fic: the highways of los angeles (rpf)
the highways of los angeles
rpf. age is hardly treasured behind the gilded walls of tinseltown; wisdom falls under a similar heading. keira knightley/james mcavoy. 4547 words. rated r.
notes: usual applies: all lies. also, blame joan didion for this. i can't seem to stop reading her stuff.
i can’t keep track of each fallen robin.
(chelsea hotel no.2; leonard cohen)
1.
It seems to be the only scripts I find worth reading these days are the ones that call their woman scarlet and are boiling over with bad decisions and the even worse retribution that comes of it.
It’s either reading those or glaring at the Plath and the others I refuse to touch.
I glare at those the way I glare at maps.
2.
She yawns into his shoulder and the first grunt of a laugh from him is shaded deep, still gruff with sleep. He rubs at his eyes and the hard curve of his shoulder moves beneath her open mouth.
“The fourth, eh?” James asks, the question posed as more of a statement than anything. She can count too, and she snorts. His hand slips down her side.
You see, it’s like this: They are little more than two fools who can’t seem to keep their legs untangled.
The twisted sheets certainly do not help.
3.
Trouble has been chasing her, hunting her down, like a bad blues album she has never heard of. These days, she’s just been listening to whatever it is Rupert likes, has paused on the stereo, and it has been nothing but utter and complete shit at that.
You see, it’s not the girls that go searching for trouble that always come up broke. It’s the blind ones, the ones who think the straight and narrow is laid out beneath their pretty feet, when in fact they have strayed and followed a trail of breadcrumbs towards nothing more than a heated oven.
Keira is not quite blind herself; rather, she sees things she invented on her own.
“I’m going to find you, reckless man,” she hums, on accident.
4.
She has always liked sticking in relationships. It’s not out of a commitment to monogamy or anything like that. Instead, she likes the strict organization that comes with it. If she were to look back into her past, she could immediately say, “Oh, yes. That was my Jamie Period. Or, no, that was the Time of Rupert.” It adds order where originally there would be none.
It’s about the definable. It’s hardly a romantic sentiment.
(James doesn’t fit, not correctly. At first it was just overlap, but now he’s kind of taking over and she has this ridiculous fear that twenty years from now when she pauses for a moment of self-reflection, it won’t be the Time of Rupert or the Rupert Period or anything along those lines. Instead? It will just be him. It’ll be James).
5.
The things the romantics forget to write home about is the significant amount of banal sacrifice inherent in love. Sure, they’ll speak of the grand things - the head placed before the guillotine, that far, far better place; Romeo, Juliet, and glamorized cyanide capsules; Antony, Cleopatra and her pet asp - and how incredible and all encompassing the power of love can be. Worse still, they might domesticate it, talk about learning to share a closet, his and hers towels, the toilet lid, the accommodation of different REM cycles that comes of occupying the same bed together each night.
They don’t talk about the little things, the intangible, all that one can come to give up just to hold another. It’s a slight, needling thing, pricking at the strangest of times, a reminder of all the personal good gone in the name of this certain someone. Maybe its dignity, self-respect, moral code. Maybe it’s the circumstances this time around.
All Keira knows is this:
When Rupert’s fingers brush her elbow, innocent in their intentions, a small part of her drops a little lower inside. And it hurts.
When Rupert knocks on her door, a cup of coffee in hand, guilt and a wild relief mix tight in her gut and half the time she isn’t sure if she would rather laugh, cry or maybe just cut and run.
When Rupert calls and her cell will ring, she hates herself. It’s sad, pathetic, it’s ungrateful and selfish the way she wishes that hello belongs to someone else.
6.
Before this story began, they had slept together a grand total of three times.
She keeps track of these things.
What she doesn’t know yet is this: he does, too.
7.
They remained professional for the duration of the filming, in southern England. In case you happened to be wondering.
James doesn’t lie in the news bites People magazine runs, and at the same time, Keira isn’t lying either. The love scene really was an awkward nightmare; yes, he really was a fantastic kisser. Maybe it was such a debacle because he was too good at the whole kissing, lip-locking thing. It doesn’t matter. Either way the contradictions still run across rather than parallel and for whatever reason the two of them aren’t above divulging the truth to prying journalists.
It does make the story easier to keep straight. And besides - it’s not as though either of them has anything there to hide.
8.
They don’t tell the whole truth, of course. They don’t tell it to the papers, the morning talk shows, their respective significant others, and perhaps most importantly, to each other or to themselves. Self-deception is an art-form all its own, and perhaps, as actors, the two of them take to it with an all too easy grace.
She tries her hardest not to dwell on the inconsequential, or at least, what she prescribes as such: the curious lingering glances he would offer her way at the oddest of times, the way his smile would spread and how there were moments where she was responsible for it, the fact he would watch her under the false assumption she was unaware of it, those kinds of things. Nothing ever went farther than that, and it’s fine, of course. It’s fine, she has taken to reminding herself, trying to talk herself down from whatever flare of emotion has threatened. It’s fine.
It’s fine. They never would have worked anyway.
It kind of makes her hate him. In theory, at least.
9.
She has a head for finding faults, rather than for figures or poetry or something of the more useful sort.
