Table by the Window - Part 4
For author's notes see Part 1
It was still too early for her to arrive, and I ordered some wine, then - on more coherent thinking - some coffee, and sat there - before the curious arrangement of a beaker and a coffee-cup, not really sipping at either, idly leafing through an outdated newspaper forgotten by some previous customer on a windowsill, not really paying attention to what I read there, letters swimming at times before my eyes from the sheer exhaustion - but still tense and nervous as a school-boy awaiting his first date. Written down like this it sounds stupid, a little insane - but it didn’t at the moment, or at least I was beyond caring if it did. All I cared about was to be set free… to be released… to… well, what it amounted to in the long run, in the long wait that almost tried the limits of my endurance - was a simple four word prayer: “Oh, please, do come!”
In the end I think I sensed her even as she was nearing the corner, even as she was turning around it - a familiar figure suddenly sharply silhouetted against the lights of some passing car. Her straight back - something right out of the “Gone With The Wind”, her brisk and purposeful step, her head - refusing to bow down before the rain, - all this combination, that was so uniquely and unmistakably - her.
I followed her progress unashamedly, safely hidden behind the dusty and dim window, drinking in every gesture, every trait that was so firmly imprinted into my mind and yet so sorely missed, drowning in them like an alcoholic anonymous finally succumbing to his addiction. Now she opened the door… Now she dropped her bag by the chair… Swept back the hair, plastered by rain and dripping water into her eyes with a familiar annoyed gesture - yes, they have grown longish again, it was time for wearing that ridiculous clip, or maybe a haircut… Now she went to the counter to order - ah! mulled wine! - a wise choice in a weather like this. I should have ordered some myself, but then - it would have grown cold anyway, as did my coffee - long before I finished the cup… Now she sat at the table, took out her papers… her pencil… And then it happened - a small miracle, something I didn’t even hope for - her eyes shooting suddenly up in my direction, the recognition slowly lighting the face, and this pleased smile gradually appearing - in the eyes mostly, the corners of her mouth only gently curving upward in a hint of a smile my hallucinations have promised, the glass of gluhwein in her hand tilting ever so slightly in a shy salute. Yes! So she was glad to see me back too!
Almost immediately she looked back down, her hand blindly and nervously searching for the dropped pencil, as if she felt scared by her own unbecoming boldness. What scared me though, was my own acute and overwhelming reaction, this mere token of friendliness and (in my hopes mostly) of interest returned sending my body in the crazy overdrive of need, a painful teenager flush, reaching seemingly right from toes and to the roots of my hair with an onrush of desire. Oh, shit! Oh, fuck! Now was the ultimate moment, so right and proper to come to her and finally introduce myself, but how could I? In the state I was in? I turned towards the window, for even if the more obvious sign of my shameful condition was safely concealed so long as I remained seated behind my table, I was sure that it was still all too apparent: in the very tenseness of my pose, the shallow breathing, the color that I felt was flooding my cheeks. So I turned towards the window - fighting to resume some semblance of control over myself - and my own eyes glanced at me from the dark glass - wild and wide and shaken and angry and scared.
And (in case you are laughing like mad on reading about that) you’d be too - just imagine yourself, say, going for an audition, or standing on the proscenium during the play, or in some other as unlikely and unsuitable situation, and the freaking thing suddenly just springs up at attention as a tin soldier, AND you feel it’s ready to burst at the slightest provocation. What would you do? Yeah, not funny at all… but, man, it was ridiculous! As in - ri-di-cu-lous! Granted, I was a grown-up man with a healthy sexual appetite, but last time my body misbehaved just so drastically belonged somewhere in the teen-days of hormonal onslaught. And the frightening thing was that after the initial blast, when I almost saw red, actually fighting the urge to rush to her and crush her, and nail her here and now, yeah, on the spot - and the bartender and any possible passing onlooker be darned… yes, even after the reason (ha! whatever!) prevailed - it didn’t help much, I still was painfully, dangerously hard-on, feeling that any careless move could cause a disaster. And it was humiliating too - to sit there - not daring to move, nor, come to that, look in her direction - for a whole assortment of reasons. I tried to calm down, I tried… I even called on the Oriental meditative technique learnt from one stuntman, who was into this kind of thing, but it, like, needed a concentration (insert here a bitter laugh), and heck - deep breathing was a movement too. I downed what was left of the wine in my beaker, gestured for more and downed that too, before the bartender had even returned to his place (all that carefully avoiding even a casual glance towards her table), in a vain hope that alcohol might somehow dull my senses. Dangerous decision, that one, for it could indeed do just the opposite, switching off whatever reason I managed still to retain. Nor did it help. It left just one way to heal it… So I stood up, moving as slowly and carefully as I could and stumbled off to the W.C., my only saving grace being, that the lavatory door was almost in straight line from my table in the corner, so as soon as I stood up and started going, it was only my back that she could see.
