What They Do in the Dark (21 page)

A
S PENANCE
, Q
UENTIN
stood under the drooling shower and suffered. Mortification of the flesh. Oh man, was she mortified. She started to scour her arms and body with the midget bar of soap, but stopped when she caught herself visualizing the shot. Norman Bates was due through the shower curtain with a big old knife any minute. Come on, babe, you can do better. Shivering, she rubbed water out of her eyes.
Shit
. When would life take over and drive this damn thing for her?

She had some calls to take, at least, once the London offices opened. The LA operations didn’t open until mid-afternoon, although Quentin knew no one really gave a small damn for her field reports. Well, this time it would be different. This time she would almost certainly have something to say about the miserable idea of luring Lallie to Hollywood. Stepping out of the shower, her hungover brain careened in her skull no matter how tenderly she moved her head, a ball of pressure that flared into a sullen pain whenever it collided with its cave of bone. Who drank brandy? Not even cognac, an ascot-and-red-setter kind of enhancement of the mood, but the crap the hotel bar had to offer, which was called ‘Three Barrels’ – Hugh had joked about this,
Ah, I see they serve Three Barrels
– in needy double-snifters. To get out of it, so she wouldn’t notice herself.

Well, it had worked. Her memory after about the third barrel was impressionistic. There had been an interlude talking to herself in the washroom cubicle, informing herself that she was drunk, as the wallpaper revolved around her. Jump cuts. The alarming hotel carpet. Same carpet on the stairs. The small surprise of Hugh’s
room, and the familiarity of foreplay. We’re on that train now. Circumcised, which she hadn’t expected, his cock as wholesome and substantial as the rest of him. The blow job, its counter-rhythm increasing hell for her spinning head, and the dawning of irritation about its longevity.
OK, just come now, OK?
She had persisted until she could feel herself about to gag. She’d made every move in her fellatio repertoire and apart from anything else was a little insulted that he was holding out on her. What was wrong with the guy? In the end, he caught her shoulders and pulled her away, benignly. She puked in his bathroom. An unforgettable evening of sensual delights, in three barrels.

She wasn’t clear how she had ended up back in her own room. Hugh must have done the gentlemanly thing, Jimmy Stewart-style, although she could find only one shoe by the bed.
There are rules about that kind of thing
. Quentin checked her memory: the rest was silence. She conjured a wishful image, almost as vivid as a memory, of sharing a bed with Hugh: the calm heat of his body, his pure, astringent smell. There would almost certainly be a really fine pair of pyjamas, navy, with a discreet lighter stripe and piping round the lapels. And now she’d never know. She sobbed a little, drily, as though the alcohol had leached all the moisture from her. And also because she was watching herself again, and it didn’t play.

She really couldn’t do this. Not on weak coffee and aspirin alone. And she didn’t even have those yet. That would have to be rectified. What she really wanted was an espresso and a joint, with a couple of Valium humming their magic beneath. And those other pills, the ones that cute but sadly married anaesthetist from LA General had introduced her to, rounding out the strings section for that full Mantovani chord of bogus well-being. The way we were …

Outside, beyond the door to her room, there was a sudden shuffling. Quentin recoiled. Hugh, come to reproach her. No, to
upbraid her, to remonstrate with her: take your pick of stuffy, unsympathetic verbs. A newspaper appeared, sliding under the gap at the bottom of the door. Quentin’s panic subsided. Just the newspaper, then. It was one of those weird British tabloids – only Hugh contrived to get the London
Times
delivered to the hotel – and Quentin barely read it, although it was faithfully shoved under her door every morning. It had close, aggressive type, and girls bizarrely flashing their tits. Today, there was a strident headline: ‘Call Girl Attack’. Quentin didn’t want to know. She had her own worries. One of which, she remembered, when she had a pee and wiped herself, was that she probably had cancer. Cervical cancer, surely, despite a clear PAP test in the spring. She was diseased within.
Rotten
. It had to be working inside her, and one day a gust of wind would collapse her, like a termite mound. Maybe she could get hold of her gynaecologist and get a referral to a doctor here, just to check?

