Fic: Grace - Chapter 11
Title: Grace - Chapter 11
Rating: M
Fandom: P!atd (Brendon/Ryan)
Edit: Sorry, I forgot to do this earlier. Sarah Blasko, as mentioned in this chapter, is an Australian singer/songwriter. Here's a picture. If you want, I can upload a few songs.
*
It doesn’t matter how many times you read the Kama Sutra, how much porn you watch, or even how adventurous you consider yourself in the bedroom (in the bathroom stalls, over the kitchen bench, against the barren dead-end of some back alley, where you’re more susceptible to getting AIDS every time your knuckles graze the wall than you are from your prostitute partner), none of this matters, because in reality, there are only two different sorts of sex.
There’s the S and S. The soft and the slow, the gentle sex full of doe-eyes and caresses that leave the audience sobbing as they wank and the couple on screen curling into each other, content to bask in a glow of sweat and cum and bodily fluids, content to wake up the next morning in some sort of love-filled haze of what, in any other circumstance, would be considered filth.
Or there’s the not S and S. The sort of sex that leaves people tired and dirty and sore, with only the ghost, some wayward spiritual presence of the other person’s cum and sweat and sometimes even blood for company. These are the extras that have their five-minute interaction with the star of the show, their five minutes of fame, and are quickly forgotten by the viewers, by the A-grade-celeb, by the pastel walls of the hotel suite.
Some people argue that there’s a middle category, some form of common ground that I’ve never believed in.
So maybe, the next morning, when my eyes flicker open like the haze of an old video, maybe, maybe I’m a little more than surprised to see a pair of eyes (bigger, more hazel, prettier than mine) staring at me. Maybe I’m surprised, because the sex we had kinda did fall into some sort of middle ground.
Ryan’s eyes are focused.
“You’re very loud when you’re awake,” he starts, blinks, forcibly reopening heavy eyelids. “I kinda figured you’d snore.”
“Oh,” I reply, and my fingers are rubbing at my bleary eyes, my toes wriggling, back stretching; it’s too early for this.
“You don’t though,” Ryan says, and he’s smiling a little, that smile that makes me feel like I’m the battery in the circuit, that he’s the light bulb. “Just breathe really heavy.”
“Oh,” I say, and my fingers run through my hair, “I can’t remember if you snored.”
Ryan shrugs a little, buries his face further in the feathery pillow, and that’s kinda how I imagine it must’ve been when whatever God exists was shaping the universe, moulding the mountains and digging out the oceans. She’d sleep here, nestle her face into mounds of soil and sand and earth, would let the planet become a mask of her visage. Let people and plants and animals nest and live and bustle across as microscopic bacteria and fungi, she’d be fucking immortalised. It would be her source of survival, she’d loathe and thrive from the mask as Dorian Grey loathed and thrived from the painting.
“So, my movie is premiering.” And I say it before I can stop myself, before my brain has called her lawyer off my vocal chords. “Red Wine.”
“Right,” Ryan says, watching me with not quite enough enthusiasm for me to say ‘eagerly’.
“Right,” I reply. “So, in it, I’m this student in highschool, and I have an affair with my teacher.”
“Is red wine consumed by any chance?” he asks, and maybe he’s smiling to himself a little, tugging hair behind his ear, but it’s hard to tell with half his face still imprinting itself in the new planet.
“Ah, do not doubt the wooing power of red wine, my friend.”
And Ryan laughs, and it’s still fucking music to my ears. “Oh, I never doubt.”
“That’s a good thing,” I say, “you should never underestimate the strength of well-thought out seduction, or you will totally end up sucking ass.” I grin. “Or, y’know, sucking cock as it were.”
Ryan laughs again, and it sounds like he’s wearing a muzzle, the jukebox noise smothered by the pillow.
“So you seduce the teacher?”
“Yep, I seduce Sarah-fucking-Blasko.”
Ryan’s head darts up from the pillow, and he’s rolled onto his side to face me before I can say anything else. “She’s pretty fucking hot.”
“For an older chick, absolutely,” I say. And he really does have a pretty smile, perfectly shaped lips.
