That was the first I had laughed. We all laughed. Maybe everything would be all right now. Sure! That was it! It was a sign! It all started and ended with the zither. And something else, too—I was going to go home with Harrison. I wasn’t sure up until that moment, and I wasn’t sure of what would happen after I went home with him. I knew it wasn’t a good idea. It would never be a good idea, but it wouldn’t be a really bad one either. I mean, weird and grumpy as he might have been, he wasn’t a bad human. He was much more on the good side of the bad/good human graph. He was bad and good, like most people. A good person who does bad things or a bad person who does good things—as long as people are involved, people will do bad or good things to them. Especially when there’s money (and small dogs) involved.
The check was fought for valiantly by all us available good soldiers, understanding as we did on some dark and smiling level that those blessed with a bounty of backed-up semen would actually pay it. Koo and I played at being semi-cloyingly grateful for the gallant sacrifice of their hard-won shekels and we rose from our four-sided trough, thus easing our way out of our eatery and on to the finer events that no doubt awaited us all.
I was in no shape to do anything but take cues, when and if they were distributed with intent. But perhaps I had misread the situation—was I following a lead that only existed in my unaccustomed-to-alcohol-and-as-such-altered mind? But I was slowly sobering up, and the likelihood that I was misreading signals was getting lower by the minute as we stood on the sidewalk outside the little Italian restaurant I’d so recently managed to survive. The cool air was welcome—who knew that there was so much of it outside! Especially when compared to the overall quantity of air set aside for eateries.
We stood under the timid light of a nearby street lamp, shuffling from one foot to the other, checking watches, lighting cigarettes, or squinting into the night to ascertain whether or not there were any incoming cabs.
“I’m in Chelsea,” Mark said.
“So you decided to keep that place in the end?” Peter observed, nodding wisely.
Mark shrugged. “In the end I figured, why not? It’s got great views, an awesome kitchen . . . I mean, sure there are better neighborhoods, but . . .” He paused and shrugged again. “But not with a second bedroom.”
Harrison flicked away his barely smoked Camel and coughed. “Okay!” he said to everyone. He then looked at me. “I can drop you at your place—it’s on my way.”
He took my arm and steered me toward Piccadilly Circus.
“Good night!” I managed as Harrison drew me along into the street and away from them. That I didn’t stumble was a miracle, not like the virgin birth or anything, but you could’ve fooled me. We walked in silence for several moments while I riffed through an assortment of remarks I might make, enabling me to seem . . . to seem like someone . . . a woman even, who knew what she was doing—or didn’t care what she was doing—because wherever she went only the very best people would follow. Follow her every word like welcome stalkers—why wouldn’t Harrison want to be where she was? If only she felt this way about herself, if only she could think of what to say to him—other than ask him what they were doing. Where were they going and why? Would he ask her to the prom and cover her in hickeys?
Now, of course she loved him, didn’t she? She wouldn’t have dared to before that business in the backseat, but now . . .
“What’s your address?” he asked, startling me, standing there beside this king, Han Solo and all the other characters he would eventually play seeded in him now. And then there was me, pregnant with all those people I would play: a vengeful hairdresser, a hostile mother-in-law, a flute-playing adulteress, a psychologist, a drug-addicted writer, a boyfriend-poaching actress, a boy-hungry casting director, myself, an unfaithful wife, an angry boss, myself, myself, myself, myself, and a couple of nuns. He took me by the elbow and eased all of us into the backseat of a taxi.
“What’s your address?”
I looked at him, blinking. “My address?”
“Where we going, ladies and gents?” The driver put the taxi in gear and it growled back to life. “Or I could drive you kids around all night, it’s your money.”
Harrison nodded in agreement, twirling his index finger rapidly—the international indicator to hurry things along.
“Fine, Esmond Court, off Kensington High Street.”
“Okay, lady. Have you there in a jiff,” he all but cheered in his cockney Dick Van Dyke East London accent. The one I wish I had. “That’s behind Barkers, is it?”
I was about to tell him when Harrison pulled me back into the seat, moving us closer and closer together, face-to-face, until we were two faces, four eyes, one kiss, going to the place where we could rehearse that kissing we would be doing a year and a half later in The Empire Strikes Back—and apparently we wanted to get a jump on it, as it were. People think you just kiss in a love scene. They don’t realize the years some actors put into those scenes. Real actors. All that practice really shows. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Check out those kisses in Empire. See? Those were years in preparation and I promise you, they did not have to use special effects there. These were the early days and nights of the Force.
“Here we are, folks! Esmond Court!” This was punctuated by the sharp sound of the pulled brake. “That’ll be five pound ten please.”
Harrison reached around to retrieve his brown beat-up wallet from his back pocket. I pulled my bag from the floor and into my lap, saying, “I could—”
He looked at me indicating that what remained of the sentence I had started would be less than welcome. I may have become a blush factory, sending southerly blood to my northerly face for a visit. It now occurred to me—belatedly, I admit—that Harrison wasn’t just dropping me off, but that we were very likely going to be having what my friends and I referred to as a sleepover. What if he—if we—and then—oh God—then he would leave me with my new slutty sense of myself established in one fell swoop—a fallen woman flat on her face, swooping for all she was worth . . . Leia would never get in a situation like this . . .
Actually she probably would, but not until the sequels. This was sequel behavior. Oh, but what if she did get into the backseat of a taxi with a smuggling married actor? If she did happen to do that, she wouldn’t just go along with things like a leaf on a rushing stream. C’mon! She’d be able to come up with something more unusual . . . maybe not poetic but . . . Why was I so obedient? What would Leia do? Obviously it would be different than following Jesus’s example. Jesus would hardly—well, it’s no use pursuing Jesus’s lead when it came to dating. And is that what this was? Dating? Oh, Leia, where are you when I need you? Oh, Jesus, if you’re watching, please don’t let my stomach look other than flat if it should get to that.
“Cheers, mate,” the cabbie said as Harrison paid the fare. He then drove off, leaving us in something better than a lurch.
“You wanna come up?” I asked absurdly.
He almost laughed. “Sure.”
I reached in my bag for my keys. Leia found them and led him into the building to her apartment, and Carrie spent the rest of the night making sequels with her future cinematic husband. How would it all end? Would it all end? And how would I look when it did?
? ? ?
it’s difficult to recall with any kind of clarity details from that weekend. Even if I could, what are we talking about here, soft porn for hardened sci-fi fans? I can’t remember events from yesterday, or earlier tonight when I put away my credit cards for safekeeping. Now for the life of me I don’t know precisely what safekeeping is.
What I do know about that weekend is more along the lines of what didn’t happen. I know we didn’t have any in-depth conversations about anything. So if we didn’t spend a bunch of time talking or playing Monopoly, then we must’ve done more physical things. Long walks, waterboarding, things of that nature.