fic: events inspired by sergio leone (rpf)
events inspired by sergio leone
rpf. these things can be classified as the good, the bad, or the just plain ugly. diane kruger/michael fassbender. rated r. 6632 words.
notes: for fated_addiction! my fellow enabler! yeah, i went there. because seriously, dude. i apparently have no shame in the realm of rpf? whatever. lies, lies, upon more lies up in here.
EVENTS INSPIRED BY SERGIO LEONE
CRACKED ACTOR, DAVID BOWIE // VENUS, AIR // UN AMICO, ENNIO MORRICONE // DREAMS, TV ON THE RADIO
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party. / Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party / and seduced you / and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing. / You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?
(Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, Richard Siken)
You made up a list of your luckiest stars, and you made me familiar to you in the dark.
And you made me familiar to you in the dark, when you said that you wish you were worse than you are.
(Magic vs. Midas, Sunset Rubdown)
CHAPTER ONE
La Louisiane
THE SET OF INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Our story began in a basement tavern that was not real.
“All levity aside, what are you doing in France?”
“Attending Goebbels’s film premiere as the fraulein’s escort.”
“You’re the fraulein’s escort?”
“Somebody has to carry the lighter.” Michael flipped the lighter and Diane took a drag of her cigarette.
“And - cut. From the top - we’ll take it from the top.”
-
BEFORE
In rehearsals they had sat around a card table in folding chairs. There were venetian blinds on the windows and the slight buzz of fluorescent lighting above them. “Really sets the scene,” Diane had joked.
Michael had been the last to arrive. When he did, it was Diane and it was August, Gedeon and Til around the table, engaged in a conversation of rapid-fire German.
“Glad I brushed up,” Michael said in German as he sat down.
"We're all friends here," she teased, but a part of Michael believed her. That he was an outsider, an interloper. That she knew these men and they knew her and he was something different, something new.
He would have been right.
-
AFTER
It was too early in the day for this heat. Diane fidgeted in her seat and the legs of her chair scraped against the wood of the floor. Next to her Michael wiped at the line of sweat that dotted his forehead.
"Fucking oven in here," he grumbled, and she smiled, wan. She could feel the line of sweat trickling down her back beneath her costume, pooling at the dip of the small of her back. She shifted again and cursed under her breath.
"Roasting as well?" he asked.
She scoffed. "I have on just as many layers as you - so, yeah. I'm frying over here."
Across the table Til pulled at his collar. "The lights," he said. "They make it too hot."
"I'd say so," Michael said and slouched a little lower next to her. His elbow bumped against her arm.
-
AND AFTER THAT
The blood was not real but it was still sticky and still red, still frustratingly insistent against her skin.
“Ah, and the buckets of blood have begun,” he said.
“This is new for me,” she said with a tight grimace. Michael cracked a smile.
“You learn to love it,” he said. Off her skeptical look his smile grew. “That’s not even true. Don’t know why I said it. One time, for one film, bunch of punks butchered me up good in the forest,” he told her. “I mean, real nasty business. Barbed wire was involved,” he said.
Diane pulled a face, and said, “Yuck.” He laughed. Her bare leg was coated in candy apple red and her fingers were slick with it. She picked at the dried fake blood on her left hand.
“Did you die?” she asked. Her face was far more serious than the question warranted.
Michael nodded, mock solemnly. “Tragically,” he said. And then, as an aside: “They lit me on fire.”
“This sounds like a terrible movie,” she said.
He smirked. “From my character’s vantage, I’d imagine he’d agree. Tho’ looks like I’m getting my nads blown to bits in this one and I think it’s still got a fair shot of being a pretty damn good film.”
“Rocks fall, everybody dies,” Diane teased and he laughed again.
-
They took lunch at three o’clock that afternoon. They left the basement and the day was overcast. Earlier that morning her phone rang and she had not answered. It had been Guillaume and his odd habit of bestowing good wishes on anniversaries that did not exist anymore.
“You ever marry?” she asked around a bite of sandwich. She pulled a napkin to her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, her mouth still full. “So unladylike.”
Michael laughed. She swallowed dramatically. “No,” he said.
“No?”
“Your question - no, I’ve never married.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You have,” he stated.
“You google me?” she asked wryly.
He shook his head, but his grin was mischievous. “Hardly necessary. Read an article on you once. They used the word divorced like a bloody qualifier or something. ‘The divorced German actress…’”
She laughed despite herself. “Sounds like quite the feat of journalism.”
He shrugged. “I was in an airport. You take what you can get.”
Their eyes met over their lunch and paper napkins, disposable cups of coffee and she looked away quickly.
“I don’t know why I asked you that,” she mumbled. She felt a flush of embarrassment and picked at the crust of her sandwich.
Michael smiled. “I’ve been asked stranger questions.”
-
Quentin scribbled something in the margins of the script and handed it back to her.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t say where you’ve been.”
Diane frowned. “I don’t think the expression works like that,” she said. “I think you have it twisted.”
Quentin shook his head and pounded her on the shoulder. “Director’s always right, ma cheri,” he shouted. “What I say goes! Your life is in my hands! Yada yada yada - get your ass back to work.”
-
CINEMA DE TARANTINO
Thursday night was movie night.
It had been one spaghetti western after the other, and this was no exception.
“He said this was his favorite?” Michael asked.
“So it would seem,” Diane drawled.
They sat arm to arm next to each other. She concentrated on the taste of the salt stuck to her tongue and the popcorn grease on her fingers. She concentrated on him as well, the heat of his arm pressed easy and natural against the length of her own, but this was without intent.
That matters, she had thought. Clint Eastwood’s face filled the screen and Michael’s arm shifted beside hers but he did not pull away.
She flexed her fingers and her pinky and ring finger bumped against his. His fingers were warm and the screen was in black and white, the sound too loud, a gunshot fired, and behind them Quentin laughed. Diane did not. Diane had not seen anything funny at all.
Her fingers wound easily with his until they loosely held hands. He ran his thumb over her knuckles and her heart pounded, the bag of popcorn forgotten in her lap.
After the film, Quentin asked her if she had liked it.
“It was my favorite,” she said, and she blushed.
-
THE SET OF INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
“I want so many things,” she told him once. It had been late and she had still been dressed as Bridget and he had been dressed as Archie and in the dim lighting of their fake tavern the muted khaki of their sleeves had matched. Later he would wear grey and she would still wear the khaki, but at that moment they had matched.
“I want so many things,” she told him, and if this was something he remembered, then it was something he remembered and held. If it was something he forgot, then he let it slip away like so many other pieces of wasted knowledge and private, personal intelligence.
This was something he remembered.
She had been tired and earnest when she said it. That was something else he remembered. He remembered that the scene had paused, that a cameraman had dropped something he should not have, and that Quentin had said, “cut.” There had been music and Michael had thought it the sort you would play in 1960, in a diner, in America, that it was happy and bright and had no place in the claustrophobia of this den, that it had no place with him or with her.
He did not remember why she said it. He could not recall what he had said to draw such a confession from her, but it happened. This was something that happened.
-
CHAPTER TWO
English As A Second Language
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
What you are supposed to want is for people to know your name.
Diane never wanted this.
She wanted the specific; she wanted that handful of men to know her name and to say it with a reverence she might not deserve. It was a matter of intimate linguistics.
Michael had another movie at Cannes, Michael had other costars.
“I want you to meet Diane,” he had told them.
“This is Diane,” he said.
-
BEFORE THE PREMIERE
“Talk to us about the film,” the man with the microphone said.
“Ah, it’s fantastic, it’s really fantastic,” Michael said; he smiled large from behind his sunglasses. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and leaned back on his heels. Diane stood to his left, an arm around Melanie and another around Brad as the photographers snapped. Michael was loud; even above the din of the crowd, an unintelligible mass of French and English, she could hear him.
“And your character? What was that like?”