Quentin moved around the room, dressing, putting on makeup. She was supposed to be meeting with Mike and Hugh to talk about an extra location Mike felt he absolutely needed. She doubted she could make it out the door, let alone sit across a table from Hugh and hold the studio’s line on the budget. Not with the cancer and all. It wasn’t the sex, of course not – who hadn’t done things they were a little embarrassed about in their time? Quentin carefully applied some green eyeshadow, decided it looked trashy, and removed it. It was just the cancer. They’d all cut her some slack if they knew, although it might make Hugh feel a little weird to know he’d fucked, however inconclusively, someone diseased. It would freak her out if she were him. The lipstick was more of a success. Colouring herself in often helped. She yelped when the phone by her bed rang, decided not to answer it, then on the fifth ring, did.

‘Hi, darling, we’re waiting for you downstairs. Everything OK?’

Hugh’s voice spread solidly over the words, like butter. There were several ways she could play this.

‘Small fashion problem. I’ll be right down.’

She seized the moment and stepped out the door, before she could think and stop herself. Her heart rate had gone up, but she was definitely breathing. She had learned not to wait for the elevator, so she set off down the stairs, and was alarmed to be hailed, a flight before the end, by Lallie’s mom, with Lallie in tow.

‘We’ve been looking for you!’

They were craning over the banister from a floor above. Quentin formed the impression of matching outfits. She continued to flee.

‘I’m running late – catch you later!’

And she was out into the lobby before Katrina could reach the end of her sentence – something about plane tickets. It was probably only a short-term escape, but if she could get going with Mike and Hugh, she might be able to fend off interruption.

They were sitting around one of the low tables near the door. Hugh looked perfect in a summer suit, Mike shifty, with his shirt unbuttoned too far. The door was propped open to circulate some air, admitting instead a block of apocalyptic light. Already, at barely nine o’clock (how late was she?), it was hot. The men rose as Quentin approached. Ordinarily, there would be social kisses,
très
European, but today Quentin sketched a wave and preemptively dropped into her chair, not even waiting for Hugh to pull it out for her with his customary flourish. Determined to emanate angular self-control, Quentin invoked Katharine Hepburn for a blithe couple of seconds before she crashed into
The Philadelphia Story
again.
Shit
. She reached for the coffee pot.

‘Allow me.’

Hugh got there first, and poured. She couldn’t tell if the fine manners were his retreat, because he was always like this, wasn’t he? Taking a leaf from Hugh’s book, she apologized graciously to Mike for being late. Hugh held up the cream jug, the bastard.

‘I take it black.’

‘Sorry to interrupt—’ It was Katrina and Lallie again. Hugh popped up from his chair, obliging Mike to follow. Quentin stayed put.

‘I was just saying, Quentin love, I need to have a word because I’m seeing the travel agent today, like. About flying over.’

Hugh and Mike were extremely and instantly curious. Quentin would happily have ploughed Katrina in her vampirically lipsticked kisser.
Leave me alone, bitch
.

‘The LA office will take care of that, you don’t need to worry.’

Quentin hadn’t, in fact, said anything to LA about Lallie and her mommy visiting. Her shrink, if she still had one (now there was a badly judged blow job for you), would say she was ambivalent on the matter. Genius, childhood, a mother thing: whatever it was, it was causing her a problem. But she was definitely going to fix that, right? Definitely going to talk to Clancy and tell him what she thought, even if it was two things at once.
She’s perfect for the movie. We shouldn’t use her for the movie
.

‘But we’re booking a holiday. Like you said.’

Had she said that? She must have done. Katrina looked to Lallie, a fake appeal not to upset the kid, who cooperated and looked concerned.

‘OK, well, you go right ahead with that, and I’ll talk to my office about the flights, OK? Just let me know the dates …’

‘It’s the twenty-third of September till the—’

‘We kind of have to get going on this, Katrina, could I catch you later?’

