Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (24 page)

Jones was sensational in bed, although ever since then I'd wondered if all actresses are. They are by their nature very vocal and giving. They have to be. They have to give of themselves on a professional basis. So does that make them automatically giving in bed? Wonderfully loud and expressive, and delivering the right line at the right moment.

Maybe that was just Jones, or maybe the very thought process was all part of my own lack of confidence. If Jones was fantastic in bed, there had to be some reason other than the fact that I was taking her there. Surely my own performance had been much the same as it was with Brin, and Brin never seemed anything like as moved as Jones.

We'd ended up having the meat of the conversation, standing on the steps outside 6/12, as I held onto Jones's presence, wanting to invite her back to my room, and knowing that I wouldn't.

She walked out into the afternoon, a light song on her lips, an indistinct melody, sounding like something Audrey Hepburn would have sung on the steps of a chic café.

'How long are you going to be in Warsaw?' I asked.

She was looking over her shoulder. I knew I'd lost her, for now at any rate.

'Oh, a few days. Hey, it's the movies, anything can happen.'

I didn't want to talk about the Jigsaw Man, but I had avoided it through lunch, and I wasn't going to be able to go on avoiding it. I had a feeling that the mention of him would be enough to snap the moment, but since the moment was about to get into a taxi, it didn't seem to matter. I didn't want to ruin the chances of seeing her again, yet at some point she would disappear and I'd likely not see her again for seventeen years, so I had to say something, whether I liked the thought of it or not.

The words stuck in my throat.

'You're looking for the Jigsaw Man,' she said suddenly.

'Yes.'

She didn't say anything else. She'd started the conversation for me, but didn't sound like she wanted to contribute anything to it beyond that.

'I spoke to the others, but they didn't seem to know.'

'No,' she said. 'They wouldn't.'

'Why?'

'They were the bit parts,' she said. 'What they did, didn't really matter. They were George and Ringo. It was you and I who were John and Paul.'

I glanced at her, but her eyes were still looking around for a taxi.

'George did some...' I began.

'And so did Henderson. But it wasn't about them. The Beatles happened because of John and Paul. The whole thing, Beatlemania, all those huge number ones, they were about John and Paul. George came into his own towards the end, but that was just decoration on the last couple of albums.'

She paused. I tried to remember if Jones had ever talked about the Beatles before. I didn't remember her being a fan, or even showing the slightest interest.

'You and I were John and Paul,' she repeated.

'We never fell out.'

She didn't immediately say anything. We never fell out. We'd never argued in our lives. Yet we did go long periods without seeing each other.

'No,' she said eventually.

'So, who was the Jigsaw Man, then? If we were John and Paul...'

Her face betrayed the slightest hint of sadness, as though the director had asked for a look of wistfulness stopping short of melancholy.

'I'm going to have to go, sorry,' she said.

The word sorry implied some sort of apology, although I couldn't remember Jones ever apologising for anything before, and I didn't think she was really apologising now.

'Will I see you again?' I asked, immediately regretting the tone of desperation. It sounded so weak. It
was
weak.

A taxi stopped, right on cue. Jones took a step or two towards it, to let him know that she was coming, then turned back.

She stared curiously for a moment, and then, with a tone that was all naïve innocence, said, 'Because you need to find the Jigsaw Man?'

I didn't know what to say to that. Yes, I needed to find the Jigsaw Man, but no, I wanted to see her again, even though I was letting her go, rather than escorting her back to my hotel bedroom.

She smiled, switching at a snap of the fingers.

'Well, of course you'll see me again,' she said. 'Look, I need to go. We'll talk about the Jigsaw Man later.'

If she'd stood there long enough, by God I really would have asked her when, in some desperate, small voice, but she followed the words with a quick smile, a theatrical wave, and then, just for a moment, she was naked, standing there on the steps outside the café, letting me see what I was missing, what I had turned my back on, and then the moment was gone, her back was turned and she was getting into the taxi.