His eyes are too expressive and her chin trembles far too much.
Good-byes make her stomach hurt; most of the time, she just doesn’t do them. With a high profile it’s difficult to fade, but a fast getaway is still manageable.
In its stead, she picks on the flaws, that kind of wonky nose of his, the way his front teeth don’t line up as straight as they aesthetically should, things like that. It doesn’t work as it should, and instead of becoming just irritated with him, as planned, she finds him a little more endearing.
She doesn’t like endearing. She doesn’t do farewells.
10.
One of them is bound to fuck this all up, and if she was a bit more of the gambling sort, she would put hard money on the wager that it will most likely be her that stumbles first.
In six weeks time, this prophecy will be self-fulfilled and if the silly girl had the guts to place her money on the table, she would be sweeping in the windfall, the colored chips.
It never works that way, of course.
11.
The first time they had sex it was as accidental as these things can be without wandering into the realm of slapstick comedy.
The film had wrapped - professionals, remember? keep up - and it was in Toronto, of all places. There had been Venice, there had been Southern England and there had been moments in London. But it was in Toronto. They had stayed in the Hyatt.
James likes to think himself a gentleman, this she knows, and he had stopped by, a little too late for a gentleman, but that’s just her opinion and it’s not like she’s Jane Austen or anything, far from it, try as the studios might. He had stopped over, her room, “just to see,” he had said, and she still wonders, even know, just what it was he wanted to see but she can never seem to work up the nerve to ask.
He had loitered in the cramped hall, the beige, discolored wallpaper and the bathroom door ajar and she had waited by a window, hands flitting at her sides and they talked about things, stupid, silly things she doesn’t remember.
It was when she walked him to the door it happened. Her hand had brushed his, holding fast to the edge of the door, and he had paused. She watched the lines deepen on his forehead and she counted each inhale and exhale of hers and willed it all to slow.
He looked at her, and like practiced celluloid experience, their eyes met.
It was like how she imagines touching a livewire would feel. That undercurrent had always been present, but with one single touch, it was ignited, amplified to a point beyond dull recognition.
He kissed her first, but he didn’t stay the night.
12.
She likes telling him things, stupid things, little things, those things of absolutely no consequence other than contributing to make you who you are. She likes the idea of filling in the gaps for him.
There are times still, little moments that spring and pop, where he feels nothing more than a stranger. This? It hurts and makes her ache as well and she will find herself teetering on the edge of embarrassment. She will want little more than to grab him by the hand, hold him closer, keep him - yes, keep him as hers and learn him. Learn everything there might be to know.
She learned his birthday from a random website online; she has yet to tell him hers and she sometimes wonders if maybe he has done research of his own as well. The same website claims he is the same height as her. She knows this to be untrue - flat-footed her nose rests below his, and if she really wanted to, if she were to lean forward in this position, head on, her lips would graze his chin.
It’s March 26. (His? It’s April 21, six years before her own. It makes her feel young, silly and frivolous).
13.
There was a night once and a bar, of course, and this is how every story concerning two twenty-something’s both starts and finishes. ‘There was a night once and a bar;’ definitely puts a new spin on ‘once upon a time,’ and more likely than not, not for the better. But there had been a night and this bar, a long day of filming, exhaustion settling heavy on both of them, manifesting itself in differing ways.
The bar had been hot, crowded, and not a single drink she downed came near enough to cooling her down. Her clothes felt sticky, damp against her back, and even though the sun had set, its departure had done little for the hanging heat.
As she drank, he sat across from her. She thought of Rupert briefly, the missed calls her mobile still displayed, the voice mails she had yet to listen to, but knew all the same exactly the tone, the volume and the words to have been said. The thought had passed quickly, on a second evaluation, perhaps too quickly.
James cut a nice angle, the way he was stretched out in his chair across from her. He was turned to the side, his legs stretched out in front of him, only slightly impeding the way past their table. He had an elbow resting on the table, a plain white t-shirt a little too thin, stretched across the expanse of his chest. It might have been the beer, or maybe the humidity, but she had felt light-headed, watching him like this. He seemed to be lost in thought, his eyes drifting over the mounted TVs and the various sporting events and news syndicates broadcast there.
It was ridiculous, the way desire can spring, uncoil, grab. She had wished to be seated on his side of the table, next to him, her thigh flush with his, and maybe then she would finally achieve the kind of contact she so desperately craves. Deep down she had known it would not have been enough, and after their thighs had touched, she would have wanted more. She would have wanted the brush of bare elbows and the contact of skin, sweaty forearm to sweaty forearm, sticking after too long of a second. She would have wanted fingers to curl, lace together, and then thighs resting against each other wouldn’t have been enough, either, and she would want - just as she wanted that very second, across the table, a still unsafe but measurable distance away - to find a way inside him.
The hair at the nape of his neck was damp, droplets of sweat had cascaded down into the not-quite white collar of his shirt.
He had caught her, in that moment, her watchful, roaming eyes and his eyebrows had risen in an unasked question.
And like the damned fool she is, she had pushed her chair farther away from the table and cursed, “It’s too fucking hot in here.”
He had laughed; the subtext spoke for itself.
