What They Do in the Dark (28 page)

He wasn’t in any pain that a couple of aspirin couldn’t dull, the same echo in his waterworks that had finally impelled him to make a doctor’s appointment, but from the way the specialist had promised future discussion of pain relief, Frank knew there was worse to come. Well, there was worse to come anyway, pain or no pain. Finishing the call, he dropped into the desk chair, dislodging the orphan socks. One of them, a burgundy Jermyn Street cashmere Lol had treated him to one Christmas, had a hole worn in the ball of the foot, where he always wore his socks and even shoes through – probably from pacing, from appearing so light on his feet. He chucked the sock in the bin. Frank allowed himself one moment to close his eyes and feel sorry for himself before he snapped out of the chair to find a manila envelope and put the comedy script into it for the afternoon post. Onward and onward. What else could you do?

N
OW THAT
Q
UENTIN
was back in England, it was tough to grasp why being there had seemed so urgent when she was in Rome. Despite a great deal of what she’d been hankering for ever since she’d landed in Europe, including mind-clearing coke and real coffee – although of course no decent shower – Italy just hadn’t done it for her in the way that Poland West seemed to. It was Hugh, of course, that damned elusive Hugh. Particularly as she hadn’t seen him before she took the Italian trip, ha ha. In his absence, well, her absence, Quentin had gone through quite a lot of scenes where she expressed to him just how uniquely she understood him and he, in return, noted her private sorrow. It was good stuff. It was shit, of course. And now she was back in the grey, the singed yellow-brown, she was going to see him really, which sucked. A verb to be avoided. Perhaps he’d been out of it, the night of the three barrels? Of course he hadn’t. And she mustn’t take
on
so. It was unsophisticated.

She had fucked two guys successfully while she had been away, if you counted success as humping to orgasm – theirs, obviously. And there was no more than the lightest dusting of self-loathing about fuck number one, a fleshy but well-tailored studio executive from Cinecittà in his fifties, and absolutely none about fuck number two, a grip of god-like beauty who had fixed her up with the coke and some joyful grass and had the muscle definition of a Renaissance statue or a Santa Barbara porn star. So that was all fine. She should be getting back here like a girl in a perfume ad, hair swinging, stride co-ordinated, the world at her command. It was just a wrap party, for God’s sake, and having seen how they
did everything else round here, and given the start time of six thirty, she was guessing it wasn’t going to give Truman Capote a run for his money. In the Black-and-White-Ball sense, that was, although it might veer a little more in the direction of
In Cold Blood
. Oh, wasn’t she the snippy one.

They put her right back in her old room at the hotel. Quentin assumed no one else had stayed there in her absence, which helped with the whole skin-cell thing. She’d barely arrived when Bri, the antisocial projectionist who had run the first dailies for her the night she’d met Hugh, turned up with a muttered injunction for her to see the final batch. In case Hugh was part of the deal, she brushed her hair and spritzed a little Cristalle (she truly was that girl), and followed Bri to the suite. But it was just the two of them, in the unsuccessful dark. She sat down. The thin drapes could only tranquillize the glare of the day into a woozy dimness, bisected, where the fabric didn’t meet, by a brutal sliver of sun that sliced into her eyes. Bri adjusted the drapes until she stopped squinting, then started the projector.

‘They’re not in order,’ he told her, grudging the words. ‘Well, just in the order we got them back from the lab.’

So the first shot she saw was possibly the last of the movie. A classroom, kids at desks, solemnly regarding the camera, which would be the POV of the cop, she guessed, as it roamed among them, hand-held. The kids were unromantically plain and tousled. The camera cherished their scabs and surfaces, then stopped among them at the empty desk, the empty chair.

After this came a double run of a more stately pan, close in over the desk and chair, marking out the kid’s absence for any numbnuts who hadn’t got it yet. Maybe they wouldn’t use that, maybe it’d be beautiful and essential in the assembly, maybe she and her bosses would be yakking on about cuts and it would go in the end.