“I was thinking about her to play Jelena.”
“Yeah?” I’m not sure why this surprises me: she fits the role, late thirties, stunning, but not in a way that slaps you in the face. Not in the way of bleached hair, or colour contacts, or fake tan or even the more silicon than actual body parts. She’s mousy and you can almost feel her artistic IQ, hear it as it doesn’t brag, but doesn’t not brag either.
“Yeah. She’s really beautiful, pretty fucking incredible actress as well.”
And okay, yeah, she is, hasn’t been recognised by the critics, by the filmmakers yet, but I’m pretty sure we were talking about me a few minutes ago. “So, ring her up, ring her agent up.”
Ryan groans, and rolls over a bit again, leaning further back into the mattress. “Not that easy, Brendon.”
“It was with me.”
“No it wasn’t, I fucking seduced you.”
“Ah, is that what last night was about?” Stupidstupidstupid, and Ryan goes dead silent, only I think when somebody dies there’s probably more noise than there is right now. More wails and sobs and the final blip of a heart-rate monitor.
I clear my throat, but he still doesn’t look at me, sketches out idle patterns amongst the sheets with his paintbrush-fingers.
I try again. “So, Red Wine premieres on Saturday night.”
“So?” Ryan asks, and it isn’t quite déjà vu. He should be saying ‘right’, should be turned a fraction more into the pillow, should be fucking looking at me.
“So, I think you should go with me.” And it kinda slips out, and it isn’t my head talking, isn’t my vocal chords either, it’s something somewhere between my crotch and my heart.
Ryan’s forehead furrows, as if he isn’t quite sure he just heard correctly. His head tilts and his eyes squint a bit before they widen almost comically.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea…”
That space, that thing somewhere between my heart and my crotch is starting to ache a bit, but that can really be pinned down to the hour of the morning, can be pinned down to the fucking month I’m having.
“No, it’ll be good.” I say, “We can go together, coz, y’know, it’s not like I’ve got a girlfriend or anything…”
Ryan’s face is buried so deep into the pillow now, that all I can see is brown hair, a paddock of dead grass, only, maybe a little softer than that. I’m expecting cows to start munching on the sides.
“Maybe,” he mumbles, and his fingers run races through his hair, his eyes are the finish line as the competitors rub away the sleep.
“It’ll be great, we can…” And, okay, maybe this isn’t such a good idea, coz, I mean, I’m not gay, I’m not, but Ryan is really fucking pretty this morning, and I’ve never been able to talk to someone like this after sex. “We can go as colleagues and I can introduce the script to the press.” That probably sounds a little better.
“No.” Ryan doesn’t hesitate this time.
The ache is back, perhaps a little stronger than before, a little more violent. ”You said maybe before.”
“You reminded me of why it was a bad idea.” He’s rolling over, ripping the waves of powder blue sheets away from his body, pointing the ocean in a different direction - not here, hun, this is gonna be some continent, one built on desert slash barren wasteland. - This is the first time I’ve seen him naked, like, for real. I didn’t see him last night; senses clouded by lust and inexperience and maybe a little bit of something else. Ryan is a street lamp, Ryan is a piece of wool, Ryan is a Japanese lantern, Ryan is a fucking mountain. His body is so pale, skin almost translucent, he’s some sort of ghost maybe, a sexual spirit. A god, for real, a God. Aphrodite. Zeus. Buddha. Ra. Brahman.
Ryan is so fucking fragile, all bone and skin and hair, that I’m pretty sure I could crush him. Does that make me the devil, or does that make me man? I don’t know.
I’ve thrown the sheets off me with nowhere near the same elegance Ryan did, am grasping adamantly at his fingers, at his wrists, at his arms. “Would it…” And I take a deep breath here, rub at my eyes again with my free hand. “…would it make a difference if I said it was a…a, y’know, date?”
