fic: pins in the atlas (rpf)
pins in the atlas
rpf. actor might just be another word for a professional, a liar; hollywood might just be everywhere. rose byrne/hugh dancy. rated pg-13. 2966 words.
notes: for oonak who requested these two! as usual, these are all lies on top of lies and some more lies. fun to write, but so not the truth, heh.
PINS IN THE ATLAS
AN EP: IS THIS IT? (STROKES COVER); ROYAL CITY // HEY SNOW WHITE; DESTROYER // UNWIND; JULIAN PLENTI // JUST LIKE HONEY (JESUS AND MARY CHAIN COVER); GUITAR
the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night, but god knows the answer to that is, don’t we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.
(elaine dundy)
-
Try as you might Hollywood is a place that can never be called home.
The houses here are missing insides and all stairs lead to nowhere. Day occurs in the middle of the night, a giant light bulb raised in pale imitation of California sun. We have Bacardi and Patron and Cristal, we’ve got the powders and the pills guaranteed to make you feel good, at least for a little while. We’ve got the clowns that crack for smiles and all the pretty girls that think they’re something special.
Hollywood is a cynic’s playground, where every conversation you hear was written on the page long before.
No one calls this place home, but they all build houses with no insides and stairs that lead to nowhere. They all date the same men and fuck over the same women, and vice versa, and reverse, and et cetera, and et cetera, so forth.
Hollywood neither starts nor ends in the state of California. It stretches with the stars.
No one is an amateur here. We’re all professionals.
Line, please.
-
1. NEW YORK CITY
The first day they met Hugh said:
“How is it that we haven’t met sooner?”
Rose had ducked her head and pressed her hands flat against the table.
“I am quite evasive,” she said. “In another life I might have been a spy. Or something equally sneaky that I just can’t think of at the moment.”
He had smirked. “A thief, perhaps? Cat burglar?”
She nodded energetically. “Most definitely.”
-
They film in New York and she lives in New York. She likes that. They have less than a month to shoot; she does not like that so much.
In between takes he reads volumes of Tolstoy. Rose mocks him, calls him The Professor. Hugh feigns offense, but he doesn’t bother to try and hide the smile as he dives back into his open book.
They both rib the other about their American accents.
“You have a lot more bloody practice than I do,” he complains.
“Why,” she drawls, a flat American accent shading her words, “’cause I’m a New Yorker now?”
“That,” and he points at her, “and your little show about the legal system. I’ve seen it. You don’t talk at all like you’re from the land down under.”
She stops mid-eye roll. “You’ve seen the show?” she asks.
He nods and looks back down at his notecards.
He writes out his lines, long, uninterrupted monologues about space and theaters and all kinds of random shit she is grateful not to have to memorize. She meets Claire one afternoon, but it is early in the shoot, too early for it to mean anything other than, “so this is Claire.” Rose takes him to her apartment, later, and when he tells her it is not what he expected she is unsure what to say to that.
This is later though; this is towards the end of things, when meeting Claire would have been wrought with something Rose has no desire to name.
-
In her apartment they drank red wine. She told him about the time she drank a pitcher of sangria in Madrid and wandered out of the bar with red-stained teeth and told strangers she was a vampire.
“That’s a good story,” he told her, and he said it like he meant it. She had thought it a strange response but she did not comment. She drank the wine and he drank the wine and outside the weather had turned colder, the night a little darker, and they drank the wine.
“I haven’t done the shopping,” she told him. “I have mustard and yogurt to my name at the moment. I’m a terrible hostess.”
There had been two bottles and he told her about Oxford and she told him about Sydney. They talked about nothing and everything, the way people are apt to do when the curiosity is mutual, when it borders on the edge of something far less innocent, something like attraction, something worse.
They had not turned on the light in her kitchen. The light from the hallway and the adjoining room filtered in, and in the semi-darkness his smile was bright. Rose had thought that for most people this is a moment, this is a moment that matters.
For them it was too but Rose insisted on discounting them as something separate.