Michael ran a hand over his mouth before releasing a sharp bark of a laugh. “He’s a real relic, isn’t he? He was a blast. And, well, I got to take part in, what I think at least, was a truly excellent scene - in the tavern, yeah? It was a good solid two weeks, and I got to work with some of the best, such great, great actors - August, uh, Diehl, and Til - Til Schweiger. And of course, Diane.”
“And of course Diane!” the man with the microphone echoed, like it meant something. “Thank you for your time, best luck.”
“Mademoiselle! Ici, ici!” they called. Diane smiled, all teeth and distracted.
Michael slipped away.
-
AFTER THE PREMIERE
There had been a reception and there had been champagne.
“You make me nervous,” she slurred.
“I think I like that,” he murmured. He brushed a lock of hair off her neck.
“It’s not fair though,” she said slowly, each word measured. “That gives you, hmm, inordinate power over me.”
Michael laughed at her pronunciation of inordinate. He dipped forward, his mouth next to her ear.
“Believe me, love, we’re on equal footing.”
She did not ask him what he meant by that, but she inhaled sharply. His hand skimmed down the exposed skin of her back.
“Maybe you should…” she started and the trailed off. He was close enough that he could not just see but feel her swallow.
“Maybe I should…?”
She leaned back away from him and tipped her face up to look at him. She was barefoot and her shoes were clutched in her left hand. Josh was gone. Josh had an airplane, Josh had a transatlantic flight. These details mattered.
“I was going to suggest you come back with me,” she said, and for a moment she felt brave. Michael’s eyes narrowed and there was slight tic of his jaw as he suppressed a smile.
“You were going to,” he said, “meaning you now rescind the offer?”
Diane’s grin was curious and close-mouthed. The bank of elevators waited behind them and the carpet of the hotel lobby was thick under her feet. For the first time she glanced behind him; there was no one else there. They were alone. Her chest felt tight and his tie was undone and he was watching her mouth, and this is how it starts, she had thought. He met her gaze.
“The offer still stands,” she said quietly. She turned and picked the length of her dress of the floor and walked over to elevators. She pressed the up button.
-
The elevator doors closed and he kissed her.
There was a small chime and she had pressed the button of her floor and then his mouth was on hers.
The mirrored walls of the elevator car were chilly against her bare back and she curved away from it, into him.
"Please," she said quietly, into his jawline, and he bit at the skin just below her ear.
He had a knee pressed between her legs and her shoes had dropped to the floor of the elevator. She let out a sound a cross between a whimper and a moan and her body arched too easily against his.
She had wanted this. She knew that much.
Both her hands framed his face and she kissed him back in earnest. He gripped her waist too tight and his mouth was wet and smoky, sharp and open against hers. This was what she wanted. She wanted more.
The elevator doors opened and Daniel stood there. Diane pushed Michael away; Michael turned his back to the both of them and cleared his throat, adjusted his clothing. Diane blushed and Daniel snickered.
“Oh shut up,” she muttered as she stormed out of the elevator.
Michael grabbed her shoes and followed after. Daniel entered the abandoned elevator and shook his head.
-
"This is a mistake," she said outside her hotel room.
"It is," he agreed. "You're right, it is," he repeated.
She was suddenly tired. The night had been long, the day longer. The hallway of the hotel stretched out in either direction and her feet were bare and her dress was too much. He was too much.
She reached for her shoes and her fingers brushed against Michael's. A long time ago her fingers had brushed against his in the dark.
"It's late," she said quietly.
"It is," he said again.
Neither of them said good night. She opened the door to her room and shut it behind her. She flipped the deadbolt. She could not hear him as he left but when she looked through the peephole minutes later he was gone.
-
THE LONDON PREMIERE
In London Quentin told her: “He’s not coming.”
“Oh,” she had said. There was the curious sensation of deflation coupled with relief. She might have let her shoulders slump and her posture bend, but she breathed in deep and perhaps that was the most important part.
-
Quentin called her hotel room. “Ah, fair fraulein,” he said. Diane laughed, fiddled with the clasp of her bracelet. “Bad news - old Fassbender’s not coming.”
“Oh,” she said. She sat down at the desk with the telephone.
“He’s fallen for the allure of Comic-Con apparently. The Trekkies have taken him hostage!”
“Hmm,” she murmured. The clasp was stuck and her fingers were not nimble enough to undo it.
“That was a joke, Big D. Get in the game.” She snorted, pressed her thumbnail into the hinge of metal but it would not give. “I just wanted to let you know,” Quentin was saying, “that his little Irish eyes won’t be sparkling the red carpet here tonight.”
“Okay then,” she said brightly enough, convincingly enough and hung up. She gave up on the bracelet.
-
THE LOS ANGELES PREMIERE
“I hate it,” he said, “how all those American ask, ‘can I smoke here?’ Is that supposed to be polite, hmm?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t smoke.”
She snatched the cigarette from his mouth and took a shallow inhale. Her fingers had passed over his lips, just barely, and he licked.
“You were going to say, ‘all you Americans,’” she said and took another drag from his cigarette. She tapped it slightly and ash fell.
“Beg pardon?”
“Before, when you were talking about Americans and their smoking and manners, or lack thereof. You said ‘all those Americans,’ but you paused. You were going to say, ‘all you Americans.’”
Michael studied her. His hand covered hers for the briefest of moments and he took his cigarette back. He pressed it between his lips and the papery tip tasted of smoke and nicotine; it tasted waxy, the way he imagined her lipstick would smear against his tongue.
“I don’t know what the fuck that’s supposed to mean,” he said with gritted teeth, the cigarette burnt down more than halfway hanging from his mouth.
She shrugged. “Nevermind,” she said. “It’s not worth it.”
Michael exhaled heavy in smoke and ground the cigarette butt out beneath his heel. He took a step forward. Diane did not take a step back. He cocked his head to the left and her arms hung at her sides.
“Don’t know why you’re so bloody confrontational all the sudden.”
Diane shook her head. His eye caught the empty champagne flute in her hand.
“You don’t get to lord last night over me,” she said suddenly. Michael arched an eyebrow.
“Love,” he said, “I hadn’t even mentioned last fucking night. That’s all you.” She looked away from him. They were by a service entrance. She must have taken a wrong turn at some point; she had asked for fresh air and a waiter had said, “This way, ma’am,” and she had cringed at the word, but she followed him. She had followed him and she had stood, alone, in a parking lot next to a loading dock, in a party dress with a flute of champagne until he showed up with his pack of cigarettes and dirty mouth, with last night in tow.
“You were right,” she finally said. “When you apologized, last night - you were right.”
Michael shook his head and smiled. “You don’t mean that. I didn’t mean it then and you don’t mean it now,” he said.
He watched her face closely and she blinked rapidly before shifting her eyes to the ground. She sniffled once and then looked up, her eyes bright and her mouth hard and angry.
“I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know what the fuck you expect, following me out here.”
Michael took another step forward. “I don’t expect anything from you,” he said quietly and Diane bit her lip. He wound an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek slowly.
“Have a good night,” he said.
Diane’s eyes were wet and she watched their feet and said, “Bye.”
She watched his feet walk away.
-
CHAPTER THREE
A Dinner Party
VINO E CUCINA, BERLIN
They were strangers when they met. Not all of them were strangers, but the two of them, Diane and Michael, had been variables, unknowns, when they met.
They went to an Italian restaurant in Berlin. “Quentin swears by this place,” Brad said, and they all believed him.
-
They each took turns introducing themselves.
“Til Schweiger,” he said, and held up a hand and waved.
“They call him the German Brad Pitt,” Diane hissed in a loud stage whisper.
Brad slammed his drink down. “Fuck that. There is only one Brad Pitt.” Everyone laughed. “’Sides,” Brad continued, “this son a bitch is far better looking than I ever was or will be.” He reached over and ruffled Til’s hair and the two men laughed.
“So modest,” Diane crowed.
-
TWO DRINKS LATER
“My French is piss poor,” he told her. He leaned over and inclined his head as though what he had just said was secret, a confession unknown to the table at large.
“Your German any better?” she asked in her native tongue.
“That’s fucking hilarious,” he answered, in kind.