Ryan’s face is vanilla ice cream, a bowl of rice, a sheet of paper that some small child had managed to drop two perfectly shaped almonds in the middle of. He’s staring at me with the same intensity that he always has, only maybe this time it’s off a little, intense for a different reason. He’s swaying on his feet, backwards and forwards, and something in me, that thing between my heart and my cock, it’s rupturing, twisting in on itself, strangling the butterflies.
“…yes.”
*
When I was fourteen years old, my dog was hit by a car.
Her name was Sasha. She was an eight-year-old Labrador that my parents had bought from Mary at church for my twelfth birthday.
I would sit in a waiting room for two hours, before a nurse would come out to tell me that Sasha had died on impact with the Ford station wagon.
Bad news comes in a million shapes and forms, a million different voices. It’s a thousand different ideas, different concepts, different circumstances; it’s a hundred different methods of telling. Bad news is eyes slanted in exaggerated sympathy, creased foreheads and lips slightly parted. It’s warm fingers that run down your arms, and try too hard to link with your own fingers, which suddenly feel frostbitten and numb.
Bad news comes from reading the paper, the day after the 9/11 attack.
Bad news comes from that monotonous voice on the 6 o’clock report, telling you that the train crash six hours ago killed your cousin.
Bad news is the nurse’s timid glance, her wide, open eyes, her brow furrowed in faux sympathy. Bad news is this nurse, Lucy, her nametag reads, bad news is her incapability to say anything more than “I’m sorry,” in that tiny, lost, little voice, when Jesus Christ, your dog just fucking died.
Bad news is a virus that can cause symptoms that vary from watery eyes, to full blown hysteria, clenched chest to a heart (you only have one of them) cracking too deep and too quickly, and proceeding to bleed all over the pretty, white tiles in the waiting room at the veterinary clinic.
Jesus Christ, it was just a dog.
*
There are ballrooms in Loretta’s eyes tonight, tiny flecks of dancers in endless brown dresses. I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time, and I’m not sure if it’s because it’s two hours before the premiere of Red Wine (which is a fair bit less shit than the films I normally take on), or if it’s because here, in my deluxe penthouse suite, Ryan is sitting next to her on my fucking sofa. They’re talking too quickly and too eagerly to be talking about anything other than the film.
“I still can’t fucking believe you brought him as a date.”
I turn around too quickly, almost choking as I try to loosen my tie. “Not a date, Jon, we are going as colleagues.”
Jon just grins, this odd little half-smile which implies nothing, but kinda fucking screams that he knows there’s more to it than that. “Yeah, okay, do you want me to go grab the corsage, a bouquet or something? I mean, I’m your PA, it’s sorta my job to make sure you don’t fuck up what could be Hollywood’s freshest couple.”
I flip him off, and when he giggles insanely (he’s been into the marijuana tonight), I throw a conveniently placed shoe at him. Miss.
“At least I’m not taking fucking Loretta.”
Jon doesn’t take offence. “Loretta’s pretty fucking hot.” He glances over to where she’s seated next to Ryan. “Y’know, in an artsy sorta way.”
“Loretta’s pretty fucking married, Jon,” I say, and cave, I’ll redo the fucking tie. “Why doesn’t her husband ever come to premieres, anyway?”
“Not everyone’s life revolves around you, Brendon. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s too upmarket-artsy, y’know, something that comes hand-in-hand with like, actual art. If you do a good job of Build God, she’ll probably take him to that.”
She doesn’t though. Loretta doesn’t take her husband to the premieres of any of my films, and when Jon finally settles down, gets married and has 2.5 kids, he’s not gonna take his wife either. Loretta and Jon are friends, and they’ll go with each other till the days that they die, as some unspoken ritual.
“Jon, my love,” Loretta calls, and she’s pulled herself off the couch, latches onto Jon’s arm and doesn’t so much pout at him (which I’m sure was her intention), as she does let loose a grin which spreads from cheekbone-to-cheekbone. “Jon, I believe it is time for us to depart, if you’re not ready, I guess I’ll be forced to beat the shit out of Brendon for holding you up.”
I half-glower at her, half-glower at my tie, which really doesn’t want to work, but suddenly fingers are on mine, over mine, working through the steps of tying a tie with the expertise of someone who has sadly been forced to do them a lot in their life.