In the dim Rose had stood at the sink, the faucet on high and hot as she rinsed their glasses out. She had felt him before she saw him, his breath at the back of her head and the sound of the start of a sigh. Rose turned the water off and gripped the edge of the sink.
“Hugh - ” she started.
“No,” he said. She had turned around at that.
And then he kissed her.
He never came back to her apartment again.
-
The film wraps as quickly as it started and as the crew packs up and heads home, Rose heads to her own home still enclosed in the embrace of New York City.
Hugh leaves, too. Of course Hugh leaves, and she chides herself for the thought. He goes back to London and she stays in New York.
“Be seeing you soon,” he had said with an odd smile, and she had returned it with the burst of an awkward laugh.
“Oh, the press junkets and I will be waiting for your return,” she teased, but that strange smile had remained until he pulled her in for a tight hug.
She had felt small in his arms, but not short. Rose let herself be drawn into the hug and her nose had brushed the bottom of his chin and his arm held tight and neat around her waist.
Rose was the first to pull back.
“You better get going. I don’t think you’re famous enough for them to hold the plane.”
He laughed and then he was gone.
-
2. NEW YORK CITY, PART II
The next time they meet is at the Met Ball.
For the Ball (and as an aside: Jesus fucking Christ, she goes to things like balls now, she gets invited to places Kate Moss and Madonna show up to, and if that’s not totally rad, she’s not sure what is), she wears a yellow dress that dips off both her shoulders.
Early into the night she spies him, off to the side with his arm around Claire. She waves. She raises an arm and her hand gives an awkward shake of a greeting and he just smiles and nods back. Claire does not notice her.
Her stomach twists, just a little, but she assumes it’s not a problem that can’t be solved with a little champagne.
-
They don’t speak until after the dinner.
“Marc Jacobs invited me,” she tells him, conspiratorial, and maybe she regrets that last drink. Maybe not because his smile is slow and his eyes are kind of watery and she wonders just how drunk he is. She thinks about last time they were drunk, and then she pushes it away.
“Well, well, well,” he murmurs. “Look at you. Our little Cinderella. How’s the glass slipper treating you?”
She’s not really sure what he means by that but she giggles all the same.
“It’s past midnight,” he says, then peers around the room. “Where’s your pumpkin?”
Rose leans in and rests a hand just above his wrist. She almost regrets the movement as she can feel his forearm tense beneath her fingers. She grips a little tighter and she might have imagined it, but she is sure his eyes narrow.
“Unlike you,” she says, “I’ve never excelled at fairy tale humor. Most likely an industry thing. No one has ever put me in a pair of tights and called me Prince Charming.”
His laughter is loud and genuine.
“Their loss I would imagine,” and her hand is still on his arm and he has not moved away; she can feel the heat of his skin below the suit jacket, below the pressed white shirt underneath. He looks her up and down, or as best he can with so little distance between them. “You’d look good in a pair of tights,” he muses.
Rose takes a step back and arches a brow. “In only a pair of tights?”
Hugh licks her bottom lip and this is stupid, this is so beyond stupid and the sort of trouble one is supposed to skirt away from, especially in a public venue. But she does not back down. Her chin is still raised and her smile is still close-lipped.
He walks towards her and rests a hand high on her waist, just below her ribcage. She inhales sharply and her chest raises with the breath; his thumb traces the jut of bone beneath dress and skin of her bottom rib. She clutches her drink tightly in her hand and the glass is slick with sweat against her palm.
“Only that,” he whispers in her ear. His breath is hot and almost clammy; his nose bumps along the side of her head and his forehead quickly brushes her temple.
Rose exhales and his fingers slide a little higher along her dress. And then nothing.
He pulls back and looks down at her, something twisted in his smile. Rose does not smile back but she does not look at him unkindly.
“You look wonderful. By the way,” he says. He clinks the lip of his glass against the lip of hers and then takes a heady sip.
“Cheers,” he says, and then he leaves.
