Baffled, he opens Si’s fourth and final communication: Call me, would you please?
Nick becomes aware of how stuffy the room is; all at once, he’s unbearably hot. He also has tears in his eyes. Well, this sort of tension is the payback for stepping out of the stream for several hours.
He manages to wrench open both windows beside the chest of drawers. The third seems stuck fast. He yanks off his shirt, almost angrily.
This is absurd. He worked with the boy for a few hours, posed for a handful of pictures. Yet at the news that Toby’s out, and then that there may be no replacement, he feels a creeping sort of…what, loneliness? As if Toby was a genuine ally. As if Nick failed to protect him.
He pulls the cushions off the couch, hauls out the bed frame. He retrieves the feather pillows from the chair on which he threw them that morning. He sits on the edge of the mattress, takes a deep breath, rings Si.
“There you are. I wondered if we’d lost you.” Si’s voice is kind, bemused.
“What’s going on?” says Nick. “Enlighten me?”
“So Andrew had been thinking, before the snarl-up with Toby and his mother—God help that boy, never mind his career, of course what am I saying, he’s nine….Anyway, it turns out Andrew’s been talking to the graphic team about dropping the live action with the boy, going with Sig on green screen, so that Lear himself is just Ivo, just the boy in the illustrations, during those scenes. This would bring you in sooner, take advantage of how young you can look. Use your voice for the boy as well.”
“Did Andrew talk about my…our conversation?”
“What conversation?”
Nick hesitates. “Not to worry.” Andrew has moved on, beyond Toby, beyond Lear’s confessions. “Does this mean delays in the schedule?”
“No. In fact, Andrew wants you back in L.A. now, before Phoenix. He wants you back in the studio, with Sig this time. And Trish. Your decks are clear the next week or two, right?”
“I’d miss going home.”
“Could you?”
I am a boat without a mooring, Nick thinks, though how maudlin is that? He must be channeling Deirdre’s message: Toss an anchor overboard. “I could.”
“Beautiful. I’ll let him know.”
“Si?”
“Nick.”
“I’m going to bed now.”
“It’s nine-thirty. Keeping country hours?”
“I know what time it is, Si.”
“I’ll let you go.”
“Please.”
Nick lays the phone on the mattress beside him. He stares at it, as if it’s a novel object, something he just found. In that small box reside just about all his relationships. A halfhearted breeze from the window brushes his back. He looks around and notices a portable fan beneath the spindly chair on which he tossed his shirt; somehow this reminds him of Mort Lear’s laptop. He looks around anxiously before he remembers giving it over to Tomasina. So much for forwarding those e-mails—though Andrew’s had enough of his natterings by now. Happenstance will keep him honest.
Just as he finds a place to plug in the fan, he hears the door open behind him.
“Oh God sorry! I thought you were the loo!”
“I’ve borne a number of insults in my life,” says Nick, “but that’s original.”
Merry starts to retreat, but she hesitates.
“You’re not made of glitter after all,” she says.
Nick looks down briefly. He folds his arms across his bare chest. “Alas, just flesh and blood, skin and bone.”
Still she stands there, in her skirt and blouse, bare-legged, her boisterous hair sprung free from the pins that tamed it earlier on.
“May I come in?” she asks in a girlish voice.
“Whyever not?” Nick means this sarcastically, but in fact, though he’s knackered, he’s not eager to be alone with his madly colliding thoughts and concerns.
She looks around for a place to sit. His clothes and two scripts occupy the only chairs. All of a sudden, she hikes up her skirt and sits on the floor, cross-legged. It’s a funny, boyish act, as if they’re mates settling in for a catch-up on football or who’s snogging whom.
“I want to ask you something,” she says, “while I have the nerve.”
Oh God, what now? But he likes her, this blurty, broad-tempered woman. Charming, the way she’s modest yet unbridled all at once.
Though he does not encourage her to go on, she says, “So this movie you’re making. The one about Mort. I was thinking, because we hope to open the museum by the end of next year, the fall if we’re lucky…and isn’t that maybe when your movie might come out? Probably that’s an insane question. But what if maybe, if I could coordinate with your producers, and you, you too, we could build a thing—listen to me, Jesus!—build a special event around the movie and have you talk about…you know. The movie. Being Lear. Inside him. Understanding him.”
Nick sighs. “I’m not at all sure I understand him. Less and less, I fear….But I’d love to see your museum, and I could speak with Andrew, my director, about…”
Is she beginning to cry? Nick stares at her for a moment, puzzled. “Merry?”
“The truth is,” she says, “I for one will never understand him. That man broke my heart and I owe him fucking nothing.” She wipes her eyes with both hands. “I am so angry at him, most of all because I fell in love with him. Which is the stupidest thing of all. And seeing these crazy beautiful drawings he did when he was just an innocent little boy—it’s sort of wrecking me. Because I want them. I feel like I would kill just to…Oh Christ.”
“I’m so sorry,” says Nick, the only thing to say.
“I am such a fool.” She is struggling to get to her feet. She makes it onto one foot and a knee, but her skirt is not cooperating.
Nick rises quickly and crosses the room to steady her before she keels over.
She grasps his bare arms with her hands.
“Oh God,” she says as she stands back, straightening her skirt, “why are you so easy to talk to? Does everybody use you this way? I honestly didn’t mean to barge in.”
You must not fucking fall down, Merry instructs her woozy self. Leave the room.
But all she can manage is to brace herself against this man—who is almost shockingly slight in build. (Christ, she could knock him over!) She is looking straight at his freckled throat, the faint V where the sun has traced what must be the line of an open-throated shirt, such civilized attire. She can see the shadowed hollows behind his collarbones. As she regains her balance, he says, “Here. Just sit for a minute. You’re wobbly.”
She lets him lead her to the couch—except that it’s a bed.
They sit at opposite corners of the opened mattress. When she looks at him, this time at his face, she senses that he shares her mirth. Not that he’s laughing at her; more like he’s—but there’s no way he could be thinking what she’s thinking. No earthly way.