Photographic (15 page)

He curled his body around her; his head propped up, an atoll to her island. He stroked pieces of her hair back, his fingers searching out the sensitive places on her head that would give her a shudder of pleasure if he touched her with just the right amount of pressure, using his nails to dig in slightly as he brushed. Her eyelids fluttered and her eyes rolled back in her head. She was on the borderland of sleep, in the gray world between wakefulness and the lost world of dreams. Her mind and body wished to sink into the arms of Morpheus; someone pulled her back. Her body, so recently purged of desire by having it so fully met, was even now being reminded it existed in the world, that she existed in a physical state, not one purely of the mind, and if she allowed herself to feel what was being offered, she would be granted great pleasure. 

Jane’s eyes fluttered and opened.

She saw a dimmed room. Candle smoke scented the air and light glowed from a far corner. Fingers coursed through her hair, the soft pads the first touch of each stroke, then the sharp defining nails separating the hair from her scalp and sending reverberations of pleasure through her body. Over and over he brushed back through her hair, touching her at that calibration of pressure that only he knew; the one he had created, by knowing her body so well, the one that turned her inside out. The magnificence of his touch was not what he touched or where or how much; it was the pressure of the touch and when he did it. 

She was spent, having just had the orgasm of her life, which was always the most recent one, and wanted only sleep. But he was stroking her hair, in that way, and she felt the answer in her body. Still too tired to move, she lay on her side, feeling what he was doing and observing its effect on her. In her sex-blown mind, she wondered, as if it were a parade going by, what might be next. There wasn’t anything he could do that would be any better than what they had just done. So it all seemed academic at this point. Humoring him was the sporting thing to do after he had wiped out all other sexual experiences in memory with this one.

She reflected as she lay there that she was co-creator of her ecstasy. Without the door opened in her mind to give access to the imagination of such feeling, it was not possible. To give way to the humanity in him was also to give way to herself, letting the darkness in her come to the surface and be seen, part of her as real as light. Not fighting to be half a person, denied wholeness. Not hidden. 

The next morning, Ian found Jane in her study, where she was paying bills. He sat down on the window seat and watched her until she turned around and smiled. His face was serious.

“There was never anything going on with Delaney.” He took a peppermint from her bowl on the bookshelf and crinkled the wrapper, twisting and untwisting the ends. “That was a figment of theirs.” He put the mint back and folded his arms as if he were cold. She could see the sharpening of the muscles of his forearms from all the physical work he’d done on the film. “There’s something else I have to talk to you about.” 

As she sat studying the familiar beloved face, so recently reintroduced to her intimate affections, something in his tone wiped the smile from her lips. 

Unfolding his arms, he rubbed his hands on his knees. A spasm crossed his face.“Oh, Lord.” He turned to look out the window. When he turned back, in command of himself again, he began in his quiet way. 

“I want you to understand what happened.” He swallowed. “You’re the only person I can talk to about it. I wish I could talk about the good things that have come of it. You probably wouldn't want to hear.” He shot a look at her. “I don’t know if you can put yourself in my shoes. I hope you’ll try to see how it was .” He thought for a moment before going on. Jane’s anxiety and curiosity built in equal, unbearable measures. She rubbed her collarbone, reaching back to catch her fingers in the hair at the base of her neck. His eyes roamed the room as if he could find something there to help him. Fixing his eyes back on Jane, he continued. 

“You know how hard this shoot was from the beginning. Tor had his vision of how it would be and I wasn’t going to argue much because I was so damn happy to be working with him. What he said sounded great. It sounded like genius. I could see what he described in my head. His ideas had to be executed a certain way. So it meant staying up nights, not much sleep.” He shrugged. “I was outside, where I wanted to be; he was agreeable, up to a point. His shots looked amazing. I felt this character pretty deep.” He stopped and gazed off into space. “I knew him in my skin. In my bones. It wasn’t hard to know him. He sank in and I felt the weight of him. His weariness—away from home for so long. The sorrow of disconnection from my family. Not knowing when I would see you again. Knowing you wouldn’t come to me.” His voice became less distinct. “That was his pain, too.” He focused on Jane. He leaned toward her. “Do you remember the visit to Calypso’s island from the script?”