Suddenly, at the end of the slow journey, Lallie’s face reared, hijacking the end of the shot in a real-life cameo, home-movie style.
Huge and partial and unfocused in the frame, she roared mutely, exposing her fillings, then was consumed to black. Never out of the picture for long – she must have turned up from make-up just as they were finishing the shot. The contrast when she appeared in the next sequence gave Quentin a drop in the stomach. So real, when she was pretending. Restored to life for a scene that would come right at the beginning of the film, before all the bad stuff started, there she was, among her snaggle-toothed classmates, lifting a pencil from her pal at the next desk, just one of the gang, although you knew to look at her. And again, and again. She’d break their hearts, if they had hearts left to break. How did the kid know to be ordinary in her pretending, when in truth she fought every moment of her life to stand out from the crowd?

But hey. Dead kid sad. Let’s all agree that on the whole, killing children is a bad thing. It was an entertainment, a fake constructed of glued-together sequences, whatever Mike’s solemn pronouncements about the ending offering ‘no consolation’ (and those certainly made Hugh and her and all the studio guys prone to conversations behind his back). The rushes were finished. What was she, Quentin Montpellier, even doing here? Pretending to have a job which pretended to help to make pretend shit. A butterfly who dreamed she was a producer. A botch job.

Quentin plucked at the secret sore places on her arms. She needed something. The party should at least be good for that. Even Hugh should be good for that, if there was nothing else on offer but his magic beans. There was something wrong with her, that’s what people didn’t realize, although you’d think they could see it, the way her skin didn’t hang right. Everyone else’s seemed to, even Bri’s, whose one scampering glance at her tits as he tweaked the curtains had been underlyingly furious. She wondered if she could play chicken with her self-love to the extent of screwing him, an old game of hers. It could be dangerous, and not just for the ego, and was really only possible drunk or stoned.

‘That’s it, unless you want to see the last batch as well.’

Quentin declined, saying she had to get ready for the party. Was Bri coming to the party? He was, unenthusiastically. She left him, diverted by film cans, and headed back to her room. Had Hugh set up their little session to keep her out of his way? Would have served him right if she had screwed the little jerk. As. If. He. Cared. Oh God, how she dully, truly hated her own company. It was like a holiday in hell. An unending cruise with a nagging, overweight country cousin, whose polyester gingham wardrobe gave her BO which permeated their tiny, shared cabin.

She stuck on false eyelashes for the party. Why not? When Quentin looked in the mirror she didn’t recognize herself, which was always a bonus. Why hadn’t she got hold of something in Rome, instead of freaking out about being stopped at Customs? Prescription medicine, after all, wasn’t illegal. She was even shambolic about self-abuse. OK, if she devoted herself to acquiring a stash of some kind she would become a professional pill-head, but the amateurism was getting her down. And the hotel room. And her cancer was troubling her.

It was just a trip down the stairs to the party. Straightaway, to be on the safe side, she stopped at the bar and downed some warm vodka. The function room was packed with people Quentin didn’t recognize, or not enough to speak to. Just as the vodka was stroking her nerve endings, there he was.

‘No Dirk, I’m afraid. He hit the M1 the moment they called it a wrap. He’ll be somewhere near London by now.’

Midnight-blue suit, white shirt, close shave. A good smell. Bay rum? Or maybe she was fantasizing that he was a cocktail.

‘Lucky Dirk.’

‘Indeed.’

He gave her the smile. She saw the trademark flash of wrist and cuff as he smoothed his hand over his hair. Maybe she’d been in love with his watch all along. Maybe it was a translation issue.
Because if you took away the accent, and the suit, and the way he held himself, Hugh was just like every guy who’d left her staring at the complicated reality of her shoes as she took a leak in his bathroom in the small hours, wondering if this really, truly, could be all there was.

‘Don’t you look wonderful.’ Hugh cradled her elbow and kissed her. That good smell. That thick shirting. Bastard. An intimate squeeze for the elbow, that well-known erogenous zone. But then, suggesting she say hello to Mike, Hugh’s hand moved to the small of her back, where her dress wasn’t, and the confident pressure of his dry fingers went straight to her cunt. Better than shoes. Realler than shoes. It wasn’t nothing, when all was said and done.

They reached Mike, who leched her formulaically, although his actual interest, as ever, was himself. ‘Have you seen the rushes?’