14.
She understands what feeling restless can be like.
There are times where she thinks no farther than beyond grand, generalizing statements, like, I was born restless. It’s probably not true, but when she does look back on the years of the life she has led, restless certainly seems a way to characterize it all. There’s a constant motion to her, never really fluid, but quick stops and just as abrupt starts, but always, always the motion is there.
15.
The second time, there was intention there, for both parties concerned.
There was a bar in New York and a celebration after yet another premiere. Joe had insisted. “Bastard,” she had cursed under her breath.
Rupert called four and a half times before giving up. She says half because he only let her phone ring twice before hanging up, had decided the effort might just not be entirely worth it.
Their numbers had dwindled but her resolve had remained, her heart beating like she had something to prove, and they - James and she - had yet to even talk about Toronto, talk about her hotel room and the bad beige wallpaper and the way he murmured “I can’t stop thinking about you,” so desperately, maybe even hopeless, along her jaw just before she came.
James had slid along the booth to sit next to her. She was drunk. So was he.
The club was playing 80’s remixes too loud and their shoulders bumped. She let her eyes wander the crowd as his hand wandered her thigh, above the knee and then up. “This is bloody stupid,” she hissed and he had only laughed.
His fingers lined the edge of her panties, his knuckles brushing against her inner thigh; she had bit her lip.
She had wanted to tell him, “No, not here,” because there are people, and people watch and people talk and there is already enough speculation about every other aspect of her life, and it wasn’t quite altruism at play, but she had no desire to drag James into any of it. She wanted to tell him, but she didn’t. Instead, she had sighed and his fingers pressed firm against her; he chuckled deeply, too close to her ear to look fully innocent to the watchful eye, and she should have been bothered more that he seemed so pleased, so proud, smug, over the fact he can elicit a reaction from her. She should have been, but she wasn’t. If anything, it added another layer of eroticism, already heaped on far too much as it was.
He fingered her in the booth, and she came, her own fingers white-knuckled against the curve of the table.
Later, it was his hotel room this time (far neater than her own, it even smelled like him) and she smacked her skull against the headboard when she tried to say his name.
16.
She made a film with her once, recently, and the makeshift friendship with Sienna has lasted past the set and the trailers and the desperate need to have someone to call a friend. She doesn’t hang around the same people she did five or even three, maybe one, year ago, and she finds it hard to earn friendships and solid things like that in a town like this.
(The last part of that statement is a lie. It is true that old friends have been lost to time and failure at communication; the second half rings false. It’s easy to blame it on the Walk of Fame and the white Hollywood sign and things like autographs, but when it comes down to it, the town is not at fault: it’s her).
They shop, London, and the cameras snap as though on parade and the two girls duck into the nearest coffee shop.
“I haven’t been exactly, well, faithful,” is all she offers, and it’s enough. Sienna’s eyes light up as if Keira as offered good news instead of bad and never before has she been more grateful for the omission of details.
“Who?” Sienna gasps, and she knows her mind is quickly cataloging any possibly contenders, and fuck. This was bloody stupid, wasn’t it?
Keira shrugs her off, quickly. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Do I know him? Is he famous? Dear lord, please tell me it isn’t Johnny Depp.” For a girl whose own boyfriend was caught fucking his kids’ nanny she seems far too rapt by the concept of infidelities and fame.
“It isn’t.”
“They all expect you to behave poorly, of course.” Sienna waves a lit cigarette in the air. “There are few things people love more than to read about bad girls and their bad, bad, troublesome ways.”
Keira doesn’t find this to be particularly helpful or useful advice.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” she sneers, and just like that, the friendliness of the lunch, the day of shopping, is trashed.
Really, now. She doesn’t even like this girl.
17.
It’s not going to last, is the kind of thought she can’t seem to shed, no matter which direction she tries to wander in.
She tries on dresses; she likes to wear them off the rack, as de classe as that may be these days, Young Hollywood and the naked starlets anyway, but she likes it. And she will wander high-end stores, the sticker shock still there at times, curiously weighed with a kind of materialistic pride she should be ashamed of. The thought will hit her, maybe when her fingers are sliding over the fabric of a green dress, and it will catch a little, the base of her throat: Oh, God. This isn’t going to last.
It’s a rush of panic that will color her face and for that curious, quivering moment she will want little more than to find him, to see him, feel the rough texture of his hands beneath hers and just know, or try to know that maybe this time she is wrong.
The contradictions spring from here - she, for one, has never enjoyed being proven incorrect.
18.
She can be a bit of a snob, and not in a good way. He can rip into her, and this, it’s in as bad a way as all the personal graces she is sorely lacking.
“You didn’t have to make me look so bloody…stupid,” she hisses when the cameras finally slip away and the set disappears into their shared collective past. Her microphone is already unclipped and tangling in her hand while he is slowly and methodically winding the cord around his hand.
“What? You think that was actual effort on my part?” he teases, the tone good-natured enough to hide the sting, and this only seems to make her angrier.
“Fuck off.”
He laughs.
19.
See, that’s the dangerous thing about falling for other people (she’s fallen for him? Jesus. It’s too far out of reach already, isn’t it?) - It brings them into your life that much deeper and with that much more likely a chance hurt will be brought and wrought.
