Lunch (14 page)

 

Chapter 17

T
here are days meant for languishing in bed, although few of us have the freedom to do so. There are times when the weight of the world presses so heavily on your shoulders that you think there is no reason why your lungs fill with air and you are not poisoned by the thoughts flashing through your mind more evanescent than fireflies. And there are times when the vast yawning abyss of anticipation so jangles your nerves, so awakens your senses, that even the smell of newsprint smudged on your fingers as you read your paper over a hurried cup of coffee is cause for celebration, the faint whiff of yesterday's perfume lingering as you sit next to a yawning young clerk in the subway, her shoes scruffed down at the heels because she is too poor or too dull to notice, so alive are you to the very cells in your body, aching to be awakened.

I stare at shoes a lot, they fascinate me. The true worth of character. Not only what is worn but how, and why, and what could that person possibly have been thinking when the laces were tied in clumsy drooping knots.

It was one of those days.

Nick does not look at shoes or smell stale perfume. He prefers a more pragmatic approach, even in his fantasies, even as he lies, waiting, his nerves jangling, for the sound of Olivia.

“I
'VE BEEN
imagining what I'd do to you when you came in,” Nick says as she is shrugging off her coat, her eyes stormy. “It's very passive-­aggressive, you know, always being late.”

“As if you'd know.” She laughs, despite herself. “God, I haven't heard shrink-­speak since I stopped seeing my therapist after my divorce.”

“Actually, I do know,” he says smugly. “I played a character like that once. Very handy, the psychological profiles, you know, all the free advice I get from overpaid so-­called experts.”

“I bet they just love you.”

“They do.”

“They believe what you tell them, don't they?”

“Of course.”

“Do they have any idea what you don't tell them?”

Nick says nothing, stubbing out his cigarette, and she is sorry, biting her lip. His stillness scares her.

I sit up, a dark knot of foreboding looping through my gut.

“So, tell me,” she says, if only to break the dreadful silence, clambering onto the bed next to him.

“Tell you what?”

“What you were imagining.”

His face clears instantly. “What I was imagining,” he muses. “What I've done to you before and what I'll do to you again.”

“Don't you have anything better to think about?”

“No. There is nothing better to think about.”

“Nothing at all.”

“Of course not.”

“Not your career.”

“Fuck my career. It has nothing to do with me. I'm just the Nick in Nick Muncie Enterprises. McAllister and all the other assholes in suits take care of my ‘career' for me. And what a
career
it is, all those blockbusters, all those front-­end grosses and back-­end grosses and slices of the pie, all those tidy little sequels for me, the trained monkey.” His voice is harsh. “All that money, and all the shit that comes with it. And, oh yes, let's not forget
Faust
while we're on the topic of shit, shall we, what a great idea for our action superstar, a real movie, a real man, just the thing for our hero to play. Don't make me laugh. As if they thought I didn't hear
them
laughing, and snickering, and spreading rumors behind my back. Even the number-­one box-­office draw in the world is not immune to all that fucking Hollywood shit.”

He lights up a cigarette, he doesn't care if she hates it, and runs his fingers through his hair. “Have you ever thought about the unconscionable amount of money I actually earn?” he asks. “Me, Nick Muncie, superstar, the most undeserving fuck who ever lived and breathed.”

I'd had that bad feeling about today from the minute Olivia walked in the door, and it tightens more deeply when I hear Nick's unprovoked candor, and see the startled expression on Olivia's face. They are talking too much of the hell on earth where he lives, too much reality is beginning to seep through the leaded windowpanes, intruding on the fantasy of their gilded wonderland when Olivia should be lying underneath him, writhing in ecstasy, pleading.

“You're not undeserving,” Olivia says, her arms around him. “I imagine you're paid what producers think you're worth, and that's why you earn it. Besides, I can think of a million things I'd do with all that money.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, set up a foundation for young artists, for starters. Another one for art therapy for battered children, and—­”

“That's the difference between us, isn't it?” he interrupts, he can't bear to hear any more. “You have a heart and soul and I have McAllister.”

“Don't say that,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “Don't say that. Don't say anything else. Just kiss me.”

He buries his head in her lap, and they stay like that, locked in a frozen embrace, until Nick comes back to himself with a start and kisses her so deeply she thinks she will never be able to draw another breath again.

“Y
OU'RE IN
a strange mood today,” he says to her afterward, twirling a stray curl in his fingers. “I guess we both are. What is it?”

“I'm not sure,” she says, but he feels her tighten. “I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess.”

“What a delectable thought.”

“Very funny,” she says, pretending to swat him, then nestling down to him. He pulls her tight, caressing the round curves of her belly.

“I owe you an apology,” she says eventually.

“What for?”

“For being a jerk. For being, as you so succinctly put it, passive-­aggressive. Because I'm always late, and cranky when I come in. Acting like a spoiled little brat. I don't mean to, you know. I've always hated being late, actually. But when I'm walking across the park my feet just start slowing down, and . . . well, if you're going to do something, you should—­I mean—­” She buries her head in a pillow. “I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know who I am anymore.”

He is still holding her tight. She can feel his tense breathing, and the absolute rigidity of his muscles.

They both know what she is trying to say.

The bad feeling is getting stronger, and my stomach is churning.

“What's the worst thing you ever did?” she asks, turning around to face him. It is a surprising question, even for Olivia.

I do not move from my perch, rooted with anxiety yet intrigued by their conversation, watching them, watching Nick, nerves on edge, to see if he snaps.

“I can't tell you that,” he says.

“Why not? Is it that bad?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters,” she says, sitting up, her eyes wide. “Everything matters. Everything that's happened has made you who you are.”