‘I cried,’ Quentin claimed. ‘Real fucking tears. The chair …’

Mike’s teeth showed, which was his version of a genuine smile. He swigged some gin and tonic. ‘Oh, I was pleased with the chair.’

Hugh tossed her a look. They were in it together. She liked that. Just at that moment, Quentin felt fine. Not as in OK, as in the full Katharine-Hepburn-
Philadelphia-Story
-CK-Dexter-Haven fine. As fine as Hugh.
Yar
.

Mike looked even shiftier than usual. ‘I was just saying to Hugh, if there was any chance of doing a few pick-ups—’

For once, being hijacked by Lallie’s Groucho Marx was a relief. Quentin had no desire to try and hold a line with Mike. It was a goddamn party. And Lallie seemed momentarily to be Katrina-less. Quentin saw that the kid hadn’t gotten over her little warmie for Hugh. Hey, who could blame her. She was capering, doing the voices. In a few years she’d learn that she was on the wrong track – as far as men were concerned, personality was never a bonus. Hugh was sweet with her, though: Quentin recognized the trick. He made you feel like he was paying attention. He insisted on getting the fat teenager behind
the bar to mix Lallie a ‘cocktail’ out of Coke and stunted bottles of fruit juice. Quentin followed his lead and pretended she was into it too, while Mike dropped away. Nobody had heard of a Shirley Temple, and in any case Quentin was pretty sure it contained things like ginger ale and grenadine that didn’t exist here. She told Lallie and Hugh about how her dad used to order them for her whenever they went out for dinner on custody weekends.

‘This was actually at the Brown Derby, you know.’ They didn’t. ‘Where all the big movie stars used to hang out.’

Her dad had wanted it to be a thrill for her and got annoyed when she, silent with devotion, didn’t deliver the goods. She didn’t say that, obviously, the way his disappointment and irritation invoked his better, shadow daughter to sit beside them: blonder, thinner, more vivacious and appreciative – a sort of Skipper to her new stepmom’s Barbie. She just mentioned the Shirley Temple as companion to his highball, a cute little father–daughter vignette.

‘My dad’s coming,’ said Lallie. ‘He’s getting the train after work.’

‘Don’t get drunk then,’ said Hugh.

Lallie beamed and giggled. It was hard not to feel jealous of such simple happiness. Her tutor, blotto of course, waylaid the kid with a maudlin hug. The woman had a peninsula of zits along her jawline, despite being middle-aged. How did that happen to people? The two of them bounced off to check out the jukebox, Lallie leading the way. Quentin couldn’t say she was sorry to see them go.

‘Is your dad still around?’ she asked Hugh. He slicked his hair one-handed as he knocked back his drink with the other.

‘Alas, no.’ She waited. ‘This’ll be the first time he’s been down, you know, since we started shooting.’ It took her a second to work out the diversion to Lallie’s father. She ignored it.

‘When did he pass away?’

‘Nearly ten years ago.’ Hugh and his glass of whatever communed, antsy. ‘He was a remarkable man.’

‘I’ve heard a little about him. From Vera.’

Who was there, somewhere, in the throng – Quentin had glimpsed her, suddenly striking with her own hair and clothes.

‘Ah yes, of course.’ Hugh focused on some invisible screen. Quentin tried to work out if his pupils were unusually contracted. ‘He had this amazing energy, drive, always. On the go from morning until night, everyone always said Sidney Calder could get more done in a day than most people managed in a week. Quite hard to live up to, actually.’ He finished his drink.

‘It wasn’t until he popped his clogs … He used to have shots, vitamin injections, you know. Pure amphetamine, as it turned out. I was rather devastated about that, stupid, actually, but I’d spent so bloody long trying to keep up with him. It was
exhausting
.’

So now she knew. Oedipal substance abuse. Oh God, now she loved him again, offering her his confidence with his pristine smile. She would have lain at his feet like a dog, right there. Was this a good time to ask him for a little something to make the evening go faster than the vodka?

‘Cooee,’ Katrina trilled, clamping Quentin by the waist, her nails making escape a hazard.
Always a pleasure
. Quentin could see Hugh was immediately on the front foot to go. Traitor.