Rose downs the remainder of her drink in one heady gulp.
-
3. SUNDANCE
Rose invests in knit hats and scarves. She buys a pair of mittens with some sort of Scandinavian pattern to them but forgets them at home in New York.
She likes the film festival.
Their film is received well. There are press calls and Hugh sits to her right, and they take photograph after photograph and Hugh is still at her right.
They drink hot chocolate and she keeps asking about Robert Redford and he rambles about his new love of Dickens and they both discuss the snow but they never talk about New York.
-
It is in Sundance that they are mistaken as a couple.
And to the untrained eye, why wouldn’t they be? They both walk together, that same narrow strip of sidewalk beneath a coat of ice, a man and a woman, nightfall. It is a rather obvious conclusion. All in all, it should not be considered anything close to surprising.
What is surprising is Hugh’s reaction.
They sign autographs for strangers in parkas and ski caps and Hugh repeats himself, stumbles over the same words, a refrain of: no, not her, not together, Claire.
Rose’s face flushes and she blames the cold.
To the strangers Hugh explains himself; Rose just laughs, her face bright red.
-
In New York, in her kitchen, his fingers had been tight on her wrist and his mouth had been light and open against her own.
His sweater had been thick in her fingers as she gripped along his chest; she had been the one to deepen the kiss, a slicking of her tongue and his bottom lip, then wet muscle along muscle. Both their mouths were stained with the wine, and perhaps outside it had begun to snow.
The apartment was silent.
She pulled back first.
-
Later, the pictures that come back, all those endless photo shoots, are something of a shock.
There she is. Her eyes are wide and underlined with dark circles. She looks old, skinny and tired. She doesn’t remember looking like that; she doesn’t remember feeling like that. At the time, there had been winter, there had been snow, and she liked the sweater she wore that day - the way her fingers could hide easy in the overlong cuff. At the time she had thought she had been happy but the face that gazes back - the pages of fucking InStyle, she doesn’t even read InStyle, no one reads InStyle - is the most miserable thing she has ever seen.
There is an obvious thread of connection between actor and pretend and liar but she chooses to ignore it.
-
4. WASHINGTON DC
The press tour starts late in the summer.
Earlier, back in the middle heat, the Emmy nominations went out. He called her then, the first time they had spoken since the spring.
“Congratulations,” he had breathed over the line. “Told you you were good.”
“Liar,” she cursed back. “You told me I had a good accent.”
When she hung up, her apartment felt a little colder. She drummed her fingers along the kitchen tabletop.
It is symmetrical, she had thought: he has someone and she has someone. The press calls these someones “partners” as though they are that easily interchangeable.
It’s not true, she knew, but it is something.
-
The face from Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood, USA Today or wherever brings up a simple word, chemistry, and Hugh is quick to deny it.
“I don’t really believe in that,” he says, and Rose inclines her head only slightly in his direction. She watches him out of the corner of her eye. She thinks he is a liar. There is something tight in her chest and she hears herself rambling something complimentary to what he just said, and it’s just - she hates these stupid junkets, she hates the same questions and the automatic answers that spill sans thought. Hugh doesn’t believe in chemistry and he’s a liar, but she’s a liar too and hate is such an angry and dangerous and self-incriminating little thing, isn’t it?
“It’s all the writing,” she says with a slight jerk of her wrist, a vague hand movement in the air.
Hugh does not look at her; he bites his lip and nods.
-
For the time being, an afternoon stop over before Chicago, they share the same hotel suite.
“I hate the word quirky,” she sneers into the mirror. She scrubs her make-up off; their flight is not for another three hours. There is the sound of rustling clothes against body, and in the reflection Rose can see Hugh pulling his jacket off his shoulders. “And off-beat. And charming. I never want to hear those words again.”
He snorts.
“Shame,” he says and he unbuttons the top button of his shirt, “I was going to say they are the perfect adjectives to describe you.”
She glares and turns to face him. “Wanker.”
