The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life

by William Brandt

  I visited Gerard too. If Sittlebury is like going back to school, Paremoremo is like going back to university. The criminals are all terribly grown-up and serious—and this is just the remand wing. Gerard’s on the way through to Porirua, but they’re holding him while they paint his cell and put in a flush toilet. Having said that, Gerard seems to be fitting in surprisingly well. The lifers have a certain Dostoyevskian mystique that gets them through the day-to-day. He says he feels much more at home here. He stands at the window sometimes and just breathes in the air and tells himself, this is New Zealand air I’m breathing here.

  He couldn’t show me his cell but they gave us a little visiting room.

  I watch him as he rolls a cigarette, briskly, and puffs away. Every so often he glances at his watch. “Yeah, I’ve got the polishes on the second draft nailed.”

  “Was there much to do?”

  “They wanted more joke lines.” He glances at his watch again.

  “Joke lines?”

  He nods, eyes crinkled through the smoke.

  “I thought you were supposed to be saving the world from heavy metal music and the devil?”

  “Oh.” He looks embarrassed. “It’s really more of a contemporary satire on modern rock culture.”

  “I see. Have they changed your medication by any chance?”

  “Yeah. I’m on lithium now. I didn’t want to take it for a long time. I was scared. I’d heard all this terrible stuff about what it can do to your liver.”

  “I know how you feel. I had just the same problem.” He doesn’t seem to be listening. He glances at his watch. His foot taps nervously. “Am I holding you up?”

  “No, that’s cool. I scheduled this meeting in. But I have to get back to work in twenty minutes, so I’m keeping an eye on the time.” He shakes his head. “So much to do, so little time. I have to have a first draft ready for next month. Seamus and Sean are flying out to talk about it.”

  “So what are you working on now?”

  “A romantic comedy.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”

  “Beg your pardon.”

  He’s got a three-picture deal. I do happen to know that much because I was involved in the early negotiations and I helped him find an agent. I also know that the Irish Brothers are paying him very handsomely, and that he’s donating all the proceeds to charity. I even know which charity: my charity. Did I not mention that? I’ve started a charity. I’m calling it the Case Foundation. Which makes me the head Case. We already have a brass plaque, an office, a receptionist called Tara and a solicitor’s firm. Even that much cost a fortune. My dad is very grateful.

  Choosing an actual charitable activity isn’t nearly so easy. At first I was thinking maybe something to do with animals but then I thought maybe not. Then I thought maybe something like a Distressed Overseas New Zealanders Repatriation Service. But apparently that’s already covered. So I’ve decided in the end to keep the brief wide open and approach it on a case-by-case basis. The entrepreneurial approach to charity. One thing. The village at Pakulalanana definitely gets a water tank and a generator—if they want one, that is.

  The traffic inches its way up and over the bridge, down the other side. It banks up again going past Auckland Grammar, but we manage to sideslip a couple of lanes and catch the Gillies Avenue exit okay. Melissa is driving. She has this insane idea that we’ll find a spot somewhere in Newmarket and of course we don’t and we end up in the municipal parking building above the Olympic pool where they charge a fortune but at least it’s close and by now we’re running out of time. We take the steps two at a time and we just make it for the title sequence.

  I sit. Melissa leans across. “Feeling okay?”

  “Never felt better.” Perhaps something of an overstatement, but still. My hand goes to the back of my neck. It still feels pretty breezy back there, but in a good way.

  The lights go out. My pulse quickens.

  Music begins to play. Here come the credits. Here they come.

  It’s dark now and we’re rolling down Parnell rise. Shops, restaurants, people on the street. Melissa has this insane, crazy, half-baked idea that we’re going to find a park here. We end up halfway down Gladstone Road and walk all the way back in the chirruping darkness, past the rose gardens, all the way to Parnell. We’ve got time. The booking isn’t until nine.

  Melissa raises her glass. “Well, here’s to it.”

  “To the divorce.”

  “The divorce.”

  We drink. I raise my glass. “And here’s to it.”

  “And all who sail in her.”

