The Man In The Seventh Row (26 page)

Roy sat dry-eyed. He had done his crying over the past few days in the little old-fashioned motel room, where he played the tune on Rosebud's music-box. Its tinny rendition of 'Singin' in the Rain' seemed a forlorn accompaniment in search of a singer whose voice had been stilled. It became slower and sadder as it wound down. It seemed to falter once or twice, but dragged on relentlessly. It strained over the final minute, threatening to expire on every note. It managed the first two notes of the title for the umpteenth time and quite suddenly it was gone. All was quiet, but for Roy's breathing, which thundered in his brain.

***

'I've seen things that other Roy Batty never saw,' Roy tells Anna. 'Yes, I have memories of my own. But I would prefer his. I don't want reality anymore. There is no point.'

He hesitates for a second or two. Anna knows he wants to say something more, but is not sure how to.

'But I don't have a choice anyway,' he says. 'I'm already dead, dead to this world anyway. I'm being sucked into the world of the movies. I know it.'

He pauses.

'And you know it too,' he adds. 'You've seen it as well.'

There was no funeral service for Rosebud. There was no one else at the chapel except the undertakers. Roy and Jo played 'Over the Rainbow' for her. Before they screwed the coffin lid down, Jo kissed Rosebud's forehead one last time and Roy kissed his daughter's lips. She looked peaceful, as if she were only sleeping, but the sudden, unexpected coldness of her lips made Roy shiver.

'Goodbye, Rosebud,' he said. And he placed her beloved, battered Eaty doll in the coffin beside her. It had turned up at the Roosevelt Hotel after all.

28

'Come back with me,' says Anna, glancing up from her coffee cup into the blue eyes across the table in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel. She is met by a look of sadness and instinctively turns her gaze away from Roy towards the palms, in giant terracotta pots, stretching up to the balcony on the first floor. Roy's look is also one of wistfulness at the idea that he and Anna, like Rachael and the other Roy Batty, might have had some sort of future together.

'Where I'm going ...' Roy says slowly, choosing his words very deliberately, 'you can't follow.'

Anna recognises not just the words, but also the tone, from Bogart's farewell speech to Bergman at the airport in
Casablanca
.

'Where I'm going I have to go alone.'

Anna's eyes ask the questions that her lips cannot quite form. The words do not come easily for Roy either.

'I let her die, Anna,' he says, his voice confessional, little more than a whisper, drained of all emotion.

'It was an accident, Roy,' says Anna, urgently, for she seems to sense they have so very little time left together. 'It could have happened to anyone.' She reaches across the table and lays her hands on his, noticing how deathly cold they are.

'No, Anna,' says Roy, patiently, like a teacher correcting the work of a small pupil. 'If I hadn't allowed her to run around a beach in a storm she'd be alive today. It's as simple as that. She died because I didn't look after her right. She died because of me.

'It was a year ago,' he says. 'She got a single paragraph in the '
LA
Times'. "Girl killed by lightning", it said.
Forrest Gump
and the Oscars were the front page news. I promised to take her there, to the Oscars. I promised her so very much ...' his voice trailed away.

'We never even said "goodbye". One minute she was there ... singing in the rain. And the next...

'I don't know exactly what's going to happen. Maybe it's a form of madness. But you saw it too. You saw me in
Blade Runner
. You saw me in
Brief Encounter
. You know that I'm being sucked into the movies, consumed by the passion that she and I shared. I don't know quite how long I have left, but not long. I'm
DOA
. But first I have to go back to the beach where she died. It is my field of dreams. If I go there ... she will come ...'

They sat in silence for a while, maybe a minute.

'I understand,' says Anna, taking her denim jacket from the back of her chair and fumbling in a pocket for something. 'You have to say goodbye, but maybe then you could come back to me, maybe then you can get on with your life.'

She takes a key from her keyring and hands it to him. He looks at it doubtfully.

'Anna?' chirrups the voice of a tall, slim, middle-aged woman with a golden tan and jewellery to match. 'Anna Fisher?'

Anna forces the key into Roy's palm.

'I haven't seen you for an age.'

Roy slips the key into his pocket.

'Are you still teaching at
UCLA
? And who is this? I'm Jessica. Introduce me, Anna.'

Anna introduces Roy, while replacing her jacket on the back of the chair and wishing Jessica would drop dead. No, she doesn't mean that. But she wishes she would simply disappear as quickly and suddenly as she arrived.

'Oh, I just love an Irish accent, Roy. Scottish. I should have known. And is
Braveheart
going to win the Oscar for best picture? I do hope so. I cried at the end when the English killed Mel. But I think maybe
Apollo 13
will win. It's the patriotic American choice, and I don't think there are too many Scotch in the Academy. Have you seen it, Anna? Wonderful film. Really we should go to the movies together sometime. I would really like to see that other film ... Oh, what's it called, you know the one with Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, where she's a nun and he's going to die? Yes, I remember,
Dead Man Walking
. A cappuccino for me, please, waiter. Anyone else?
Dead Man Walking
? Oh, must you go, Roy?'

'Yes, I'm afraid I must,' he says. 'I have a long way to go and not much time.'

Anna moves as if she is about to rise, but Roy puts a hand firmly on her shoulder.

'Look after yourself, Anna.'

Her mouth is dry. Her fingers dart to the crucifix that hangs around her neck. Something from her childhood stirs within her and she feels a sudden desire to tell Roy that she will pray for him – or maybe it was just Jessica's mention of Susan Sarandon playing a nun. Anna says nothing. One moment Roy's hand is on her shoulder, the next the pressure is gone. She does not turn round, but watches Jessica's eyes as they follow Roy out of the lobby. When they return to Anna's face she knows Roy has gone.