“Don’t fuck this up,” Loretta mumbles in my ear, fingers still working the tie, “he’s a keeper.” And really, what do you say to that?
But Loretta doesn’t wait for a response, clutches adamantly again at Jon’s outstretched arm. Some people are afraid or spiders, some of heights, but Loretta will always loathe limos. It’s a thing. She’ll arrive before me at every one of my premieres, decked out in a Mercedes and the silver necklace her grandmother gave her before she died.
By the time the door slams shut, Ryan’s standing in front of me, all pinstriped pants, and thin, dark vest. He looks pretty fucking good, but then again, so do I.
“So,” he says, rocks back on the heels of his feet, (he always takes his shoes off before he enters someone’s home).
“So,” I say, and I grin back at him, coz suddenly this is feeling like one of my dates from highschool, all awkward tension and a brain-dead voice box.
Music’s playing though, Belle and Sebastian, and I really fucking like this song.
“Brendon.”
“Yeah?”
“Phone.”
Ah. I should really stop downloading ringtones. I grasp my mobile, pull it out of my pocket and grin at Ryan from across the kitchen. “’ello?”
It’s a heavy breath that starts it all. An unsteadily deep, heavy breath that sounds like the murderer in one of those 1980’s horror flicks.
“Hello?” And Ryan shoots me a questioning look, props himself up on the countertop. I shrug in response, focus my attention back at the phone in my hand.
“Brendon?” The voice crackles a little over the phone line, pops and fades over the two syllables.
“Yes, who is this?”
The breathing is becoming even more erratic, less stable, and she (I’m sure it’s a she now), I think she’s crying.
“Come get me, Bren, come save me.”
“What?” Ryan’s looking at me again, but I block my other ear, trying to focus on the voice, which is becoming less and less audible. “Who are you?”
“Please, Brendon, I need you. I…I think I OD’d.” Her breath hitches, voice wavers. “I can’t remember, but there’s blood, and I think I passed out sometime, I don’t-I…don’t leave me here, Brendon, please.”
She’s sobbing again, and all I can think to say is, “Who the fuck is this?”
And then it hits me with the impact of a thousand buses and trains and huge transportation vehicles. It hits me so hard and fast that I put my head between my knees and vomit all over the shoes Loretta bought me for the premiere.
“Don’t leave me here.” She’s whispering now, voice catching and fading. “Don’t leave me behind again.”
“Catherine?” I say, and my voice never quivers this much, my tongue is thick in my throat, in my mouth, like I’ve overdosed on peanut butter, overdosed on thick shake, overdosed on Catherine.
Ryan’s staring at me now, his eyes are big and questioning, and he reminds me of those small porcelain dolls you buy as an adult for your little nieces and nephews, only they never want something that fragile, so it sits on the shelf, collects dust, all forgotten beauty.
“Brendon…” Catherine is whimpering, and Ryan’s eyes are still very big, still very inquiring, and I wonder how natural he’d look behind the glass at a museum or art gallery. He’s not just a china doll; he’s one of those antique ones, the one’s worth millions, the one’s hand-painted by old men in the sixteenth century.
“Don’t let me die, Brendon” she says, and really, Ryan isn’t behind glass, maybe never has been behind anything thicker or pricier than the windows in that bohemian apartment. Without the proper protection, I can see dust collect on his cheekbones, in his hair, on his clothes, on his shoes.
“Don’t let me die,” Catherine whispers again, and the phone line, the phone line is dead (and maybe Catherine is too). I’m in the clinic again, but this time it’s Sasha I’m fucking talking to, it’s Sasha telling me that she died two hours ago when she ran into the street and was hit by an overweight guy with too much hair and an ugly car, died two hours ago not quite on impact (but very almost), lived just long enough to wonder where I was. It’s Sasha giving me the bad news, and reminding me that hey, bad news is at its worst when you hear it from someone you love.
There’s so much more to this, so much to do right now, but all I can think, all I can think is how come Ryan’s the porcelain doll, yet I’m the one falling off the shelf, and shattering on the cold tiles of the kitchen.
