Part 37 (1/2)
”No, man. She's a tart. A real tart,” Martini said, then crawled off to another table.
Henry looked up toward Peace's legs. She was wearing a pair of fishnet stockings, and in his state, Henry thought for a moment that he saw actual fish.
IT WAS NOT A GOOD TRIP, though it was more exotic than truly disturbing; what Henry saw-even as he tried to escape the experience-was unpleasant but not unbearable. What he saw was an animalized world-actually not that different from the world he had learned to see and to draw at Disney. Martini, for example, was unmistakably a bear-somewhat along the lines of Baloo in The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, but polar-bear pale. The small round tables on their center legs were storks, and the chairs were dogs and cats. but polar-bear pale. The small round tables on their center legs were storks, and the chairs were dogs and cats.
The fish in the fishnet stockings moved suddenly, slapping against each other. Henry grabbed hold of one of them, and Peace's hand appeared on her knee, then her face beside her knee, and then she fluttered down to sit beside him under the table. Peace turned out to be a bird-a dove or pigeon-her nose beakish, her hair feathery.
”Did you sleep with him?” Henry asked Peace. Her skinny knees, above the tops of her boots, looked as if they'd been drawn by two smile lines.
”With who?”
”With Mr. Fate.”
”Of course,” she said.
”To get the part?”
”Of course,” she said. ”That's what everyone does.”
She was right, but Henry didn't care that she was right.
He tried to locate the feeling-as weirdly unfamiliar as a sudden illness or a stranger's rage. He knew he had felt it some time before: a blend of fear, amazement, and hollowness. But Peace's reaction to his his reaction was easier to recognize. He saw it in the set of her lips, in the torque of her shoulders, the almost coquettish look in her eyes that said: reaction was easier to recognize. He saw it in the set of her lips, in the torque of her shoulders, the almost coquettish look in her eyes that said: What did you expect of me? Don't tell me you couldn't have seen this coming. What did you expect of me? Don't tell me you couldn't have seen this coming. This was the look he himself had given so many times before-starting all the way back with Daisy, way back on the night of the fire at Humphrey. This was the look he himself had given so many times before-starting all the way back with Daisy, way back on the night of the fire at Humphrey.
”It's the way it works,” Peace said.
”Did you sleep with Whitehall too?” Henry asked her.
”What do you want me to say?”
”These guys are just using you,” Henry said.
”And what's wrong with that? It's my body, you know. n.o.body owns me.”
Henry tried to answer Peace for a brief, awful, familiar moment, but he couldn't say a thing.
”YOU REALIZE, OF COURSE,” Victoria told him, ”that you are attempting to zig whilst the rest of the world is zagging.”
They were sitting on one of the leather couches in the office on Monday afternoon, before a mess of lunch plates and cups that the previous diners had left behind.
”What do you mean?” Henry asked her.
”You're attempting the vine-covered cottage bit during the only time in history when not a single soul in the entire known world is being remotely monogamous.”
Henry got to his feet and began to gather the paper plates and cups. Victoria lit a cigarette and watched him carelessly.
”Do you love her?” Victoria asked.
”Yes,” Henry said. ”I do.”
”How do you know?” she asked him. He was aware that there was something more than sisterly in her inquiry, but for the moment he decided that he would ignore it and hear her advice anyway.
”I know because-I don't know. I don't get tired of her. I want to be with her.”
”Really?”
”Really.”
”Do you want to be with her now?”
Victoria asked the question as if it were clinical, not personal, but again it felt to Henry more like some form of flirtation.
”Now?” he asked. ”This minute? No. This minute I want to kill her.”
Victoria crossed her legs at the ankles, leaning back into the couch. ”Kill her?” she said. ”Really, Harry? I didn't think you could feel that.”
”Feel what?” Henry asked.
”Are you sure you want to kill her? Or do you just want to trade her in?”
Henry looked at Victoria. ”How did you know that?”
”Harry. You're hardly a mystery.”
”I'm not?”
It felt good to flirt back. It felt as if he had just had something returned to him that he'd been missing. After all, he was much more accustomed to this than to sincerity, jealousy, and rage.
Finally, he slid down the leather couch to sit beside her, and then he pivoted onto his right hip while she pivoted onto her left. They faced each other. She looked both wry and needy, but the wryness was more appealing to him than the neediness was unappealing. He kissed her, totally unsurprised by the enthusiasm with which she kissed him back. It was the rapid, not particularly interesting answer to a question that had been only marginally more interesting to ask.
He knew it would be their only kiss. It wasn't because he felt guilty about Peace, or even felt indifferent to her. It was, rather, his sense of Victoria, a sense of bottomless longing that was too much like Martha's, or maybe his own.
YELLOW SUBMARINE WAS DUE to premiere in July. Throughout the spring and early summer, days and nights-never religiously differentiated before-blended entirely. It was not unusual for an animator to come into the studio on a Monday morning and, buoyed by successive tides of naps, snacks, and carts of bangers and mash, not leave until Wednesday or Thursday night. There were always people sleeping on the couches now, and often there were ink-and-paint girls napping in the camera room. At Disney, the ranks of animators and painters had usually dwindled as units finished their work. But here, with an intractable deadline and increasing hysteria from the distributors, more people were being added all the time. As the deadline for delivery neared, the producers sent word out to the London art schools, and now in the evenings vans and buses pulled up to the Soho studio, disgorging students who formed a delighted night s.h.i.+ft, donning white gloves to color in the Beatles and their fantastical world. to premiere in July. Throughout the spring and early summer, days and nights-never religiously differentiated before-blended entirely. It was not unusual for an animator to come into the studio on a Monday morning and, buoyed by successive tides of naps, snacks, and carts of bangers and mash, not leave until Wednesday or Thursday night. There were always people sleeping on the couches now, and often there were ink-and-paint girls napping in the camera room. At Disney, the ranks of animators and painters had usually dwindled as units finished their work. But here, with an intractable deadline and increasing hysteria from the distributors, more people were being added all the time. As the deadline for delivery neared, the producers sent word out to the London art schools, and now in the evenings vans and buses pulled up to the Soho studio, disgorging students who formed a delighted night s.h.i.+ft, donning white gloves to color in the Beatles and their fantastical world.
PEOPLE HAD SPENT WEEKS angling for tickets, and trying to get one for Peace would have done Henry no good, even if he'd been so inclined. With the rest of the animators, he had been relegated to a balcony seat at the huge London Pavilion.
”You'll sneak me in,” Peace said on the morning of the opening.
”Not a chance. There are a.s.signed seats, Peace,” he said.
”Well, someone might not show,” she said.
”Why don't you ask Mr. Fate to bring you? Or Martini? Or Whitehall?” Henry asked her bitterly.
”I did.”
Their eyes flashed and met.
”Please, Henry?” she said.