“I…I don’t know.” She let go of her hair and clasped her fidgeting hands in her lap.

“He is Calypso’s love slave, in essence. He weeps for home by day and lies with her at night. Then the gods order her to release him back to the sea. They share one last night of passion before she lets him go.” 

She had read the script when he accepted the part. “Yes, I remember.”

Ian nodded. “Tor wanted Vaughn and me to have what he called an ‘authentic’ love scene. To take down all the barriers and film it in the raw. As he put it.” 

Jane tried to understand what he was telling her. Suddenly his intense gaze, the pictures, his moods, everything rushed at her at once; she was driving a car and the back of a parked bus was in front of her, out of nowhere. She was going to hit the bus; no brakes, it was coming closer and closer, out of control. She felt a physical slam and for a moment she thought she had fainted, but when her eyes opened, she saw Ian telescoped, farther away than he was a moment ago, and realized she had only skipped a heartbeat—lost a breath—and nothing had happened at all. 

“Are you saying he wanted you to have sex for real?” Her voice was detached and foreign, separate from her.

Ian nodded. “Yes.” His voice rasped, a saw on wood. He paused and cleared his throat. “He wanted us to strip away all our layers, all the personas and images we brought to the job. To become as naked as possible. Vulnerable and stripped of all our defenses. He thought our characters expressed that sexually.”

Jane sat transfixed. He hadn’t said he said no. That meant he had said yes. 

“Have you gone completely mad?” She lost her sense of unreality, her real self leaping back into her awareness. She looked about the room, as if for other people, a chorus of voices to support her in echoing the madness of this.

From a far-off place, he spoke again. “I felt like him. I was him. Separated from you. I couldn’t go back. You couldn’t come to me. She was there.” His eyes were wide and open, letting her in to see the terrible honesty he allowed her, laying it at her feet as a gift. 

She shut her eyes. What she saw was too real. Her body twisted out of the chair until she found herself kneeling on the floor, her hands grasping the seat. She opened unseeing eyes; she saw the vision.

Her husband, on a bed of furs, in a fire-lit cave, shadows splashing on the wall, shining skin; his assumption by a goddess. The edges of the picture blurred and the focus narrowed to the rapture on his face. He looked different, his expression loose and intoxicated. He was in a heat of lust, passion for the woman who was astride him. Then his face twisted in torment and he threw the woman over and pressed her down. Jane gasped and turned her head to look away. The scene vanished from her mind. 

Ian crouched next to her, not daring to touch her.

“I see you. I see you with her.”

“What?”

“In my head.”

He got up and paced behind her. She stared off, lost in thought. He knelt again by her side.

“Jane.” He reached out to her.

“I know what you did.”

“Jane.” Her name was a whisper on his lips.

The world was far distant, sounds and colors melded together into a background washing over her as meaninglessly as water over rock. 

“This life is nothing.” She heard herself say the words.

“Jane, don’t.” His voice got louder.

“It’s become nothing.” Her eyes focused. She turned her head and looked right at him.

“No.” He laid the back of his hand to his lips.

“That life’s real. This one’s not. That’s what’s happened.” She pushed herself up, shoving herself up from the floor using his shoulder as leverage, and walked out of the room, away; away from him. 