Hugh steps forward in front of her. With the pad of his thumb he wipes away at the errant streak of smudged lipstick off the corner of her mouth. “Missed a spot,” he murmurs and Rose stares at the triangle of exposed throat, the rise and fall as he swallows.
He does not move his hand. He stands there, the width of his hand cupping her jaw, and when Rose looks up at him she wishes she had not. It all comes back, of course. It all comes back like that, every glance and every exchange, every time the two of you might have ever toed the line.
“I never told you,” Hugh says, “but I really do like your apartment.”
She kisses him first this time. This time, neither of them pulls back and her fingers snag along the line of buttons that end at his belt, the waistband of his trousers. His left hand is firm along the bare expanse of her back and his right hand is too tight at the nape of her neck.
She stumbles back against the sink and the bathroom countertop and there is the start of a laugh that never gets finished, because, yes, it’s symmetry again.
He pulls her dress above her hips and she takes him between her legs.
-
5. LOS ANGELES
Every city is the same as in all the hotel sheets are white and all the elevators rise on a ding and open on a ping. Every bathroom comes with bottles in miniature and every wake-up call from concierge rings with an all too similar accent with no discernible origin.
In Hollywood everything is steeped in degrees of the same.
She had understood what he meant, that very first day: how is that we haven’t met sooner? They probably should have. They walk the same circles and they attend the same parties; they have the same friends who had the same costars who walk the same red carpets at the same premieres for the same movies.
She had understood him, but she had not agreed. There is a pattern to the things and events at play in a person’s life. You meet the people you are supposed to meet when you are supposed to, never earlier. She does wonder though. Rose wonders. There are the tangle of what ifs that pollute and spill, that question of roads not taken and alternate realities to be had. She does not voice them.
They’re all professionals. The press tour ends and for him there is to be a wedding and for her there is more of the same.
They separate and leave past cities behind.
-
How is it that we have never met before?
In Los Angeles, in Hollywood, a young woman meets a young man on the street and they both pretend it is for the very first time.
-
fin.
rpf. actor might just be another word for a professional, a liar; hollywood might just be everywhere. rose byrne/hugh dancy. rated pg-13. 2966 words.
notes: for oonak who requested these two! as usual, these are all lies on top of lies and some more lies. fun to write, but so not the truth, heh.
PINS IN THE ATLAS
AN EP: IS THIS IT? (STROKES COVER); ROYAL CITY // HEY SNOW WHITE; DESTROYER // UNWIND; JULIAN PLENTI // JUST LIKE HONEY (JESUS AND MARY CHAIN COVER); GUITAR
the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night, but god knows the answer to that is, don’t we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.
(elaine dundy)
-
Try as you might Hollywood is a place that can never be called home.
The houses here are missing insides and all stairs lead to nowhere. Day occurs in the middle of the night, a giant light bulb raised in pale imitation of California sun. We have Bacardi and Patron and Cristal, we’ve got the powders and the pills guaranteed to make you feel good, at least for a little while. We’ve got the clowns that crack for smiles and all the pretty girls that think they’re something special.
Hollywood is a cynic’s playground, where every conversation you hear was written on the page long before.
No one calls this place home, but they all build houses with no insides and stairs that lead to nowhere. They all date the same men and fuck over the same women, and vice versa, and reverse, and et cetera, and et cetera, so forth.
Hollywood neither starts nor ends in the state of California. It stretches with the stars.
No one is an amateur here. We’re all professionals.
Line, please.
-
1. NEW YORK CITY
The first day they met Hugh said:
“How is it that we haven’t met sooner?”
Rose had ducked her head and pressed her hands flat against the table.
“I am quite evasive,” she said. “In another life I might have been a spy. Or something equally sneaky that I just can’t think of at the moment.”
He had smirked. “A thief, perhaps? Cat burglar?”
She nodded energetically. “Most definitely.”
-
They film in New York and she lives in New York. She likes that. They have less than a month to shoot; she does not like that so much.