Rating: M
Fandom: P!atd (Brendon/Ryan)
Edit: Sorry, I forgot to do this earlier. Sarah Blasko, as mentioned in this chapter, is an Australian singer/songwriter. Here's a picture. If you want, I can upload a few songs.
*
It doesn’t matter how many times you read the Kama Sutra, how much porn you watch, or even how adventurous you consider yourself in the bedroom (in the bathroom stalls, over the kitchen bench, against the barren dead-end of some back alley, where you’re more susceptible to getting AIDS every time your knuckles graze the wall than you are from your prostitute partner), none of this matters, because in reality, there are only two different sorts of sex.
There’s the S and S. The soft and the slow, the gentle sex full of doe-eyes and caresses that leave the audience sobbing as they wank and the couple on screen curling into each other, content to bask in a glow of sweat and cum and bodily fluids, content to wake up the next morning in some sort of love-filled haze of what, in any other circumstance, would be considered filth.
Or there’s the not S and S. The sort of sex that leaves people tired and dirty and sore, with only the ghost, some wayward spiritual presence of the other person’s cum and sweat and sometimes even blood for company. These are the extras that have their five-minute interaction with the star of the show, their five minutes of fame, and are quickly forgotten by the viewers, by the A-grade-celeb, by the pastel walls of the hotel suite.
Some people argue that there’s a middle category, some form of common ground that I’ve never believed in.
So maybe, the next morning, when my eyes flicker open like the haze of an old video, maybe, maybe I’m a little more than surprised to see a pair of eyes (bigger, more hazel, prettier than mine) staring at me. Maybe I’m surprised, because the sex we had kinda did fall into some sort of middle ground.
Ryan’s eyes are focused.
“You’re very loud when you’re awake,” he starts, blinks, forcibly reopening heavy eyelids. “I kinda figured you’d snore.”
“Oh,” I reply, and my fingers are rubbing at my bleary eyes, my toes wriggling, back stretching; it’s too early for this.
“You don’t though,” Ryan says, and he’s smiling a little, that smile that makes me feel like I’m the battery in the circuit, that he’s the light bulb. “Just breathe really heavy.”
“Oh,” I say, and my fingers run through my hair, “I can’t remember if you snored.”
Ryan shrugs a little, buries his face further in the feathery pillow, and that’s kinda how I imagine it must’ve been when whatever God exists was shaping the universe, moulding the mountains and digging out the oceans. She’d sleep here, nestle her face into mounds of soil and sand and earth, would let the planet become a mask of her visage. Let people and plants and animals nest and live and bustle across as microscopic bacteria and fungi, she’d be fucking immortalised. It would be her source of survival, she’d loathe and thrive from the mask as Dorian Grey loathed and thrived from the painting.
“So, my movie is premiering.” And I say it before I can stop myself, before my brain has called her lawyer off my vocal chords. “Red Wine.”
“Right,” Ryan says, watching me with not quite enough enthusiasm for me to say ‘eagerly’.
“Right,” I reply. “So, in it, I’m this student in highschool, and I have an affair with my teacher.”
“Is red wine consumed by any chance?” he asks, and maybe he’s smiling to himself a little, tugging hair behind his ear, but it’s hard to tell with half his face still imprinting itself in the new planet.
“Ah, do not doubt the wooing power of red wine, my friend.”
And Ryan laughs, and it’s still fucking music to my ears. “Oh, I never doubt.”
“That’s a good thing,” I say, “you should never underestimate the strength of well-thought out seduction, or you will totally end up sucking ass.” I grin. “Or, y’know, sucking cock as it were.”
Ryan laughs again, and it sounds like he’s wearing a muzzle, the jukebox noise smothered by the pillow.
“So you seduce the teacher?”
“Yep, I seduce Sarah-fucking-Blasko.”
Ryan’s head darts up from the pillow, and he’s rolled onto his side to face me before I can say anything else. “She’s pretty fucking hot.”
“For an older chick, absolutely,” I say. And he really does have a pretty smile, perfectly shaped lips.