As it drove away, she leaned forward, speaking to the driver, and I was left staring at the back of her head as the car turned the corner at the end of the block. The pain of her leaving, of having her slip through my fingers like that, settled upon me and crushed me, for all the world like it was a giant, Pythonesque foot.

I stared at the space where she'd been for a while, then started walking back along to the hotel. I felt so useless, so wretched, so consumed by desire for Jones. How pathetic. I didn't feel like walking through the park again, so I went back to the room, undressed and got into bed.

I woke up some time later to complete stillness. Felt like I'd been out for a long time, and although it was still light outside, the quality of the day was completely different, the afternoon having progressed considerably.

I felt disorientated, even though I knew where I was. I had a peculiar feeling that someone was in the room with me. Had Jones come back? For a second I couldn't remember, but of course she hadn't. Maybe it was the female agent, maybe that was how they knew everything about me. They were following me this closely.

I pushed the sheets off and went to check the bathroom. I looked into the darkened empty space, and then turned back to the room. I didn't need to check my watch. It was several hours later.

I stood there, naked, in the middle of the room, for a long time. Long enough that it grew obviously darker outside. Fighting the urge to get in a taxi and head back to the park to find Jones. That would have been just too small. To turn up there, to stand and watch her in pathetic, shallow impotence.

A long, uncomfortable evening lay ahead of me, and then I could wrestle with the question the following day. Wait here to see if she'd come back, or get in a taxi and go over to the shoot?

Of course, I already knew the answer.

Finally I forced myself to move. I got in the shower, then dressed and headed down to the bar.

I ordered a bottle of wine. I ate some nuts, then a second bowl, and then, as the wine started to taste a little bitter, ordered a sandwich. All the time I sat in a position that allowed me to see the main entrance to the hotel, so that I would see her if she turned up to surprise me, something I wished for and yet dreaded.

I knew she wasn't coming.

––––––––

I
woke up to the lights going on. All of them at once. I'd fallen asleep with the curtains open, and it was dark outside. Jones was standing at the end of the bed, wearing a coat, a bag over her shoulder.

'Come on,' she said. 'We're leaving.'

All the lights, plus the arrival of Jones and the shock of being rudely awoken, ought to have startled me out of sleep in an instant, yet I lay there, head on the pillow, eyes not quite open, staring at her.

'Sleepyhead,' she said, smiling. 'Come on, flight's leaving in an hour-and-a-half. You need to get a move on. If you're quick, you can jump in the shower.'

I'd started to lift my head, then I let it rest back on the pillow and rubbed my eyes. Stretched my legs. Life began to pour back into me, as if the sleep dam had been breached. Took a moment, half expected her not to be there when I opened my eyes again, then leaned up on my elbows, the duvet falling from my chest, revealing the fact that I'd got into bed wearing yesterday's t-shirt. Looked at the clock. 4:29a.m.

'Where are we going?'

'Seattle.'

She smiled. The fully engaged, I'm all yours for the foreseeable future smile, even if that future could not be foreseen for very long.

'How did you get in?' I asked, not quite ready to move yet.

'I'm gorgeous,' she said, with a shrug. 'People do things for me.'

Despite having just woken up, I managed to pick up the lack of confidence behind the words. She didn't quite have the courage of her conviction, but she smiled her way through it.

Gave my head a shake, like a dog after it's been in the sea, and straightened up. Stretched and put my legs over the side of the bed.

'Why are we going to Seattle?'

She giggled. 'Where else would we be going?'

Seattle. I couldn't see any sense in that. Yet, that hardly mattered. The movie had decided to up sticks on its production – as if Jones had been in charge of the entire operation, and had taken them off on some crazy caprice, to film elsewhere – and now she'd come to take me with her, that was all.

There seemed absolutely no reason why I should find the Jigsaw Man in Seattle, but neither had there been a reason why I would ever have found him in Warsaw. This whole, mixed-up crazy thing was leading me again, and I just had to follow it until it had played itself out, while hoping that I didn't miss the obvious moment when I ought to jump off the ride.