His accent was impeccable. She did not tell him this. Diane watched him finish his pint and watched Gedeon laugh at whatever Michael had just said.
He turned his attention back to her and simply smiled at her with raised eyebrows. She returned the gesture with a soft laugh.
Michael stretched back in his chair. His mouth sounded sticky when he sighed.
Beneath the table Diane crossed her legs.
-
THREE DRINKS LATER
Her mouth was stained from the empty bottle of burgundy on the table. Her teeth were darker and her lips were near purple. She did not seem to notice; he did not mention it.
"I'm going to regret this in the morning," she said.
"Most things worth doing are regretted come morning," he said.
"That's not even true," she said. "You're just trying to be cute."
"It was a valiant effort, if I do say so myself," he said, and it earned a small laugh from her.
-
AN INDETERMINATE NUMBER OF DRINKS LATER
“You seem like the kind of dude who’s good at keeping his business quiet,” Brad said to Michael. Brad was drunk. Michael was almost drunk.
Michael only laughed. “Thanks, I think?”
“Nah, man,” Brad said. “That’s a good thing. That’s a fucking attribute, man. I mean, I was with you at that table. You give nothing away - I don’t know shit about you. And there’s really only two industries that comes in handy, right? The CIA. And Hollywood.” Brad sobered for a moment. “Probably politics too. But that’s just sticky, man.”
Michael smirked. “You telling me if this doesn’t pan out I’d make for a good spy?”
“Fuck yeah. You’re all wiry and shit. You’d be sly on your feet. Don’t know if you’re a good shot, but I bet they’d teach you that.”
“Thanks for the career advice.”
“My pleasure.” Brad threw an arm around his shoulder. “And here’s another little tidbit for you - when we get back to the table, tell Kruger we were talking about her. She’s been watching us the whole goddamn time.” Brad looked over at her quickly and then back, studied Michael. “Scratch that, my friend. I’ve been e-fucking-clipsed.”
“How’s that?” Michael asked.
“She’s been watching you, motherfucker,” and Brad opened in a laugh. Michael cast a surreptitious glance over to the table they had abandoned and Diane jerked her head quick to the right, nodded her head along with whatever Daniel was saying.
“I’d make a damn good spy too, you know,” Brad added. Michael turned back towards the other man and laughed; he needed another drink.
“I have no doubts,” he said. They rejoined the table.
Michael sat beside Diane.
-
CHAPTER FOUR
Ad Lib
COMIC-CON, SAN DIEGO
“You look fucking beat,” Brolin told him.
“Hmm,” Michael hummed. “It’s a living.”
“You got shit on your mind, don’t you.”
Michael’s line of sight slid to the side and he leaned forward in his chair, hands clasped before him.
“I think you cross a certain threshold, an age let’s say, and you’ve always got something on your fucking mind.”
“Don’t sass me. Asshole.”
Michael chuckled. “Apologies,” he said, and then shook his head and leaned back heavy. “Yeah,” he conceded, “I got shit on my mind.”
There was silence. Megan had not yet arrived.
“You got that big premiere coming up, yeah? Los Angeles?”
“That’s right.”
“When you headed out?”
“After this. Quentin wants a cast reunion of sorts, night before,” and laughed at that, “and you know I never miss a fucking party.” He laughed again and this time it sounded accusingly anxious.
Josh frowned. “You worried about the film?”
Michael sighed. “Sure.” Josh let it slide.
-
TWELVE HOURS LATER
That evening, after the convention, after, what Josh coined “the fucking pack of nerds” none too cleverly, they found the hotel bar. Both men drank whiskey.
“So what’s her name?” Josh asked.
“Beg pardon?”
“Fucking Europeans,” Josh said with a laugh. “Always so goddamn insufferably polite. I asked you what her name is.”
“I don’t have a her to name,” Michael answered, glib.
“Fuck that, man. You’ve got the look of the pining and the unconsummated all over your ruddy Euro face.”
“Point taken,” Michael said. He finished his drink and ordered another. He waited until the bartender delivered the glass, a new napkin underneath the sweating drink.
“No names,” Michael said suddenly.
Josh only laughed and gestured wide with his hand. “If that makes it any easier, then by all means.” He clapped a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “I am here to guide you, Mikey. Let me - let me be your fucking Oprah.”
Michael snickered into his drink and crunched down hard on a cube of ice.
“Since I can’t get a name, tell me how you met her then.”
Michael’s mouth pulled in a mock grimace. “Let’s just call her a business associate.”
Josh let out a catcall and then began to laugh uproariously. “She’s a fucking actress? Well done, my friend. Well done. Aim high, I say.”
Josh finished his drink. “So you work with her?”
“I have been in all of two films you are aware of, one of which I was costar to your leading man role. Unfair question.”
“So that’s a yes.”
They drank in silence and a cover band started up with Sinatra’s greatest hits. Josh groaned and Michael stifled a yawn. After another drink, Josh turned to him.
“Diane’s a good name for a girl. But then again, I might be biased.”
-
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
“Let’s do lunch,” Rose had said earlier in the week. “You’re back from Los Angeles, you’re back in New York, and we always, always say we’ll get together, blah, blah, nothing ever happens. So. I’m taking charge. Executive decision: we will be ladies who lunch this week.”
They met for drinks instead.
“How’s Josh?” Rose asked.
“Vancouver,” Diane said. She caught Rose’s confused face. “I’m sorry. I thought you said where.”
Rose only nodded. “So Vancouver, huh? You going out there?”
“Eventually,” Diane said quietly. Resigned - that was the word for it. She took a large gulp of her martini.
“Oh, Krugs,” Rose said. “What is it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Liar.”
“How are you?” Diane asked; she spun it on the other woman.
Rose sighed. “I have no idea.”
Both women drank in silence.
Rose leaned in. “Were we always this cagy with each other? What the hell happened to us?”
Diane knew what had happened but she did not know how to explain it. There are some things and some events and some people you must admit to yourself before you can share them with others. She was not there yet. Los Angeles was still too fresh and still too far away. To admit Los Angeles and to admit him would be something too great for her to stand.
-
THAT ONE TIME, A LONG ENOUGH TIME AGO
She knew things just as everyone else knew them. Guillaume had a film with Keira Knightley coming up. Guillaume was shooting a film with his Marion. She remembered that about him. He liked to work with the women he loved. She thought she understood it; she knew she had understood it once with him.
There was a day when Josh had teased her and suggested she guest star on his TV show.
“God no,” she had said. He had laughed but the sound had been false and unfamiliar. Over the rest of their dinner following that, he had not looked her in the eye.
I didn’t mean that, she didn’t say. I didn’t mean it like that. She had meant it, but she had not meant for it to hurt.
This was before Cannes. This was before Berlin and before Bridget von Hammersmark.
This was before Archie Hicox, because sometimes, and let us be honest, thinking in terms of the fictional and the slightly detached, albeit familiar, is the easier path to take.
This was before Los Angeles.
-
INTERLUDE: A PHONE CALL
“Sorry to bother,” she had said.
“No,” Melanie answered. “You are good practice. An English lesson, yeah?”
Diane had smiled. “Yeah.”
And then:
“I’ve done some stupid - some really stupid - things,” Diane said.
“That part’s easy,” Melanie answered. “That part? It is done. Now you go forward - now you fix it.”
Diane rubbed her thumb over the handle of the empty white coffee mug before her.
“What if I don’t want to fix it?” she asked quietly. Melanie did not answer at first.
“Then maybe these things, these stupid things you talk of are not that stupid.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that maybe this is not a problem. Maybe it is solution, maybe it is…an answer. Something new to start with.”
“You sound like a goddamn fortune teller.”
“Merci.” Diane stood and placed the mug into the sink and braced herself against the edge of the sink.
“You do know what we’re talking about here, right?” Diane asked.
Melanie laughed hard. “Give me some of the credit. That is the expression, no?”
Diane laughed this time. “Something like that.” There was a beat and Diane looked out the window, Diane looked over New York.