“And who am I?” He sits up and snakes closer to her, pulling her back into his lap, scooting back with her until he is propped securely against the bedframe, holding her tight, one arm an iron vise across her chest, the other running down her body, bending her with him, caressing her breasts, his thumb and forefinger playing with her nipples till they harden, her belly, her thighs, his fingers swirling in that familiar teasing waltz of urgent hunger. She feels him growing harder against her back, it takes so little time for him to stiffen, and then take what he wants, over and over again.

His hands, swirling, harder, and faster. She is arching away from him, and he pulls her back, sliding up and into her.

“Who am I?” he asks again.

“Nick.”

“Nick who?”

“Nick Muncie.”

He claps one hand over her mouth. “Who am I?” he says, his voice raspy. “Say my name. Say it like this. I want to feel you say it.”

She tries to bite his fingers, and he pinches her, cruelly, just to hear her scream beneath his hand.

“Who am I?”

“Nick.” He feels her say it. “You fucking bastard, Nick.”

He laughs and takes his hand away.

“Why do you always have to ruin it?” she says, gasping, his abrupt changes of mood so unpredictable and terrifying, so inflaming, always leaving her defenseless against him. “You can never be nice, and just stay nice, never.”

“You don't want me to just be nice and
stay
nice, so shut up and take it,” he says, knowing her body too well, knowing that as long as he is moving like this inside her, her protests are feeble shams and his fears are groundless. “You know you have to take it, whether you like it or not.”

“Fuck you,” she says, twisting away so suddenly that she falls free from him, and tries to crawl off the bed.

“So you want to play, do you,” he says, grabbing her ankles and dragging her back as she claws helplessly for a handhold. “We'll play ‘Who Am I?' and it's your him to guess.” He spanks her. “So,” he says, punctuating each word with a resounding smack as she writhes frantically, trying to get away, “who am I?”

“Stop,” she screams.

“Stop? No, I'm not ‘Stop.' ” Spanking her harder. “Try again.”

“Nick,” she says, sobbing with rage and pain. “You're Nick.”

“Now we're getting somewhere,” he says, lifting her up and telling her to blow her nose on the large handkerchief he keeps tucked inside one of the pillows, there, like a good girl, before turning her around to sit back on his lap, facing him this time, one hand gripping her wrists tight behind her back, kissing the tears away, smiling triumphant as she twists her head away from his lips, smiling still as he impales her and she shudders, despite herself. “Where were we? Ah, yes,” he says, “we're playing ‘Who Am I?' So, who am I?”

“Nick,” she says, her eyes shut, her ass on fire, riding him, heedless. “Nick Muncie.”

“Nick Muncie, who?”

“Nick Muncie, superstar.” He lets go of her hands and she leans forward into him, pressing down, hard, feeling him deeper, her breathing ragged. “The most famous actor in the world.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“I am?”

“Yes.” Oh, why so many questions, she can't think. “More famous than anyone. More, more, more.”

He is laughing softly, watching her, so close to the brink. “More than anyone else in the world?”

“Yes, more,” she says, delirious, until she can bear it no longer, how can he hurt her and then make her feel like this, it's not possible, no, don't stop, she is falling in the sea, drenched, wave after wave of unbearable satisfaction flooding over her.

When she can think again she opens her eyes, surprised to see Nick's face so close, still with that awful smug grin, and she is suddenly aware of a sharp stinging pain on her rear.

“You prick,” she says, pouting. “You spanked me.”

“You deserve it, and worse. Much, much worse.”

“Let me go.”

“Not a chance.” He is still hard, inside her, rocking her back and forth, imperceptibly, and she bites her lip to keep from crying out. “We're still playing.”

“I don't like this game.”

“Ah, but I do. And I think you do, too.” His hands on her breasts, pulling her down. “So tell me, who am I?”

“I told you already,” she says, stretching out her full length on him, as he wants her to, she has no choice but to obey the overwhelming mastery of her will when she is lying in his arms, she isn't strong enough to fight him, no woman is. Not like this. “Nick. Muncie. Superstar. The most famous actor in the world. More famous than anyone.”

“Anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Acting is my job.”

“Yes.”

“My life.”

“Yes. I don't know. How should I know?”

“It is.” His grip tightens, squeezing her till she cries out. “Acting all the time. You have no fucking idea.”

He pulls away from her suddenly, pushing her off, and sits up, lighting another cigarette, and she is so startled by his abrupt standoffishness that she sits up behind him.

“Acting at what, Nick?”

“Acting at
living,”
he says savagely.

There is a look on his face she's never seen before, worse than the silence she'd glimpsed there already and wished she could block out of her dreams. Not pain, not anguish, just emptiness, a gaping black void, his features still so starkly handsome and so terrifyingly empty, a face wiped clean of any human emotion as if a squeegee had passed over it like the one Nick used to use at the Sunoco station in Beverly Hills, retreating inward, far away, dropping deep into a fathomless cavern.

It is like looking at the face of annihilation itself.

I haven't seen that face for a long time. No one should ever have to see that face.

She doesn't know him at all, Olivia realizes with a shiver so sudden it is like footsteps tap-­dancing on her grave, all she knows is how much he wants her. It is their unspoken rule not to talk of who they are, who he is or his life outside this flat. She only knows what he means to other ­people, what his body means to her—­and hers, she guesses, to him—­but not where he came from, what incomprehensible brutality molded him, what sparked that indefinable longing driving him on into life, plaguing him always to take more than is offered, even when he has her nakedness, exposed and vulnerable, dissolving into his, bending to his will, and begging him to stop.

For the first time, she is truly afraid.

He wants more. He will always want more.

“You want to know what I was like?” Nick says, the dreadful blankness fading into the simplicity of anger. “Okay, I'll tell you what I was like. I'll tell you a nice little story about what I was like, since you asked. I was just a kid. I needed money.”

She doesn't ask why a kid would need money, she thinks she can imagine.