It makes her skittish in that sense. And really. That’s just silly.
20.
She calls herself a workaholic, and she is, of sorts. But because she does not have the nine to five job, an office or a cubicle, the sensible work shoes or the morning commute the term earns disparaging glances from others.
They all sometimes forget just how young she is. At times, she herself forgets, adds numbers to her age that shouldn’t be there.
But he? He always seems to be aware of it, or at least, so she assumes. Nothing else could explain the condescending manner he adopts towards her.
That is, if this manner even exists in anyone’s eyes but her own. But it’s near impossible, isn’t it. To achieve clear vision through the eyes of another; if it were, the point of storytelling would be damn near obsolete, and she, Keira, would be out of a job.
21.
The third time she was angry.
She calls it a bad habit of his, the way he can be so cheeky and clever, but really, it isn’t a habit, it’s who he is.
That’s not why she was angry.
It happened against a wall in yet another hotel, Los Angeles, the bed sitting just a few feet away. The wall had felt cool against the nape of her neck, and she had liked that, but her anger still tried. Her fingers caught on buttons of his, and that frustrated her more, and she pulled, a couple buttons sprang. He kissed her deep, his leg pressed between hers, and it made her furious.
He fought back against her, just as hard, his hands too rough against her hips. There was the slack-jawed moan of her name when he thrust in and there was that shuddering down her spine.
She was angry, and when her back finally hit the mattress, she was still grasping at the why.
22.
They take to meeting in neutral zones. This time it is LA, a small diner, the kind with the counter, the Commodores, the overweight, bleach blonde waitress and the snapping gum. They both order coffees, and while Keira sips hers black, James adds enough cream and sugar to dilute it to a faded light brown. His spoon clinks against his cup as he withdraws it and Keira’s fingers crawl the edge of her folded paper napkin.
“I got this new GPS tracking system thing whatever, for my car, my rental here, you know?” she starts, at random. His head tips to the side a little, that closed-mouth smile of his, more akin to a smirk, already present. “And it’s completely bonkers, like 1984 and all…Orwellian, or whatever. I mean, it doesn’t matter where you’re driving! The little lady in the GPS box… thing knows exactly where you are at any given moment, and she’ll be all ‘turn right in 0.2 miles,’ and there’s a map and everything. It looks like a tiny videogame, right?” She pauses to take a sip of her coffee. It is still too hot and her tongue burns. The lines deepen around his eyes as he watches her, the way she scowls over her burnt tongue, her hands still gingerly cupping the mug. “I just find it so strange. It doesn’t matter where you are with this silly little thing. You can still always be found.” She jiggles her foot a little beneath the table, bites her lip, and he’s still watching her. He is still watching her, only his smile-smirk has fallen a little, the corners of his mouth not nearly as raised as they were when she first dove into this anecdote. “I’m not sure if it’s more comforting or terrifying, really,” she says.
He has an arm laid out over the back of the both, at ease in a way she never is, and he purses his lips as though thinking, hard. She wonders if he’s mocking her. He might be.
“I imagine it can be both, eh?” he finally says.
He’s giving her an out here, making it far too simple for her to just fall, for him, into him, whichever, both. And he has no idea of it, she thinks. No idea how his words carry to her and through her and how they make her want to jump.
Her hands drop into her lap, and in her mind, it’s a symbol of some small defeat and she sighs on a shudder. His eyes slip to kind, the humor not as bright. He looks near to saying something, but he doesn’t. It’s not like him, or it’s not like the James she thinks she knows; he speaks too often without thinking, the words just tumble.
She wants to tell him that she has never accomplished bravery very well. She wants him to hold her hand when she says it. Her coffee is cool enough to drink now, but it still doesn’t taste good. The silence is frightening her, almost as much as the very possibility of him.
Her fingers find her spoon instead and hold tight. She watches the way her coffee trembles within its cup, not full enough to threaten over the sides. As she is watching, as she is steadying herself, his fingers find her wrist.
They hold like reassurance.
23.
Rupert likes to throw things, adopting the more dramatic role in their relationship, while Keira just pouts by the door. She gave up smoking, again, over a month ago - threw the cigarettes in the toilet, tossed out all her lighters, matchbooks gleamed from posh restaurants. She is really regretting the decision at this moment.
“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you? That bloody Scot. You’re fucking him. I was right, wasn’t I? How long, now, Keira? How bloody long now?”
She leans against the doorframe and rolls her eyes for extra emphasis.
“Really. I haven’t the slightest as to what you’re on about.”
He breaks a lamp; she never liked that one anyway.
24.
Sometimes she forgets. Just how young she is. It will come in starts but never completed finishes, the not so gentle reminders that there is still so much left for her to learn.
He never forgets.
Perhaps it’s why he hums, “gentle, gentle,” into the crown of her head when he thinks she isn’t listening.
She is.
25.
I look across the room sometimes, but I still say: there is work to attend to. And sometimes they will laugh, maybe say, “Yes, of course. There is always a corset to be worn,” as though they are particularly clever.
They’re not.
I still don’t read maps, because if you ask me, it defeats the point.