'Was that a key I saw changing hands there?' Jessica asks, leaning forward conspiratorially. She does not wait for an answer, because she knows that it was.

'I'm having an Oscar night party, Anna. You really must come and bring Braveheart with you. Ha-ha. Everyone must come as a character from one of the nominated films, a spaceman or a nun or a Scotchman. That will be easy for Roy. He can just be himself. Ha-ha-ha. I love the Scotch ... especially on the rocks.' She laughs at her own wit. Anna smiles indulgently.

'I've already promised to watch the Oscars at my sister's,' she says, trying desperately to keep her composure. 'And I don't think Roy will be in
LA
then.'

***

On the day of the Oscars Anna does not go to her sister's. She follows Pacific Highway Route One up the coast to Santa Barbara, taking a room at the Motel 6. She walks along the beach, not sure what she might find. In the distance she can see a man and a small child playing with an American football. She feels her stride quicken as she hurries along the otherwise deserted beach towards them.

'This is going to be a high one, Jack,' shouts the man.

Anna slows down again as the boy backs towards her, squinting against the late afternoon sun to follow the ball's flight. Ball, boy and Anna come together in a heap on the sand. The father, a young man in wire-rimmed glasses and grey jogging suit, helps Anna to her feet with a smile and apologies.

'It's alright,' she says, brushing the sand from her jeans. 'No harm done.'

She walks back towards the wharf, taking one final look at the beach before leaving. The father and child are still playing ball in the hazy distance. And for a moment she thinks maybe she sees another man and another child just beyond them, skipping along at the water's edge, the child no more than a red blur. But Anna is looking into the sun, as it dances on the water, creating strange, fleeting patterns. She rubs her eyes and looks again. There is only one man, only one child.

In the solitude of her motel room she watches the Oscar ceremony, her heart leaping when a clip is shown of the English knights charging across the plain towards the Scottish army. Mel Gibson, his hair braided, his face painted blue, urges his men to 'hold ... hold ... hold ...' until the English cavalry are upon them and they lift their staves. As the cavalry are skewered like kebabs, Anna catches just a fleeting glimpse of a man with blue lightning painted on his face, the man she knew as Roy Batty, the man in the seventh row. Anna finds herself holding her breath as Sidney Poitier opens the final envelope of the night.

'Let it be
Braveheart
,' she prays. 'God, please, let it be
Braveheart
.'

***

She walks down State Street to Stearns Wharf, past the ice cream stands and onto the beach, which is now deserted. At the water's edge she sits on the sand and looks out to the point where the blue of the sky merges with the blue of the ocean. She sits, just staring into nothingness as the day fades. Out on the water a light blinks at her from a passing ship. It is dark when she gets back to the motel and switches on the television set. Mel Gibson is seen arriving at the Paramount party. She wonders if she might see Roy in the crowd scene there, or maybe alongside his
Braveheart
co-star as he enters Chasen's, but she does not.

Next morning Anna telephones all the hotels and motels in the Santa Barbara area to ask if they have a guest called Batty. They all say the same thing –
none of them has a guest called Batty. Until the last one.

'We did have a Mr Batty,' says the voice, 'a Mr Roy Batty, but he checked out a week ago.'

But that is the Roosevelt Hotel, back in
LA
, just confirming what Anna already knew.

Every day for a week she walks down State Street and along the beach, she watches the lights on the ocean at dusk, and she returns to the emptiness of her motel room and lies awake in bed for hours, thinking. She feels close to Roy here, somehow, or at least comforted by her own anonymity and isolation in an unfamiliar setting, a setting as unfamiliar as Roy Batty.

In Los Angeles Anna telephones police stations and hospitals, asking if they know anything of a Roy Batty. Most quickly confirm they have no record of a Roy Batty, but one hospital administrator comes back on the line to ask if Anna is a relative.

'Yes,' says Anna, hopefully. 'I'm ... I'm his wife.'

'Just a minute ...' Anna can feel her heart thumping against her chest.

'No,' says the voice, 'There's been no admission under that name.'

She telephones the
LAPD
public relations office, claiming to be a reporter, just wanting to check if ever anyone reported their own murder or disappearance to the police.

'How could they do that?'

'Well,' says Anna, 'I don't know. My editor just asked me to check. You know what they're like.'

'Assholes,' says the police spokesperson. 'I've been there too.'

'You said it. But I suppose someone might know they were being murdered if they were being poisoned.'

'Why would they take the poison if they knew it was poison?'

'I don't know, but they might know they were about to be killed or abducted. They had seen the signs – strange people following them, strange things happening. They were powerless to stop it, but they were able to tell the police what was about to happen.' Anna feels she is not explaining this very well.

'No,' says the voice, 'that could only ever happen in the movies.'

29

Los Angeles, March 1997

One year later, Anna scans the showbiz section of the
LA
Times
. It seems
The English Patient
, the tale of doomed wartime romance, is going to win the best picture Oscar over
Shine
, the Australian pianist movie, and
Fargo
, the quirky Coen Brothers' thriller with Frances McDormand as a pregnant policewoman.
Fargo
seems to have been around for a very long time. Anna and Roy almost went to see it together, so it must have been in the cinemas before the last Oscars. They went to
Blade Runner
instead. What would have happened if they had gone to a film about a pregnant policewoman instead of one about a dying robot who shared Roy's name? Which part would Roy have played? The pregnant policewoman? A smile forms on Anna's lips.