Exposure

by Talitha Stevenson

  She put down the frothing beer bottle beside her and took a packet of cigarettes out of her bag.

  'My strategy?' he said.

  She spoke out of the side of her mouth while she lit the cigarette: 'Yup.'

  'What do you mean, exactly?'

  'Well, with your job, for example. Are you actually trying to get sacked or is this, like, a test of their selfless belief in your talent?'

  Luke waved his hand, brushing away her remarks as if they were flies. 'Yeah, yeah,' he said. He wished she would go away because he was getting used to exile, to his expat status at home where, with no one but himself to maintain them, the old peer-group standards were ceasing to apply. But he was torn because, conversely, he was intensely relieved to see his intelligent friend because he could trust her sense of proportion, even if he found it brutal at times. She was generally thought to 'take no shit' and he often wondered why this was. How did a person get that way? He had a vague impression of hardship in her childhood—money, possibly violence or alcoholism—and, of course, there was the loss of both her parents by the age of twenty-two. He couldn't begin to imagine what it felt like to have no parents—no mother.

  'Gimme one of those?' he said.

  'You can have a cigarette if you promise me you won't lose your job:

  'What if I don't want my job any more?'

  She tossed the cigarette at him anyway. 'Oh, God. Not you too. I heard about bloody Sophie daahling.'

  'What about Sophie?'

  'Shit, don't you know? Your parents must know.'

  'Know what?'

  'Sophie handed in her notice at the Telegraph.'

  'What? Why? To do what?'

  'Don't know what she's doing. My mate Caroline just said she left. That's all.'

  'Caroline?'

  'You know Caroline. My friend at uni? She used to come and do her philosophy essays on our kitchen table. This is terrible—you probably can't remember her because she isn't five foot nine and a size ten. Her name's Caroline Selwyn. Very bright. A really interesting person.'

  'Oh, sure. Of course. No, I do remember. She had bad skin.'

  'God, Luke. Yeah—that's her. Anyway, Caro said it was like the big shock of the month, apparently. I mean, obviously things weren't easy with the whole thing about your dad, but life goes on, doesn't it? And shit, Luke, that was a hell of a job to throw in.'

  'Yes, it was,' said Luke, feeling frightened for Sophie—and for himself. Were they just a no-good pair? Were they a bad batch of genes?

  'I'm just throwing out ideas here, but maybe you should, like, call her? You're her brother. It might be friendly. Do you lot communicate at all?'

  'I will call her,' he said. 'No, I will.'

  'But I didn't come here to talk about Sophia. She gets quite enough air-time in my opinion. This is all about you. What's up?'

  'You know what's up.'

  'Arianne?' She frowned.

  Luke nodded and tapped the ash off his cigarette. He glanced at the annexe windows: it was still and dark behind the leaves and glass.

  'So what are you feeling? Will you tell me? It might help,' Jessica said. 'Look, it might help me, OK, because you've got me dead worried.'

  She stroked his hair in the peaceful, maternal way she had and Luke said, 'It's simple, really. I love her and I have to have her back. I just have to. That's all there is to it. It's that or I've missed my chance, Jess. Because what she and I had—well, that was it, what everyone's waiting for. She was it and I let her go. Not let her, exactly, but sort of lost her. It's complicated.'

  Jessica sighed. 'Oh, Luke.'

  'What?'

  'Why was she it? Yes, she was beautiful, yes, she had the whole damaged and manipulative Monroe thing going on and, sure, everyone turned to look when she came in. But, really, was that what you actually wanted to live with? It was all a fucking performance, Luke. She was your consummate actress. What was real?'

  Luke took a drag on his cigarette. He remembered how, at the end, he had wondered if Arianne was faking the seductive little sighs she gave while she slept. In bad moments, after she had stopped wanting to sleep with him, he had been sure she did things to taunt him, to punish him for his global inadequacy. While he attempted to work from home, for example (which he had done more often when he became afraid she might call his supposed friend Joe and ask him over to keep her company), she had begun to give disproportionate attention to the smoothing of moisturizer on to her bare legs—up and down, up and down on the sofa beside him. She had padded about in a rainbow of G-strings, making an X-rated reflection in his computer monitor and, absentmindedly, she had often paused in the kitchen doorway to bite into pieces of fruit, letting juice run from her wrist to her elbow, then chasing it back up again with her tongue.

