Lunch (8 page)

This is why he'll never tell.

“N
ICK, WILL
you do something for me?” Olivia says, breaking what had been a companionable silence, Nick sitting, slightly hunched, quietly smoking one of the two cigarettes Olivia has grudgingly allowed him, because the smoke makes her sick. It is two weeks later. He is reading his script, memorizing lines, and I am reading Bulfinch's
Mythology,
because she talked of it. Chopin is playing, Olivier's fingers weightless sprites on the keyboard. Outside it is raining, we hear it strumming on the skylight.

He looks at her, his eyes alight.

“Will you take off your shirt?”

Only momentarily stupefied by such a plain request, for no one ever need ask him to strip, Nick rallies, bringing his wrists together in an almost prayerlike gesture, loosening his cufflinks, which fall with a soft clink on the floor, reaching to unbutton his crisp white shirt, slowly, his fingers caressing the buttons as if they were a lover's breasts, then pushing it back off his shoulders to drop in a heap.

His eyes do not leave Olivia's. She is staring back at him, at his muscled splendor.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

“Yes, thank you. I just need to see your shoulders for a minute.”

“You're blushing.”

“I am not.”

“But you are.” He smiles. “I like it. It's sweet. Women don't usually blush when they see me.”

“What
do
they do?”

“They're so busy being with the legend they don't even bother to look.”

Olivia puts down her brush. Her face softens. “I hadn't thought about it that way,” she says slowly. “Of course, I haven't much thought of it at all.”

“Why should you?”

“Well, because it's you, it's about
you,
who you are, how you feel, what's in your face. That's what I am determined to capture. And it's driving me crazy.” She wipes her hand across her forehead.

Her eyes have not strayed from his.

“Crazy,” he says.

“Yes, crazy,” she mutters. “Absolutely stark raving looney tunes.”

“Absolutely.”

They are staring at each other. Nick's raw male-­ness is overpowering, filling this studio, flooding its white walls, puddling between the canvases, pooling at her feet. His gaze will not leave her, leave her be, he is again looking at her like she is lunch, yet he is softer, kinder, because he is here, near her, in her space, and she knows he will stand, posing however she asks, stand motionless, the music in his ears, her eyes flicking over him, looking, searching for the chink she will not find, not here, not yet, because he is too polished at posing.

I cannot read her face, but her cheeks are red, flaming, alizarin crimson.

They cannot take their eyes off each other. This time she is really looking. Something in her is gentling, less wary, and Nick feels it, grabs it though he hasn't moved a muscle, kisses it, sweet, buries his head in it, cradling it close.

There is no way she could ever know that he has never been like this before, with any woman, so pliant, acquiescent, so willing to please, so eager to wait.

He sits, waiting, and watching.

It is an impressive performance.

He is acting like me. Except I will never possess his charm, his beauty, the ease with which he can simply be, his palpable charisma a hot hovering specter floating effortlessly to Olivia, capturing her, snatching away her will to fight him, carrying her away, carrying her up into the flat that awaits them.

W
E COME,
a final time, the portrait is finished, it was finished the week before, Annette told us, but Olivia wants us there, in the studio, she wants to be there when Nick sees it, she wants to see his face, she wants to be sure.

“Why did you want me here to see it?” Nick asks her when we are inside, there in the whiteness, light streaming in, clean, welcoming, a safe haven. By habit, we have assumed our places, Nick lounging against the pillar, me near the hyacinths. The ones I last saw have bloomed, and shriveled, and others, lilac and pink, have taken their place.

Olivia finds it hard to meet his eyes.

“You wanted to see me,” Nick says. “Tell me it's true, I know it is.”

“I wanted to see you when you saw it,” she says, finally. “Sometimes it's so hard to let go. Especially this.”

He stands there, a looming tangible presence, breathing in, waiting, she knows he is waiting, he will keep waiting, she feels helpless in the wake of it, lost, wandering in the maze she has painted, needing to be found, begging for it, yet dreading the moment when she must confront the man who has chased her into it, locked the door behind them, and thrown away the key.

She is flicking a brush idly, her breasts rising and falling, her nerves straining. I wonder how many bristles there are in a brush. I've never tried counting.

Nick comes over to her, slowly, and looks at the painting, at himself revealed, a man with a beast's face, his face, his features so beautiful and so hurt, beckoning, the torturous hiding curves of the maze twisting behind him in lush, verdant greenery, neatly clipped hedges surrounding this chiseled monster of unassailable strength and sorrow, all the contradictions of his character, the spirit of darkness and the light of hope combined, undone only by the ball of string slowly unspooling, disappearing into the grass beneath his feet.

Olivia watches him, frozen, helpless. Nick is looking at himself as a man, so sexual and yet so innocent, as a naked creature yearning for whatever crumbs of love are strewn at his feet. He blinks, as if disbelieving, then laughs, and I realize I have been holding my breath.

