Chapter Seventeen
Despite
everything, Laurie had only been an hour or so late home. Sasha had
greeted him quietly—taken instant pity on his headache and fatigue
and steered him up to bed. Only when Laurie was lying in the sweet
cool twilight, an ice pack on his brow, had Sasha ventured to ask
about his day. And Laurie had told him all about it. Almost
all...
“So... let me get this straight. You had a row with your
co-star, got someone fired and went out on the lash with someone
who sounds like he should be in rehab?”
Laurie
nodded. The movement dislodged the ice-pack on his brow. Sasha put
it back, gently disentangling the damp curls beneath it. “In a
nutshell,” Laurie said faintly. “And I was late without telling
you.”
“Only a little.” At the crunch of the Cherokee’s tyres on the
drive, Sasha had quietly closed off his laptop. Laurie need never
know he’d been scanning the traffic news for accidents: a paranoid
overreaction, but in all their time together Laurie had never been
more than ten minutes late without calling, emailing, practically
sending up flares.
“I’m still sorry.”
“Forget it. I was just wondering what you were saving up for
day two.”
Laurie
chuckled helplessly. He didn't want to laugh. He hadn't wanted
Sasha wryly sympathetic. He’d wanted him behind the door with a
rolling pin, ready to crack some sense into him. Didn't want the
story of his day extracted as if by delicate surgical procedure,
painlessly, a piece at a time.
But it
was all out now, except the tiny malign dark spot he couldn't let
Sasha near. And God knew it had been a relief to tell him. His
afternoon had gone downhill, if possible, after the drama with
Wesley and Libby Palermo. Brett had been called into an emergency
meeting with sponsors, and because he refused to delegate direction
even of his running-and-jumping scenes, Laurie and Bailey had hung
around for hours in their faux-Egyptian finery, waiting for a call
to set that never came. Bailey had prattled, but his chatter had
only created a deeper emptiness in Laurie's head in which he could
contemplate his crimes. He'd lost a woman her job. It hadn't
occurred to him to blame Wesley, to blame Brett. Finally they'd
been dismissed. By then Bailey's hand on his arm, his offer of a
quiet drink, had been pleasant: it had been early still, and he
hadn't wanted to take the way he was feeling straight home to
Sasha. One quiet drink, and a look at the Hollywood
sign...
Bailey
had chosen to take Libby's sacking as a message from the gods that
he could now throw off all self-restraint. He'd done a line or two
of coke before he'd left the studio, although this only became
apparent to Laurie when he'd started to drive his open-top yellow
Camaro back and forth across his lane of the highway in time to the
death-metal track blasting out of the speakers. He'd been
cooperative enough when Laurie had told him to pull over, then had
sat on the back of the passenger seat, waving and singing joyously,
while Laurie had driven them on.
Laurie
stirred restlessly on the bed. “It wasn’t much of a lash,” he said.
“With Bailey, I mean. Just a couple of martinis.”
“Where did you go? Somewhere nice?”
“Mm. Little actors' bar up in the Heights where they don't let
in fans or reporters. It was okay. A bit loud.” The bass had
stripped a year or so off Laurie's functional hearing as he'd
stumbled with Bailey into the strobe-lit dark. What he'd found in
his martini glass was faintly luminous and tasted like a vodka
triple shot. He'd knocked it back in sheer distraction, and the
world—Libby Palermo, Wesley, guilt and anxiety—had retreated to a
safe distance. He'd had one more. An hour had disappeared like
seconds. Had somebody spiked him? He doubted it—why taint something
already so lethal?—but had turned the third one down and gone in
search of Bailey. Found him in a back room with another line laid
out and ready, this one on the naked spine of a beautiful chorus
boy from the latest blockbuster musical setting itself up in town.
Laurie had bundled him back into the convertible, driven him to an
address he sincerely hoped was his home. Laurie had driven the
Camaro carefully back to Ivory Gate and left it with the
night-shift security guy. Then he'd got back into his Cherokee and
driven just as cautiously home. He felt fine. His head ached, that
was all, and Sasha was dealing with that for him, ice pack and cool
soothing hands. “I'll have to take you there sometime.” He sat up
halfway, suddenly inspired. “Hey, would you like to go out now?
Everywhere's open all night around here. We could do
anything.”
“I'm all right here if you are.”
“Okay.” Laurie subsided. He was fine, except that Libby and the
world had crept back close to him, and he'd been enjoying the
break. Still, no doubt housekeeping had stocked the drinks cabinet
as well as the cupboards: he could fix himself a nightcap later on.