‘Why don’t I …’

Hugh intervened with his handsome notebook and silver pencil, transcribed dates.
Take it away, Jeeves
. Mike smirked at her, lying low. Quentin wondered why she disliked him so much, then glimpsed his exposed chest hair and was reminded. He flourished the extra script pages at her, which she took, concentrating on the yellow paper so that Katrina would get the message.

It was a bare half page. Lallie’s character, before she meets Dirk’s weirdo, is exploring a derelict house. After a few rooms she happens on a teenage couple having sex. The boy catches her watching, exchanges ‘a look’ with her, they continue. Quentin read it twice.

‘We have a fantastic location,’ Mike told her. ‘There’s an old bomb site near the place we were shooting the car scenes.’

‘Was this the writer, or you?’

‘I managed to squeeze it out myself – can’t you tell from the typos? No dialogue …’

‘See you then –’

Katrina was moving off, with Lallie. Quentin was gratified to see she looked tentative. She realized Katrina had never witnessed her doing anything really connected with her job before. She probably thought she was just some chick, like her, hanging around the set and making nice.

‘Bye, hon!’ Quentin smiled, prepared to be friendly now they were going.

The woman and girl dissolved into the sunshine. Hugh sat. Mike continued to talk.

‘I was just looking round it the other day when we wrapped, and it’s so perfect. It could be such a powerful scene because we know then exactly where she’s come from, that she’s alone, and her milieu isn’t innocent, and she’s curious …’

‘Half a day?’ Quentin asked, brutally.

‘At least half, I’d say.’

Mike started at Hugh’s intervention. Quentin could see he’d been expecting support.

‘If you’re going into every room,’ Hugh pointed out.

‘We’re not lighting it, except for the sex,’ said Michael.

Quentin ignored this. ‘You’ll still need a second unit, unless you really want to be in on the action,’ she said. ‘I mean the
action
action.’

She neither looked Hugh’s way nor blushed. Adults could casually refer to sex in conversations, particularly when in Europe.

‘I’d prefer to do it myself,’ said Mike. ‘We were talking about scheduling it in on Sunday.’

‘Aren’t there union rules about working on days off?’ Quentin asked. ‘Isn’t it called overtime?’

‘Double bubble,’ said Hugh, mysteriously. Then, to Mike, ‘You’ve got to think about Lallie as well, Mike – they take a dim view of her working on her days off.’

Mike slumped, sulking. Where his hectic shirt gaped, Quentin got an unwelcome view of flaccid pink man-nipple.

‘I just think it’s a scene we’re really going to miss when we get to the edit, if it’s all the big bad man taking the little girl. Katrina will turn a blind eye, you know what she’s like, especially if you bung her, I don’t know, fifty quid.’

Hitching his trouser legs to prevent creasing, Hugh leaned forward in his chair and steepled his fingers low between his open legs, as though cradling the large, fragile sphere of Mike’s ego. ‘I have a suggestion.’

He’d worked it all out: they could use the school. Mike began to object, but Hugh fended him off until he’d got to the end. The fucking couple (necking and fondling perhaps, instead) could be the teacher (no extra actor fees) and another teacher used in a playground scene (non-speaking, a genuine bargain). They’d tag the scene on to the end of a day already in the schedule – no extra set-up, job done, time and money saved. Then, before Michael could voice his artistic objections, Hugh segued into his opinion that this would perhaps be a less conventional and more unexpected view of adult sexuality, compared with the humping teenagers, which he felt as though he’d seen – and he appealed to Quentin here – before. Oh, Christ, he was good. Why hadn’t he come? It was the least she could do.

‘I love what you’ve got here, Mike,’ said Quentin, with maximum
sincerity. ‘This is just a way to build on it. Because what you gain with the teachers is the girl seeing kind of adult authority compromised by, uh, sexuality. The violation of a really crucial boundary. Which helps with the Dirk stuff, maybe.’

This took all of them by surprise. She appeared to be talking Mike’s language. Fluent artistic bullshit. Who knew?

‘Why would she see them,’ asked Mike, as a last resort. ‘In the school?’