“I was thinking about her to play Jelena.”
“Yeah?” I’m not sure why this surprises me: she fits the role, late thirties, stunning, but not in a way that slaps you in the face. Not in the way of bleached hair, or colour contacts, or fake tan or even the more silicon than actual body parts. She’s mousy and you can almost feel her artistic IQ, hear it as it doesn’t brag, but doesn’t not brag either.
“Yeah. She’s really beautiful, pretty fucking incredible actress as well.”
And okay, yeah, she is, hasn’t been recognised by the critics, by the filmmakers yet, but I’m pretty sure we were talking about me a few minutes ago. “So, ring her up, ring her agent up.”
Ryan groans, and rolls over a bit again, leaning further back into the mattress. “Not that easy, Brendon.”
“It was with me.”
“No it wasn’t, I fucking seduced you.”
“Ah, is that what last night was about?” Stupidstupidstupid, and Ryan goes dead silent, only I think when somebody dies there’s probably more noise than there is right now. More wails and sobs and the final blip of a heart-rate monitor.
I clear my throat, but he still doesn’t look at me, sketches out idle patterns amongst the sheets with his paintbrush-fingers.
I try again. “So, Red Wine premieres on Saturday night.”
“So?” Ryan asks, and it isn’t quite déjà vu. He should be saying ‘right’, should be turned a fraction more into the pillow, should be fucking looking at me.
“So, I think you should go with me.” And it kinda slips out, and it isn’t my head talking, isn’t my vocal chords either, it’s something somewhere between my crotch and my heart.
Ryan’s forehead furrows, as if he isn’t quite sure he just heard correctly. His head tilts and his eyes squint a bit before they widen almost comically.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea…”
That space, that thing somewhere between my heart and my crotch is starting to ache a bit, but that can really be pinned down to the hour of the morning, can be pinned down to the fucking month I’m having.
“No, it’ll be good.” I say, “We can go together, coz, y’know, it’s not like I’ve got a girlfriend or anything…”
Ryan’s face is buried so deep into the pillow now, that all I can see is brown hair, a paddock of dead grass, only, maybe a little softer than that. I’m expecting cows to start munching on the sides.
“Maybe,” he mumbles, and his fingers run races through his hair, his eyes are the finish line as the competitors rub away the sleep.
“It’ll be great, we can…” And, okay, maybe this isn’t such a good idea, coz, I mean, I’m not gay, I’m not, but Ryan is really fucking pretty this morning, and I’ve never been able to talk to someone like this after sex. “We can go as colleagues and I can introduce the script to the press.” That probably sounds a little better.
“No.” Ryan doesn’t hesitate this time.
The ache is back, perhaps a little stronger than before, a little more violent. ”You said maybe before.”
“You reminded me of why it was a bad idea.” He’s rolling over, ripping the waves of powder blue sheets away from his body, pointing the ocean in a different direction - not here, hun, this is gonna be some continent, one built on desert slash barren wasteland. - This is the first time I’ve seen him naked, like, for real. I didn’t see him last night; senses clouded by lust and inexperience and maybe a little bit of something else. Ryan is a street lamp, Ryan is a piece of wool, Ryan is a Japanese lantern, Ryan is a fucking mountain. His body is so pale, skin almost translucent, he’s some sort of ghost maybe, a sexual spirit. A god, for real, a God. Aphrodite. Zeus. Buddha. Ra. Brahman.
Ryan is so fucking fragile, all bone and skin and hair, that I’m pretty sure I could crush him. Does that make me the devil, or does that make me man? I don’t know.
I’ve thrown the sheets off me with nowhere near the same elegance Ryan did, am grasping adamantly at his fingers, at his wrists, at his arms. “Would it…” And I take a deep breath here, rub at my eyes again with my free hand. “…would it make a difference if I said it was a…a, y’know, date?”
Ryan’s face is vanilla ice cream, a bowl of rice, a sheet of paper that some small child had managed to drop two perfectly shaped almonds in the middle of. He’s staring at me with the same intensity that he always has, only maybe this time it’s off a little, intense for a different reason. He’s swaying on his feet, backwards and forwards, and something in me, that thing between my heart and my cock, it’s rupturing, twisting in on itself, strangling the butterflies.