“He cares for you too, you know this,” Melanie said. Diane imagined a shrug on her end as she said it. “He looks at you like that, like he means it. I do notice.”
“What?” Diane asked; her mouth was dry. “Who?”
“Michael,” Melanie said, and that was all.
-
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, ALWAYS NEW YORK
There was a party. This was New York. They met.
Autumn had arrived in the close of summer and the temperature dipped. Their film remained only in half-price theaters and the smallest of venues lost in the expanse of Middle America.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” she said, and let him kiss her cheek.
He smiled without teeth and looked at her carefully. “I figured you would.”
Diane frowned. “Know that you’d come?”
“No,” he said, “just be here.” He smiled for real this time. “This is New York.”
Diane smiled in return.
People are context specific. People are the places they live in.
The adverse holds true as well. This was a city built on the very people who lived in it. This was a city of old lovers and lost lovers, new lovers, current lovers, all the lovers she would never meet and never come to possess. This was the city that continually broke her heart yet found new ways to mend it. This was the cite of resurrection and new beginnings.
This was New York.
-
CHAPTER FIVE
Il buoni, il brutto, il cattivo.
LOS ANGELES
A person can only fight realities for so long. You can argue against gravity even as it presses you down, keeps you tethered to this earth. You can argue until it hurts, until that very pressure breaks you down and you relent - you give in.
Quentin had a house in Los Angeles and Quentin had a party.
-
"We should talk," she suggested. Michael did not answer but he slammed back the rest of his drink and hissed as it went down.
"We'll talk then."
Quentin had hired a band. Or maybe they were here for free, Diane did not know. But there was a bar and there was a band and the sound was deafening, vibrating the floor and the walls around them.
She jerked her head toward the staircase and he followed her as she began her ascent.
-
A BEDROOM
"So," he said. Diane shut the door to the spare bedroom behind her and leaned heavy against it, her hands behind her back. "Talk."
"I just," she started and then she stopped. Cannes sat between them. "I just wanted to make sure we were okay."
Michael pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and lit one with a match. He dropped the match onto a set of coasters on a side table and inhaled before answering her.
"We're okay then," he said.
"That's not terribly convincing."
"Not sure what you want me to say." He took another drag and began to pace the room. "I'm fine. I was under the impression you were fine as well - it's been how many bloody months, eh? Figured that meant you were well, good, marvelous. I've been well, good, marvelous. Like I said. Not sure what you want me to say. I’m an actor. I’m a lying bastard. I’ll say what you want."
"I," and she stopped again. She glared. She pushed off the door and walked towards him. Michael stopped his pacing and looked at her expectantly.
"You want me to tell you it won't ever happen again?" he asked. There was something dangerous in his tone; Diane chose to ignore it. "Because as I recall, and I believe I do recall correctly - excellent memory, mind you - it was you who invited me up to your room."
"You kissed me first," she shot back, ready.
"Chicken or the egg," he drawled and stabbed out his cigarette in an ashtray next to a lamp.
"We're fine?"
"If you're asking if I'm going to tell, or if I've told, mum's the word, love. Nothing to fear."
"That wasn't what I was asking."
"Then cut the bullshit here and tell me what you're asking exactly. This is fucking exhausting." He ran a hand over his eyes and looked at her, his face frighteningly open.
At that moment her phone rang.
“Jesus, fuck,” she muttered under her breath and her hands shook slightly as she opened the small black purse. JOSH, the display read. “Fuck,” she repeated and stared at the phone in her hand.
“Duty calls?” Michael asked, the smirk on his face too much for her.
Diane did not look up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe,” he said, and she raised her head at that. “I do know you’re here, with me, and you have yet to answer him. What are you afraid of?”
She slapped him.
She went to slap him again but he grabbed her by the wrist. She dropped her purse and her phone on the table, next to the ashtray, next to his spent cigarette. She had not meant to hit him the first time, nor a second.
“That expression, what’s it again? Fool me once, fool me twice.” Diane only shook her head; her eyes narrowed a little more. Michael leaned in a little and she held her breath. He looked more amused than angry. “I may be drunk but my reflexes aren’t completely shot yet.”
Her nostrils flared as she fought for some semblance of control - control of him, control of herself.
The corners of Michael’s mouth softened slightly as he looked at her. His cheek was bright where her hand had been. “I didn’t realize people actually did that in real life,” he said. His grip was still tight. “I knew it happened in soap operas, those Spanish, what you call them? Telenovelas? I just didn’t think real people slapped other real people.” And then he laughed.
She kissed him.
She swallowed the sound and she kissed him. It was all teeth and his lip and he gave her back exactly what she deserved. Their mouths clashed and she had not remembered it this rough or this ugly back in France. He still gripped her wrist tight, too tight, and she wondered if later, if in the morning, if at the premiere the next evening, there would be a mark. She scratched her nails down the length of his neck and there was a shaky sigh against her mouth.
His hand slid along her bare thigh and her legs parted for him. This was easy, she thought. This was so easy. This should have happened sooner, she thought as well, but she dismissed the thought. It didn't matter. This was now. This was the present. His fingers ghosted along the dip of thigh and hip then lower and this was happening.
His fingers twisted in the thin fabric of her panties, damp and then to the side.
His hand under her dress felt too good to be anything that lasted.
Diane pushed his jacket off his shoulders and just as quickly pulled the shirt beneath over his head. He was all lean and muscle and she pushed against him, her hands along the stretch of chest and down lower, abdomen to hip.
He pushed her back and back until her legs hit the edge of the bed and she fell. He fell with her.
She wore her black party dress and her black purse was spilled open on the end table.
She threw her arms behind her head. She would not look at him.
She had stripped him naked; she remained clothed - the satin black party dress with the little puff sleeves and the high waist. Michael had told her she had looked pretty. Hours ago, at the front door and before her first drink but after his - before he followed her down that hallway and before she shut the door behind them.
His hands held her ass and raised her off the mattress. She gasped first for that and second when he thrust hard into her. Her dress made small swishing noises against the fabric of the bedspread.
He moaned, mouth open against the length of her throat, and her fingers curled against the nape of his neck and pulled his head back. Just as she would not look at him as he had first entered her, now he was all that she wanted to see. His nose bumped against hers as he leaned in to kiss her; she breathed thickly between his parted lips. She raised her hips to him and he fought to push her down with his.
Michael said her name and she clutched at him, her nails blunt against his skin. He moved to bury his face in the crook of her neck, and Diane said, “no, no, no;” she choked out, “I want to look at you,” and he obliged.
When she came her eyes were open.
So were his.
-
AND AFTER
She waited for the guilt; it did not come.
Michael stood to pull his trousers up and as his fingers caught to adjust his collar, she stopped him. She stood behind him and her fingers overlapped with his - she kissed the back of his neck and held him. Without her heels he was taller and she rested her face against the hard muscle that joined shoulder to shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Shut the fuck up,” she mumbled into his skin, the shirt that covered it. “Shut the fuck up,” she said, and the words were satisfyingly coarse in her mouth, against the press of cotton to her lips. It was not what she wanted to say. What she wanted to say was, “You can’t mean that, please don’t mean that,” but even with his back to her and even with her face hidden, his out of view, she could not bring herself to say it.
They returned to the party.
She returned to New York.
-
ONCE UPON A TIME ON THE SET OF INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
These were the places they visited and these were the places they claimed. These were the places months later could not be left behind. Memory was involuntary more times than not.
These were the events in question. These were the events an outsider might pick up in print form and read, and upon arriving at the closest thing to a construction of a conclusion would say: how romantic.
These were yet to pass.
There is a movie screen and there is a popcorn machine in the corner and the entire room smells of the old cinema you would visit as a child.
“It’s not a joke, it’s a rope, Tuco,” Clint Eastwood says. “Now I want you to get up there and put your head in that noose.”
Michael’s arm stretches along Diane’s arm. She does not flinch, he does not pull away. The bone of her wrist presses against the bare skin of his forearm; she reaches her fingers out and perhaps he does the same. Perhaps they brush, perhaps they twist - they undeniably meet.
Our story does not end.