  Or had she just been eating fruit, for God's sake? Was it not possible for an individual to be so close to perfect that their fruit-eating, their sighs, were precisely what 'eat' or 'sigh' had always meant in your imagination? Jessica was sceptical about perfection because she had not been exposed to it. He wanted to tell her this, but he was afraid she might call him an idiot and tell him to go back to work.

  She was so sharp and clever about people and he knew she would have theories about Arianne, but he did not want to hear them. Jessica saw human nature neon-lit under a microscope and although he could always see she was right when she explained herself, he was glad his mind naturally blurred life a litde and made it softer to look at.

  Jessica went on, 'What a girl. No, I'm not surprised she's doing so well really.'

  'Is she?' he said. 'I haven't heard anything about her.'

  'Oh, well, I haven't seen her either and nor has Ludo, I don't think, but she's been in the press a bit recently. You really have cut yourself off, haven't you? Not even reading the Style section. Good Lord.'

  Luke's mouth went dry with fear. Here it was: Arianne's independent life. It was about to crash into him head on. 'In the press? Why?' he said.

  'She's in that play Hotel in the West End. It's being directed by that Hollywood actor, Jack Cane—oh, you know, from that film where the thinly disguised Arab types plot to blow up the White House? He's in loads of stuff'

  'She got the part.'

  'Yeah, she's replacing the lead actress indefinitely—maybe the whole run. Apparently the real girl was "exhausted". We all know what that means,' Jessica said, tapping her nose.

  'Wow. That's—that's fantastic.'

  'Yeah. All worked out nicely for her. No, she must be pretty talented, actually, if they thought she could learn the whole part in a few weeks like that. Not that she didn't get a little help, of course.'

  'Oh?'

  'From—oh, you know, Jamie wotsit.'

  'Who? From who?' Luke said. 'Why did he help her? Do I know him?'

  Jessica stubbed out her cigarette and a drank some beer. 'Oh, it's nothing. He's just some crappy TV actor with floppy black hair.'

  'And she's—what? She's friends with him?' Luke said. He felt the garden slope violently away from him. He was almost too weak to breathe.

  'I ... I really don't know,' Jessica said, appalled at her tactless-ness. She just found it impossible to believe that Luke genuinely loved that agonized narcissist, no matter how good her legs were, so she had not taken enough care to be discreet.

  'You do know,' he said.

  'Look, I'm sorry—I really don't. I only know he helped her get the part because his dad's the major backer of the production.'

  Luke put his head into his hands and then he put his head in his hands on his knees, and then he drew his knees and his head and his hands up into his chest. It was as if being smaller might shrink the pain.

  'Oh, babe,' Jessica said, 'they might just be friends, honey. I really don't know.'

  'They're not,' Luke said. 'She's sleeping with him.'

  'Luke, you don't know that.'

  'Yes, I do.'

  Jessica sighed and looked away. They sat in silence for a moment and the wind stirred the
bushes and blew a few rose petals out across the lawn. Eventually she said, 'So have you just ditched your amazing flat?'

  'I'm just staying here for a bit, OK? Basically I'm not going back there without her, Jess.'

  'What?'

  'I mean it. I'm not doing anything without her. Life, I mean. None of it.'

  'Luke, this is crazy,' she said. 'Luke? How do I make you listen to the voice of your friend who loves you?'

  'I always listen to you.'

  'OK, then. What if she is going out with this Jamie whatever-his-name-is?'

  'Turnbull,' he said, remembering Arianne mentioning she had met him. How insignificantly the name had trickled into his life! He recalled her saying, 'Yeah, I met some new people this evening—a few models, an actor. Mostly twats—except this swanky actor called Jamie Turnbull. Want a bubble bath? I'll go and run it.'

  Unable to drink, Luke put down his beer bottle. 'I know who he is. He's the one from that hospital thing,' he said.

