Table by the Window
AN: This is the only finished story for this fandom that I have, and I hate to put some pairing and/or the usual description that should accompany a fic here, because in truth, even if I borrowed some details, life happenings, words or indeed the manner of speech from a real person - this is really more a study on the nature of being a fan, than anything else. I have two more stories that I haven't finished - and maybe I will, for I still remember where they should go, and am still reasonably sure I can write this man. But maybe I will finish them, and maybe - not. This story however is already here...
Table by the window
“I'm not (romantic). I see myself like a tragic.
If I think about a love story, I recall Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet.
I can't forget my melancholic half.”
Look, if at any point you decide that you do not want to read this story - just do not. Drop it. Altogether. I won’t mind. I mean, I am not even sure I’m writing it for you, if you get me. And anyway, it’s one strange story, and the simple fact I cannot just go on without telling it someone doesn’t mean you have to feel that you must to… or are indeed obliged to read it up to the end. Just so that you do not call the doctor, when you are but midway through, or call myself telling “Oh, you’re nuts…”, and “You’re a loser, man…”, and “Why haven’t you…” Just do not say anything. Nothing at all, OK? ‘Cause those are all the words I’ve told and the questions I’ve asked myself many times. And I’m not writing it down to get any reaction from you, either. Just hoping that the writing will be therapy in itself. Like, bringing things in perspective, you know, and finding semblance of order within myself. I’m supposed to be a stickler for order. It’s in my sign. And I am. Most of the time. It’s just that this whole thing has sort of crept on me, and I was deeply stuck in it before I could pin it down for what it is…. Oh, fuck! I have written almost a paragraph without getting any nearer to the beginning, and now I’m trying to start it all from the end. From the very word I’m so loath to utter even in my thoughts that clearly and truly depicts my state and that might well make you stop your reading this very moment. Why is it so difficult to put it all into words? To tell it just the way it has happened? But I never was proficient with the words. Not with written words, nor with spoken ones for that matter…They just… escape me. The only ones, the right ones, the ones I need… Yeah, I know I’m rambling, just trying to prolong the preamble. But I will begin… eventually… Oh, yes, I will. I will.
I know you envy me. Don’t deny it, you do. The fame, the crowds, the recognition in the eyes of every which person. No, do not deny it, man. And do not think I don’t know that you pity me too, as when it grows out of all proportion and, sort of, becomes real scary, really tough to bear. Or just is a simple nuisance, as when I’m trying to just… go out… to a movie, perhaps, or a theater play, or just a gig, or have a quiet talk with you in a cafe. Ah, a cafe… But for now - just look deep inside yourself, and admit it. That however solicitous you are when I whine sometimes, which is not that often, not as often at least as I do feel stifled and in need of whining about it… however humorous you seem in relaying to me what pictures of me have recently surfaced on the world wide web, yes, I know you do it to make me smile, more than drawing any humor from it yourself… yet, you do envy me, or rather the opportunities that seem inherent in my being a star. When you look at the girl who’s dying to get…eh, near me, and you think: “There is but nothing what she won’t do if he just right now gets up and asks her”. And I see this look on your face, this envious longing to trade places with me if for a moment, if for a time, and it’s like blow to me, it goes right for the heart, man… for it doesn’t work quite that way, you know, and more often than not it is me, who’d gladly traded places with you… oh, well, sometimes. But it doesn’t quite work this way, not for me at least, no, it doesn’t… which is why sometimes I’m growing tired of even the company of the closest, of the most trusted friends… and… no, not feel offended… just for a while… cannot bear it. Must go off by myself… And this is such a roundabout way to come to the beginning, but important, in a sense that it might allow you to see it “my side”, my perspective, to see what a kind of person I really am. An exercise in futility, cause you probably have much better or just your own picture of what I am and you won’t trade it for mine. But I’m rambling again, so here goes…the story… the story… Ah, a cafe…
The cafe, really. ‘Cause this was the one I frequented. Being a night owl it is important to know of some such place where you can go at any time day or night to just drink a quick cup of coffee, a shot of whisky, well, a beer, if I felt thirsty - and go back on my way. And I knew quite a lot of them around town. But this one was, sort of, different. It was of this sort of quiet out of sight out of mind places most people just didn’t notice as they ran on their business along the dimly lit windows, it somehow… didn’t look very inviting? But not for me. For among the patrons which were the strangest collection of low life characters I had seen (and I have seen my share of low life characters, as you know) no one seemed to notice me or mark me down for who, or actually what I really was. It wasn’t me indeed or even the clothes you scorn so, so much as no one was really paying attention, they all seemed too deeply immersed either in their booze, or in