The relief came quick and hot and humiliating. God! But to seek a release in a public lavatory of all things, no - to be forced to seek a release, to lose a control to the point of no return, that’s what was painful. I swear I’d died for shame if anyone entered there at this moment - but thankfully the only other male presence in the café was the bartender, who peacefully returned to his night vigil behind the bar after delivering me a drink. And still - as I stood there panting, my fired forehead pressed to the cool surface of the mirror above the sink - I felt curiously at peace, as if a tightly wound spring within me had let go - at least for a time - leaving me breathless. And weak. Humiliated beyond my own contempt and yet - unabashedly happy. And in this ambivalent mood I made it back to my place, and ordered some gluhwein, and sat there sipping it slowly, feeling the warmth of mulled wine reaching into the cells of my body, even as its essence was reaching into my brain, watching her fully immersed in whatever it was that she wrote (can’t say how glad I was to find her thus - paying not the slightest attention to my disappearance or return), leaning on the windowpane - and feeling… at home, I guess. Yes, feeling at last returned to the very place where I belonged.
And I must've gradually drifted into sleep, slipped into the welcome oblivion, my exhaustion catching up with me at last, for when I woke up with a start a few hours later - the grayish twilight outside was already brighter than the dim lighting in the café, my forehead rested uncomfortably upon the elbow, neck and shoulders felt painfully stiff, and I didn't feel my right arm at all, cause it had fallen both from the table and my lap and was now hanging along the chair completely numb... There was no one else in the café but me and the bartender - snoring it away behind his counter, - the woman, my sweet nemesis, had long gone home, which wasn't any surprise considering what time it probably was.
Rising up was a symphony of groans and curses, as I discovered further aftereffects of my untimely nap. Finally I managed to twist and stretch my body into a semblance of working order, briefly pondered whether I should now wake the bartender to pay my bill, but decided against it and just left a few banknotes under the still half-full beaker of mulled wine. The sum was big enough to cover all I had drunk last night, and the man sure deserved some extra for being so considerate and letting his customer sleep where he had fallen instead of waking me up and forcing to leave the premises into the darkness and rain. I suspected though, that he was aware of my true identity - something in his eyes, no more - old and experienced as he was, he was long used to any kind of public, and if I chose to come and spend all my nights at his unpretentious hole, so much the better for him and the hole alike. Actually I found such kind of attitude very much to my liking and never failed to tip him generously when given a bill.
Going by her table I noticed an edge of another banknote sticking from under the cup, and smiled - for like me she had decided to leave the money and go, and let the old bugger slumber the night in peace. Just for a moment I wondered what did she think when leaving, or come to that - when sitting, as she must have sat for some time - a lone vigilant presence in the realm of sleep, what indeed did she think of me - fallen in this miserable slouch against my table... did she think me tired? or stoned? or what indeed? I pushed this question away. I thought about her way too much as it were, this at least was painfully apparent to me now. And frankly, I was tired of projecting and generally not on a par at the moment for speculations about what she might think of me, especially after this night.
The morning outside was as wet and drizzly as the evening before, and I remembered that I had come here by foot only after standing in the street for a full five minutes, searching through all the pockets of my jacket and pants for either car or bike keys, and squinting around for where in hell I could have placed the damn vehicle. Both vehicles were safely resting in my garage, and there was nothing doing about it now, so I pulled the collar up, dug the hands into the pockets and prepared for a long walk. Luck smiled at me, I didn't have to go all the way home, managing to stop a rather reluctant cabbie only a few streets away from the café. The guy actually remained standing until I opened the front door and got inside, even though I had already paid him in full. Nor could I blame him, for after I stumbled cursing over my own bags still standing right there in the hall, where I'd dropped them as I had hurried for a meeting with mom, and made my way into the bedroom - aiming straight for the bathroom, a quick shower and back to bed - I stood still as my own reflection in the bathroom mirror caught my undivided attention - not only didn't I look remotely as a possible inhabitant of a Beverly Hills mansion, but there also was an angry red imprint on my chick, where it pressed into the elbow while I slept, and it was only-only just starting to fade.
I took an extra-hot shower to relieve some of the cramp from my neck and back and crawled into bed, turning and twisting until I seemed to find the comfortable pose and slept without dreams for eight hours straight, thankfully - without dreams… That is - I didn’t remember dreaming when I woke up, but judging by a condition of my body - it clearly had lately got not only a mind but also the dreams of its own. And it was definitely starting to piss me off, if you forgive me this unintended pun. I mean - I was supposed to be spending this week resting peacefully after the insomnia that had struck me during the filming and learning to function normally once again so that I could get back to work. Yeah, right! Could just imagine myself coming to the director and telling: “Great, dude, I’m sleeping like a baby now, but you better tell the cameramen to give my crotch area a wide berth or else you’d have to come up with a really valid reason for why I would be hard-on throughout the movie”. Not funny, but I was not in a funny mood either. I was damned scarily angered, angrily scared or whatever! Mooning, projecting and indulging in all that romantic stuff was one thing. Having an instant Pavlov’s dog reaction on a mere mention, a mental image of the café - quite another. Come on, tell me that I’m a control freak! But there are some things we’d all like to have at least a partial control over. And that was my own freaking body for Holy sake!