  'Yes, that's him. He's like the "lovable rogue" who's secretly a genius but has-a-drinking-problem-and-is-wasting-his-incredible-potential-to-be-a-brain-surgeon-like-his-highly-respected-brain-surgeon-father. God, those shows are crap—psychiatrists must wince if they see them. Anyway,' she said softly, seeing she had lost him he was staring out across the garden,'anyway, what if she is going out with him, sweetheart?'

  'No,' he said.

  'Because you probably should just try and be ready for that. I suppose that would be sensible.'

  'No, it's OK. She can't be, Jess. She isn't. She couldn't after what we had. Not so soon. The reason I know is because it wouldn't be humanly possible.'

  '"Frailty, thy name is woman,"' Jessica said. She hated the glibness with which she was avoiding her friend's unhappiness, but she had not been prepared for it. It occurred to her that, oddly, she sounded rather like Luke's emotionally paralysed father, who was a mine of apposite quotations if ever warmth was required. It was unlike her, but she felt thrown. Of course, she had seen other friends heartbroken before, but to see Luke in this state somehow constituted an end of innocence. If her broad-shouldered, privileged, sports-playing, handsome friend Luke wasn't immune to this depth of pain, no one was safe. Here was the rose garden of his childhood—and here was Luke, pale and slouched before it.

  He looked at her as if she had been trying deliberately to confuse and scare him.

  She said, 'Oh, sweetheart, I'm sorry. All I'm saying is, you know what Arianne's like. I mean, I don't know her that well, but wasn't she seeing some guy when you met her? Didn't she leave him in exactly the—'

  'No,' Luke said. 'It's not the same. Oh, my God.'

  She saw tears in his eyes and went on, rather desperately, 'But, Luke, think about it calmly. Please try. She wasn't the easiest of girls, was she? Let's face it, she was a total nightmare. Don't you remember that evening at Ludo's—the dinner party? She went completely mental because you stopped checking on her for five minutes so you and I could have a litde gossip and catch up. Do you remember? She didn't like you having friends, Luke. She didn't like you having a job. These are commonly thought to be bad signs in a girlfriend.'

  'It was just she didn't know many people that night. She thought I was ignoring her.'

  'Oh, right. OK—because she's so shy. Yes, I can see why that would have been a problem.'

  'She is shy. Underneath it, I mean. You don't know her. It's all very complicated. There's basically been a huge confusion.'

  'What confusion, Luke? OK—no, I don't know her. But I do know love isn't meant to be complicated, there aren't meant to be huge confusions. To me, you either love someone or you don't. And, Luke, if you do love someone, you respect them.'

  'But I do respect her.'

  'Fuck! I'm talking about her, Luke, not you. Wake up! She practically kissed your friends in front of you. Remember Joe and that whole tequila-shot incident? Everyone fucking gossiped about it, babe. They were all, like, "Luke should have more self-respect." Is that what you want?'

  'Well, I know why she didn't respect me. And I just need a chance to show her who I really am and then she will.'

  'Who you really are? Who were you then?'

  'I don't know. I was just—I was scared all the time. All I could think about was her leaving me. I was not myself. I wasn't a real man.'

  'Yes, you were. What's a real man? That was you. Luke, you were what she made you into—you were both what you made each other into. And you still would be now. That's the Arianne-Luke, just as much as this is an aspect of the Jessica-Luke.'

  He shook his head slowly. 'God, you really think that's how people are? Chaotic like that? Changing, changing, changing?'

  He sounded slightly manic, but Jessica did not notice this. She enjoyed theorizing and could forget her context in the rush of mathematical excitement. 'Definitely,' she said. 'We're like colours. You put one shade of blue next to another shade of blue and it can look green, but put it next to green and it's blue as the sky, put it next to red and it looks purple. No one's fixed. And, Luke, Arianne made you invisible. You disappeared on us.'

  'Not at the beginning. It wasn't like that at the beginning.'

  She sighed. 'No, it can't have been. I know. But maybe it wasn't ever meant to be a long-term thing. Maybe it was always just a litde bit of the journey.'

  This was almost exactly what Arianne had said to him. He remembered her standing there with her weird assortment of possessions, sinister in their disparateness as ingredients for a spell. She had said, 'This was always a temporary thing, Luke. Life's a journey, right? Who wants to settle down and all that?'

