Chapter 17 2010 #3
“Ah,” he says, smiling. Funny, she’s funny! “A Samaritan.”
“The Samaritan,” Maitland says, leaning over the bar, nearly knocking Viola’s drink, “is all about ethics versus morals. Having a good character rather than following rules.”
“Is he your priest?” Orson asks.
“No, he’s my…” she needs to get rid of Maitland, fast. “Professor, sorry to ask, but you don’t happen to have a light?”
She turns back to Orson. “Smoke?”
Through the crowd again, drinks paid, aware that everyone is watching her, hating her, and she herself can hardly believe that she has bought his attention, that he is trailing her even now, whiskey in hand.
That he is stepping out into the almost drizzle and closing the door.
That somehow the two of them together is warding off the other students aching for his attention.
She hadn’t intended to steal the prop cigarettes, but somehow they had entered her pocket. She offers him one and he laughs, recognizing them instantly.
“You’re kidding.”
“They aren’t even mine,” she says, blushing, seven again and ludicrous.
“Dear God. Put those away.” He removes his own pack from a pocket, along with a silver-plated lighter.
He offers her one. She accepts, as though she has done this a thousand times, her reserve liberated by the immortality of the moment, by his death-defying smile.
The wind spins up the street and both of them turn to the wall, an instinctive, secretive arrangement.
He lights up (hand brushing her hand) and she inhales her brother, her aunt Sadie, Niamh, poison, radicalism, Orson, all of it.
“So what’s your name then, good Samaritan.”
“Viola.”
“Viola. Not too many Violas running about these days. Fan of Shakespeare?”
“I guess so.” By most other measures, Shakespeare should appeal to her; the perfect plots and profundity, the sense of the universe and all humanity.
The romance. But she cannot help carrying a grudge against him, as though he and her mother conspired in the choice of her name—too grandiose, too on the nose, burdened with unnecessary associations, with flagrant thespian pretention.
The awful Viola-and-Sebastian of it all. She’s never seen Twelfth Night.
He laughs. “That’s lukewarm.”
“I guess I just haven’t seen very much.”
“I’m impressed you’ve managed to avoid it.” Oddly familiar and fluid, their conversation, oddly easy to approach him with the innocence of a seven-year-old. “I thought you might be American. I don’t know any English person who would dare to be quite so fluorescent.”
Sebastian
Burning your books for warmth sorry
Sebastian. Even five minutes ago, she could have texted him about it. Wouldn’t have, but could have. He would never have believed her, they might have laughed. But now it wouldn’t feel right. Any past understanding of Orson has given way to a living, breathing person.
“That your boyfriend?” he asks.
“No,” she says, pocketing the glowing phone. Where is this going? “I have to admit something.”
“Go on, then.”
Here’s the moment, now, declaring itself: Disclose!
She always thought she would need to mention her mother, that this would be the key to his attention.
But he’s looking at her like a fully formed thing, a woman whose origin is irrelevant.
Perhaps it is irrelevant! How far she’s come from the country of her mother.
“I didn’t come to your talk.”
“Well, I appreciate your honesty. It was considerate of you to stay away, to be honest. The neon would have been very distracting.”
“Well, in that case, you’re welcome.”
“You didn’t miss much anyway,” he says. “It was very dull.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“That’s kind,” he says. “But I assure you, talking about yourself is exceedingly dull.”
The door swings open and a group of students she recognizes as Union people pass by them. “You all right, Orson?” one of them asks, clapping him boldly on the shoulder as they pass by.
“Stupid question,” he mutters. “So repressed. Never ask a question you don’t want the answer to.”
Exactly! Standing in his glow induces a pleasant melting sensation, an awakening to a new kind of tenderness. A new quality of being alive.
“Well,” Viola asks. “Are you all right?”
“Right now?” He smiles, playing at really considering the question, at taking stock. “Yeah, I’m just fine, thanks.”
“When did you start smoking again?” The question slips out softly, an admission of a one-sided intimacy.
“I never stopped smoking,” he says, furrowing. “You, on the other hand, have never smoked a cigarette in your life.”
She reddens. Is she so transparent? Was it the Sugar Lilies?
Or something about how she’s doing it, clutching the cigarette between her second and third finger, like she’s seen in the movies?
He is looking directly at her for the first time since they began talking, a look that threatens to become more than a look.
“I’m worried I’m going to say something rude, now,” he says. “They’ve been plying me with drinks.”
“It’s our highest-value currency, students,” she says. “You should be honored.”
“I’m honored, yes,” he murmurs, his eyes swimming. “No, I was going to comment on your hair. You were hiding it, before, you had it all up. I haven’t seen that much hair in a decade at least.”
Her mother’s hair. Unruly, impossible to coerce, but lustrous, rippling around her face, cascading down her back. She realizes, looking at his face, all question marks, that through some combination of humor and beauty, knowing and not knowing, she has enchanted him. That the night is hers.
“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t realize I needed to disclose, about my hair.”
“I can understand it would be impractical. You know, running with all of that.”
“Certainly.”
The problem with Orson is that she has grown familiar with the scripted version of him, the one-woman man, pining after and occasionally dying for the singular object of his affections.
Has she been naive to dream of romance with someone who has been described as a “notorious bon vivant” in Vanity Fair?
Even now, as he is extending his fingers into her hair with the expertise of someone who has encountered curls before, who knows not to manhandle them or pat them inanely, but to entwine his fingers inside and clutch, she wonders whether she should disclose to him that no one has ever touched her hair like this before.
Whether it would make a difference. Whether it would guarantee her any greater chance of forever, or at least not just a single night.
“Sorry,” he says. “Don’t let me get carried away.
There are spies everywhere.” He isn’t wrong.
Only a couple of tables away the editor of The Tab is watching them ravenously, waiting for a story to unfold.
“I do feel out of sorts in this town. Like everyone’s brains are whirring twenty times faster than mine. Though maybe that’s the scotch.”
“I’m sure it’s the scotch,” she says, and it’s clear this particular arrow of kindness strikes his heart.
“I should probably get out of here. You students all get a bit funny after midnight. But I owe you a drink,” he says. “You’re welcome to come for a nightcap if you like. The hotel bar has these great nuts. Spicy. Moreish.”
She understands the offer. She has read the script. In ordinary circumstances, she has heard, the game is to be withholding, to make yourself desirable through unavailability. But these are not ordinary circumstances.
Sebastian
Resorting to cannibalism
Orson catches the name that flashes up on her phone, and something sparks in him, some glimmer of recognition.
Viola. Sebastian. Does he remember? Is she going to be forced into it here, disclosing the fact of herself?
Fuck. No time to find out. Behind her the door is swinging open and Maitland is stumbling out into the street.
“I should probably make sure he gets home,” she says, fearing the rapid shift of parameters, not wanting to know where she stands. “But it has really been nice to meet you.”
Before he can reply, she is turning and greeting again her professor, guiding him away toward the dim lights of the taxi rank.
Whether Orson waits and watches her or pinballs off into the hungry harem, she will never know.
It doesn’t matter. There is nothing more precious than the fact that it might have happened, nothing more important than leaving while the moment is still perfect.