  After dinner, we walk back to the car, and drive, late, to an expensive hotel in the middle of town. We cross downtown Queen Street on the stroke of midnight, and it’s as dead and empty as Oxford Street on a weekday night. We check into a penthouse suite. The lift doors close. It’s a long way to the seventeenth floor. I turn to Melissa. “So, listen, about payment . . . Is it really necessary?”

  “Really, it is necessary.”

  “After all we’ve been through together, and I fired you and you quit, and I even came down to visit your folks in Levin and stayed the night and everything, you still insist on payment?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, okay, if you insist.”

  “I do. I absolutely insist. And in advance too.”

  “How much would a hundred pounds be in New Zealand dollars, anyway?”

  “Call it three hundred. That’s a round figure.”

  “Okay, three hundred it is.”

  She unclips her purse, pulls out three hundred, in cash, and stuffs it down the front of my underpants. It was her idea. She says it’s a way of restoring balance. I never saw myself as the gigolo type, but whatever. She grabs my butt.

  The lift doors open and we let ourselves into the room, which, by the way, is very nice. She puts on a Miles Davis CD while I open the French doors. There’s a wonderful view of the harbor, the lights on the bridge, the black shadow of Rangitoto, the sleeping volcano, felt rather than seen out across the slick water. We stand on the balcony and drink a glass of champagne, enjoying the cool night breeze. Tomorrow morning Melissa flies back to London. She has a midday flight, which I guess is civilized. She’s working for Tamintha, and Tamintha is working with the Irish Brothers. They’re coproducing Gerard’s film. I have nothing to do with it whatsoever and I couldn’t be more okay about it.

  “So did you like it?”

  “Actually, I did. It was okay.”

  “And what did you think of her?”

  “She was very good. She didn’t seem like herself at all. She seemed very believable—and so was he. He certainly didn’t seem anything like himself.”

  “I don’t know how he manages to seem so intelligent on screen.”

  “He takes out his contact lenses.”

  “Ah.”

  It wasn’t a great film. Jazzy camera work, wall-to-wall sex, a sound track that will quickly date, a bit overt on the issues, but nonetheless, it was okay. Matt plays a war-torn journalist, and Sophie plays a tyro, both of them assigned to cover the war in Afghanistan. It’s all about burnout and replenishment, sex, politics, war, guilt, sex, responsibility, honesty, sex, sex, and the media. Not a great film, but okay. It has something to say and it says it. What makes it come to life, what lifts it out of the mass, is the fact that there’s a real connection there between Sophie and Matt, where it counts, on screen.

  “And what did you think of the scene?”

  “The scene?”

  I sat in the dark and I watched a woman I used to know with a man I almost pushed into a volcano once. They were simulating a relationship. They were pretending to be two lonely people in a hotel room, in a place and a time they’d never been or seen. They were neither of them, in real life, remotely like the people they were pretending to be: it was fake, all of it, and they were doing it for the money. But really, they weren’t, and it wasn’t. They were
creating something that was real, something alive, which passed between them at the time, which existed for that moment and now, sitting there in the dark, it was something we were all part of, all of us there, suspending our disbelief by that precious Damoclean thread. Whatever else passed between them is something else. But now, in this darkened room, it was real, and we believed.

  “Actually, you know, I didn’t mind that either.”

  “Did you think it was sensual?”

  “Ah . . . yeah I guess.”

  “A turn-on?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  I shake my head. “It wasn’t hot. More lyrical than hot.”

  “I have to agree.”

  “When all is said and done, I suspect it’s probably a chick movie.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “A hard-core chick movie, but a chick movie nonetheless.”

  I’m thinking of Sophie, as we turn into the room. For a while I missed Sophie so much I thought I was going to die. I tried to trace it back, the whole thing, where it all went wrong, why, when, how, but I could see where it was all headed. It was headed for the devil and heavy metal music. It’s a girl, by the way, and her name is Esther. Sophie wrote me a very, very long letter in which she uses the word sorry forty-five times. I know because I counted. I appreciated that but I don’t think I’ll be writing back. Not immediately anyway. She enclosed photos. Looks like a sweet little thing. She’s managed to identify the father. Apparently he’s thrilled and he’s suing for custody. Sophie says motherhood has changed her in a fundamental way and if I’m ever in London she’d love to see me. She wants to repair the past and build a real friendship based on honesty and mutual respect. Well, I will be in London, because that’s where Melissa’s going to be. We’ll see. I’m flying out to join her in a month, then we’re coming back here for the wedding, midsummer, and then off to Africa for the honeymoon. Matt’s going to try to be in Kenya around February. He’s going to bring the family.