“Is that me? Is that how you see me?” he asks, finally, when his laughter fades. “Is that how I really look?”

Olivia can only nod. Her heart is thumping so loud she can barely hear him.

I see them see each other. I wonder for the briefest of seconds if it could have been me, but I push the thought away. There is no point in such speculation. Instead, I will marvel at the thoroughness of her skill, like luggage being X-­rayed in the airport: The machine sees what is packed away, revealing every little thing in stark clarity, all hidden secrets, no matter how careful the wrappings binding them tight.

“You did this,” Nick says, “you did this for me. It's impossible. An animal, but he has a heart.” He turns to her, tears standing in his eyes that he quickly blinks away, tears in hers. “You found my heart. You made me live.”

I can't remember the last time I saw tears in his eyes.

His arms are around her, crushing her, crushing her lips before she can move, or try to protest. “Please,” he says, “please,” kissing her so she cannot answer.

She pulls away. “I can't,” she says, her voice shaky, one tear trickling down her cheek. She rubs it away. “I can't be with you that way. Don't ask me to do that.”

“I won't,” Nick says, looking again at his face, painted, vibrantly enigmatic, his eyes hooded, violet shadows, following the gaze of the viewer, the secret sharer, waiting, in a maze, then back at Olivia, prolonging this rare moment of unblemished happiness.

“You'll call me, when you want to, and we'll celebrate. That's the least I can do for you. Please let me. It would give me great pleasure.”

He smiles at her, grateful beyond expression, unable to articulate why the painted beauty of his beastliness has brought him, in an instantaneous rush, such profound, simple satisfaction.

I know why. She has seen through him to his heart of darkness, somehow penetrating his facade to link up with his spirit in a swift rush of terrifying exhilaration. Here, before him, she has conjured Nick as he could have been, as the boy he was never allowed to be wishes he could be seen, had fate not left him to be jerked awake by nightmares populated by lurking creatures, prowling and hungry, dreams that sent me down the hill into the after-­hours clubs, where even though my face was known and feared the women were willing, leaping into the backseat of the black car, tying on the blindfold, eagerly succumbing to the desperate desires of the man who awaited their submission.

She will call him, he knows, because at this moment she no longer fears his desire. She only fears her own.

 

Chapter 7

T
he table, the waitress, the bottle of champagne chilled just so, all the same, the glances, murmuring, hushed, expectant, room abuzz, blazing with anticipation. It is all the same, except this time Nick knows what he is waiting for.

He arrived early, irritation with his impatience masked behind the usual polite facade, smile frozen, small talk distracting, a flirting gaze, his hands through his hair. He smokes, inhaling his nicotine deep followed by a languid exhale, women watching enraptured, wishing they were his cigarette, his lips on theirs while he sits, willing Olivia through the door, his heart pounding slow, slow, he is lost in his world, alone with unpardonable thoughts, wishes swimming deep, waiting, always waiting, watching her as she stood behind her easel, fingers hovering over his painted face, watching, waiting, and wanting, certain now she will not come.

He looks up. Olivia.

A smile lights his face, surprised into gentleness, a pure sweet smile she had not thought possible, and she smiles back, sliding into her seat, her hair pulled back, tidy, prim, its glories tamed, because she is nervous.

“I'm not late this time, am I?”

“No, I was early.”

“Were you wondering if I'd come?”

“Maybe.” He pours her a glass. “Cheers,” he says. “Here's to . . .”

“To what? Your portrait?”

“No. To lunch.”

The air between them is saturated, heavy with anticipation, the pulsing unseen, desire breathed out, breathed in, hypnotic, steady, and as relentless as his eyes upon her.

Olivia's anxious fingers, slim and paint-­flecked, sliding up and down the stem of her wineglass, unconscious mimics of unwanted thoughts. “It's funny that M's not here,” she says. “I almost expected him to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're always together,” she explains. “He's like your shadow, isn't he. Behind you, and you don't even think about it, because you know he's there. He makes you feel safe, right? Well, at least he made me feel safe, when I was painting.”

Nick frowns. This is dangerous territory. Who we are and what we do together, so much a part of us, so long taken for granted, is not meant to be talked about.

“M doesn't usually make ­people feel safe,” he admits, trying to find the right thing to say, to steer her away.

“Of course he doesn't. He's damaged goods in a world that expects perfection, isn't he, like a fat person in an ice cream shop, so who can be bothered to find the man behind the scars? He must have been really handsome, once,” she muses.

“He was. Much better-­looking than me.”

“Why, Nick,” she says, trying to tease away her nervousness. “I do believe you're jealous.”