their depression, or in a rare case when they came there in twos or threes (it was not the place for bigger companies) in some kind of an earnest and somewhat subdued discussion. So you see, it was just a place for myself on these very moments when I didn’t fancy a company, or a talk, or a stare, or any other undue attention. But it all refers in the most to a fair daytime, and I wasn’t such a patron of it by day. At night however… now I’m trying to figure out just when I have found it, and it turns out - must have been all of two years ago, somehow I didn’t think it had been so long… at night, when even dimly lit windows turn into quite an inviting beacon, it had become a sort of a turning point to me or a point of no return beyond which I didn’t dare to wander. In terms of time - not in terms of actual trip. Whether I rode a bike or chose to walk on foot, been driven from home by restlessness or just returned from a gig, yes, sometimes even after I just had sat at another cafe with you, exchanging old jokes and anecdotes and discussing some book, it had become a good… well, maybe not so good, but just a habit of mine to turn up there at about three in the morning, when there was almost no one, and even the bartender looked like falling asleep, take a table in the corner, some beer or some red wine, depending on what’s the mood, and just sit there - reading or simply gazing out the nearby window, thinking my own thoughts or - more often - trying to vanquish the thoughts altogether, just watching the palm leaves bending-unbending-turning under the wind. I spent there two to three hours on most every night - unless I had a filming to begin first thing in the morning, or an in-house date, or naturally - unless I was out of town. But apart from it - it was five to six by the time that I called for check, by the time I felt it was now a safe assumption that I can go home, lie down and find some sleep.
I was already fairly set in this routine by the time I really started paying attention to what surrounded me. But you know only too well that about that time I myself had too deeply plunged into the realm of depression, was too immersed in my own troubled and bitter thoughts to begin to notice first thing about the reality. But for the palm leaves… but then they somehow seemed a safe thing to watch. They were always there. Always unchanging. Turning and bending and dipping under the wind in a faintly hypnotic fashion. I found it soothing. Relaxing. As if some tightly wound spring or a cramped muscle deep within me unlocked when I watched them swirl in the yellow light. No actually cramped muscles that period though. I think that it might have helped. Some straightforwardly nasty work-out, to make me concentrate, and to leave me aching and sore in so many places that it surely had kept me thinking along the strictly practical lines. As it was - my work was the only thing, perhaps, that still interested me enough to make me want to concentrate on the world outside myself, and it was work that finally carried me through, work and this story I’m going to begin at last.
There was a woman sitting by the window just a table apart from me. She must have already been there for sometime, indeed, she must have been sitting there every night, for her presence - so fairly close to my table in an almost empty cafe (where there were rarely more than four people at this time of night) - when it finally registered, didn’t startle me, nor did I feel any threat. For let us face it, me being what I am, a strange woman nearby might well have been considered a threat - a threat of intrusion, the star-encounter thing they so like to brag about afterwards, which I - in my troubled state, slightly drunk and at night when (and it’s a proven fact, man) the human defenses are at their lowest ebb - just couldn’t handle, couldn’t imagine myself handling in a remotely graceful manner… But no, her presence didn’t seem to be threatening, instead it felt… familiar. Soothing. And unchanging. Just as the palm leaves beyond the window…
But that is something that really needs an explanation, man, so you do understand. I do not know whether you’ve ever been in a depression… yes, I do know you’ve felt depressed, but what I mean is a depression in it’s almost clinical, almost over the edge depth, when you suddenly find yourself going hours in doing the most simple, the most unthinking things for the pure reason that they seem like the only ones you can do… for this very dumbness they bring, which you are scared to abandon. Consider finding that you’ve been doodling for the past two hours until the paper in front of you is covered with an interwoven maze of words and lines, and nothing on it makes any sense any more and you can’t even remember what you were thinking about while you did it or whether you were thinking at all… I’d say it scares shit out of you, man. And also - plunges you even deeper in your depression… Or - when you suddenly realize you are almost unable to comprehend what is said to you, but only hear and follow it as the simplest commands, as when we were shooting a street scene and the director told me: “Just walk with the crowd”, and walk I did - right out of the camera range, so they had to send an assistant to turn me back. Scares the shit out of one, oh yeah… and that was work - the only thing I felt remotely interested in, the only thing I really… really wanted to concentrate on… They changed the schedule around me after that. To allow me time to come to my senses… which was immensely sweet of them… no, really… and also so very pragmatic, cause they wanted me in a working condition, of course, didn’t they?..