-
CREDITS ROLL.
rpf. these things can be classified as the good, the bad, or the just plain ugly. diane kruger/michael fassbender. rated r. 6632 words.
notes: for fated_addiction! my fellow enabler! yeah, i went there. because seriously, dude. i apparently have no shame in the realm of rpf? whatever. lies, lies, upon more lies up in here.
EVENTS INSPIRED BY SERGIO LEONE
CRACKED ACTOR, DAVID BOWIE // VENUS, AIR // UN AMICO, ENNIO MORRICONE // DREAMS, TV ON THE RADIO
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party. / Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party / and seduced you / and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing. / You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?
(Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, Richard Siken)
You made up a list of your luckiest stars, and you made me familiar to you in the dark.
And you made me familiar to you in the dark, when you said that you wish you were worse than you are.
(Magic vs. Midas, Sunset Rubdown)
CHAPTER ONE
La Louisiane
THE SET OF INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Our story began in a basement tavern that was not real.
“All levity aside, what are you doing in France?”
“Attending Goebbels’s film premiere as the fraulein’s escort.”
“You’re the fraulein’s escort?”
“Somebody has to carry the lighter.” Michael flipped the lighter and Diane took a drag of her cigarette.
“And - cut. From the top - we’ll take it from the top.”
-
BEFORE
In rehearsals they had sat around a card table in folding chairs. There were venetian blinds on the windows and the slight buzz of fluorescent lighting above them. “Really sets the scene,” Diane had joked.
Michael had been the last to arrive. When he did, it was Diane and it was August, Gedeon and Til around the table, engaged in a conversation of rapid-fire German.
“Glad I brushed up,” Michael said in German as he sat down.
"We're all friends here," she teased, but a part of Michael believed her. That he was an outsider, an interloper. That she knew these men and they knew her and he was something different, something new.
He would have been right.
-
AFTER
It was too early in the day for this heat. Diane fidgeted in her seat and the legs of her chair scraped against the wood of the floor. Next to her Michael wiped at the line of sweat that dotted his forehead.
"Fucking oven in here," he grumbled, and she smiled, wan. She could feel the line of sweat trickling down her back beneath her costume, pooling at the dip of the small of her back. She shifted again and cursed under her breath.
"Roasting as well?" he asked.
She scoffed. "I have on just as many layers as you - so, yeah. I'm frying over here."
Across the table Til pulled at his collar. "The lights," he said. "They make it too hot."
"I'd say so," Michael said and slouched a little lower next to her. His elbow bumped against her arm.
-
AND AFTER THAT
The blood was not real but it was still sticky and still red, still frustratingly insistent against her skin.
“Ah, and the buckets of blood have begun,” he said.
“This is new for me,” she said with a tight grimace. Michael cracked a smile.
“You learn to love it,” he said. Off her skeptical look his smile grew. “That’s not even true. Don’t know why I said it. One time, for one film, bunch of punks butchered me up good in the forest,” he told her. “I mean, real nasty business. Barbed wire was involved,” he said.
Diane pulled a face, and said, “Yuck.” He laughed. Her bare leg was coated in candy apple red and her fingers were slick with it. She picked at the dried fake blood on her left hand.
“Did you die?” she asked. Her face was far more serious than the question warranted.
Michael nodded, mock solemnly. “Tragically,” he said. And then, as an aside: “They lit me on fire.”
“This sounds like a terrible movie,” she said.
He smirked. “From my character’s vantage, I’d imagine he’d agree. Tho’ looks like I’m getting my nads blown to bits in this one and I think it’s still got a fair shot of being a pretty damn good film.”
“Rocks fall, everybody dies,” Diane teased and he laughed again.
-
They took lunch at three o’clock that afternoon. They left the basement and the day was overcast. Earlier that morning her phone rang and she had not answered. It had been Guillaume and his odd habit of bestowing good wishes on anniversaries that did not exist anymore.
“You ever marry?” she asked around a bite of sandwich. She pulled a napkin to her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, her mouth still full. “So unladylike.”
Michael laughed. She swallowed dramatically. “No,” he said.
“No?”
“Your question - no, I’ve never married.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You have,” he stated.
“You google me?” she asked wryly.
He shook his head, but his grin was mischievous. “Hardly necessary. Read an article on you once. They used the word divorced like a bloody qualifier or something. ‘The divorced German actress…’”
She laughed despite herself. “Sounds like quite the feat of journalism.”
He shrugged. “I was in an airport. You take what you can get.”
Their eyes met over their lunch and paper napkins, disposable cups of coffee and she looked away quickly.
“I don’t know why I asked you that,” she mumbled. She felt a flush of embarrassment and picked at the crust of her sandwich.
Michael smiled. “I’ve been asked stranger questions.”
-
Quentin scribbled something in the margins of the script and handed it back to her.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t say where you’ve been.”
Diane frowned. “I don’t think the expression works like that,” she said. “I think you have it twisted.”
Quentin shook his head and pounded her on the shoulder. “Director’s always right, ma cheri,” he shouted. “What I say goes! Your life is in my hands! Yada yada yada - get your ass back to work.”
-
CINEMA DE TARANTINO
Thursday night was movie night.
It had been one spaghetti western after the other, and this was no exception.
“He said this was his favorite?” Michael asked.
“So it would seem,” Diane drawled.
They sat arm to arm next to each other. She concentrated on the taste of the salt stuck to her tongue and the popcorn grease on her fingers. She concentrated on him as well, the heat of his arm pressed easy and natural against the length of her own, but this was without intent.
That matters, she had thought. Clint Eastwood’s face filled the screen and Michael’s arm shifted beside hers but he did not pull away.
She flexed her fingers and her pinky and ring finger bumped against his. His fingers were warm and the screen was in black and white, the sound too loud, a gunshot fired, and behind them Quentin laughed. Diane did not. Diane had not seen anything funny at all.
Her fingers wound easily with his until they loosely held hands. He ran his thumb over her knuckles and her heart pounded, the bag of popcorn forgotten in her lap.
After the film, Quentin asked her if she had liked it.
“It was my favorite,” she said, and she blushed.
-
THE SET OF INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
“I want so many things,” she told him once. It had been late and she had still been dressed as Bridget and he had been dressed as Archie and in the dim lighting of their fake tavern the muted khaki of their sleeves had matched. Later he would wear grey and she would still wear the khaki, but at that moment they had matched.
“I want so many things,” she told him, and if this was something he remembered, then it was something he remembered and held. If it was something he forgot, then he let it slip away like so many other pieces of wasted knowledge and private, personal intelligence.
This was something he remembered.
She had been tired and earnest when she said it. That was something else he remembered. He remembered that the scene had paused, that a cameraman had dropped something he should not have, and that Quentin had said, “cut.” There had been music and Michael had thought it the sort you would play in 1960, in a diner, in America, that it was happy and bright and had no place in the claustrophobia of this den, that it had no place with him or with her.
He did not remember why she said it. He could not recall what he had said to draw such a confession from her, but it happened. This was something that happened.
-
CHAPTER TWO
English As A Second Language
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
What you are supposed to want is for people to know your name.
Diane never wanted this.
She wanted the specific; she wanted that handful of men to know her name and to say it with a reverence she might not deserve. It was a matter of intimate linguistics.
Michael had another movie at Cannes, Michael had other costars.
“I want you to meet Diane,” he had told them.
“This is Diane,” he said.
-
BEFORE THE PREMIERE
“Talk to us about the film,” the man with the microphone said.
“Ah, it’s fantastic, it’s really fantastic,” Michael said; he smiled large from behind his sunglasses. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and leaned back on his heels. Diane stood to his left, an arm around Melanie and another around Brad as the photographers snapped. Michael was loud; even above the din of the crowd, an unintelligible mass of French and English, she could hear him.
“And your character? What was that like?”
Michael ran a hand over his mouth before releasing a sharp bark of a laugh. “He’s a real relic, isn’t he? He was a blast. And, well, I got to take part in, what I think at least, was a truly excellent scene - in the tavern, yeah? It was a good solid two weeks, and I got to work with some of the best, such great, great actors - August, uh, Diehl, and Til - Til Schweiger. And of course, Diane.”