  It was funny how it happened with Melissa. It was when she brought me that cup of tea. She walked in the tent, all orange, and all of a sudden—WHAM. I realized. The proposal, by the way, was extremely romantic, extremely postmodern, and utterly wonderful. I took her down to the beach at Takapuna. It was the end of the day. I cleared away the seaweed and knelt before her and presented her with the severed corpse of my ponytail. (She’s keeping it in a plastic bag. We’re going to bury it in Highgate, next to Karl. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.) A dog was cavorting in the waves. A chill wind was blowing her hair all over the place. Rangitoto was doing handsprings in the background.

  “Now will you marry me?” I said.

  “Oh, all right.”

  “So much for your cast-iron guarantee about balding fattish forty-year-olds.”

  “You’ve lost weight.”

  As far as genre goes, it could change at any moment of course, but at present we’re talking whimsical postmodern black romantic comedy, which actually suits me pretty well. I guess I’ll just string it out as long as I can. And as for this whole thing with Melissa—I know, I know, it’s a nightmare: a cliché of the first order, smacks of blatant wish-fulfillment of the very worst kind, but what can I do? I can’t push her away from me just because she’s young and gorgeous and crazy about me. That would be unwarrantedly cruel. I’m exactly what she needs and I know she’ll be very happy with me. It’s true I’m quite a bit older than her, but I’ve lost a lot of weight lately and as a nonsmoking social drinker who remembers his medication and takes regular mild exercise there’s every likelihood I’ll live to see my grandchildren. Even if I can’t pick them up. But this is real life here, after all, and life is nothing if not a constant series of compromises. Don’t forget also that I’ve saved her. I’ve saved her from a fate worse than death: squandering her youth and innocence impersonating an Australian. Also, if it makes you feel any better, we went to the opera the other night and she hated it. I wept buckets.

  As for Sophie, my love for Sophie was real, but unfortunately the Sophie I loved wasn’t. I don’t think the Sophie I loved ever existed, or if she did, she died alone somewhere far from home in the night and nobody noticed. It hurts, and I still mourn her, but there it is, it’s just something I’m stuck with, like medication. You learn to accept these things. That’s what being forty is all about.

  I pull the sliding doors shut and the sound of the traffic cuts out like a radio.

  INT. HOTEL ROOM—NIGHT.

  SLIGHTLY POPPY LOUNGE MUSIC PLAYS. SLOWLY SHE REMOVES HIS CLOTHES, AND HE HERS, ITEM BY ITEM. THEY STAND TOGETHER IN THE HOTEL ROOM SHOWER, AND SHE SOAPS HIM FROM HEAD TO TOE, AND HE HER. SHE LEADS HIM TO THE BEDROOM. THEY LIE ON THE SHAGPILE, ON THEIR SIDES, FACING ONE ANOTHER. MAGNIFICENT PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE CITY THROUGH PLATEGLASS WINDOWS. THEY KISS. SHE PUSHES HIM GENTLY ONTO HIS BACK, REACHES BETWEEN HIS LEGS. SHE TAKES HIM IN HER MOUTH. SHE NUZZLES AND TASTES HIM. CRADLES HIM, CUPS HIM. SMELLS HIM. LICKS HIM. BITES HIM. TEASES HIM, CAJOLES HIM. HE WATCHES WITH DETACHMENT, THEN GROWING INVOLVEMENT, AS SHE DRAWS HIM SLOWLY, REMORSELESSLY, ALL THE LONG WAY BACK TO LIFE.

  About the Author

  WILLIAM BRANDT was born in London in 1961 to New Zealand parents. He grew up in New Zealand, and has lived in Australia, Russia, the UK, and Noumea. He studied acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, and has appeared in many productions, from An Angel at My Table to Shortland Street. He is married and has three children.

  William Brandt’s collection of short stories Alpha Male won the Best First Book of Fiction Award at the 1999 Montana NZ Book Awards, and was highly praised by reviewers in New Zealand and the UK.