What I’m trying to come to, though, is that when you are in this kind of state… things really do not register very quickly, and something stands a fairer chance to catch your attention if it moves repeatedly, constantly, as if giving the fact of its existence a time to sink in… So the first thing I’ve noticed about her were her hands. Her hand… Moving and moving and moving on the brink of my vision, writing something seemingly endless on the blank page of ordinary office paper. A wiry hand and tense, or perhaps, just tired, with an upsticking angle of a forefinger on the pencil… Ah! A pencil!.. I felt slightly amused… A strong hand, too big for a surprisingly slender wrist that supported it, but beautiful… in this natural way - not too womanly, not too crude… I found myself fascinated with this hand, with all the tiny movements that go into the process of writing: the way it slides across the paper, the miniscule back and forth movements, as the letters unfold, the gentle rotation of the wrist, the intricate lace - mirror image of written text - woven into the air by the back end of moving pencil. I watched it and watched it, just as the leaves before, admiring the simple beauty of this moving and living thing a human hand is. Then the second hand crept into my line of vision in the unconsciously searching gesture of someone reaching for a cup, or cigarettes in this case, while still doing something and fully concentrated on it. Her ashtray was half full of stubs, neatly smoked right up to the butt, a true sign of heavy smoker. Well, so was mine. We, night owls, tend to smoke a lot… more in the night that is… than during the day. So I watched this other hand too… as I told you, it was about the first thing outside myself, in days and days, I found I was really fascinated with, or maybe - it was still the single-mindedness of my depression - just finding another simple thing to engage into as long as it stopped the thoughts… so I watched her perform this little Houdini trick of single-handedly extricating a ciggie out of nearly full a pack, and - as her hand went in search of a lighter, and her other hand stopped - contemplatively hanging above the line - my head jerked up and I saw her looking in my direction and tensed, awaiting this god-awful moment when the recognition hits her, the coming of glazed-eyed look. It didn’t come. Instead her lips barely twitched in a hint of a smile, acknowledging my presence - not as a star I didn’t feel, but as a fellow vagabond, appearing right where he should be, where she was used for him to be, - before she turned to the window to gaze at the deserted street. And so did I, feeling my body relax and a hot blush of shame rising up to my ears from the recognition that just a moment ago I was watching her unawares - just as I myself so hated to be watched.
I made a point of looking into the window for the next few minutes. Not so much looking at anything in particular, just forcibly prohibiting myself to look back. Not even a quick, not even a sideways glance in her direction. Yet an urge to look back was almost unbearable. And it felt odd, man… Gosh, did it feel odd!.. Out of character. I was never interested in watching people. Unknown people, that is. Unless I was searching for a specific way my character in the movie should walk, talk and do whatever he was supposed to do. But that was work. I never really understood watching people - for fun… This was not mine thing… Painfully I even knew - whose… This picture of me and Kevin they took in Paris for the promos and never used. On the quay, both of us laughing. God, I can’t believe it was six years ago, we both seem so young on it. The one they used to cut his face out for the obituary… It is so telling in its own way. Me - looking on the Seine, the gulls on the water, the boats, the buildings out on the far side… Him - watching the people on the quay, thinking up the imaginary monologues this or that person might speak, hilarious as he could. That’s what we were laughing at… But I’m digressing. I am… At the same time, I think, even then I felt it was good for me. This sudden interest. This embarrassment. Even this pain. Everything, but everything - outside the inner numbness I fell in for far too long… And so I turned - ever so furtively - and looked at her…
She was not writing anymore. Sitting back in her chair, eyes closed, hands locked behind her head (made me smile inwardly, ‘cause this was exactly how I sat sometimes, when my back was tired), and I could look at her face unashamedly… Uh, shamefully in fact. But I did. No, really, if her eyes opened right then, there would have been no hiding the fact I was watching her face. But I did. I studied it. I dissected it feature by feature with morbid interest of a scientist. Resenting her for my own curiosity I couldn’t stifle… Have you ever thought - whatever we resent in others, lies really within ourselves? The source of this resentment? The reasoning?.. She was not pretty. Definitely not the face one notices or remembers. Not the star material. Unless she went for the character actress in which case she would have been able to play anything. Any role at all. Such almost-but-not-quite features are priceless for a character actor, ‘cause it is the expression then that makes the casting and not just - looks.