It’s like this: I was born restless.
rpf. age is hardly treasured behind the gilded walls of tinseltown; wisdom falls under a similar heading. keira knightley/james mcavoy. 4547 words. rated r.
notes: usual applies: all lies. also, blame joan didion for this. i can't seem to stop reading her stuff.
i can’t keep track of each fallen robin.
(chelsea hotel no.2; leonard cohen)
1.
It seems to be the only scripts I find worth reading these days are the ones that call their woman scarlet and are boiling over with bad decisions and the even worse retribution that comes of it.
It’s either reading those or glaring at the Plath and the others I refuse to touch.
I glare at those the way I glare at maps.
2.
She yawns into his shoulder and the first grunt of a laugh from him is shaded deep, still gruff with sleep. He rubs at his eyes and the hard curve of his shoulder moves beneath her open mouth.
“The fourth, eh?” James asks, the question posed as more of a statement than anything. She can count too, and she snorts. His hand slips down her side.
You see, it’s like this: They are little more than two fools who can’t seem to keep their legs untangled.
The twisted sheets certainly do not help.
3.
Trouble has been chasing her, hunting her down, like a bad blues album she has never heard of. These days, she’s just been listening to whatever it is Rupert likes, has paused on the stereo, and it has been nothing but utter and complete shit at that.
You see, it’s not the girls that go searching for trouble that always come up broke. It’s the blind ones, the ones who think the straight and narrow is laid out beneath their pretty feet, when in fact they have strayed and followed a trail of breadcrumbs towards nothing more than a heated oven.
Keira is not quite blind herself; rather, she sees things she invented on her own.
“I’m going to find you, reckless man,” she hums, on accident.
4.
She has always liked sticking in relationships. It’s not out of a commitment to monogamy or anything like that. Instead, she likes the strict organization that comes with it. If she were to look back into her past, she could immediately say, “Oh, yes. That was my Jamie Period. Or, no, that was the Time of Rupert.” It adds order where originally there would be none.
It’s about the definable. It’s hardly a romantic sentiment.
(James doesn’t fit, not correctly. At first it was just overlap, but now he’s kind of taking over and she has this ridiculous fear that twenty years from now when she pauses for a moment of self-reflection, it won’t be the Time of Rupert or the Rupert Period or anything along those lines. Instead? It will just be him. It’ll be James).
5.
The things the romantics forget to write home about is the significant amount of banal sacrifice inherent in love. Sure, they’ll speak of the grand things - the head placed before the guillotine, that far, far better place; Romeo, Juliet, and glamorized cyanide capsules; Antony, Cleopatra and her pet asp - and how incredible and all encompassing the power of love can be. Worse still, they might domesticate it, talk about learning to share a closet, his and hers towels, the toilet lid, the accommodation of different REM cycles that comes of occupying the same bed together each night.
They don’t talk about the little things, the intangible, all that one can come to give up just to hold another. It’s a slight, needling thing, pricking at the strangest of times, a reminder of all the personal good gone in the name of this certain someone. Maybe its dignity, self-respect, moral code. Maybe it’s the circumstances this time around.
All Keira knows is this:
When Rupert’s fingers brush her elbow, innocent in their intentions, a small part of her drops a little lower inside. And it hurts.
When Rupert knocks on her door, a cup of coffee in hand, guilt and a wild relief mix tight in her gut and half the time she isn’t sure if she would rather laugh, cry or maybe just cut and run.
When Rupert calls and her cell will ring, she hates herself. It’s sad, pathetic, it’s ungrateful and selfish the way she wishes that hello belongs to someone else.
6.
Before this story began, they had slept together a grand total of three times.
She keeps track of these things.
What she doesn’t know yet is this: he does, too.
7.
They remained professional for the duration of the filming, in southern England. In case you happened to be wondering.
James doesn’t lie in the news bites People magazine runs, and at the same time, Keira isn’t lying either. The love scene really was an awkward nightmare; yes, he really was a fantastic kisser. Maybe it was such a debacle because he was too good at the whole kissing, lip-locking thing. It doesn’t matter. Either way the contradictions still run across rather than parallel and for whatever reason the two of them aren’t above divulging the truth to prying journalists.
It does make the story easier to keep straight. And besides - it’s not as though either of them has anything there to hide.
8.
They don’t tell the whole truth, of course. They don’t tell it to the papers, the morning talk shows, their respective significant others, and perhaps most importantly, to each other or to themselves. Self-deception is an art-form all its own, and perhaps, as actors, the two of them take to it with an all too easy grace.
She tries her hardest not to dwell on the inconsequential, or at least, what she prescribes as such: the curious lingering glances he would offer her way at the oddest of times, the way his smile would spread and how there were moments where she was responsible for it, the fact he would watch her under the false assumption she was unaware of it, those kinds of things. Nothing ever went farther than that, and it’s fine, of course. It’s fine, she has taken to reminding herself, trying to talk herself down from whatever flare of emotion has threatened. It’s fine.
It’s fine. They never would have worked anyway.
It kind of makes her hate him. In theory, at least.
9.
She has a head for finding faults, rather than for figures or poetry or something of the more useful sort.