“Me? Jealous of M?” Nick smiles at the impossibility of that thought, and shakes his head. “No, but what I'm jealous of right this minute is the implication that I don't make you feel safe.”

“Nick,” she says, laughing, “how dumb do you think I am? Of course you don't. Nor do you want to. That's why I shouldn't have come,” she says. “I know I shouldn't.”

“Then why did you?”

“I think you know why. The portrait's finished, and you like it, so what else is there to talk about?”

He has to bite the inside of his lip to refrain from grabbing her tight and pushing her down, flinging her on the table as he'd wanted to do in her studio, plates and silver crashing at their feet, wine spilled, soaking through white linen a bloody stain, kissing her, devouring, while everyone sits, transfixed with lust, envious, equally desirous yet never daring, sitting and watching him ravish her with complete, relentless impunity.

“How much longer are you in London? Shooting, I mean,” she asks, if only to say something.

“A few months. So far we're a few days behind schedule, but it's difficult with period pieces, you know, and—­”

There is a shadow falling over the table.

“My dear girl,” says a mocking French accent, “and you said to me that you so dearly hate to go out to lunch.”

“Jean-­Michel,” she says, her voice curt, turning her cheek for him to kiss. “So nice to see you. What brings the world-­famous pianist to London?”

His eyes alive with mischief, eager yearning for some small humiliation to send winging along the grapevine of gossip. “Recording, what else, abusing my ghastly producer with long lunches and many martinis. The usual.” He shrugs. “And where is the charming Olivier?”

“You know very well he's in Japan,” she says, a small flush rising into her cheeks. “But before he left he suggested that I paint Nick's portrait. You do know Nick Muncie, don't you?”

They nod to each other, coldly appraising, instantly wary, the knowing gaze of the professional seducer catching a fleering glimpse of his own hard face in the mirror.

“I don't know,” she goes on, “should I paint him? I'm getting the feeling he might be difficult. What do you think?”

The wicked smirk fades imperceptibly in Jean-­Michel's fervent haze of delirious conjecture. So Olivier knew, did he, or perhaps he didn't, no, she was bluffing, the cool lying bitch, trying to trap him, sitting for all the world to see in a public place, or is it a blind, the perfect cover for duplicity, but no, she is too straight and this is Nick Muncie, superstar, what could he see in her anyway, what did Olivier see in her anyway but devotion, she's no great beauty, she is too quiet to be charming and she's just a painter and besides she slapped me when I pinched her ass.

The cool lying bitch.

“Hmmm,” he says, regarding Nick's famous profile. “I see him as Cardinal Mazarin, or perhaps Richelieu. No. More legendary. A Borgia. Napoleon. No. Too European. He needs to be an American legend.”

“But he already is a legend,” Olivia says slyly. “At least in his own mind.”

Nick laughs. Heads turn. He is deeply impressed with Olivia's collected performance, that instantaneous, seamless whiff of mendacity far more alluring to his senses and sensibility than anything else she could have done. “I've only heard that about a thousand times,” he says.

Jean-­Michel smiles, stiff, outfoxed. He lifts Oliv­ia's hand in a farewell kiss, scrutinizing her face for even a vague hint of deception, and, finding none, says goodbye and returns to his friends.

“Serves me right. Now I know I shouldn't have come,” says Olivia, a tinge of bitterness in her voice that Nick finds intoxicating in its ferocity. “Jean-­Michel is a second-­rate—­no, failed—­pianist who's insanely jealous of Olivier's success, and he loves nothing more than to see his name nearly as large as Nigel Dempster's, and I don't want Olivier bothered with this nonsense.”

“This isn't nonsense.”

“Isn't it?”

She is agitated, her eyes shiny with stress. That damn French prick.

“Olivia.”

“Don't. Please, please don't.”

“Okay,” he says, leaning back and stretching his legs. “Relax. I can wait. We've got all day. Have a drink. Let's order.”

“I'm not hungry.” She tries to smile. “Besides, I don't think you can wait.”

“That's where you're wrong, my darling Olivia, because I can. I'm going to wait as long as I have to for you to revise your opinion of me.”

“But why should I?” she says soberly. “I admit that you're a lot more surprising—­or substantial, I guess—­than I thought you were, but I expect you're still a rake, a cad, and an abomination to women.”

His eyes spark with some unnamable hurt, a flash no longer than a blink, but Olivia catches it, sees that window opening only an instant to the bitter secrets locked inside his heart, buried, forgotten, willed by his ambition to lie dormant and sleeping, far away where they cannot touch him. She sees it and as so she sees him now, outside the sealed calm space of her studio, sees him as she'd painted him, sees the shadow of a raw terror she knows must be real, for no actor could possess a skill so rare as to break his own heart.