Right now she looked tired… and sad… sorrowful even. With a kind of a deep-etched sadness that doesn’t come light, but is a sign of some pain and losses… past, but not quite passed… lingering… But I was, of course, projecting. Putting my own thoughts in her head. Making her feel my own bitter turmoil of sorrow, and guilt, and resentment - haven’t I told that the source of resentment lies always within ourselves? - and utter futility of them all… All this feelings… What could I be guilty of? Of not being there?.. But I was filming in the other end of the country… Now, what if I had been there?.. Of not stopping him from taking this ride?.. Would have ridden with him, most probably. Could have been the one taking that turn first… Not dying instead of him?!.. Oh, c’mon!.. And the resentment… now, I knew where this one was coming from… I felt… abandoned, left alone, betrayed, you choose it… by my best, my most trusted friend… He has betrayed me by dying… This seems so fucking - idiocy… and so selfish… and it only made me resent him more… for making me feel like that…
I wonder… He was your friend too. That’s why I never had it in me to talk to you about all that… We so avoided this subject, man! Both of us… Isn’t it strange that I am writing about it now?.. But I do tend to talk too much about myself. And too little of her… So, where was I?.. I was projecting. Of course. But maybe not quite. For there was something in her, that wasn’t just my projection. That wasn’t - me… She seemed - resigned. As if she went through whatever pain and losses were there for her, and found a place of inner calm. A haven. The calm I craved for and lacked… I suddenly felt restless. Disconcerted. In need of some fresh air… So I stood up, and went to the bar to pay my check, and left.
Do not think I have slept at all that night. But the rest of it comes in fragments. Walked and walked and walked for hours. Good thing - was not on the bike. Another good thing - didn’t have a filming planned for next day. Ended up at home sitting on the floor by my bed, with a bottle of wine. Drinking and crying and cussing and drinking again. But… God! It felt good. Hurting like hell - but alive, that’s how it felt. Came back to my senses at about midday. Still sitting by the bed. The wine - what was left of it - forming a huge stain on the carpet. My best collectors Chateau Petrus too. Birds singing their heads off outside. Considered cleaning the mess. Reconsidered. Climbed into bed. And slept.
Continued in - Part 2
Table by the window
“I'm not (romantic). I see myself like a tragic.
If I think about a love story, I recall Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet.
I can't forget my melancholic half.”
Look, if at any point you decide that you do not want to read this story - just do not. Drop it. Altogether. I won’t mind. I mean, I am not even sure I’m writing it for you, if you get me. And anyway, it’s one strange story, and the simple fact I cannot just go on without telling it someone doesn’t mean you have to feel that you must to… or are indeed obliged to read it up to the end. Just so that you do not call the doctor, when you are but midway through, or call myself telling “Oh, you’re nuts…”, and “You’re a loser, man…”, and “Why haven’t you…” Just do not say anything. Nothing at all, OK? ‘Cause those are all the words I’ve told and the questions I’ve asked myself many times. And I’m not writing it down to get any reaction from you, either. Just hoping that the writing will be therapy in itself. Like, bringing things in perspective, you know, and finding semblance of order within myself. I’m supposed to be a stickler for order. It’s in my sign. And I am. Most of the time. It’s just that this whole thing has sort of crept on me, and I was deeply stuck in it before I could pin it down for what it is…. Oh, fuck! I have written almost a paragraph without getting any nearer to the beginning, and now I’m trying to start it all from the end. From the very word I’m so loath to utter even in my thoughts that clearly and truly depicts my state and that might well make you stop your reading this very moment. Why is it so difficult to put it all into words? To tell it just the way it has happened? But I never was proficient with the words. Not with written words, nor with spoken ones for that matter…They just… escape me. The only ones, the right ones, the ones I need… Yeah, I know I’m rambling, just trying to prolong the preamble. But I will begin… eventually… Oh, yes, I will. I will.