“…yes.”
*
When I was fourteen years old, my dog was hit by a car.
Her name was Sasha. She was an eight-year-old Labrador that my parents had bought from Mary at church for my twelfth birthday.
I would sit in a waiting room for two hours, before a nurse would come out to tell me that Sasha had died on impact with the Ford station wagon.
Bad news comes in a million shapes and forms, a million different voices. It’s a thousand different ideas, different concepts, different circumstances; it’s a hundred different methods of telling. Bad news is eyes slanted in exaggerated sympathy, creased foreheads and lips slightly parted. It’s warm fingers that run down your arms, and try too hard to link with your own fingers, which suddenly feel frostbitten and numb.
Bad news comes from reading the paper, the day after the 9/11 attack.
Bad news comes from that monotonous voice on the 6 o’clock report, telling you that the train crash six hours ago killed your cousin.
Bad news is the nurse’s timid glance, her wide, open eyes, her brow furrowed in faux sympathy. Bad news is this nurse, Lucy, her nametag reads, bad news is her incapability to say anything more than “I’m sorry,” in that tiny, lost, little voice, when Jesus Christ, your dog just fucking died.
Bad news is a virus that can cause symptoms that vary from watery eyes, to full blown hysteria, clenched chest to a heart (you only have one of them) cracking too deep and too quickly, and proceeding to bleed all over the pretty, white tiles in the waiting room at the veterinary clinic.
Jesus Christ, it was just a dog.
*
There are ballrooms in Loretta’s eyes tonight, tiny flecks of dancers in endless brown dresses. I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time, and I’m not sure if it’s because it’s two hours before the premiere of Red Wine (which is a fair bit less shit than the films I normally take on), or if it’s because here, in my deluxe penthouse suite, Ryan is sitting next to her on my fucking sofa. They’re talking too quickly and too eagerly to be talking about anything other than the film.
“I still can’t fucking believe you brought him as a date.”
I turn around too quickly, almost choking as I try to loosen my tie. “Not a date, Jon, we are going as colleagues.”
Jon just grins, this odd little half-smile which implies nothing, but kinda fucking screams that he knows there’s more to it than that. “Yeah, okay, do you want me to go grab the corsage, a bouquet or something? I mean, I’m your PA, it’s sorta my job to make sure you don’t fuck up what could be Hollywood’s freshest couple.”
I flip him off, and when he giggles insanely (he’s been into the marijuana tonight), I throw a conveniently placed shoe at him. Miss.
“At least I’m not taking fucking Loretta.”
Jon doesn’t take offence. “Loretta’s pretty fucking hot.” He glances over to where she’s seated next to Ryan. “Y’know, in an artsy sorta way.”
“Loretta’s pretty fucking married, Jon,” I say, and cave, I’ll redo the fucking tie. “Why doesn’t her husband ever come to premieres, anyway?”
“Not everyone’s life revolves around you, Brendon. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s too upmarket-artsy, y’know, something that comes hand-in-hand with like, actual art. If you do a good job of Build God, she’ll probably take him to that.”
She doesn’t though. Loretta doesn’t take her husband to the premieres of any of my films, and when Jon finally settles down, gets married and has 2.5 kids, he’s not gonna take his wife either. Loretta and Jon are friends, and they’ll go with each other till the days that they die, as some unspoken ritual.
“Jon, my love,” Loretta calls, and she’s pulled herself off the couch, latches onto Jon’s arm and doesn’t so much pout at him (which I’m sure was her intention), as she does let loose a grin which spreads from cheekbone-to-cheekbone. “Jon, I believe it is time for us to depart, if you’re not ready, I guess I’ll be forced to beat the shit out of Brendon for holding you up.”
I half-glower at her, half-glower at my tie, which really doesn’t want to work, but suddenly fingers are on mine, over mine, working through the steps of tying a tie with the expertise of someone who has sadly been forced to do them a lot in their life.