Her defenses melt, she is sorry, ashamed of her harshness, because she is kind, and pain is no stranger to her thoughts. She brushes her fingers across the rim of his glass, a feather, a spontaneous gesture so unbearably erotic that Nick quickly picks up the glass and drinks, his lips touching the spot she'd so briefly caressed.

“Well,” she says, her voice lightening, apologetic, “maybe not an abomination.”

“I've had my moments,” he says. “Believe me, I've had way too many.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

He pours more champagne. “You shouldn't be. Bad boys in Hollywood usually deserve their reputations. When I told my agent I wanted to do
Faust
even he thought I should be playing Mephisto.”

“I don't pay any attention to gossip.”

“I know that. I just really have no idea what you think about me. You studied my face, who I am. It's all there; I can see how you
saw
me, but not what you think.”

“Why is that so important?”

He does not know how to start what he wants to say, although we have rehearsed it so much I never want to write another word for him again, hours spent pacing in our suite in the Savoy, curtains drawn against the cold and dull throb of dreariness outside our window, hours spent on Olivia that should have been given to
Faust.

Or perhaps in his mind's eye the quest to conquer both has been inextricably melded.

“What do you think?” he'd asked me, and I'd hidden my amazement. Nick did not ask my opinion, not about anything important, unless it was work-­related. He just told me what to do.

“She's not Belinda.”

He laughed. “God, no. No, she's definitely not Belinda.”

“She's a woman.”

“I get the point.”

“But why her, you mean. Why now.”

Nick looked at me, silent, waiting. We know each other too well. We sat there for a long time.

“She's so much smarter than I am,” he said, finally.

Nick has been with other clever women before, in whatever context of his choosing, but their purported intelligence has never mattered, not when he'd never cared enough to remember their names or what they did or anything they might have said. There was no need to listen.

“You're smarter than you think you are,” I told him. “I've always believed it. It's just that no one expects you to be. Intelligence is a burden to actors like you.”

He ignored my comment, because there's no point arguing with that Hollywood truism. “So tell me what to say to her.”

I got up and pushed back the draperies to stare out at the blackness, punctuated by bright round suns of the headlights wavering below us. “How do you mean?”

“You were there, watching. How did it make you feel?”

I was not going to tell him how it made me feel. I can't even tell myself.

“You mean how it made
you
feel,” I said.

“Whatever.” He shrugged. “Just do it.”

I did it, of course, and he repeated what I'd given him so often that it became his own.

Sometimes even I underestimated the determination behind his talent.

And so he sits, staring at the tablecloth. Nick, unaccustomed to the truth, wherever it came from, to telling it or feeling it, finds himself wanting to be honest with Olivia, wanting to confide in her, divulge and reveal. Why should this woman, this odd, truthful, strangely protective woman whose heart belongs to another, have fixed her peculiar eyes upon him and cracked through to his heart? How can he hope to understand why she makes him feel, so fiercely, that he wants whatever stolen moments he is to have with her to be real?

That with her, far from home, he can be real.

“I would watch you, you know, when you were painting, there and not there, so remote from me,” he says finally. “I'm not used to that. To being seen, but not acknowledged. To having a woman look at me and not want to take something.”

“But I wanted you, to paint.”

“That's different. Now it's yours. You made it. You made me immortal on a canvas. But I would watch you, I'd be talking, or maybe I wasn't but it didn't matter because I knew you weren't really listening. You'd nod or say umm-­hmm but you were lost in the work, and I'd stand there watching you with such envy, such
envy
at the easy rhythm you'd fallen into. You'd paint, glance at me but not seeing me, and I am standing there, useless, a captive audience that can only watch in silence, my actor's ego dented, watching yours at work, giving me nothing, needing nothing more than my face, or my body, no role to play, no lines, no being, no director giving me cues, no camera in my face, no one there but you, and you didn't even see me.”

Olivia is astonished by his words. My words.

“Sometimes you'd push your hair impatiently off your forehead or chew on a knuckle or even talk to yourself, so lost in thought, concentrating, remote from me, from the world, it had disappeared, I no longer existed because you didn't need me, you were turning me into another, and I was standing there silent in a maze, lost, with only my eyes upon you in your painter's dance, and there was nothing,
nothing
I wanted more in the world than to hear you say, ‘Come with me now and we will dance together.'”

She doesn't know Nick, or me, well enough to have heard that subtle shift in his voice, she has not seen him act before, act truly, and she would never have guessed that all these words are not the spontaneous outpourings of his soul, that I thought them up, wrote them down on the Savoy's smooth stationery for Nick to repeat to her, caring only that she would hear them.

She doesn't know.

Nick has leaned closer to her as he spoke, that famous voice made magical with the rawness of truth unexpected, and she cannot help herself from leaning in to hear him, knowing without knowledge that he is speaking full from the heart, nakedly yearning, auditioning for a role he never thought he'd want to play.