Chapter 53
53
MINNIE
Now
‘Nor did I.’
Their eyes locked as the sun seemed to drop suddenly in the sky. Minnie looked stunning. She wore a black loose-fitting sequin tux seemingly with nothing underneath it, and black trousers with a gunmetal side stripe. Her green eyes were painted smoky grey, her lips blood red. She looked like a fucking movie star, not a TV actor chasing her first dream. She was astonishing.
Jesse glanced at his feet. Then back up.
‘You made it. You got on a plane! You made it out to LA. That’s amazing.’
Minnie nodded and smiled knowingly.
‘The buzz about the show is insane. Everywhere I look I’m seeing you, about twenty-feet tall, on billboards all over the city.’
‘Creepy huh?’
‘Mesmeric.’ He paused. ‘And nothing less than you deserve.’
Minnie smiled awkwardly but didn’t seem to be able to find her words.
‘The premiere last night – I saw pictures. It looked incredible.’
She blushed.
‘ You’re incredible.’
Minnie looked up at him sharply, but still the words couldn’t come.
Jesse put his hands in his pocket and dared to take a step nearer.
‘I really am genuinely sorry, Minnie.’
Minnie scowled as Jesse felt time slow down; the sky darken further.
‘Sorry? Sorry for what?’
‘I’m sorry I upset you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything. I’m sorry you’re angry with me. I really didn’t mean to?—’
‘Don’t worry about it, fair dos…’
‘Huh?’
‘I’m angrier with myself if I’m honest.’
Jesse was taken aback. He approached the wall and leaned against it, facing Minnie.
‘Why?’
‘I was shocked about you – what you didn’t tell me – but to be honest, I was angrier with myself. You held up the mirror to me that I was failing.’
‘Failing? How? Look at you!’
‘I was failing the Bechdel test of my life. A real howler you could say.’ She raised her eyebrows as if to concede.
Jesse didn’t understand.
‘I can’t believe I tried to get over a broken heart by falling in love with another man.’
Jesse felt it. The punch of love, hope and disappointment, all coiled into one tight spring, slammed into his stomach. She was with that slug JP.
Love?
He was speechless.
‘I was so focused on the optics: how my career looked, how I wasn’t going to be a success, I forgot about the metrics. I failed the metrics of the Bechdel test of my own life. I suppose I realised that in France. And then Tony helped me chew it over.’
‘What does a stupid test mean if you got what you wanted? Isn’t that empowering at least?’
‘What?’ Minnie scowled again. Jesse thought she really did have the most beautiful scowl. He’d seen it when JP dumped her. He’d seen it in bed the morning she’d run away from him. He could see it tonight.
‘You got what you wanted.’ Jesse said it as casually and supportively as he could manage. ‘The TV show. You got JP back. You made it out here without crashing; I assume you didn’t crash…’
Minnie shook her head.
‘I’m not with JP.’
Then she looked disgusted.
‘Eww! Why would you think I was with JP?’
‘Oh, I just thought…’
‘No!’
‘Someone saw you.’
Minnie looked a little like she had in the bedroom that morning back in Gordes. Spied upon. Outraged.
‘It wasn’t me – Kip from the cafe. I went in, asking after you. He said someone saw you out with a man, I suppose he assumed it was JP…’
‘It was JP. We went for dinner. Once! A consolation dinner apparently. He does it with all his girls. Likes to check in with exes a few months down the line, just to make sure they’re not too cut up over him. Sort of like an exit interview, I imagine.’
Jesse shook his head.
‘Gross.’
‘Yeah, I think it’s just an ego boost. He’s probably due to take your wife out any day now!’ she added cheerily.
Minnie saw the hurt in Jesse’s face and felt instantly wretched.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was trying to be funny?—’
‘It’s fine.’
‘It wasn’t funny.’
‘Blissfully, I don’t care if he does,’ Jesse declared. And he meant it.
It was Minnie’s barb that hurt more than the thought of Hannah with JP, but he could see the remorse on her face. He nodded. ‘It really is fine…’ He leaned an elbow on the wall and looked at Minnie pleadingly. ‘I just didn’t want us to end how it did.’
Us . It had sounded nice to both of them.
‘No, I know. But it had to. I had to be on my own.’
Jesse nodded. Minnie sounded sensible, more mature. It made him love her even more.
‘But I made it!’ she almost shouted into the evening. ‘On a plane. Out here. Without JP, without Wim Fischer. I don’t need anyone to get me my next job or to coax me onto a plane or to mend my silly heart.’
Jesse felt the punch.
‘I know.’ He fiddled with his watch while he galvanised himself. ‘But I need you.’
‘Huh?’
‘Minnie, please.’
She looked at him with the light of Downtown glimmering like a reverse night sky behind him, leaning on the wall.
‘ You rescued me, Minnie.’
She studied him.
‘ You rescued me . From Orson’s mum…’
They both laughed, breaking the tension that lingered in the dusk.
‘You rescued me from my drudgery. From my grief. From couch surfing. The moment you came up to me in that cafe and suggested your ridiculous game, you illuminated my world.’
Jesse looked to the dots sparkling on the hills behind her as she smiled and put a palm on Jesse’s cheek. The touch of gratitude, of friendship.
‘Jesse,’ she said, as she leaned over and kissed him, carefully and precisely on the lips, so as not to blur her lipstick. ‘You know I have to walk away now, don’t you?’
Jesse felt sick. They’d come all this way.
‘Please, you are more than the sum of the Bechdel test. You are brilliant. And I want my time with you.’
Minnie gasped. ‘You saw it?’
They were both transported to St Pancras station. Neon art glowing pink. The start of their fourth day together.
‘Yes.’
She looked sombrely at her heels, then back up at him intently. ‘It made me think of you.’
‘It made me think of you. I want my fucking time with you, Minnie. I want to introduce you to Ida and to travel with you and to go see the Northern Lights in Scotland – or fuck it – Finland now you can fly, or wherever we can! And drive along the C?te d’Azur with you and show you my new flat and support your meteoric rise, and show up and meet your family and…’
Minnie put a bejewelled finger to his lips to shush him. ‘Not now.’
‘Why?’
A figure from down below got out of a sleek black car and shouted up.
‘Get your skates on!’ the man shouted. Jesse narrowed his eyes and saw Devon, standing on the asphalt, as he took his hands out of his pockets and raised them to the night sky. Minnie nodded back at him.
She looked back to Jesse and levelled him with a palm on his shirt.
‘You have a flight to catch and I’m going on Jimmy Kimmel Live – we were due at the studio half an hour ago.’
‘ What? ’
‘But listen…’
She leaned in again and kissed him wholeheartedly this time. He kissed her back, under the encouraging gaze of the astronomers. She didn’t want to break his heart; she never wanted him to break hers. The reassurance she felt from his warm gentle kiss, from the touch of his hand on her cheek as if she were a work of art he would treasure until the end of time, was reassurance enough.
‘I’ll see you back in London,’ she said with a slight mischievousness in her smile as she walked away, across the terrace, down the steps and towards the car.
He heard the muffled conversation of Devon hurrying Minnie along.
‘All right, all right! Small matter of the heart to fix!’ she said, looking up with a backward glance.
‘And we need make-up to fix your mouth, you look like Weird Barbie.’
‘Fair dos,’ Minnie said proudly.
As Jesse watched Minnie glance up again as she got into her car, he waved, unaware – or unbothered – that he had red lipstick all over his mouth. As he watched the car speed away he pressed both palms onto the white surface of the terrace wall, leaned on it, and smiled to himself. Relief rolling away into the canyon. It was then that Jesse felt a strong palm press his shoulder blade and his smile widened even more.