I know you envy me. Don’t deny it, you do. The fame, the crowds, the recognition in the eyes of every which person. No, do not deny it, man. And do not think I don’t know that you pity me too, as when it grows out of all proportion and, sort of, becomes real scary, really tough to bear. Or just is a simple nuisance, as when I’m trying to just… go out… to a movie, perhaps, or a theater play, or just a gig, or have a quiet talk with you in a cafe. Ah, a cafe… But for now - just look deep inside yourself, and admit it. That however solicitous you are when I whine sometimes, which is not that often, not as often at least as I do feel stifled and in need of whining about it… however humorous you seem in relaying to me what pictures of me have recently surfaced on the world wide web, yes, I know you do it to make me smile, more than drawing any humor from it yourself… yet, you do envy me, or rather the opportunities that seem inherent in my being a star. When you look at the girl who’s dying to get…eh, near me, and you think: “There is but nothing what she won’t do if he just right now gets up and asks her”. And I see this look on your face, this envious longing to trade places with me if for a moment, if for a time, and it’s like blow to me, it goes right for the heart, man… for it doesn’t work quite that way, you know, and more often than not it is me, who’d gladly traded places with you… oh, well, sometimes. But it doesn’t quite work this way, not for me at least, no, it doesn’t… which is why sometimes I’m growing tired of even the company of the closest, of the most trusted friends… and… no, not feel offended… just for a while… cannot bear it. Must go off by myself… And this is such a roundabout way to come to the beginning, but important, in a sense that it might allow you to see it “my side”, my perspective, to see what a kind of person I really am. An exercise in futility, cause you probably have much better or just your own picture of what I am and you won’t trade it for mine. But I’m rambling again, so here goes…the story… the story… Ah, a cafe…
The cafe, really. ‘Cause this was the one I frequented. Being a night owl it is important to know of some such place where you can go at any time day or night to just drink a quick cup of coffee, a shot of whisky, well, a beer, if I felt thirsty - and go back on my way. And I knew quite a lot of them around town. But this one was, sort of, different. It was of this sort of quiet out of sight out of mind places most people just didn’t notice as they ran on their business along the dimly lit windows, it somehow… didn’t look very inviting? But not for me. For among the patrons which were the strangest collection of low life characters I had seen (and I have seen my share of low life characters, as you know) no one seemed to notice me or mark me down for who, or actually what I really was. It wasn’t me indeed or even the clothes you scorn so, so much as no one was really paying attention, they all seemed too deeply immersed either in their booze, or in their depression, or in a rare case when they came there in twos or threes (it was not the place for bigger companies) in some kind of an earnest and somewhat subdued discussion. So you see, it was just a place for myself on these very moments when I didn’t fancy a company, or a talk, or a stare, or any other undue attention. But it all refers in the most to a fair daytime, and I wasn’t such a patron of it by day. At night however… now I’m trying to figure out just when I have found it, and it turns out - must have been all of two years ago, somehow I didn’t think it had been so long… at night, when even dimly lit windows turn into quite an inviting beacon, it had become a sort of a turning point to me or a point of no return beyond which I didn’t dare to wander. In terms of time - not in terms of actual trip. Whether I rode a bike or chose to walk on foot, been driven from home by restlessness or just returned from a gig, yes, sometimes even after I just had sat at another cafe with you, exchanging old jokes and anecdotes and discussing some book, it had become a good… well, maybe not so good, but just a habit of mine to turn up there at about three in the morning, when there was almost no one, and even the bartender looked like falling asleep, take a table in the corner, some beer or some red wine, depending on what’s the mood, and just sit there - reading or simply gazing out the nearby window, thinking my own thoughts or - more often - trying to vanquish the thoughts altogether, just watching the palm leaves bending-unbending-turning under the wind. I spent there two to three hours on most every night - unless I had a filming to begin first thing in the morning, or an in-house date, or naturally - unless I was out of town. But apart from it - it was five to six by the time that I called for check, by the time I felt it was now a safe assumption that I can go home, lie down and find some sleep.
I was already fairly set in this routine by the time I really started paying attention to what surrounded me. But you know only too well that about that time I myself had too deeply plunged into the realm of depression, was too immersed in my own troubled and bitter thoughts to begin to notice first thing about the reality. But for the palm leaves… but then they somehow seemed a safe thing to watch. They were always there. Always unchanging. Turning and bending and dipping under the wind in a faintly hypnotic fashion. I found it soothing. Relaxing. As if some tightly wound spring or a cramped muscle deep within me unlocked when I watched them swirl in the yellow light. No actually cramped muscles that period though. I think that it might have helped. Some straightforwardly nasty work-out, to make me concentrate, and to leave me aching and sore in so many places that it surely had kept me thinking along the strictly practical lines. As it was - my work was the only thing, perhaps, that still interested me enough to make me want to concentrate on the world outside myself, and it was work that finally carried me through, work and this story I’m going to begin at last.