  Luke turned to Jessica. 'A journey?' he said desperately.' Where?'

  'Well, I mean I don't know, exactly. Why would I know? But this is what people say is the interesting—'

  'Don't tell me that. And I don't see why you're so sure you're on a journey, anyway. You only call it a journey if you know you're going somewhere, right? If you were just going round and round you'd call it—' He broke off in wordless frustration.

  'Just going round and round,' she said.

  'So how can you tell that isn't what we're doing?'

  'I ... You can't.'

  'Well, then.'

  'Well, what? I don't see how this relates to you and Arianne.'

  'No,' Luke said, 'neither do I. I think I've forgotten.'

  But even though the idea could lose its logical formation, he could not really forget. Although he could not explain it, he knew that his belief in God and heaven and in human progression altogether was inextricably connected to the salvage of all that wasted love. That it should simply be lost and forgotten implied facts about the world too terrible to contemplate.

  'Sweetheart, if you want my honest opinion—and I'm well aware you've given me no reason to believe you do—I think you should move on. Mend yourself and move on!

  'Oh, you make it sound so ... How would you know? I'm sorry, Jess, but how would you fucking know?'

  They sat quietly while he cried, and then Jessica said, 'Luke, haven't you ever wondered why I don't have a boyfriend?'

  It took a moment for her words to reach him. 'I suppose,' he said. 'You're pretty secretive about things. Private, I mean.'

  She laughed. 'No, secretive was the right word. But you're so unsuspicious, Luke, aren't you? You just accept things—the way they look on the surface.'

  'Oh, I'm thick, you mean?' he said, remembering how frequently his sister had made this poisonous observation. 'You mean I'm thick and conventional.'

  'No!' she said, although if you stripped away the fond indulgence that was what was left. 'No,' she said more quietly, ashamed of herself. 'Anyway, I'm trying to tell you I'm gay.'

  Luke flinched as if he had been punched in the stomach, and she couldn't help giggling at the artless honesty of his reaction. 'So, what do you think?' she said. And then, unable to stop herself before it came out, 'Are we still friends?'

  'Of course we're still friends,' he said. He put his
hand on her arm and then, as if in response to a new understanding of her, he shook it and thumped her on the back.

  She smiled lovingly at him. 'Good. I'm sorry I didn't say before.'

  'I—well, you should have. How long have you known? I mean—oh, God. Does Ludo know?'

  'Yes. I told him a couple of weeks ago. Actually, I introduced him to my new girlfriend the other night.'

  'Your—'

  'Cally,' she said. 'I'd like you to meet her. She's doing a doctorate in philosophy at Cambridge.'

  'Wow.'

  Jessica blushed with pleasure and excitement. 'I know. She's gorgeous, too. I have no idea what she's doing with me, which is a completely great sensation.'

  Luke felt a stab of jealousy. 'That's really fantastic, Jess.'

  She put an arm round him and kissed his cheek. 'Thanks, babe,' she said, again reminding herself not to sound so grateful in future. Cally was always telling her off for this—and she was right. You had to start on the right footing—no defensiveness—particularly, as Cally said, if you'd been crazy enough to pretend for as long as Jessica had.

  'So, you see, I do know what it feels like, Luke. I know what love feels like. I understand how overwhelming it can be and how you can't tell left from right from wrong.'

  He looked at her seriously and it occurred to him that he had probably been this obtuse in his own happiness. Perhaps everyone was. Hadn't he almost wanted to tell his ex-girlfriend Lucy not to be sad about them splitting up because so much happiness had come out of it? He had wanted to draw her attention to the sum total of happiness because, for a moment back there, he had felt sure good old Lucy would understand and be pleased, if only she thought about it.

  Happiness was an ugly condition to be in, really, he thought. A picture came back: himself, overexcited by a new red bike on his eighth birthday, running round the house shouting his joy like a Red Indian, accidentally stamping on Sophie's hamster. 'No,' he said bitterly. 'Now you'd have to feel it all turning into hate.'

  Jessica looked at him and nodded. Then she put her arms out and he let go of himself into them and cried into her long hair.