His eyes are too expressive and her chin trembles far too much.
Good-byes make her stomach hurt; most of the time, she just doesn’t do them. With a high profile it’s difficult to fade, but a fast getaway is still manageable.
In its stead, she picks on the flaws, that kind of wonky nose of his, the way his front teeth don’t line up as straight as they aesthetically should, things like that. It doesn’t work as it should, and instead of becoming just irritated with him, as planned, she finds him a little more endearing.
She doesn’t like endearing. She doesn’t do farewells.
10.
One of them is bound to fuck this all up, and if she was a bit more of the gambling sort, she would put hard money on the wager that it will most likely be her that stumbles first.
In six weeks time, this prophecy will be self-fulfilled and if the silly girl had the guts to place her money on the table, she would be sweeping in the windfall, the colored chips.
It never works that way, of course.
11.
The first time they had sex it was as accidental as these things can be without wandering into the realm of slapstick comedy.
The film had wrapped - professionals, remember? keep up - and it was in Toronto, of all places. There had been Venice, there had been Southern England and there had been moments in London. But it was in Toronto. They had stayed in the Hyatt.
James likes to think himself a gentleman, this she knows, and he had stopped by, a little too late for a gentleman, but that’s just her opinion and it’s not like she’s Jane Austen or anything, far from it, try as the studios might. He had stopped over, her room, “just to see,” he had said, and she still wonders, even know, just what it was he wanted to see but she can never seem to work up the nerve to ask.
He had loitered in the cramped hall, the beige, discolored wallpaper and the bathroom door ajar and she had waited by a window, hands flitting at her sides and they talked about things, stupid, silly things she doesn’t remember.
It was when she walked him to the door it happened. Her hand had brushed his, holding fast to the edge of the door, and he had paused. She watched the lines deepen on his forehead and she counted each inhale and exhale of hers and willed it all to slow.
He looked at her, and like practiced celluloid experience, their eyes met.
It was like how she imagines touching a livewire would feel. That undercurrent had always been present, but with one single touch, it was ignited, amplified to a point beyond dull recognition.
He kissed her first, but he didn’t stay the night.
12.
She likes telling him things, stupid things, little things, those things of absolutely no consequence other than contributing to make you who you are. She likes the idea of filling in the gaps for him.
There are times still, little moments that spring and pop, where he feels nothing more than a stranger. This? It hurts and makes her ache as well and she will find herself teetering on the edge of embarrassment. She will want little more than to grab him by the hand, hold him closer, keep him - yes, keep him as hers and learn him. Learn everything there might be to know.
She learned his birthday from a random website online; she has yet to tell him hers and she sometimes wonders if maybe he has done research of his own as well. The same website claims he is the same height as her. She knows this to be untrue - flat-footed her nose rests below his, and if she really wanted to, if she were to lean forward in this position, head on, her lips would graze his chin.
It’s March 26. (His? It’s April 21, six years before her own. It makes her feel young, silly and frivolous).
13.
There was a night once and a bar, of course, and this is how every story concerning two twenty-something’s both starts and finishes. ‘There was a night once and a bar;’ definitely puts a new spin on ‘once upon a time,’ and more likely than not, not for the better. But there had been a night and this bar, a long day of filming, exhaustion settling heavy on both of them, manifesting itself in differing ways.
The bar had been hot, crowded, and not a single drink she downed came near enough to cooling her down. Her clothes felt sticky, damp against her back, and even though the sun had set, its departure had done little for the hanging heat.
As she drank, he sat across from her. She thought of Rupert briefly, the missed calls her mobile still displayed, the voice mails she had yet to listen to, but knew all the same exactly the tone, the volume and the words to have been said. The thought had passed quickly, on a second evaluation, perhaps too quickly.
James cut a nice angle, the way he was stretched out in his chair across from her. He was turned to the side, his legs stretched out in front of him, only slightly impeding the way past their table. He had an elbow resting on the table, a plain white t-shirt a little too thin, stretched across the expanse of his chest. It might have been the beer, or maybe the humidity, but she had felt light-headed, watching him like this. He seemed to be lost in thought, his eyes drifting over the mounted TVs and the various sporting events and news syndicates broadcast there.
It was ridiculous, the way desire can spring, uncoil, grab. She had wished to be seated on his side of the table, next to him, her thigh flush with his, and maybe then she would finally achieve the kind of contact she so desperately craves. Deep down she had known it would not have been enough, and after their thighs had touched, she would have wanted more. She would have wanted the brush of bare elbows and the contact of skin, sweaty forearm to sweaty forearm, sticking after too long of a second. She would have wanted fingers to curl, lace together, and then thighs resting against each other wouldn’t have been enough, either, and she would want - just as she wanted that very second, across the table, a still unsafe but measurable distance away - to find a way inside him.
The hair at the nape of his neck was damp, droplets of sweat had cascaded down into the not-quite white collar of his shirt.
He had caught her, in that moment, her watchful, roaming eyes and his eyebrows had risen in an unasked question.
And like the damned fool she is, she had pushed her chair farther away from the table and cursed, “It’s too fucking hot in here.”
He had laughed; the subtext spoke for itself.
14.
She understands what feeling restless can be like.