The moment called for some urgent measures. Similia similibus and all this jazz… There was after all a simple remedy for my state, and I felt considerably better as I set to implement it, that is took my cellular from under the bed-table where it had slipped as I dropped my jacket on a nearby chair, and sat down on bed scanning through the numbers within. The first one drew a blank: “Customer disconnected, or out of reach”. Now that should have been a warning, but I persisted. The second was in gym - I could hear her panting as she continued her work out even while speaking:
- Ow, honey, how nice of you to call me! Dine out? You know I’m all for it, but, darling, not tonight. Got this impooooortant party to attend. Why! I know! You could join me there! Yes, it’s an invitation only, but don’t you think they dare tell you - you’re not invited! Ha! I just can imagine Melissa’s face if I appear there with you in tow… Ow, you spoilsport! No, I cannot forgo the party. It’s awwwful important for my carrier. Unless you want to give me a role in some of your…
At that I disconnected, feeling slightly nauseated by the whole dialogue. Must’ve been real drunk before I even agreed to take her number, don’t really remember if there had been much more than that. I wasn’t that desperate… OK, right now I was pretty desperate, but still not to the point when I’d sleep with a woman the mere sound of whose voice was making me sick.
That made me veer altogether from the numbers of the former one-nighters (there weren’t many of those anyway) and to the former girl-friends with whom I would still occasionally go to a party or a concert, dine or sleep if we both appeared to be in the right mood. And you could bet I was in the right mood now. But whatever lucky streak was granted me for this day I had clearly exhausted it catching this cab in the morning. Some were busy and “shit, why hadn’t you called me at least yesterday, so I could speak myself out of this appointment?”; some - away… even as stressed out as I was - I couldn’t but laugh at a recorded message left by one aspiring actress, who had been going out with me for a pair of months last year: “Got myself a part in a musical based on the “Scottish Play”. Nope, not the one by the Bard, but who’d complain? Anyways, will be on the road for the next half-year or around. Sooo… if you are calling about work, could you contact my agent, pleeeease? And if you’re not calling about work - you can’t leave me a message either, cause the tape has probably run out by now. No other way but to wait till my return, dudes”. Beep. And “beep” for you too, Doll, I could have really benefited from your bouncy and humorous nature that night.
And so it went, and so it went… the culmination coming with really the last of the numbers, this one belonging not to a girl-friend really, or at least she wasn’t my girl-friend, in the sense that we had never had sex, but she was showing some genuine interest in my person in the last month before I left for Philly and after she had fallen out with one of my friends. Yes, I’m speaking about Nancy and John if you wonder, and you already know the outcome, and you can judge what the state of my mind was like if I even decided to call her in the first place. Being informed that they have reconciled was a shock, but frankly - to be expected. But being then cheerfully informed that John would be glad if I could be his best man!!.. (insert here any expletive of your choice) John’s!.. Best man!.. Man! I never thought the guy was a marrying type at all!.. And as you can well imagine this wasn’t a kind of good news I needed just there and then.
Frustrated I fell back on my back giving the pillow a mighty blow that sent it flying right across the room… and the roof seemed to be leaking after the rains, not much, just a little dark stain forming in the corner of the ceiling. But that meant I needed to contact my house-manager and organize some repairs to be done when I go back to Philly the next week. I dialed her number, but the line was busy. Just my luck. My rotten luck today… I do not know why, but this little stain was irritating me no end. I even considered buying some paint and painting it over myself, even if it would only last till the next rain… And as I thought of the paint - I thought of Jane. Jane the painter, my dear trusted friend. No “girl-” about this “friend”, never. Oh, maybe, when we had been still class-mates in our teens, I might have been a little in love with her, or she with me, or whatever, but we were such silly kids back then, it never got to more than some kisses. And since I had met her many years later, we were exactly - just friends.
No, you don’t know her, don’t rack your brain, she was never one of our world. In fact - I didn’t keep much contact with her myself - an occasional e-mail, mostly on some generally philosophic theme, a postcard for Christmas, when I didn’t forget to send one - she never did. She lived in Riverside. Not far really, but also not exactly in the vicinity, and with my busy schedule we only probably saw each other a pair of times in all this years. So I called Jane. Did I mean to bed her? No, I didn’t, she was, well, she was Jane, not a bed-mate of any kind. But I always relied on a kind of a common sense wisdom she possessed, and thought that talking with her might somehow sooth me. So again - could the long bike ride to Riverside. She was at home. I heard in her voice that my suggestion to meet and go somewhere to dinner surprised her a little, but all she said was: “Sure. I hope you still remember where I live”.