“And of course Diane!” the man with the microphone echoed, like it meant something. “Thank you for your time, best luck.”
“Mademoiselle! Ici, ici!” they called. Diane smiled, all teeth and distracted.
Michael slipped away.
-
AFTER THE PREMIERE
There had been a reception and there had been champagne.
“You make me nervous,” she slurred.
“I think I like that,” he murmured. He brushed a lock of hair off her neck.
“It’s not fair though,” she said slowly, each word measured. “That gives you, hmm, inordinate power over me.”
Michael laughed at her pronunciation of inordinate. He dipped forward, his mouth next to her ear.
“Believe me, love, we’re on equal footing.”
She did not ask him what he meant by that, but she inhaled sharply. His hand skimmed down the exposed skin of her back.
“Maybe you should…” she started and the trailed off. He was close enough that he could not just see but feel her swallow.
“Maybe I should…?”
She leaned back away from him and tipped her face up to look at him. She was barefoot and her shoes were clutched in her left hand. Josh was gone. Josh had an airplane, Josh had a transatlantic flight. These details mattered.
“I was going to suggest you come back with me,” she said, and for a moment she felt brave. Michael’s eyes narrowed and there was slight tic of his jaw as he suppressed a smile.
“You were going to,” he said, “meaning you now rescind the offer?”
Diane’s grin was curious and close-mouthed. The bank of elevators waited behind them and the carpet of the hotel lobby was thick under her feet. For the first time she glanced behind him; there was no one else there. They were alone. Her chest felt tight and his tie was undone and he was watching her mouth, and this is how it starts, she had thought. He met her gaze.
“The offer still stands,” she said quietly. She turned and picked the length of her dress of the floor and walked over to elevators. She pressed the up button.
-
The elevator doors closed and he kissed her.
There was a small chime and she had pressed the button of her floor and then his mouth was on hers.
The mirrored walls of the elevator car were chilly against her bare back and she curved away from it, into him.
"Please," she said quietly, into his jawline, and he bit at the skin just below her ear.
He had a knee pressed between her legs and her shoes had dropped to the floor of the elevator. She let out a sound a cross between a whimper and a moan and her body arched too easily against his.
She had wanted this. She knew that much.
Both her hands framed his face and she kissed him back in earnest. He gripped her waist too tight and his mouth was wet and smoky, sharp and open against hers. This was what she wanted. She wanted more.
The elevator doors opened and Daniel stood there. Diane pushed Michael away; Michael turned his back to the both of them and cleared his throat, adjusted his clothing. Diane blushed and Daniel snickered.
“Oh shut up,” she muttered as she stormed out of the elevator.
Michael grabbed her shoes and followed after. Daniel entered the abandoned elevator and shook his head.
-
"This is a mistake," she said outside her hotel room.
"It is," he agreed. "You're right, it is," he repeated.
She was suddenly tired. The night had been long, the day longer. The hallway of the hotel stretched out in either direction and her feet were bare and her dress was too much. He was too much.
She reached for her shoes and her fingers brushed against Michael's. A long time ago her fingers had brushed against his in the dark.
"It's late," she said quietly.
"It is," he said again.
Neither of them said good night. She opened the door to her room and shut it behind her. She flipped the deadbolt. She could not hear him as he left but when she looked through the peephole minutes later he was gone.
-
THE LONDON PREMIERE
In London Quentin told her: “He’s not coming.”
“Oh,” she had said. There was the curious sensation of deflation coupled with relief. She might have let her shoulders slump and her posture bend, but she breathed in deep and perhaps that was the most important part.
-
Quentin called her hotel room. “Ah, fair fraulein,” he said. Diane laughed, fiddled with the clasp of her bracelet. “Bad news - old Fassbender’s not coming.”
“Oh,” she said. She sat down at the desk with the telephone.
“He’s fallen for the allure of Comic-Con apparently. The Trekkies have taken him hostage!”
“Hmm,” she murmured. The clasp was stuck and her fingers were not nimble enough to undo it.
“That was a joke, Big D. Get in the game.” She snorted, pressed her thumbnail into the hinge of metal but it would not give. “I just wanted to let you know,” Quentin was saying, “that his little Irish eyes won’t be sparkling the red carpet here tonight.”
“Okay then,” she said brightly enough, convincingly enough and hung up. She gave up on the bracelet.
-
THE LOS ANGELES PREMIERE
“I hate it,” he said, “how all those American ask, ‘can I smoke here?’ Is that supposed to be polite, hmm?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t smoke.”
She snatched the cigarette from his mouth and took a shallow inhale. Her fingers had passed over his lips, just barely, and he licked.
“You were going to say, ‘all you Americans,’” she said and took another drag from his cigarette. She tapped it slightly and ash fell.
“Beg pardon?”
“Before, when you were talking about Americans and their smoking and manners, or lack thereof. You said ‘all those Americans,’ but you paused. You were going to say, ‘all you Americans.’”
Michael studied her. His hand covered hers for the briefest of moments and he took his cigarette back. He pressed it between his lips and the papery tip tasted of smoke and nicotine; it tasted waxy, the way he imagined her lipstick would smear against his tongue.
“I don’t know what the fuck that’s supposed to mean,” he said with gritted teeth, the cigarette burnt down more than halfway hanging from his mouth.
She shrugged. “Nevermind,” she said. “It’s not worth it.”
Michael exhaled heavy in smoke and ground the cigarette butt out beneath his heel. He took a step forward. Diane did not take a step back. He cocked his head to the left and her arms hung at her sides.
“Don’t know why you’re so bloody confrontational all the sudden.”
Diane shook her head. His eye caught the empty champagne flute in her hand.
“You don’t get to lord last night over me,” she said suddenly. Michael arched an eyebrow.
“Love,” he said, “I hadn’t even mentioned last fucking night. That’s all you.” She looked away from him. They were by a service entrance. She must have taken a wrong turn at some point; she had asked for fresh air and a waiter had said, “This way, ma’am,” and she had cringed at the word, but she followed him. She had followed him and she had stood, alone, in a parking lot next to a loading dock, in a party dress with a flute of champagne until he showed up with his pack of cigarettes and dirty mouth, with last night in tow.
“You were right,” she finally said. “When you apologized, last night - you were right.”
Michael shook his head and smiled. “You don’t mean that. I didn’t mean it then and you don’t mean it now,” he said.
He watched her face closely and she blinked rapidly before shifting her eyes to the ground. She sniffled once and then looked up, her eyes bright and her mouth hard and angry.
“I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know what the fuck you expect, following me out here.”
Michael took another step forward. “I don’t expect anything from you,” he said quietly and Diane bit her lip. He wound an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek slowly.
“Have a good night,” he said.
Diane’s eyes were wet and she watched their feet and said, “Bye.”
She watched his feet walk away.
-
CHAPTER THREE
A Dinner Party
VINO E CUCINA, BERLIN
They were strangers when they met. Not all of them were strangers, but the two of them, Diane and Michael, had been variables, unknowns, when they met.
They went to an Italian restaurant in Berlin. “Quentin swears by this place,” Brad said, and they all believed him.
-
They each took turns introducing themselves.
“Til Schweiger,” he said, and held up a hand and waved.
“They call him the German Brad Pitt,” Diane hissed in a loud stage whisper.
Brad slammed his drink down. “Fuck that. There is only one Brad Pitt.” Everyone laughed. “’Sides,” Brad continued, “this son a bitch is far better looking than I ever was or will be.” He reached over and ruffled Til’s hair and the two men laughed.
“So modest,” Diane crowed.
-
TWO DRINKS LATER
“My French is piss poor,” he told her. He leaned over and inclined his head as though what he had just said was secret, a confession unknown to the table at large.
“Your German any better?” she asked in her native tongue.
“That’s fucking hilarious,” he answered, in kind.