There was a woman sitting by the window just a table apart from me. She must have already been there for sometime, indeed, she must have been sitting there every night, for her presence - so fairly close to my table in an almost empty cafe (where there were rarely more than four people at this time of night) - when it finally registered, didn’t startle me, nor did I feel any threat. For let us face it, me being what I am, a strange woman nearby might well have been considered a threat - a threat of intrusion, the star-encounter thing they so like to brag about afterwards, which I - in my troubled state, slightly drunk and at night when (and it’s a proven fact, man) the human defenses are at their lowest ebb - just couldn’t handle, couldn’t imagine myself handling in a remotely graceful manner… But no, her presence didn’t seem to be threatening, instead it felt… familiar. Soothing. And unchanging. Just as the palm leaves beyond the window…
But that is something that really needs an explanation, man, so you do understand. I do not know whether you’ve ever been in a depression… yes, I do know you’ve felt depressed, but what I mean is a depression in it’s almost clinical, almost over the edge depth, when you suddenly find yourself going hours in doing the most simple, the most unthinking things for the pure reason that they seem like the only ones you can do… for this very dumbness they bring, which you are scared to abandon. Consider finding that you’ve been doodling for the past two hours until the paper in front of you is covered with an interwoven maze of words and lines, and nothing on it makes any sense any more and you can’t even remember what you were thinking about while you did it or whether you were thinking at all… I’d say it scares shit out of you, man. And also - plunges you even deeper in your depression… Or - when you suddenly realize you are almost unable to comprehend what is said to you, but only hear and follow it as the simplest commands, as when we were shooting a street scene and the director told me: “Just walk with the crowd”, and walk I did - right out of the camera range, so they had to send an assistant to turn me back. Scares the shit out of one, oh yeah… and that was work - the only thing I felt remotely interested in, the only thing I really… really wanted to concentrate on… They changed the schedule around me after that. To allow me time to come to my senses… which was immensely sweet of them… no, really… and also so very pragmatic, cause they wanted me in a working condition, of course, didn’t they?..
What I’m trying to come to, though, is that when you are in this kind of state… things really do not register very quickly, and something stands a fairer chance to catch your attention if it moves repeatedly, constantly, as if giving the fact of its existence a time to sink in… So the first thing I’ve noticed about her were her hands. Her hand… Moving and moving and moving on the brink of my vision, writing something seemingly endless on the blank page of ordinary office paper. A wiry hand and tense, or perhaps, just tired, with an upsticking angle of a forefinger on the pencil… Ah! A pencil!.. I felt slightly amused… A strong hand, too big for a surprisingly slender wrist that supported it, but beautiful… in this natural way - not too womanly, not too crude… I found myself fascinated with this hand, with all the tiny movements that go into the process of writing: the way it slides across the paper, the miniscule back and forth movements, as the letters unfold, the gentle rotation of the wrist, the intricate lace - mirror image of written text - woven into the air by the back end of moving pencil. I watched it and watched it, just as the leaves before, admiring the simple beauty of this moving and living thing a human hand is. Then the second hand crept into my line of vision in the unconsciously searching gesture of someone reaching for a cup, or cigarettes in this case, while still doing something and fully concentrated on it. Her ashtray was half full of stubs, neatly smoked right up to the butt, a true sign of heavy smoker. Well, so was mine. We, night owls, tend to smoke a lot… more in the night that is… than during the day. So I watched this other hand too… as I told you, it was about the first thing outside myself, in days and days, I found I was really fascinated with, or maybe - it was still the single-mindedness of my depression - just finding another simple thing to engage into as long as it stopped the thoughts… so I watched her perform this little Houdini trick of single-handedly extricating a ciggie out of nearly full a pack, and - as her hand went in search of a lighter, and her other hand stopped - contemplatively hanging above the line - my head jerked up and I saw her looking in my direction and tensed, awaiting this god-awful moment when the recognition hits her, the coming of glazed-eyed look. It didn’t come. Instead her lips barely twitched in a hint of a smile, acknowledging my presence - not as a star I didn’t feel, but as a fellow vagabond, appearing right where he should be, where she was used for him to be, - before she turned to the window to gaze at the deserted street. And so did I, feeling my body relax and a hot blush of shame rising up to my ears from the recognition that just a moment ago I was watching her unawares - just as I myself so hated to be watched.