'James,' she said, 'move your arse. I'll still be here when you get out the bathroom.'

Right there, that was it. For the first time she acknowledged the mendaciousness, that I couldn't trust her from one moment to the next.

Was I to thank her for the acknowledgement? It didn't matter. I was getting on a plane to Seattle with her, and the effect of this could be entirely seen from the fact that it never even crossed my mind to worry about once again flying across the Atlantic. The last time it hadn't gone so well, after all.

She smiled again, then sat down on the comfy chair beside the window.

'I'm not washing your back for you. We'd miss the plane.'

––––––––

I
had no fears about the flight to Seattle.

I'd always been scared of flying, and every time I got on a plane there hadn't been anything else for me to worry about, so I'd worried about that. Like the flight to see the non-existent Marion Hightower. Life had been not too bad. Had been enjoying my work, Baggins was happy at school, things weren't great with Brin, but they hadn't been apocalyptic, and whatever it was that was troubling her, I usually managed to persuade myself that we'd be able to get past it. The prospect of the film script happening had also been at least interesting, even if I'd done my damnedest to deny myself any actual anticipation and excitement. So, I'd needed something to push back against, something to counteract the fact that things were going well, to bring equilibrium, and so my basic fear of flying became exaggerated, and I started to catastrophise the flight (it being entirely coincidental that the catastrophe played itself out).

Now things were so screwed up, I had no need to worry about anything unnecessarily. I didn't need to invent any worries. My whole damned life was screwed up, so why did I have to worry about doing something that millions of people did every day without anything bad happening to them? And what were the odds of it happening to me twice in a row?

We flew from Warsaw to Charles De Gaulle, had a two-hour wait, and then caught Air France club class to Seattle. I bought my ticket at Warsaw, feeling a peculiar pleasure in using the agency's credit card for something that was so stupidly expensive. Not that it would make any difference to them. I had no idea who they were, but I saw them as some shadowy organisation that most people in the government hadn't even heard of, who appeared as a one line afterthought in the gargantuan US Defence Budget under the heading Other Items or Miscellaneous Security Services or something so dull that people were trained to barely even see it; yet they would account for some four or five hundred million dollars of spending each year. My flight to Seattle would be an afterthought.

At some point in the taxi between the Hyatt and the airport, I again asked Jones why we were going to Seattle. She smiled, gave me a look that said
you're not really asking that, are you, silly?
and squeezed my hand. We barely talked after that, not until we were over the north Atlantic, up above the clouds, flying through a perfect blue sky.

'Really, why are we going to Seattle?' I finally asked.

We'd just finished lunch, three glasses of white wine each. Neither of us was interested in the in-flight entertainment. I'd had chicken in white wine, Jones had eaten a few vegetables and two desserts.

She smiled again, squeezed my hand. Sometimes I wondered how long I'd have to spend with Jones for me to find the smile irritating, yet however long it was, I was never going to get anything like that amount of time to spend with her. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to be married to Jones, but those thoughts never went well. I couldn't even imagine a happy, long-term relationship with Jones, and anyway, the very thought usually included a shot of Brin, curled up in a corner, crying, looking at me like she'd always known.

'Filming switched to the west coast. They're not actually shooting in Seattle. In the woods outside. Doubling for Russia. Hey, it's the movies.'

That same line. She delivered it as though it was an in-joke. Anything goes. Any old shit goes.

'I thought you just had a small part in the thing?'

'Piotr wants me there, and I don't have anything for the next couple of weeks anyway. His wife is going to be in London the whole time, so you know...' and she let the sentence drift away through the cabin with an unconcerned hand waved casually in the air.

'So...' I began, but stopped myself. I wondered if what I'd been about to say might offend her. Or, at least, give her a reason to pretend to be offended, which was something of which I lived in fear. Every second with her needed to work, but God it was such an effort.

I never realised I didn't actually need to make any effort. It never made any difference.