Now, that bears explanation. I actually never knew her address… no, I mean, I knew it, of course, it was written somewhere in a big brown telephone-book I kept at home and only unearthed from under the pile of newspapers and discarded scripts in time to do the round of holiday greetings. But I didn’t know it in a way that I had been to her house just once before - when I took her home on the very first evening after we met. It was literally a chance meeting - one of my friends was opening a photo-exhibition in a few days, I was eager to see it but had to leave for a filming before the opening date, so we made an appointment to meet at the exhibition hall at the day he was scheduled to put his pictures in place.
I came a trifle bit earlier and was informed by the attendant that my friend had called and told that he would come in another half hour and asked for me to be allowed inside. The deserted halls - bereft of crowds, bereft even of the pictures on the walls left me in a strangely forlorn, vaguely desolate mood, so I was more than glad to find another person there, or - in fact - to hear a string of most intricately weaved together obscenities, sounding from behind the corner stand. There was a girl back there, or at least I assumed this was a girl - from her voice - because all I could see was a short violently black crew-cut showing from behind a number of different-sized paper-wrapped paintings, she was trying to tie together with duct tape.
My tentative: “May I hold them for you?” was rewarded with a crash, a “fuck!” and a fully revealed vision in torn blue jeans, army boots and acid green T-shirt emerging from the resulting heap. “Now what the heck you’re thinking, sneaking on me like that… - then her face brightened with a pure child-like smile appearing as a sun from the stormy clouds, - good Gosh, Charlie! Now of all the people I never hoped to meet any time soon!” That made me look closer - nobody calls me Charlie nowadays, I myself got so used to the second name they chose for my movie alias, that do not think of myself as Charlie anymore… Of course, mom… but then moms do usually call their offspring by some weird childhood moniker… So - who on Earth could call me Charlie in the middle of Los Angeles, where nobody probably even knew it was my name?
What finally triggered my memory - were her eyes. Big, sky blue, naturally black-lashed eyes… and a tiny dimple that appeared when she smiled only on one cheek. Those were the only features that remained unchanged. Back in school teachers and students alike tended to consider her dumb - hey, how could a girl who most resembled a porcelain-doll - miniscule, plumpy-curvy, with those wide blue eyes, raven black hair falling in ringlets to the small of her back, those rosy cheeks, that Irish white skin, those frilly dresses amidst our jeans and plaids - be anything but at best… not bright? No, I know (and knew even then) that there certainly were pretty girls that had brains as well. But Jane just so totally fitted the image that nobody even tried to speak with her about the “clever” things. On the other hand - nor was she ever accosted with the usual sexual innuendos teenagers are so good at (especially towards their earlier developed classmates) - she just seemed to exist separately from all of us - in her own world wide apart, not caring of what was said, or thought or implied about her. And it was this very imperturbability of hers that made me to seek her company - I always was a sucker for people who possessed this quality of inner peace. Maybe because I never could find much peace within myself.
Well, as I’ve already written - my interest didn’t get me much past the first line of her defenses - and then I was kicked out of school, and we moved again, and that was that. Until the Friday afternoon when I saw her in a deserted exhibition hall, mad as a fighting Valkyr - if you could imagine a fighting Valkyr barely reaching under my armpit. Much had changed about her, I would even have written - everything, if not the eyes and a dimple I mentioned before. But way underneath - as I found out later that day, after helping her with packing the paintings - her own, due to be taken back to her place on Monday - and taking her home, and drinking coffee, then beer, then, I think, wine or maybe tequila (at least in the morning I woke up on her sofa with a grandmother of all the headaches), and watching her paintings, which were of whatever not - landscapes, seascapes, people, animals, trees, just abstractions depicting a certain mood (she didn’t seem to stick to any particular technique or particular theme) - and talking, talking, talking our heads off… Way underneath she was still the same Jane - complaisant and composed on the outside, while on the inside - not giving a freaking damn about what anyone said. I also found out that she was extremely bright in her own way, not in a “well-read and quoting” way of a vast majority of clever people, but rather having a “well-thought out and that’s what I seemed to come to” unobtrusive opinion. But then I had suspected some hidden depth in her all along. She just never “felt an urge to explain people anything about herself - except through her art”. No, dude, I know it sounds pretty much as something I could tell myself, but I’m not projecting here - those were her very own words, spoken to me when I outright asked her - why hadn’t she ever spoken out for herself, or tried to prove her point in our heated teenage discussions - for it sure must have sucked to be considered dumb back in school (which was hardly polite of me, but we were pretty well advanced with our drinking at this stage). So - this was my Jane, and now you, perhaps, have a better inkling as to why I considered her company as a viable medicine or at least a reprieve from my malaise.