There are times where she thinks no farther than beyond grand, generalizing statements, like, I was born restless. It’s probably not true, but when she does look back on the years of the life she has led, restless certainly seems a way to characterize it all. There’s a constant motion to her, never really fluid, but quick stops and just as abrupt starts, but always, always the motion is there.
15.
The second time, there was intention there, for both parties concerned.
There was a bar in New York and a celebration after yet another premiere. Joe had insisted. “Bastard,” she had cursed under her breath.
Rupert called four and a half times before giving up. She says half because he only let her phone ring twice before hanging up, had decided the effort might just not be entirely worth it.
Their numbers had dwindled but her resolve had remained, her heart beating like she had something to prove, and they - James and she - had yet to even talk about Toronto, talk about her hotel room and the bad beige wallpaper and the way he murmured “I can’t stop thinking about you,” so desperately, maybe even hopeless, along her jaw just before she came.
James had slid along the booth to sit next to her. She was drunk. So was he.
The club was playing 80’s remixes too loud and their shoulders bumped. She let her eyes wander the crowd as his hand wandered her thigh, above the knee and then up. “This is bloody stupid,” she hissed and he had only laughed.
His fingers lined the edge of her panties, his knuckles brushing against her inner thigh; she had bit her lip.
She had wanted to tell him, “No, not here,” because there are people, and people watch and people talk and there is already enough speculation about every other aspect of her life, and it wasn’t quite altruism at play, but she had no desire to drag James into any of it. She wanted to tell him, but she didn’t. Instead, she had sighed and his fingers pressed firm against her; he chuckled deeply, too close to her ear to look fully innocent to the watchful eye, and she should have been bothered more that he seemed so pleased, so proud, smug, over the fact he can elicit a reaction from her. She should have been, but she wasn’t. If anything, it added another layer of eroticism, already heaped on far too much as it was.
He fingered her in the booth, and she came, her own fingers white-knuckled against the curve of the table.
Later, it was his hotel room this time (far neater than her own, it even smelled like him) and she smacked her skull against the headboard when she tried to say his name.
16.
She made a film with her once, recently, and the makeshift friendship with Sienna has lasted past the set and the trailers and the desperate need to have someone to call a friend. She doesn’t hang around the same people she did five or even three, maybe one, year ago, and she finds it hard to earn friendships and solid things like that in a town like this.
(The last part of that statement is a lie. It is true that old friends have been lost to time and failure at communication; the second half rings false. It’s easy to blame it on the Walk of Fame and the white Hollywood sign and things like autographs, but when it comes down to it, the town is not at fault: it’s her).
They shop, London, and the cameras snap as though on parade and the two girls duck into the nearest coffee shop.
“I haven’t been exactly, well, faithful,” is all she offers, and it’s enough. Sienna’s eyes light up as if Keira as offered good news instead of bad and never before has she been more grateful for the omission of details.
“Who?” Sienna gasps, and she knows her mind is quickly cataloging any possibly contenders, and fuck. This was bloody stupid, wasn’t it?
Keira shrugs her off, quickly. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Do I know him? Is he famous? Dear lord, please tell me it isn’t Johnny Depp.” For a girl whose own boyfriend was caught fucking his kids’ nanny she seems far too rapt by the concept of infidelities and fame.
“It isn’t.”
“They all expect you to behave poorly, of course.” Sienna waves a lit cigarette in the air. “There are few things people love more than to read about bad girls and their bad, bad, troublesome ways.”
Keira doesn’t find this to be particularly helpful or useful advice.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” she sneers, and just like that, the friendliness of the lunch, the day of shopping, is trashed.
Really, now. She doesn’t even like this girl.
17.
It’s not going to last, is the kind of thought she can’t seem to shed, no matter which direction she tries to wander in.
She tries on dresses; she likes to wear them off the rack, as de classe as that may be these days, Young Hollywood and the naked starlets anyway, but she likes it. And she will wander high-end stores, the sticker shock still there at times, curiously weighed with a kind of materialistic pride she should be ashamed of. The thought will hit her, maybe when her fingers are sliding over the fabric of a green dress, and it will catch a little, the base of her throat: Oh, God. This isn’t going to last.
It’s a rush of panic that will color her face and for that curious, quivering moment she will want little more than to find him, to see him, feel the rough texture of his hands beneath hers and just know, or try to know that maybe this time she is wrong.
The contradictions spring from here - she, for one, has never enjoyed being proven incorrect.
18.
She can be a bit of a snob, and not in a good way. He can rip into her, and this, it’s in as bad a way as all the personal graces she is sorely lacking.
“You didn’t have to make me look so bloody…stupid,” she hisses when the cameras finally slip away and the set disappears into their shared collective past. Her microphone is already unclipped and tangling in her hand while he is slowly and methodically winding the cord around his hand.
“What? You think that was actual effort on my part?” he teases, the tone good-natured enough to hide the sting, and this only seems to make her angrier.
“Fuck off.”
He laughs.
19.
See, that’s the dangerous thing about falling for other people (she’s fallen for him? Jesus. It’s too far out of reach already, isn’t it?) - It brings them into your life that much deeper and with that much more likely a chance hurt will be brought and wrought.
