Chapter 19 2010 #2
“I’m sorry we can’t go anywhere normal around here,” he says. “It’s just such a hassle.”
“It’s fine,” Viola says. “The weather is better down here.”
“I like you,” he says. “You like a glass half full, don’t you?”
“Maybe I’m too idealistic.”
“Well, that’s just the tonic. Hollywood makes you cynical.
” He drums his fingers on the table. “Admittedly, London isn’t Southern California weather-wise.
The thing is, I’m always being asked to go onstage here.
No one in California would dream of asking a movie actor to perform onstage.
It’s just embarrassing, really, for most people.
And most of the time I tell them to fuck off, or Jen tells them to fuck off, but it’s just hard to tell a charity for childhood diabetes to fuck off more than twice.
It just starts to feel like you don’t care about childhood diabetes, which of course you might not feel any personal connection toward, but the kids really are sweet and they’re always sending photos of them, and if there’s something that you can do—something that should be easy, that should be your stock and trade—then, well, you want to do it.
You want to be able to do something aside from swanning around and spending money and talking to pretty girls outside of pubs. ”
His foot is tapping restlessly on the ground, and it occurs to Viola that even though he is twenty years older than her, he too might be nervous.
“I don’t understand why it would be different on stage than film,” Viola says. “Isn’t it all just acting?”
“Oh, there you’re wrong. Completely different. For one, if you fuck up on film, you can just do it again. Doesn’t matter. Take two. As many takes as you want to get it perfect. If you fuck up onstage, though, that’s it. You’ve blown your shot. Terrifying, really.”
Jen returns with a bottle of red wine and a bowl full of mixed nuts covered in a thin dust of cumin and cinnamon.
“They’re the ones from the hotel!” he said. “Jen figured it out for me, where to get them, she’s extremely clever like that. I thought it was just a crime that you didn’t get to try them.”
“A lot of phone calls went into those nuts,” Jen mutters. “So please, do enjoy them.”
“Jen is just sour because she has an allergy, aren’t you, Jen?”
Jen turns to a stack of papers in the corner.
“So, sorry,” Viola begins, trying to ignore Jen, who is trying very hard not to look wounded. “But what is this?”
Orson sighs, pours out the wine. “It’s a Midsummer Night’s Dream–themed charity fundraiser. For orphans, I think? Or a refugee crisis? Jen, did you write the speech?”
“What do you think I’m working on?”
“I have to read a monologue. Oberon, something about oxlips and nodding violet. It’s embarrassing really, I haven’t even memorized it, that’s the kind of shit film actor I am. Learn my lines right before the scene. They’ve printed it for me, haven’t they, Jen?”
“Yes.”
“So that’s all it is. And then it will be free booze and wealthy, well-intentioned people signing big checks.
And it would just be so great. For me. If you could just whisper idealistic things in the corner.
Especially about how I stack up against all of these very serious Royal Shakespeare people, I just don’t really hold a candle, and I’m very embarrassed. ”
“Don’t be silly,” says Viola. “Of course you’ll be fine.”
“There, see, perfect. Just like that. Anyway, I thought you could be my nodding violet, or whatever. My talisman.”
“If that’s what you need.” His gaze, holding hers, is full of an inescapable past. Viola is certain now that he knows, that the fact of it is approaching barometric; they are too familiar with each other.
Jen, having had enough, gets up and leaves the room without a word.
“Is she okay?”
“Oh, sure. Just a bit moody,” he says. “Insecurities aside, if I didn’t take you to Shakespeare, I never would have forgiven myself.”
It’s coming up now, hot and inescapable—the fact throbbing between them.
“I’m sorry, I just—do you remember my—do you remember Susan Bliss?”
“Of course, I do.”
A long moment, the atmosphere thick with something, an end or a beginning, she can’t tell.
She slides a hand across the table, touches one of his electric fingers.
When he looks at her again, he looks older, furrowed with a need she cannot identify.
The back of his hand reaches across, strokes the inside of her arm.
“Do you remember me?” she asks.
He shakes his head back and forth—noncommittal. “You’ve changed a bit,” he says, a smile cracking through the seriousness of it all. “I’m sorry I’ve got so old.”
“Don’t. You haven’t changed at all.”
His hand swirls her hair as he leans toward her, pushing gently at the back of her neck until his lips brush against her forehead.
If he hesitates for a moment as she bends her cheek to him, she hopes it is because he is leaving behind the child and her mother, both long gone anyways, and surrendering himself to the woman here, now, who has come so far and waited so long for him to arrive.