Continued in - Part 5
It was still too early for her to arrive, and I ordered some wine, then - on more coherent thinking - some coffee, and sat there - before the curious arrangement of a beaker and a coffee-cup, not really sipping at either, idly leafing through an outdated newspaper forgotten by some previous customer on a windowsill, not really paying attention to what I read there, letters swimming at times before my eyes from the sheer exhaustion - but still tense and nervous as a school-boy awaiting his first date. Written down like this it sounds stupid, a little insane - but it didn’t at the moment, or at least I was beyond caring if it did. All I cared about was to be set free… to be released… to… well, what it amounted to in the long run, in the long wait that almost tried the limits of my endurance - was a simple four word prayer: “Oh, please, do come!”
In the end I think I sensed her even as she was nearing the corner, even as she was turning around it - a familiar figure suddenly sharply silhouetted against the lights of some passing car. Her straight back - something right out of the “Gone With The Wind”, her brisk and purposeful step, her head - refusing to bow down before the rain, - all this combination, that was so uniquely and unmistakably - her.
I followed her progress unashamedly, safely hidden behind the dusty and dim window, drinking in every gesture, every trait that was so firmly imprinted into my mind and yet so sorely missed, drowning in them like an alcoholic anonymous finally succumbing to his addiction. Now she opened the door… Now she dropped her bag by the chair… Swept back the hair, plastered by rain and dripping water into her eyes with a familiar annoyed gesture - yes, they have grown longish again, it was time for wearing that ridiculous clip, or maybe a haircut… Now she went to the counter to order - ah! mulled wine! - a wise choice in a weather like this. I should have ordered some myself, but then - it would have grown cold anyway, as did my coffee - long before I finished the cup… Now she sat at the table, took out her papers… her pencil… And then it happened - a small miracle, something I didn’t even hope for - her eyes shooting suddenly up in my direction, the recognition slowly lighting the face, and this pleased smile gradually appearing - in the eyes mostly, the corners of her mouth only gently curving upward in a hint of a smile my hallucinations have promised, the glass of gluhwein in her hand tilting ever so slightly in a shy salute. Yes! So she was glad to see me back too!
Almost immediately she looked back down, her hand blindly and nervously searching for the dropped pencil, as if she felt scared by her own unbecoming boldness. What scared me though, was my own acute and overwhelming reaction, this mere token of friendliness and (in my hopes mostly) of interest returned sending my body in the crazy overdrive of need, a painful teenager flush, reaching seemingly right from toes and to the roots of my hair with an onrush of desire. Oh, shit! Oh, fuck! Now was the ultimate moment, so right and proper to come to her and finally introduce myself, but how could I? In the state I was in? I turned towards the window, for even if the more obvious sign of my shameful condition was safely concealed so long as I remained seated behind my table, I was sure that it was still all too apparent: in the very tenseness of my pose, the shallow breathing, the color that I felt was flooding my cheeks. So I turned towards the window - fighting to resume some semblance of control over myself - and my own eyes glanced at me from the dark glass - wild and wide and shaken and angry and scared.
And (in case you are laughing like mad on reading about that) you’d be too - just imagine yourself, say, going for an audition, or standing on the proscenium during the play, or in some other as unlikely and unsuitable situation, and the freaking thing suddenly just springs up at attention as a tin soldier, AND you feel it’s ready to burst at the slightest provocation. What would you do? Yeah, not funny at all… but, man, it was ridiculous! As in - ri-di-cu-lous! Granted, I was a grown-up man with a healthy sexual appetite, but last time my body misbehaved just so drastically belonged somewhere in the teen-days of hormonal onslaught. And the frightening thing was that after the initial blast, when I almost saw red, actually fighting the urge to rush to her and crush her, and nail her here and now, yeah, on the spot - and the bartender and any possible passing onlooker be darned… yes, even after the reason (ha! whatever!) prevailed - it didn’t help much, I still was painfully, dangerously hard-on, feeling that any careless move could cause a disaster. And it was humiliating too - to sit there - not daring to move, nor, come to that, look in her direction - for a whole assortment of reasons. I tried to calm down, I tried… I even called on the Oriental meditative technique learnt from one stuntman, who was into this kind of thing, but it, like, needed a concentration (insert here a bitter laugh), and heck - deep breathing was a movement too. I downed what was left of the wine in my beaker, gestured for more and downed that too, before the bartender had even returned to his place (all that carefully avoiding even a casual glance towards her table), in a vain hope that alcohol might somehow dull my senses. Dangerous decision, that one, for it could indeed do just the opposite, switching off whatever reason I managed still to retain. Nor did it help. It left just one way to heal it… So I stood up, moving as slowly and carefully as I could and stumbled off to the W.C., my only saving grace being, that the lavatory door was almost in straight line from my table in the corner, so as soon as I stood up and started going, it was only my back that she could see.
