”
“I care. I do charity work. I care. I mean, if they just pulled their fingers out and developed some basic acting skills they could be in here rather than out there. If they just put on the odd production of Twelfth Night instead of building football stadiums the whole time. Bit of initiative, that’s all.”
“You’re a bad man.”
“That’s right. Okay, I need to find out where this bar is.”
Henry drank Old Fashioneds, Virginia vodka and tonic. Her mouth was large, her eyes widely spaced and staring. She had a fashion model’s looks, just this side of grotesque, alarmingly beautiful. When she smiled, curving lines flexed from the sides of her mouth to the apples of her cheeks. Her wrists and hands were long and gave the impression of an unused excess of dexterity when she handled her glass and drinking straw. Henry said to her, “So what goes on in Virginia?”
“Say what now?”
“I’m sorry. I actually made that mistake. What goes on in Kentucky?”
“Oh there. Not too much. That’s why I moved up to New York.”
“You live in New York.”
“Well, Queens. You have to be there for all the castings, the shows, for everything. Weird gigs like this one. So freakin’ expensive, though. I live in a models’ apartment, as in we’re all models. When I tell guys this they usually get excited but it’s really not like you’d like it to be. It’s a lot of arguing about bathroom access and underwear on all the radiators and a depressing kitchen with a refrigerator where everyone keeps like three out-of-date yogurts.”
“Do you want to come and see my room? I bet it’s better than your room in Queens.”
“You mean just like survey it in a real estate way. For comparison.”
“Exactly. Let’s go.”
“You’re not hanging around.”
“Ooh. The world feels different when you get off the stool.”
“Just hold my arm, you’ll be fine.”
On the way to the elevator Henry’s pocket buzzed. Emails. His phone had reconnected to the hotel’s wifi. He took it out and checked. “What’s that?” Virginia said. “Fan mail?”
“If only.” There was one from his mother. Henry, I’m sur
e you’re very busy but if you could just find five minutes.
Henry said to Virginia, “Do you know if you can legally divorce your parents?”
“Just walk away, Henry. You don’t need lawyers. Out the front door and keep going.”
*
“My God, the rooms, too. This is just unfair.”
“It does the job.”
“Two beds, like a queen double situation. This is great. It’ll be like summer camp. We can lie on our separate beds and tell each other secrets.”
“Great. So you’re staying, then? Let’s take our clothes off and roll around.”
“That didn’t happen at my summer camp.”
“Things have moved on since … don’t even tell me when. It’s going to be way too recent.”
“Okay, mister.” She walked towards him. “If we’re going to do this.”
The first drunken kiss, one of life’s reliable pleasures.
Virginia’s body looked lonely. Was that the word? Long and narrow with small projecting breasts and no pubic hair and shadows between her ribs. A very exposed body, a working body. Henry could see it stepping in and out of clothes, posing, makeup applied and cleansed away, chemicals to style her hair, a body scoured by other people’s attention, by the impacts of photographs. He felt for her. This was something that seemed to have come with age, the ability to see the human person even in this moment. The moment passed, though. The feminine shapes, the willing contact overwhelmed him. He experienced the secret pleasure that he had with someone new, conquest, possession gained watching her give in and do what he wanted. It felt almost like a theft from her that she would never know about. It happened as they began on the bed, looking down at her face, then passed as things became focused on small adjustments to avoid discomfort, intimate, and then strenuous and obliterating. At least for him. When he was close he looked down at her face to check and she said, “Don’t worry about me. It’s okay.”
“But …”
And then quietly, perhaps knowing that it would send him quickly over the edge, “Don’t worry. You can just fuck me.”
Afterwards, they showered together the parts of their bodies that needed cleaning, making use of the large and sparkling bathroom, living up to its promise. Dry again, Virginia wearing a robe, Henry wrapped in a thick towel, returning to the bedroom after all the frenzy, they felt sexless and innocent. They climbed into bed like children, kicking the huge crackling duvet loose and pulling it up under their chins, showing each other only their silly faces.