“How was your day, sweetheart?”
Sasha
stroked his brow. The lies coming out of that lovely mouth were
such small ones, little fish close to the surface, easy to catch.
Slowly Sasha was beginning to suspect the existence of a deep-water
shark, a beast that had swum into their lives several weeks ago and
remained there feeding since, but he could only deal with what he
had in front of him right now. “I had a good day. I had a swim, and
I met Mrs Alvarez, who's going to keep house for us. She's very
nice. I met the...” He paused for a fraction of a second, feeling
his colour come and go, glad of the darkness. “I met the pool boy
too.”
“Okay. Good.”
“Can you listen to me for a few minutes?”
“Of course. Always.” Jesus, Laurie had been neglectful! His own
day had been so full of racket and colour, he could scarcely think
how it must have been for Sasha, alone for so many hours here, only
on his second day in his new world. He held Sasha's wrist, traced
the delicate tendons and the veins on its underside. “What
about?”
“Couple of things. First, it sounds to me as though Douglas
Brett manipulates his staff and sets them on one another in order
to get what he wants.”
Laurie
snorted faintly. “Nice try. I'd love to get myself off the hook
like that, but... No. I fucked up.”
“Well, I wasn't there. I guess that one's for your conscience.”
Sasha waited for almost a minute. It was so hard for him to do
this, and he wished there was someone around to take him off his
own hooks, the barbs of his responsibility towards this man. It was
strange—in London the problem had never arisen. They hadn't kept a
dry house, of course. They both loved the occasional bottle of good
wine over dinner, had popped the cork on plenty of champagne for
celebratory moments in both their lives. But they had never, by
tacit, mutual consent, touched anything harder than that. Sir
William Fitzroy had died from a heart attack, partly brought on by
decades of alcohol abuse. Laurie had been aware of the genetic
dangers that lay in his path. They had never stored alcohol, only
bought in what they needed for the pleasures of the night. Sasha
sat up. He took the ice pack off Laurie's brow, then caught gentle
hold of his jaw and turned him so that they were looking straight
into one another's eyes. “Second thing, then. I know when you've
had a couple of drinks, Laurie, and I know when you're drunk.
You're as elegant and graceful as ever, but... those weren't
martinis, and you had no right at all to drive home.”
Laurie
gaped. “Sash... What the fuck...”
“Not finished. Almost, and then I'll go and fix you some food
so you don't feel too rough in the morning. I love you, and I'd
give my own life to keep you from harm. All right? That's my job.
But next time you get into a car pissed, and drive, and endanger
other people, I'll call the police myself. Because stopping you
then would be theirs.”
Laurie
rolled onto his side. He stared out of the vine-cloaked window. He
wanted to spring out of bed, turn on Sasha like a tiger and deny it
all, or deny at least Sasha's right to have seen it and speak out.
Laurie had believed the lies himself by the time he'd thought them
up, holding the truth and his new version of it on the dangerous
parallel tracks in his mind. He wanted to walk away.
Instead
he sat up. He grabbed hold of Sasha with all his strength, and
sobbed in relief when Sasha's arms closed round him. When Sasha's
hand made a shaky track down the back of his skull, as if he were
still somehow worthy of being touched and loved. “Fuck,” he rasped.
“What was I thinking? What did I do?”
“Something so, so unlike you it makes my head spin. Jesus,
love. It could have been anyone out there on the roads. It could
have been Clara.”
“Oh, don't. Don't.”
“Okay. I've stopped. Now, will you let me go fix you a
sandwich?”
Laurie
shuddered. He held on tighter. “No. Fix me here, ves'tacha. Don't
let me go.”
***
The
trouble, of course, was working out how to hold him. Not hold on to
him, not hold him down—just how to offer the strength and structure
he needed without getting in his way.
Without
being burned to a crisp on the launch pad. Idly Sasha pursued the
metaphor, smiling faintly at its drama. He wasn't sure what kind of
mission was going on at Cape Fitzroy at the moment, a leap for the
stars or test-to-destruction, but it was producing so much heat and
light that Sasha felt blinded, blistered.
The pool water was cool. Sasha had discovered that, if he came
out here straight after Laurie had left for work, half an hour's
shade would still be resting on the courtyard. Diving in then would
knock a pleasant breath out of his lungs. Sasha had established a
kind of routine over this last week. He'd swim until he was
physically exhausted, then go inside and work on his essays and
research until his vision blurred with fatigue. Once he'd tried to
fix some dinner in the kitchen, the slow-cooked Romanian
ghiveci Laurie loved, but