The relief came quick and hot and humiliating. God! But to seek a release in a public lavatory of all things, no - to be forced to seek a release, to lose a control to the point of no return, that’s what was painful. I swear I’d died for shame if anyone entered there at this moment - but thankfully the only other male presence in the café was the bartender, who peacefully returned to his night vigil behind the bar after delivering me a drink. And still - as I stood there panting, my fired forehead pressed to the cool surface of the mirror above the sink - I felt curiously at peace, as if a tightly wound spring within me had let go - at least for a time - leaving me breathless. And weak. Humiliated beyond my own contempt and yet - unabashedly happy. And in this ambivalent mood I made it back to my place, and ordered some gluhwein, and sat there sipping it slowly, feeling the warmth of mulled wine reaching into the cells of my body, even as its essence was reaching into my brain, watching her fully immersed in whatever it was that she wrote (can’t say how glad I was to find her thus - paying not the slightest attention to my disappearance or return), leaning on the windowpane - and feeling… at home, I guess. Yes, feeling at last returned to the very place where I belonged.
And I must've gradually drifted into sleep, slipped into the welcome oblivion, my exhaustion catching up with me at last, for when I woke up with a start a few hours later - the grayish twilight outside was already brighter than the dim lighting in the café, my forehead rested uncomfortably upon the elbow, neck and shoulders felt painfully stiff, and I didn't feel my right arm at all, cause it had fallen both from the table and my lap and was now hanging along the chair completely numb... There was no one else in the café but me and the bartender - snoring it away behind his counter, - the woman, my sweet nemesis, had long gone home, which wasn't any surprise considering what time it probably was.
Rising up was a symphony of groans and curses, as I discovered further aftereffects of my untimely nap. Finally I managed to twist and stretch my body into a semblance of working order, briefly pondered whether I should now wake the bartender to pay my bill, but decided against it and just left a few banknotes under the still half-full beaker of mulled wine. The sum was big enough to cover all I had drunk last night, and the man sure deserved some extra for being so considerate and letting his customer sleep where he had fallen instead of waking me up and forcing to leave the premises into the darkness and rain. I suspected though, that he was aware of my true identity - something in his eyes, no more - old and experienced as he was, he was long used to any kind of public, and if I chose to come and spend all my nights at his unpretentious hole, so much the better for him and the hole alike. Actually I found such kind of attitude very much to my liking and never failed to tip him generously when given a bill.
Going by her table I noticed an edge of another banknote sticking from under the cup, and smiled - for like me she had decided to leave the money and go, and let the old bugger slumber the night in peace. Just for a moment I wondered what did she think when leaving, or come to that - when sitting, as she must have sat for some time - a lone vigilant presence in the realm of sleep, what indeed did she think of me - fallen in this miserable slouch against my table... did she think me tired? or stoned? or what indeed? I pushed this question away. I thought about her way too much as it were, this at least was painfully apparent to me now. And frankly, I was tired of projecting and generally not on a par at the moment for speculations about what she might think of me, especially after this night.
The morning outside was as wet and drizzly as the evening before, and I remembered that I had come here by foot only after standing in the street for a full five minutes, searching through all the pockets of my jacket and pants for either car or bike keys, and squinting around for where in hell I could have placed the damn vehicle. Both vehicles were safely resting in my garage, and there was nothing doing about it now, so I pulled the collar up, dug the hands into the pockets and prepared for a long walk. Luck smiled at me, I didn't have to go all the way home, managing to stop a rather reluctant cabbie only a few streets away from the café. The guy actually remained standing until I opened the front door and got inside, even though I had already paid him in full. Nor could I blame him, for after I stumbled cursing over my own bags still standing right there in the hall, where I'd dropped them as I had hurried for a meeting with mom, and made my way into the bedroom - aiming straight for the bathroom, a quick shower and back to bed - I stood still as my own reflection in the bathroom mirror caught my undivided attention - not only didn't I look remotely as a possible inhabitant of a Beverly Hills mansion, but there also was an angry red imprint on my chick, where it pressed into the elbow while I slept, and it was only-only just starting to fade.
I took an extra-hot shower to relieve some of the cramp from my neck and back and crawled into bed, turning and twisting until I seemed to find the comfortable pose and slept without dreams for eight hours straight, thankfully - without dreams… That is - I didn’t remember dreaming when I woke up, but judging by a condition of my body - it clearly had lately got not only a mind but also the dreams of its own. And it was definitely starting to piss me off, if you forgive me this unintended pun. I mean - I was supposed to be spending this week resting peacefully after the insomnia that had struck me during the filming and learning to function normally once again so that I could get back to work. Yeah, right! Could just imagine myself coming to the director and telling: “Great, dude, I’m sleeping like a baby now, but you better tell the cameramen to give my crotch area a wide berth or else you’d have to come up with a really valid reason for why I would be hard-on throughout the movie”. Not funny, but I was not in a funny mood either. I was damned scarily angered, angrily scared or whatever! Mooning, projecting and indulging in all that romantic stuff was one thing. Having an instant Pavlov’s dog reaction on a mere mention, a mental image of the café - quite another. Come on, tell me that I’m a control freak! But there are some things we’d all like to have at least a partial control over. And that was my own freaking body for Holy sake!