“Don’t fuck this up,” Loretta mumbles in my ear, fingers still working the tie, “he’s a keeper.” And really, what do you say to that?
But Loretta doesn’t wait for a response, clutches adamantly again at Jon’s outstretched arm. Some people are afraid or spiders, some of heights, but Loretta will always loathe limos. It’s a thing. She’ll arrive before me at every one of my premieres, decked out in a Mercedes and the silver necklace her grandmother gave her before she died.
By the time the door slams shut, Ryan’s standing in front of me, all pinstriped pants, and thin, dark vest. He looks pretty fucking good, but then again, so do I.
“So,” he says, rocks back on the heels of his feet, (he always takes his shoes off before he enters someone’s home).
“So,” I say, and I grin back at him, coz suddenly this is feeling like one of my dates from highschool, all awkward tension and a brain-dead voice box.
Music’s playing though, Belle and Sebastian, and I really fucking like this song.
“Brendon.”
“Yeah?”
“Phone.”
Ah. I should really stop downloading ringtones. I grasp my mobile, pull it out of my pocket and grin at Ryan from across the kitchen. “’ello?”
It’s a heavy breath that starts it all. An unsteadily deep, heavy breath that sounds like the murderer in one of those 1980’s horror flicks.
“Hello?” And Ryan shoots me a questioning look, props himself up on the countertop. I shrug in response, focus my attention back at the phone in my hand.
“Brendon?” The voice crackles a little over the phone line, pops and fades over the two syllables.
“Yes, who is this?”
The breathing is becoming even more erratic, less stable, and she (I’m sure it’s a she now), I think she’s crying.
“Come get me, Bren, come save me.”
“What?” Ryan’s looking at me again, but I block my other ear, trying to focus on the voice, which is becoming less and less audible. “Who are you?”
“Please, Brendon, I need you. I…I think I OD’d.” Her breath hitches, voice wavers. “I can’t remember, but there’s blood, and I think I passed out sometime, I don’t-I…don’t leave me here, Brendon, please.”
She’s sobbing again, and all I can think to say is, “Who the fuck is this?”
And then it hits me with the impact of a thousand buses and trains and huge transportation vehicles. It hits me so hard and fast that I put my head between my knees and vomit all over the shoes Loretta bought me for the premiere.
“Don’t leave me here.” She’s whispering now, voice catching and fading. “Don’t leave me behind again.”
“Catherine?” I say, and my voice never quivers this much, my tongue is thick in my throat, in my mouth, like I’ve overdosed on peanut butter, overdosed on thick shake, overdosed on Catherine.
Ryan’s staring at me now, his eyes are big and questioning, and he reminds me of those small porcelain dolls you buy as an adult for your little nieces and nephews, only they never want something that fragile, so it sits on the shelf, collects dust, all forgotten beauty.
“Brendon…” Catherine is whimpering, and Ryan’s eyes are still very big, still very inquiring, and I wonder how natural he’d look behind the glass at a museum or art gallery. He’s not just a china doll; he’s one of those antique ones, the one’s worth millions, the one’s hand-painted by old men in the sixteenth century.
“Don’t let me die, Brendon” she says, and really, Ryan isn’t behind glass, maybe never has been behind anything thicker or pricier than the windows in that bohemian apartment. Without the proper protection, I can see dust collect on his cheekbones, in his hair, on his clothes, on his shoes.
“Don’t let me die,” Catherine whispers again, and the phone line, the phone line is dead (and maybe Catherine is too). I’m in the clinic again, but this time it’s Sasha I’m fucking talking to, it’s Sasha telling me that she died two hours ago when she ran into the street and was hit by an overweight guy with too much hair and an ugly car, died two hours ago not quite on impact (but very almost), lived just long enough to wonder where I was. It’s Sasha giving me the bad news, and reminding me that hey, bad news is at its worst when you hear it from someone you love.
There’s so much more to this, so much to do right now, but all I can think, all I can think is how come Ryan’s the porcelain doll, yet I’m the one falling off the shelf, and shattering on the cold tiles of the kitchen.