Andrew looks directly at Nick, but his face is devoid of emotion. After several seconds have elapsed, he makes an odd sound, like a grunt.
“He heard them more than saw them,” Nick says. “He was in a tiny room in the shed where he went to…draw pictures.”
“You’re claiming he was a juvenile voyeur.”
“No, no. And I’m not just ‘claiming.’ I’m telling you what he told me.”
“He told you this when?”
“We e-mailed back and forth. I was planning to—but you know that. I was supposed to meet him last week. I was hoping to talk about it in person.”
“Why would he tell you all this?”
“I don’t know. Which is why I know it’s the truth. Who would trade the easier version—the victim, plain and simple—for the stranger one, in which he might have refused, walked out, blown the whistle at the get-go? Theoretically. But the thing is, I understand how he couldn’t, how trapped he was. By so many things. I feel it.”
Andrew suddenly beams and waves; Nick realizes he sees his wife outside the window of the bungalow. Andrew blows a kiss.
“You see,” says Nick, “it’s like the cat’s out of the bag for me. It’s worlds different from what I’d imagined.”
Andrew eyes the ceiling, where reflections from the rippling surface of the pool cast a zebralike pattern. “I could point out that you’re not playing the child.”
“I know that, Andrew. But I’m playing that child grown into the man who can’t bloody forget what the child went through. It’s not as if he’d blocked the memory. He lived with it for half a century. He lived with a mother who knew what he knew.”
“The mother knew?”
“God yes! That’s what makes it especially frightful. The mother found out that he was behind that wall, though not before she’d been to the shed, with that evil man, more than once. Lear finally couldn’t stand it. He made his presence known. Later, he broke down and told.”
“You have all this in writing—the e-mails.”
Nick groans. “No.”
“No? Nick…” Andrew frets with his earring, toggling the tiny gold loop between thumb and forefinger. Nick can hardly stand it. He wants to reach out and pull Andrew’s hand away from his ear.
“He didn’t reveal any of this in the interview.”
“The interview is ancient. He clearly wanted to amend it, or why would he have—”
“Look. I don’t see how we can change this aspect of the story this late in the game. For so many reasons, some of them probably legal.”
“It’s not just an ‘aspect’!” cries Nick, then lowers his voice. “Andrew, it’s the crux of the story as we’re telling it.”
“I’m not sure I agree with you there.”
Andrew’s phone buzzes. He pulls it from his pocket. “Flora’s serving lunch. We have to wrap up the meeting in half an hour.”
“Are you just going to ignore this?”
Andrew sighs, toys with the earring for a long excruciating moment. “Nick, I don’t want to. I wish you’d spilled the beans sooner.”
“I wanted to talk with him first.”
“What Lear might have wanted, whatever his peculiar motives were in making this confession, none of that matters to me. Not to insult you, Nick, but this is my film, not his, not yours—and I am not sure I would have bought the version you’re giving me.”
“You don’t believe him?”
Andrew shakes his head, but he is already out of his chair, aiming for the door. “I mean ‘bought’ in the literal sense. It’s…there’s something over-the-edge about it. Too kinky. Ambiguous. The studio—”
“Kinky and ambiguous never scared you off before.” Nick follows Andrew back onto the trellised walkway.
Andrew pauses and turns around. “Let’s talk tonight or tomorrow morning. Right now I have to finish up with Jake and Hardy—but stay for lunch, will you? You’ll still have time to go back to your hotel before meeting with Toby and Trish. You’ll love Trish—she’s just out of ABT. And let’s get a couple of images for the bloggers to nosh on, shots of you and Toby while I’ve got you together. Can’t have you going stale. I’m tired of those Taormina stills, which is what your growing army of fans get right now whenever they IMDb you—you and, if you’ll forgive me, the not so gracefully aging Deedee. I’d rather have them find the surprise of you with the fresh-faced Toby. Oh—and I forgot to say, you were great on Sunday. That was the perfect nibble. Thank you for that.”
Nick silences himself. For now. Shading his eyes, he looks toward the pool, its inky darkness elegant yet forbidding. At a table sheltered by a wide ivory parasol sit Jake and Hardy, between them Andrew’s wife, who has donned a translucent caftan in that same virulent yellow. Her matching hair erupts from her head in blunt, effusive tufts. She touches the two men frequently on their shoulders, arms, and hands, making them laugh freely.
She reminds him of Kendra, those easy public charms. At moments, just isolated moments, he misses Kendra, the way she could weave a kind of warm, protective aura around him, especially in social situations like this one.
“Sir.”
He turns, startled, to see a dark-skinned older woman in a flowered dress holding a tray occupied by a single glass of deep red liquid.
“Blood orange,” she says. “You must try.”
I am in a fairy tale, he thinks, and now I will drink the blood. The sangfroid, he muses as he grasps the icy glass.
Of course you will, Deirdre would say. And listen up when the wizard speaks, or you just might lose your head.
How searingly lonely he feels in this instant: how far from home, far from certain, far from any sort of lasting love.
—
Franklin finally gave in and agreed to a gin and tonic. “Oh, corrupt me.”
“I’m bribing you.”
“No need, Tommy. Morty’s still paying me plenty, even from beyond the grave.”
Today they are attending to what Tommy thinks of, with no small dose of irony, as “the easy stuff,” beginning with Morty’s wish that they auction off his small but precious Dickens library, as well as the Alice ephemera. They’ve just arranged for representatives from two separate auction houses to show up the following week. This will be the first of the seed money allocated directly to Ivo’s House.
“I have no idea what it’s worth, any of it,” she says. “I’m sure Morty didn’t. He collected the things he did like a kid collects stamps.”
“I don’t think kids collect stamps anymore,” says Franklin. “Mine didn’t.”
“I collected toy harmonicas.”
“You’re musical?”
“No. My parents were.” She thinks of her abandoned piano lessons, Dani’s resistance to the guitar.
Dani. Her brother, like so much else, will have to wait.
“I played the sax in high school,” says Franklin. “Badly but with hormonal passion. Or desperation. ‘Sax gets you sex,’ some older punk told me when we were choosing instruments. Talk about false marketing.”
“Tell me you still play.” Tommy pictures a smaller, bow-tied Franklin playing “Watermelon Man” or “How High the Moon” in an adolescent jazz band.