The moment called for some urgent measures. Similia similibus and all this jazz… There was after all a simple remedy for my state, and I felt considerably better as I set to implement it, that is took my cellular from under the bed-table where it had slipped as I dropped my jacket on a nearby chair, and sat down on bed scanning through the numbers within. The first one drew a blank: “Customer disconnected, or out of reach”. Now that should have been a warning, but I persisted. The second was in gym - I could hear her panting as she continued her work out even while speaking:
- Ow, honey, how nice of you to call me! Dine out? You know I’m all for it, but, darling, not tonight. Got this impooooortant party to attend. Why! I know! You could join me there! Yes, it’s an invitation only, but don’t you think they dare tell you - you’re not invited! Ha! I just can imagine Melissa’s face if I appear there with you in tow… Ow, you spoilsport! No, I cannot forgo the party. It’s awwwful important for my carrier. Unless you want to give me a role in some of your…
At that I disconnected, feeling slightly nauseated by the whole dialogue. Must’ve been real drunk before I even agreed to take her number, don’t really remember if there had been much more than that. I wasn’t that desperate… OK, right now I was pretty desperate, but still not to the point when I’d sleep with a woman the mere sound of whose voice was making me sick.
That made me veer altogether from the numbers of the former one-nighters (there weren’t many of those anyway) and to the former girl-friends with whom I would still occasionally go to a party or a concert, dine or sleep if we both appeared to be in the right mood. And you could bet I was in the right mood now. But whatever lucky streak was granted me for this day I had clearly exhausted it catching this cab in the morning. Some were busy and “shit, why hadn’t you called me at least yesterday, so I could speak myself out of this appointment?”; some - away… even as stressed out as I was - I couldn’t but laugh at a recorded message left by one aspiring actress, who had been going out with me for a pair of months last year: “Got myself a part in a musical based on the “Scottish Play”. Nope, not the one by the Bard, but who’d complain? Anyways, will be on the road for the next half-year or around. Sooo… if you are calling about work, could you contact my agent, pleeeease? And if you’re not calling about work - you can’t leave me a message either, cause the tape has probably run out by now. No other way but to wait till my return, dudes”. Beep. And “beep” for you too, Doll, I could have really benefited from your bouncy and humorous nature that night.
And so it went, and so it went… the culmination coming with really the last of the numbers, this one belonging not to a girl-friend really, or at least she wasn’t my girl-friend, in the sense that we had never had sex, but she was showing some genuine interest in my person in the last month before I left for Philly and after she had fallen out with one of my friends. Yes, I’m speaking about Nancy and John if you wonder, and you already know the outcome, and you can judge what the state of my mind was like if I even decided to call her in the first place. Being informed that they have reconciled was a shock, but frankly - to be expected. But being then cheerfully informed that John would be glad if I could be his best man!!.. (insert here any expletive of your choice) John’s!.. Best man!.. Man! I never thought the guy was a marrying type at all!.. And as you can well imagine this wasn’t a kind of good news I needed just there and then.
Frustrated I fell back on my back giving the pillow a mighty blow that sent it flying right across the room… and the roof seemed to be leaking after the rains, not much, just a little dark stain forming in the corner of the ceiling. But that meant I needed to contact my house-manager and organize some repairs to be done when I go back to Philly the next week. I dialed her number, but the line was busy. Just my luck. My rotten luck today… I do not know why, but this little stain was irritating me no end. I even considered buying some paint and painting it over myself, even if it would only last till the next rain… And as I thought of the paint - I thought of Jane. Jane the painter, my dear trusted friend. No “girl-” about this “friend”, never. Oh, maybe, when we had been still class-mates in our teens, I might have been a little in love with her, or she with me, or whatever, but we were such silly kids back then, it never got to more than some kisses. And since I had met her many years later, we were exactly - just friends.
No, you don’t know her, don’t rack your brain, she was never one of our world. In fact - I didn’t keep much contact with her myself - an occasional e-mail, mostly on some generally philosophic theme, a postcard for Christmas, when I didn’t forget to send one - she never did. She lived in Riverside. Not far really, but also not exactly in the vicinity, and with my busy schedule we only probably saw each other a pair of times in all this years. So I called Jane. Did I mean to bed her? No, I didn’t, she was, well, she was Jane, not a bed-mate of any kind. But I always relied on a kind of a common sense wisdom she possessed, and thought that talking with her might somehow sooth me. So again - could the long bike ride to Riverside. She was at home. I heard in her voice that my suggestion to meet and go somewhere to dinner surprised her a little, but all she said was: “Sure. I hope you still remember where I live”.