His accent was impeccable. She did not tell him this. Diane watched him finish his pint and watched Gedeon laugh at whatever Michael had just said.
He turned his attention back to her and simply smiled at her with raised eyebrows. She returned the gesture with a soft laugh.
Michael stretched back in his chair. His mouth sounded sticky when he sighed.
Beneath the table Diane crossed her legs.
-
THREE DRINKS LATER
Her mouth was stained from the empty bottle of burgundy on the table. Her teeth were darker and her lips were near purple. She did not seem to notice; he did not mention it.
"I'm going to regret this in the morning," she said.
"Most things worth doing are regretted come morning," he said.
"That's not even true," she said. "You're just trying to be cute."
"It was a valiant effort, if I do say so myself," he said, and it earned a small laugh from her.
-
AN INDETERMINATE NUMBER OF DRINKS LATER
“You seem like the kind of dude who’s good at keeping his business quiet,” Brad said to Michael. Brad was drunk. Michael was almost drunk.
Michael only laughed. “Thanks, I think?”
“Nah, man,” Brad said. “That’s a good thing. That’s a fucking attribute, man. I mean, I was with you at that table. You give nothing away - I don’t know shit about you. And there’s really only two industries that comes in handy, right? The CIA. And Hollywood.” Brad sobered for a moment. “Probably politics too. But that’s just sticky, man.”
Michael smirked. “You telling me if this doesn’t pan out I’d make for a good spy?”
“Fuck yeah. You’re all wiry and shit. You’d be sly on your feet. Don’t know if you’re a good shot, but I bet they’d teach you that.”
“Thanks for the career advice.”
“My pleasure.” Brad threw an arm around his shoulder. “And here’s another little tidbit for you - when we get back to the table, tell Kruger we were talking about her. She’s been watching us the whole goddamn time.” Brad looked over at her quickly and then back, studied Michael. “Scratch that, my friend. I’ve been e-fucking-clipsed.”
“How’s that?” Michael asked.
“She’s been watching you, motherfucker,” and Brad opened in a laugh. Michael cast a surreptitious glance over to the table they had abandoned and Diane jerked her head quick to the right, nodded her head along with whatever Daniel was saying.
“I’d make a damn good spy too, you know,” Brad added. Michael turned back towards the other man and laughed; he needed another drink.
“I have no doubts,” he said. They rejoined the table.
Michael sat beside Diane.
-
CHAPTER FOUR
Ad Lib
COMIC-CON, SAN DIEGO
“You look fucking beat,” Brolin told him.
“Hmm,” Michael hummed. “It’s a living.”
“You got shit on your mind, don’t you.”
Michael’s line of sight slid to the side and he leaned forward in his chair, hands clasped before him.
“I think you cross a certain threshold, an age let’s say, and you’ve always got something on your fucking mind.”
“Don’t sass me. Asshole.”
Michael chuckled. “Apologies,” he said, and then shook his head and leaned back heavy. “Yeah,” he conceded, “I got shit on my mind.”
There was silence. Megan had not yet arrived.
“You got that big premiere coming up, yeah? Los Angeles?”
“That’s right.”
“When you headed out?”
“After this. Quentin wants a cast reunion of sorts, night before,” and laughed at that, “and you know I never miss a fucking party.” He laughed again and this time it sounded accusingly anxious.
Josh frowned. “You worried about the film?”
Michael sighed. “Sure.” Josh let it slide.
-
TWELVE HOURS LATER
That evening, after the convention, after, what Josh coined “the fucking pack of nerds” none too cleverly, they found the hotel bar. Both men drank whiskey.
“So what’s her name?” Josh asked.
“Beg pardon?”
“Fucking Europeans,” Josh said with a laugh. “Always so goddamn insufferably polite. I asked you what her name is.”
“I don’t have a her to name,” Michael answered, glib.
“Fuck that, man. You’ve got the look of the pining and the unconsummated all over your ruddy Euro face.”
“Point taken,” Michael said. He finished his drink and ordered another. He waited until the bartender delivered the glass, a new napkin underneath the sweating drink.
“No names,” Michael said suddenly.
Josh only laughed and gestured wide with his hand. “If that makes it any easier, then by all means.” He clapped a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “I am here to guide you, Mikey. Let me - let me be your fucking Oprah.”
Michael snickered into his drink and crunched down hard on a cube of ice.
“Since I can’t get a name, tell me how you met her then.”
Michael’s mouth pulled in a mock grimace. “Let’s just call her a business associate.”
Josh let out a catcall and then began to laugh uproariously. “She’s a fucking actress? Well done, my friend. Well done. Aim high, I say.”
Josh finished his drink. “So you work with her?”
“I have been in all of two films you are aware of, one of which I was costar to your leading man role. Unfair question.”
“So that’s a yes.”
They drank in silence and a cover band started up with Sinatra’s greatest hits. Josh groaned and Michael stifled a yawn. After another drink, Josh turned to him.
“Diane’s a good name for a girl. But then again, I might be biased.”
-
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
“Let’s do lunch,” Rose had said earlier in the week. “You’re back from Los Angeles, you’re back in New York, and we always, always say we’ll get together, blah, blah, nothing ever happens. So. I’m taking charge. Executive decision: we will be ladies who lunch this week.”
They met for drinks instead.
“How’s Josh?” Rose asked.
“Vancouver,” Diane said. She caught Rose’s confused face. “I’m sorry. I thought you said where.”
Rose only nodded. “So Vancouver, huh? You going out there?”
“Eventually,” Diane said quietly. Resigned - that was the word for it. She took a large gulp of her martini.
“Oh, Krugs,” Rose said. “What is it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Liar.”
“How are you?” Diane asked; she spun it on the other woman.
Rose sighed. “I have no idea.”
Both women drank in silence.
Rose leaned in. “Were we always this cagy with each other? What the hell happened to us?”
Diane knew what had happened but she did not know how to explain it. There are some things and some events and some people you must admit to yourself before you can share them with others. She was not there yet. Los Angeles was still too fresh and still too far away. To admit Los Angeles and to admit him would be something too great for her to stand.
-
THAT ONE TIME, A LONG ENOUGH TIME AGO
She knew things just as everyone else knew them. Guillaume had a film with Keira Knightley coming up. Guillaume was shooting a film with his Marion. She remembered that about him. He liked to work with the women he loved. She thought she understood it; she knew she had understood it once with him.
There was a day when Josh had teased her and suggested she guest star on his TV show.
“God no,” she had said. He had laughed but the sound had been false and unfamiliar. Over the rest of their dinner following that, he had not looked her in the eye.
I didn’t mean that, she didn’t say. I didn’t mean it like that. She had meant it, but she had not meant for it to hurt.
This was before Cannes. This was before Berlin and before Bridget von Hammersmark.
This was before Archie Hicox, because sometimes, and let us be honest, thinking in terms of the fictional and the slightly detached, albeit familiar, is the easier path to take.
This was before Los Angeles.
-
INTERLUDE: A PHONE CALL
“Sorry to bother,” she had said.
“No,” Melanie answered. “You are good practice. An English lesson, yeah?”
Diane had smiled. “Yeah.”
And then:
“I’ve done some stupid - some really stupid - things,” Diane said.
“That part’s easy,” Melanie answered. “That part? It is done. Now you go forward - now you fix it.”
Diane rubbed her thumb over the handle of the empty white coffee mug before her.
“What if I don’t want to fix it?” she asked quietly. Melanie did not answer at first.
“Then maybe these things, these stupid things you talk of are not that stupid.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that maybe this is not a problem. Maybe it is solution, maybe it is…an answer. Something new to start with.”
“You sound like a goddamn fortune teller.”
“Merci.” Diane stood and placed the mug into the sink and braced herself against the edge of the sink.
“You do know what we’re talking about here, right?” Diane asked.
Melanie laughed hard. “Give me some of the credit. That is the expression, no?”
Diane laughed this time. “Something like that.” There was a beat and Diane looked out the window, Diane looked over New York.
“He cares for you too, you know this,” Melanie said. Diane imagined a shrug on her end as she said it. “He looks at you like that, like he means it. I do notice.”