CHAPTER TWENTY

S
HE
WALKED
OUT
of the house like shedding a skin that had become too small. The air was cool: a low mist settled around the house and out into the fields. She cut across the eastern quarter of their land, once corn, now lying fallow and the shortest way to Hank’s, though not the easiest walking. Stumbling over the rows in the thatch of broken ground, she followed her sense of direction as sight couldn’t help her through the cloak of fog. Her feet tripped along faster and faster until she was running, feeling for footing in some kind of heightened alertness through her legs, which now worked better than when she’d been creeping along. Arms swinging, breath rhythmic and visible, she floated along in a brief absence of feeling, a safe cocoon of being, hurtling toward her destination, invincible and unstoppable. Her body anticipated and adjusted to unseen dangers and obstacles. Without knowing how, she leapt over holes before she was consciously aware of them beneath her. Each push off the ground propelled her forward toward her goal. At a certain moment she felt she was no longer fleeing from or running toward, but was simply a body in motion in this place and time. Nothing changed around her. The mist, the rough ground. What if she ran forever and never emerged from this limbo? At the same moment she had that thought, the feeling of being able to run forever flickered and she heard her breath deepen and rasp. She saw the border of the field. She put her head down and sped up, lungs burning. Her legs trembled. Sucking in air faster than she could blow it out, she jolted onto the harder ground beyond the tilled land. After a few stiff-legged jounces she geared down to a walk and breathed in air with her whole body, rising and bowing.

As the house came in sight she picked up her run again. She arrived, breathless, at his screen door. The sound of the piano floated out to her from inside, a wistful tune she didn’t recognize. She pulled the door open and went in. His back was to her as he played, his head down, his upper body slouched over the keys. She stopped in the middle of the room and stood there watching him play. He segued into Debussy and she knew he knew she was there. Her eyes followed his elegant fingers as they touched deftly here and there, almost as if in afterthought. The hands that mended what was broken, soothed restless horses. She came up to stand behind him. He stopped playing. She turned away. In response he put his hands back on the keys and began again, one of her favorites, “Clair de lune.” 

She turned back and rested her hands on his shoulders so she could feel the movement in his body. They hadn't touched before. It was strange it felt natural to do so. The panic in which she’d run over melted away under the intoxication of the music. When he finished the final note and let it die away, he reached his hands up and grasped hers as they lay on his shoulders. Then somehow he twisted, swinging his legs up and over the bench, and he was in front of her. He looked up into her eyes and she looked searchingly back. He pulled her down beside him. 

Hank ran his fingers through his silvery brown hair. “What's the matter?"

“What’s the use.”

“Of what.”

“Of hiding anything. Trying to be anyone other than the same old me.”

“Hey. I like you.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of being who you are?”

His face as he looked at her was filled with the fine lines of his years, the easy brown color of outdoor life, his merlin eyes piercing her. “You’ve seen me fall.” 

She flushed and looked away. 

“It’s okay. We’ve gotten close, these years. We know a few of each other’s secrets. I’m fine with it. You?” 

She nodded. 

“I’m sure you’ll deal with your questions of identity almost as well as I have. Probably with a smaller bar tab.”

“I never meant to invade your privacy. I was just worried.”

He waved it off. “I know. Doesn’t happen very often anymore. Right after Cor died was bad. Then I cleaned up for two years or so. Something about spilling it all to you got me thinking about old times. Visited an old habit. ’Course I never really needed a reason. I wished you hadn’t seen me.” 

“I didn’t mind that much. I don’t know why. It wasn’t pleasant, it’s true. But it was something else to know about you.”

“It’s something else all right. I’d rather think it isn’t me.”

“It wasn’t the you I know. Sometimes at my darkest times I’ve wanted someone there. A witness. Maybe that’s what I was, for you.”

He took her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll be yours.”

“You will?”

“I’m here playing your song, aren’t I?”

She laughed and sniffed. With a big sigh, her shoulders sank a little, relaxing. "I’d better get home.”

“I’ll give you a lift.” 

“It didn’t seem as far over here as it will going back.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

N
OW
,
AFTER
THE
fact, Ian remembered the way Tor had talked to him, after Tor had broken through Ian’s wariness and gained his confidence with the purity of Tor’s vision. How they talked about his character, Odysseus; so many years away from the wife he loved. The intimate moments between them, when it felt as if Tor were the only one who understood, the only one who could understand what his life was. As Odysseus, but also sometimes the conversations seemed to meld into the mundane world, while they still spoke in the language of the story. The one who protected him from everything he didn’t want around him: media, unwanted attention, fuss, anything that detracted from the performance. Tor would come and whisper to him, at just the right moment, say the few words to get him in the space to give what he had to give in the next take. Even if it was intended to piss him off. Tor was in his head.