Now, that bears explanation. I actually never knew her address… no, I mean, I knew it, of course, it was written somewhere in a big brown telephone-book I kept at home and only unearthed from under the pile of newspapers and discarded scripts in time to do the round of holiday greetings. But I didn’t know it in a way that I had been to her house just once before - when I took her home on the very first evening after we met. It was literally a chance meeting - one of my friends was opening a photo-exhibition in a few days, I was eager to see it but had to leave for a filming before the opening date, so we made an appointment to meet at the exhibition hall at the day he was scheduled to put his pictures in place.
I came a trifle bit earlier and was informed by the attendant that my friend had called and told that he would come in another half hour and asked for me to be allowed inside. The deserted halls - bereft of crowds, bereft even of the pictures on the walls left me in a strangely forlorn, vaguely desolate mood, so I was more than glad to find another person there, or - in fact - to hear a string of most intricately weaved together obscenities, sounding from behind the corner stand. There was a girl back there, or at least I assumed this was a girl - from her voice - because all I could see was a short violently black crew-cut showing from behind a number of different-sized paper-wrapped paintings, she was trying to tie together with duct tape.
My tentative: “May I hold them for you?” was rewarded with a crash, a “fuck!” and a fully revealed vision in torn blue jeans, army boots and acid green T-shirt emerging from the resulting heap. “Now what the heck you’re thinking, sneaking on me like that… - then her face brightened with a pure child-like smile appearing as a sun from the stormy clouds, - good Gosh, Charlie! Now of all the people I never hoped to meet any time soon!” That made me look closer - nobody calls me Charlie nowadays, I myself got so used to the second name they chose for my movie alias, that do not think of myself as Charlie anymore… Of course, mom… but then moms do usually call their offspring by some weird childhood moniker… So - who on Earth could call me Charlie in the middle of Los Angeles, where nobody probably even knew it was my name?
What finally triggered my memory - were her eyes. Big, sky blue, naturally black-lashed eyes… and a tiny dimple that appeared when she smiled only on one cheek. Those were the only features that remained unchanged. Back in school teachers and students alike tended to consider her dumb - hey, how could a girl who most resembled a porcelain-doll - miniscule, plumpy-curvy, with those wide blue eyes, raven black hair falling in ringlets to the small of her back, those rosy cheeks, that Irish white skin, those frilly dresses amidst our jeans and plaids - be anything but at best… not bright? No, I know (and knew even then) that there certainly were pretty girls that had brains as well. But Jane just so totally fitted the image that nobody even tried to speak with her about the “clever” things. On the other hand - nor was she ever accosted with the usual sexual innuendos teenagers are so good at (especially towards their earlier developed classmates) - she just seemed to exist separately from all of us - in her own world wide apart, not caring of what was said, or thought or implied about her. And it was this very imperturbability of hers that made me to seek her company - I always was a sucker for people who possessed this quality of inner peace. Maybe because I never could find much peace within myself.
Well, as I’ve already written - my interest didn’t get me much past the first line of her defenses - and then I was kicked out of school, and we moved again, and that was that. Until the Friday afternoon when I saw her in a deserted exhibition hall, mad as a fighting Valkyr - if you could imagine a fighting Valkyr barely reaching under my armpit. Much had changed about her, I would even have written - everything, if not the eyes and a dimple I mentioned before. But way underneath - as I found out later that day, after helping her with packing the paintings - her own, due to be taken back to her place on Monday - and taking her home, and drinking coffee, then beer, then, I think, wine or maybe tequila (at least in the morning I woke up on her sofa with a grandmother of all the headaches), and watching her paintings, which were of whatever not - landscapes, seascapes, people, animals, trees, just abstractions depicting a certain mood (she didn’t seem to stick to any particular technique or particular theme) - and talking, talking, talking our heads off… Way underneath she was still the same Jane - complaisant and composed on the outside, while on the inside - not giving a freaking damn about what anyone said. I also found out that she was extremely bright in her own way, not in a “well-read and quoting” way of a vast majority of clever people, but rather having a “well-thought out and that’s what I seemed to come to” unobtrusive opinion. But then I had suspected some hidden depth in her all along. She just never “felt an urge to explain people anything about herself - except through her art”. No, dude, I know it sounds pretty much as something I could tell myself, but I’m not projecting here - those were her very own words, spoken to me when I outright asked her - why hadn’t she ever spoken out for herself, or tried to prove her point in our heated teenage discussions - for it sure must have sucked to be considered dumb back in school (which was hardly polite of me, but we were pretty well advanced with our drinking at this stage). So - this was my Jane, and now you, perhaps, have a better inkling as to why I considered her company as a viable medicine or at least a reprieve from my malaise.
Continued in - Part 5