In between takes he reads volumes of Tolstoy. Rose mocks him, calls him The Professor. Hugh feigns offense, but he doesn’t bother to try and hide the smile as he dives back into his open book.
They both rib the other about their American accents.
“You have a lot more bloody practice than I do,” he complains.
“Why,” she drawls, a flat American accent shading her words, “’cause I’m a New Yorker now?”
“That,” and he points at her, “and your little show about the legal system. I’ve seen it. You don’t talk at all like you’re from the land down under.”
She stops mid-eye roll. “You’ve seen the show?” she asks.
He nods and looks back down at his notecards.
He writes out his lines, long, uninterrupted monologues about space and theaters and all kinds of random shit she is grateful not to have to memorize. She meets Claire one afternoon, but it is early in the shoot, too early for it to mean anything other than, “so this is Claire.” Rose takes him to her apartment, later, and when he tells her it is not what he expected she is unsure what to say to that.
This is later though; this is towards the end of things, when meeting Claire would have been wrought with something Rose has no desire to name.
-
In her apartment they drank red wine. She told him about the time she drank a pitcher of sangria in Madrid and wandered out of the bar with red-stained teeth and told strangers she was a vampire.
“That’s a good story,” he told her, and he said it like he meant it. She had thought it a strange response but she did not comment. She drank the wine and he drank the wine and outside the weather had turned colder, the night a little darker, and they drank the wine.
“I haven’t done the shopping,” she told him. “I have mustard and yogurt to my name at the moment. I’m a terrible hostess.”
There had been two bottles and he told her about Oxford and she told him about Sydney. They talked about nothing and everything, the way people are apt to do when the curiosity is mutual, when it borders on the edge of something far less innocent, something like attraction, something worse.
They had not turned on the light in her kitchen. The light from the hallway and the adjoining room filtered in, and in the semi-darkness his smile was bright. Rose had thought that for most people this is a moment, this is a moment that matters.
For them it was too but Rose insisted on discounting them as something separate.
In the dim Rose had stood at the sink, the faucet on high and hot as she rinsed their glasses out. She had felt him before she saw him, his breath at the back of her head and the sound of the start of a sigh. Rose turned the water off and gripped the edge of the sink.
“Hugh - ” she started.
“No,” he said. She had turned around at that.
And then he kissed her.
He never came back to her apartment again.
-
The film wraps as quickly as it started and as the crew packs up and heads home, Rose heads to her own home still enclosed in the embrace of New York City.
Hugh leaves, too. Of course Hugh leaves, and she chides herself for the thought. He goes back to London and she stays in New York.
“Be seeing you soon,” he had said with an odd smile, and she had returned it with the burst of an awkward laugh.
“Oh, the press junkets and I will be waiting for your return,” she teased, but that strange smile had remained until he pulled her in for a tight hug.
She had felt small in his arms, but not short. Rose let herself be drawn into the hug and her nose had brushed the bottom of his chin and his arm held tight and neat around her waist.
Rose was the first to pull back.
“You better get going. I don’t think you’re famous enough for them to hold the plane.”
He laughed and then he was gone.
-
2. NEW YORK CITY, PART II
The next time they meet is at the Met Ball.
For the Ball (and as an aside: Jesus fucking Christ, she goes to things like balls now, she gets invited to places Kate Moss and Madonna show up to, and if that’s not totally rad, she’s not sure what is), she wears a yellow dress that dips off both her shoulders.
Early into the night she spies him, off to the side with his arm around Claire. She waves. She raises an arm and her hand gives an awkward shake of a greeting and he just smiles and nods back. Claire does not notice her.
Her stomach twists, just a little, but she assumes it’s not a problem that can’t be solved with a little champagne.
-
They don’t speak until after the dinner.
“Marc Jacobs invited me,” she tells him, conspiratorial, and maybe she regrets that last drink. Maybe not because his smile is slow and his eyes are kind of watery and she wonders just how drunk he is. She thinks about last time they were drunk, and then she pushes it away.