It makes her skittish in that sense. And really. That’s just silly.
20.
She calls herself a workaholic, and she is, of sorts. But because she does not have the nine to five job, an office or a cubicle, the sensible work shoes or the morning commute the term earns disparaging glances from others.
They all sometimes forget just how young she is. At times, she herself forgets, adds numbers to her age that shouldn’t be there.
But he? He always seems to be aware of it, or at least, so she assumes. Nothing else could explain the condescending manner he adopts towards her.
That is, if this manner even exists in anyone’s eyes but her own. But it’s near impossible, isn’t it. To achieve clear vision through the eyes of another; if it were, the point of storytelling would be damn near obsolete, and she, Keira, would be out of a job.
21.
The third time she was angry.
She calls it a bad habit of his, the way he can be so cheeky and clever, but really, it isn’t a habit, it’s who he is.
That’s not why she was angry.
It happened against a wall in yet another hotel, Los Angeles, the bed sitting just a few feet away. The wall had felt cool against the nape of her neck, and she had liked that, but her anger still tried. Her fingers caught on buttons of his, and that frustrated her more, and she pulled, a couple buttons sprang. He kissed her deep, his leg pressed between hers, and it made her furious.
He fought back against her, just as hard, his hands too rough against her hips. There was the slack-jawed moan of her name when he thrust in and there was that shuddering down her spine.
She was angry, and when her back finally hit the mattress, she was still grasping at the why.
22.
They take to meeting in neutral zones. This time it is LA, a small diner, the kind with the counter, the Commodores, the overweight, bleach blonde waitress and the snapping gum. They both order coffees, and while Keira sips hers black, James adds enough cream and sugar to dilute it to a faded light brown. His spoon clinks against his cup as he withdraws it and Keira’s fingers crawl the edge of her folded paper napkin.
“I got this new GPS tracking system thing whatever, for my car, my rental here, you know?” she starts, at random. His head tips to the side a little, that closed-mouth smile of his, more akin to a smirk, already present. “And it’s completely bonkers, like 1984 and all…Orwellian, or whatever. I mean, it doesn’t matter where you’re driving! The little lady in the GPS box… thing knows exactly where you are at any given moment, and she’ll be all ‘turn right in 0.2 miles,’ and there’s a map and everything. It looks like a tiny videogame, right?” She pauses to take a sip of her coffee. It is still too hot and her tongue burns. The lines deepen around his eyes as he watches her, the way she scowls over her burnt tongue, her hands still gingerly cupping the mug. “I just find it so strange. It doesn’t matter where you are with this silly little thing. You can still always be found.” She jiggles her foot a little beneath the table, bites her lip, and he’s still watching her. He is still watching her, only his smile-smirk has fallen a little, the corners of his mouth not nearly as raised as they were when she first dove into this anecdote. “I’m not sure if it’s more comforting or terrifying, really,” she says.
He has an arm laid out over the back of the both, at ease in a way she never is, and he purses his lips as though thinking, hard. She wonders if he’s mocking her. He might be.
“I imagine it can be both, eh?” he finally says.
He’s giving her an out here, making it far too simple for her to just fall, for him, into him, whichever, both. And he has no idea of it, she thinks. No idea how his words carry to her and through her and how they make her want to jump.
Her hands drop into her lap, and in her mind, it’s a symbol of some small defeat and she sighs on a shudder. His eyes slip to kind, the humor not as bright. He looks near to saying something, but he doesn’t. It’s not like him, or it’s not like the James she thinks she knows; he speaks too often without thinking, the words just tumble.
She wants to tell him that she has never accomplished bravery very well. She wants him to hold her hand when she says it. Her coffee is cool enough to drink now, but it still doesn’t taste good. The silence is frightening her, almost as much as the very possibility of him.
Her fingers find her spoon instead and hold tight. She watches the way her coffee trembles within its cup, not full enough to threaten over the sides. As she is watching, as she is steadying herself, his fingers find her wrist.
They hold like reassurance.
23.
Rupert likes to throw things, adopting the more dramatic role in their relationship, while Keira just pouts by the door. She gave up smoking, again, over a month ago - threw the cigarettes in the toilet, tossed out all her lighters, matchbooks gleamed from posh restaurants. She is really regretting the decision at this moment.
“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you? That bloody Scot. You’re fucking him. I was right, wasn’t I? How long, now, Keira? How bloody long now?”
She leans against the doorframe and rolls her eyes for extra emphasis.
“Really. I haven’t the slightest as to what you’re on about.”
He breaks a lamp; she never liked that one anyway.
24.
Sometimes she forgets. Just how young she is. It will come in starts but never completed finishes, the not so gentle reminders that there is still so much left for her to learn.
He never forgets.
Perhaps it’s why he hums, “gentle, gentle,” into the crown of her head when he thinks she isn’t listening.
She is.
25.
I look across the room sometimes, but I still say: there is work to attend to. And sometimes they will laugh, maybe say, “Yes, of course. There is always a corset to be worn,” as though they are particularly clever.
They’re not.
I still don’t read maps, because if you ask me, it defeats the point.
It’s like this: I was born restless.