I made a point of looking into the window for the next few minutes. Not so much looking at anything in particular, just forcibly prohibiting myself to look back. Not even a quick, not even a sideways glance in her direction. Yet an urge to look back was almost unbearable. And it felt odd, man… Gosh, did it feel odd!.. Out of character. I was never interested in watching people. Unknown people, that is. Unless I was searching for a specific way my character in the movie should walk, talk and do whatever he was supposed to do. But that was work. I never really understood watching people - for fun… This was not mine thing… Painfully I even knew - whose… This picture of me and Kevin they took in Paris for the promos and never used. On the quay, both of us laughing. God, I can’t believe it was six years ago, we both seem so young on it. The one they used to cut his face out for the obituary… It is so telling in its own way. Me - looking on the Seine, the gulls on the water, the boats, the buildings out on the far side… Him - watching the people on the quay, thinking up the imaginary monologues this or that person might speak, hilarious as he could. That’s what we were laughing at… But I’m digressing. I am… At the same time, I think, even then I felt it was good for me. This sudden interest. This embarrassment. Even this pain. Everything, but everything - outside the inner numbness I fell in for far too long… And so I turned - ever so furtively - and looked at her…
She was not writing anymore. Sitting back in her chair, eyes closed, hands locked behind her head (made me smile inwardly, ‘cause this was exactly how I sat sometimes, when my back was tired), and I could look at her face unashamedly… Uh, shamefully in fact. But I did. No, really, if her eyes opened right then, there would have been no hiding the fact I was watching her face. But I did. I studied it. I dissected it feature by feature with morbid interest of a scientist. Resenting her for my own curiosity I couldn’t stifle… Have you ever thought - whatever we resent in others, lies really within ourselves? The source of this resentment? The reasoning?.. She was not pretty. Definitely not the face one notices or remembers. Not the star material. Unless she went for the character actress in which case she would have been able to play anything. Any role at all. Such almost-but-not-quite features are priceless for a character actor, ‘cause it is the expression then that makes the casting and not just - looks.
Right now she looked tired… and sad… sorrowful even. With a kind of a deep-etched sadness that doesn’t come light, but is a sign of some pain and losses… past, but not quite passed… lingering… But I was, of course, projecting. Putting my own thoughts in her head. Making her feel my own bitter turmoil of sorrow, and guilt, and resentment - haven’t I told that the source of resentment lies always within ourselves? - and utter futility of them all… All this feelings… What could I be guilty of? Of not being there?.. But I was filming in the other end of the country… Now, what if I had been there?.. Of not stopping him from taking this ride?.. Would have ridden with him, most probably. Could have been the one taking that turn first… Not dying instead of him?!.. Oh, c’mon!.. And the resentment… now, I knew where this one was coming from… I felt… abandoned, left alone, betrayed, you choose it… by my best, my most trusted friend… He has betrayed me by dying… This seems so fucking - idiocy… and so selfish… and it only made me resent him more… for making me feel like that…
I wonder… He was your friend too. That’s why I never had it in me to talk to you about all that… We so avoided this subject, man! Both of us… Isn’t it strange that I am writing about it now?.. But I do tend to talk too much about myself. And too little of her… So, where was I?.. I was projecting. Of course. But maybe not quite. For there was something in her, that wasn’t just my projection. That wasn’t - me… She seemed - resigned. As if she went through whatever pain and losses were there for her, and found a place of inner calm. A haven. The calm I craved for and lacked… I suddenly felt restless. Disconcerted. In need of some fresh air… So I stood up, and went to the bar to pay my check, and left.
Do not think I have slept at all that night. But the rest of it comes in fragments. Walked and walked and walked for hours. Good thing - was not on the bike. Another good thing - didn’t have a filming planned for next day. Ended up at home sitting on the floor by my bed, with a bottle of wine. Drinking and crying and cussing and drinking again. But… God! It felt good. Hurting like hell - but alive, that’s how it felt. Came back to my senses at about midday. Still sitting by the bed. The wine - what was left of it - forming a huge stain on the carpet. My best collectors Chateau Petrus too. Birds singing their heads off outside. Considered cleaning the mess. Reconsidered. Climbed into bed. And slept.
Continued in - Part 2