“Well, well, well,” he murmurs. “Look at you. Our little Cinderella. How’s the glass slipper treating you?”
She’s not really sure what he means by that but she giggles all the same.
“It’s past midnight,” he says, then peers around the room. “Where’s your pumpkin?”
Rose leans in and rests a hand just above his wrist. She almost regrets the movement as she can feel his forearm tense beneath her fingers. She grips a little tighter and she might have imagined it, but she is sure his eyes narrow.
“Unlike you,” she says, “I’ve never excelled at fairy tale humor. Most likely an industry thing. No one has ever put me in a pair of tights and called me Prince Charming.”
His laughter is loud and genuine.
“Their loss I would imagine,” and her hand is still on his arm and he has not moved away; she can feel the heat of his skin below the suit jacket, below the pressed white shirt underneath. He looks her up and down, or as best he can with so little distance between them. “You’d look good in a pair of tights,” he muses.
Rose takes a step back and arches a brow. “In only a pair of tights?”
Hugh licks her bottom lip and this is stupid, this is so beyond stupid and the sort of trouble one is supposed to skirt away from, especially in a public venue. But she does not back down. Her chin is still raised and her smile is still close-lipped.
He walks towards her and rests a hand high on her waist, just below her ribcage. She inhales sharply and her chest raises with the breath; his thumb traces the jut of bone beneath dress and skin of her bottom rib. She clutches her drink tightly in her hand and the glass is slick with sweat against her palm.
“Only that,” he whispers in her ear. His breath is hot and almost clammy; his nose bumps along the side of her head and his forehead quickly brushes her temple.
Rose exhales and his fingers slide a little higher along her dress. And then nothing.
He pulls back and looks down at her, something twisted in his smile. Rose does not smile back but she does not look at him unkindly.
“You look wonderful. By the way,” he says. He clinks the lip of his glass against the lip of hers and then takes a heady sip.
“Cheers,” he says, and then he leaves.
Rose downs the remainder of her drink in one heady gulp.
-
3. SUNDANCE
Rose invests in knit hats and scarves. She buys a pair of mittens with some sort of Scandinavian pattern to them but forgets them at home in New York.
She likes the film festival.
Their film is received well. There are press calls and Hugh sits to her right, and they take photograph after photograph and Hugh is still at her right.
They drink hot chocolate and she keeps asking about Robert Redford and he rambles about his new love of Dickens and they both discuss the snow but they never talk about New York.
-
It is in Sundance that they are mistaken as a couple.
And to the untrained eye, why wouldn’t they be? They both walk together, that same narrow strip of sidewalk beneath a coat of ice, a man and a woman, nightfall. It is a rather obvious conclusion. All in all, it should not be considered anything close to surprising.
What is surprising is Hugh’s reaction.
They sign autographs for strangers in parkas and ski caps and Hugh repeats himself, stumbles over the same words, a refrain of: no, not her, not together, Claire.
Rose’s face flushes and she blames the cold.
To the strangers Hugh explains himself; Rose just laughs, her face bright red.
-
In New York, in her kitchen, his fingers had been tight on her wrist and his mouth had been light and open against her own.
His sweater had been thick in her fingers as she gripped along his chest; she had been the one to deepen the kiss, a slicking of her tongue and his bottom lip, then wet muscle along muscle. Both their mouths were stained with the wine, and perhaps outside it had begun to snow.
The apartment was silent.
She pulled back first.
-
Later, the pictures that come back, all those endless photo shoots, are something of a shock.
There she is. Her eyes are wide and underlined with dark circles. She looks old, skinny and tired. She doesn’t remember looking like that; she doesn’t remember feeling like that. At the time, there had been winter, there had been snow, and she liked the sweater she wore that day - the way her fingers could hide easy in the overlong cuff. At the time she had thought she had been happy but the face that gazes back - the pages of fucking InStyle, she doesn’t even read InStyle, no one reads InStyle - is the most miserable thing she has ever seen.