“What?” Diane asked; her mouth was dry. “Who?”
“Michael,” Melanie said, and that was all.
-
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, ALWAYS NEW YORK
There was a party. This was New York. They met.
Autumn had arrived in the close of summer and the temperature dipped. Their film remained only in half-price theaters and the smallest of venues lost in the expanse of Middle America.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” she said, and let him kiss her cheek.
He smiled without teeth and looked at her carefully. “I figured you would.”
Diane frowned. “Know that you’d come?”
“No,” he said, “just be here.” He smiled for real this time. “This is New York.”
Diane smiled in return.
People are context specific. People are the places they live in.
The adverse holds true as well. This was a city built on the very people who lived in it. This was a city of old lovers and lost lovers, new lovers, current lovers, all the lovers she would never meet and never come to possess. This was the city that continually broke her heart yet found new ways to mend it. This was the cite of resurrection and new beginnings.
This was New York.
-
CHAPTER FIVE
Il buoni, il brutto, il cattivo.
LOS ANGELES
A person can only fight realities for so long. You can argue against gravity even as it presses you down, keeps you tethered to this earth. You can argue until it hurts, until that very pressure breaks you down and you relent - you give in.
Quentin had a house in Los Angeles and Quentin had a party.
-
"We should talk," she suggested. Michael did not answer but he slammed back the rest of his drink and hissed as it went down.
"We'll talk then."
Quentin had hired a band. Or maybe they were here for free, Diane did not know. But there was a bar and there was a band and the sound was deafening, vibrating the floor and the walls around them.
She jerked her head toward the staircase and he followed her as she began her ascent.
-
A BEDROOM
"So," he said. Diane shut the door to the spare bedroom behind her and leaned heavy against it, her hands behind her back. "Talk."
"I just," she started and then she stopped. Cannes sat between them. "I just wanted to make sure we were okay."
Michael pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and lit one with a match. He dropped the match onto a set of coasters on a side table and inhaled before answering her.
"We're okay then," he said.
"That's not terribly convincing."
"Not sure what you want me to say." He took another drag and began to pace the room. "I'm fine. I was under the impression you were fine as well - it's been how many bloody months, eh? Figured that meant you were well, good, marvelous. I've been well, good, marvelous. Like I said. Not sure what you want me to say. I’m an actor. I’m a lying bastard. I’ll say what you want."
"I," and she stopped again. She glared. She pushed off the door and walked towards him. Michael stopped his pacing and looked at her expectantly.
"You want me to tell you it won't ever happen again?" he asked. There was something dangerous in his tone; Diane chose to ignore it. "Because as I recall, and I believe I do recall correctly - excellent memory, mind you - it was you who invited me up to your room."
"You kissed me first," she shot back, ready.
"Chicken or the egg," he drawled and stabbed out his cigarette in an ashtray next to a lamp.
"We're fine?"
"If you're asking if I'm going to tell, or if I've told, mum's the word, love. Nothing to fear."
"That wasn't what I was asking."
"Then cut the bullshit here and tell me what you're asking exactly. This is fucking exhausting." He ran a hand over his eyes and looked at her, his face frighteningly open.
At that moment her phone rang.
“Jesus, fuck,” she muttered under her breath and her hands shook slightly as she opened the small black purse. JOSH, the display read. “Fuck,” she repeated and stared at the phone in her hand.
“Duty calls?” Michael asked, the smirk on his face too much for her.
Diane did not look up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe,” he said, and she raised her head at that. “I do know you’re here, with me, and you have yet to answer him. What are you afraid of?”
She slapped him.
She went to slap him again but he grabbed her by the wrist. She dropped her purse and her phone on the table, next to the ashtray, next to his spent cigarette. She had not meant to hit him the first time, nor a second.
“That expression, what’s it again? Fool me once, fool me twice.” Diane only shook her head; her eyes narrowed a little more. Michael leaned in a little and she held her breath. He looked more amused than angry. “I may be drunk but my reflexes aren’t completely shot yet.”
Her nostrils flared as she fought for some semblance of control - control of him, control of herself.
The corners of Michael’s mouth softened slightly as he looked at her. His cheek was bright where her hand had been. “I didn’t realize people actually did that in real life,” he said. His grip was still tight. “I knew it happened in soap operas, those Spanish, what you call them? Telenovelas? I just didn’t think real people slapped other real people.” And then he laughed.
She kissed him.
She swallowed the sound and she kissed him. It was all teeth and his lip and he gave her back exactly what she deserved. Their mouths clashed and she had not remembered it this rough or this ugly back in France. He still gripped her wrist tight, too tight, and she wondered if later, if in the morning, if at the premiere the next evening, there would be a mark. She scratched her nails down the length of his neck and there was a shaky sigh against her mouth.
His hand slid along her bare thigh and her legs parted for him. This was easy, she thought. This was so easy. This should have happened sooner, she thought as well, but she dismissed the thought. It didn't matter. This was now. This was the present. His fingers ghosted along the dip of thigh and hip then lower and this was happening.
His fingers twisted in the thin fabric of her panties, damp and then to the side.
His hand under her dress felt too good to be anything that lasted.
Diane pushed his jacket off his shoulders and just as quickly pulled the shirt beneath over his head. He was all lean and muscle and she pushed against him, her hands along the stretch of chest and down lower, abdomen to hip.
He pushed her back and back until her legs hit the edge of the bed and she fell. He fell with her.
She wore her black party dress and her black purse was spilled open on the end table.
She threw her arms behind her head. She would not look at him.
She had stripped him naked; she remained clothed - the satin black party dress with the little puff sleeves and the high waist. Michael had told her she had looked pretty. Hours ago, at the front door and before her first drink but after his - before he followed her down that hallway and before she shut the door behind them.
His hands held her ass and raised her off the mattress. She gasped first for that and second when he thrust hard into her. Her dress made small swishing noises against the fabric of the bedspread.
He moaned, mouth open against the length of her throat, and her fingers curled against the nape of his neck and pulled his head back. Just as she would not look at him as he had first entered her, now he was all that she wanted to see. His nose bumped against hers as he leaned in to kiss her; she breathed thickly between his parted lips. She raised her hips to him and he fought to push her down with his.
Michael said her name and she clutched at him, her nails blunt against his skin. He moved to bury his face in the crook of her neck, and Diane said, “no, no, no;” she choked out, “I want to look at you,” and he obliged.
When she came her eyes were open.
So were his.
-
AND AFTER
She waited for the guilt; it did not come.
Michael stood to pull his trousers up and as his fingers caught to adjust his collar, she stopped him. She stood behind him and her fingers overlapped with his - she kissed the back of his neck and held him. Without her heels he was taller and she rested her face against the hard muscle that joined shoulder to shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Shut the fuck up,” she mumbled into his skin, the shirt that covered it. “Shut the fuck up,” she said, and the words were satisfyingly coarse in her mouth, against the press of cotton to her lips. It was not what she wanted to say. What she wanted to say was, “You can’t mean that, please don’t mean that,” but even with his back to her and even with her face hidden, his out of view, she could not bring herself to say it.
They returned to the party.
She returned to New York.
-
ONCE UPON A TIME ON THE SET OF INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
These were the places they visited and these were the places they claimed. These were the places months later could not be left behind. Memory was involuntary more times than not.
These were the events in question. These were the events an outsider might pick up in print form and read, and upon arriving at the closest thing to a construction of a conclusion would say: how romantic.
These were yet to pass.
There is a movie screen and there is a popcorn machine in the corner and the entire room smells of the old cinema you would visit as a child.
“It’s not a joke, it’s a rope, Tuco,” Clint Eastwood says. “Now I want you to get up there and put your head in that noose.”
Michael’s arm stretches along Diane’s arm. She does not flinch, he does not pull away. The bone of her wrist presses against the bare skin of his forearm; she reaches her fingers out and perhaps he does the same. Perhaps they brush, perhaps they twist - they undeniably meet.
Our story does not end.
-
CREDITS ROLL.