There is an obvious thread of connection between actor and pretend and liar but she chooses to ignore it.
-
4. WASHINGTON DC
The press tour starts late in the summer.
Earlier, back in the middle heat, the Emmy nominations went out. He called her then, the first time they had spoken since the spring.
“Congratulations,” he had breathed over the line. “Told you you were good.”
“Liar,” she cursed back. “You told me I had a good accent.”
When she hung up, her apartment felt a little colder. She drummed her fingers along the kitchen tabletop.
It is symmetrical, she had thought: he has someone and she has someone. The press calls these someones “partners” as though they are that easily interchangeable.
It’s not true, she knew, but it is something.
-
The face from Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood, USA Today or wherever brings up a simple word, chemistry, and Hugh is quick to deny it.
“I don’t really believe in that,” he says, and Rose inclines her head only slightly in his direction. She watches him out of the corner of her eye. She thinks he is a liar. There is something tight in her chest and she hears herself rambling something complimentary to what he just said, and it’s just - she hates these stupid junkets, she hates the same questions and the automatic answers that spill sans thought. Hugh doesn’t believe in chemistry and he’s a liar, but she’s a liar too and hate is such an angry and dangerous and self-incriminating little thing, isn’t it?
“It’s all the writing,” she says with a slight jerk of her wrist, a vague hand movement in the air.
Hugh does not look at her; he bites his lip and nods.
-
For the time being, an afternoon stop over before Chicago, they share the same hotel suite.
“I hate the word quirky,” she sneers into the mirror. She scrubs her make-up off; their flight is not for another three hours. There is the sound of rustling clothes against body, and in the reflection Rose can see Hugh pulling his jacket off his shoulders. “And off-beat. And charming. I never want to hear those words again.”
He snorts.
“Shame,” he says and he unbuttons the top button of his shirt, “I was going to say they are the perfect adjectives to describe you.”
She glares and turns to face him. “Wanker.”
Hugh steps forward in front of her. With the pad of his thumb he wipes away at the errant streak of smudged lipstick off the corner of her mouth. “Missed a spot,” he murmurs and Rose stares at the triangle of exposed throat, the rise and fall as he swallows.
He does not move his hand. He stands there, the width of his hand cupping her jaw, and when Rose looks up at him she wishes she had not. It all comes back, of course. It all comes back like that, every glance and every exchange, every time the two of you might have ever toed the line.
“I never told you,” Hugh says, “but I really do like your apartment.”
She kisses him first this time. This time, neither of them pulls back and her fingers snag along the line of buttons that end at his belt, the waistband of his trousers. His left hand is firm along the bare expanse of her back and his right hand is too tight at the nape of her neck.
She stumbles back against the sink and the bathroom countertop and there is the start of a laugh that never gets finished, because, yes, it’s symmetry again.
He pulls her dress above her hips and she takes him between her legs.
-
5. LOS ANGELES
Every city is the same as in all the hotel sheets are white and all the elevators rise on a ding and open on a ping. Every bathroom comes with bottles in miniature and every wake-up call from concierge rings with an all too similar accent with no discernible origin.
In Hollywood everything is steeped in degrees of the same.
She had understood what he meant, that very first day: how is that we haven’t met sooner? They probably should have. They walk the same circles and they attend the same parties; they have the same friends who had the same costars who walk the same red carpets at the same premieres for the same movies.
She had understood him, but she had not agreed. There is a pattern to the things and events at play in a person’s life. You meet the people you are supposed to meet when you are supposed to, never earlier. She does wonder though. Rose wonders. There are the tangle of what ifs that pollute and spill, that question of roads not taken and alternate realities to be had. She does not voice them.
They’re all professionals. The press tour ends and for him there is to be a wedding and for her there is more of the same.
They separate and leave past cities behind.
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How is it that we have never met before?
In Los Angeles, in Hollywood, a young woman meets a young man on the street and they both pretend it is for the very first time.
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fin.