Photographic (32 page)

She entered the room to ancient sounds. The calling voice, the bell, the cymbal, the languorous twisting of the singer’s voice as it twined up and down, weaving the same spell as this woman reborn. Tanais, no longer Jane, wove with her hips, her eyes, her hair unbound. The candles guttered, throwing her shadow high upon the wall. A gauzy material covered her legs, nipping in at the ankles, where chains of bells on each foot rang. Bare, her stomach gleamed with a hint of oil. Metallic scales covered her breasts, joined with silver thread to the same transparent material on her arms as her legs. 

Her veiled face was to him inscrutable. Her movements unfamiliar. Languid, sinuous, rapturous. As if she were demonstrating to him the connections and uses of her body, one articulated inch at a time. He entertained a fantasy of himself as a Sultan. It was one of the most erotic sensations he’d ever experienced. She was on the floor now, trailing her hair in front of him. Up again, she flipped it back, turning in hip-guided circles. She clashed her finger cills as flourishes, accent to the movement. The music grew more urgent, faster, the voice pitching higher, the bass rhythm underneath thrumming harder. Her hips rolled a figure-eight with the slow beat of the drums, underneath the faster chant of the singer. His eyes were fixed on her hips as she turned. Her arms wove a plaintive snake-like motion, to the side, to the front, always drawing in, pulling him somehow into that hypnotic movement that started somewhere below her navel and radiated outward to the tips of her fingers and the toes on her feet, the very length of her hair. The music switched to something new. Pan flutes, drums, and tambourine. The voice, in that mysterious language; always calling, longing for something just out of reach. 

She danced closer. Her eyes were darkened, her hair long and independent, twisted in fine little spirals. She undulated her body, looked down at him. He reached for her, touched her midsection on each side with his hands, felt its movement. She uncurled her hand. He took it and pulled her closer. For a heartbeat, she rested on his lap. She twirled away. With a final drumbeat, a flutter of the curtain, the song was over, and she was gone. 

After the heightened tension of the dance, separate bedrooms were more difficult to abide by. Had she been showing another side of herself or torturing the condemned? She couldn’t forget the look he gave her as they said good night.

Releasing Tanais had more consequences than allowing her to dance as she once had. 

Rolling around between Marta’s Egyptian cotton sheets, Jane felt the friction against her legs and arms and thought of Ian one floor below with her pillow beneath his head. Or between his legs. Or underneath one knee. Depending on where he’d put it. Oh, damn. Was she going to abandon her principles of ‘I’m still angry so you sleep in another bed’ for ‘I’m horny so get back in mine’? Maybe she wouldn’t be aroused if she were still mad, so maybe she wasn’t as furious anymore. She rolled from one side to the other. It felt like a long time since the last time. Especially since the last time was so good. It wasn’t that she wanted to make up. She just wanted to be with him, not up here thinking about it. 

She leapt out of bed and tiptoed down to his room. With a slight push, his door creaked open. She felt her way to the foot of his bed in the darkness. His breathing was audible. He was still, lying on top of the sheet. As she stood there she heard him thrash. He whispered, “What is it?” She didn’t say anything. She could see him now in the navy blackness. They looked at each other for a long moment, two shapes in the night. He made a noise of frustration and flopped down again on his pillow. She stood and stared at him for a long time, until she reached out and touched his foot. He lay still. She climbed onto the bed on all fours and climbed over him, her arms and legs on either side. 

“What are you doing?” 

She kissed his chest, pressing her body down so she could feel him. 

“You like me now.” He took a sharp breath in, “But tomorrow morning, how will you like me then?” 

She grabbed his hair and pulled it and he grabbed her arms. It all became a blur of dark blue, knife-edged sheets against flesh as they twisted, a death roll of anguish and pleasure. 

“No promises.” She had to say it.

“Is that true?” He stopped her from what she was doing. She lifted her head. “I can’t do it like that, Jane. I can’t.” He hissed with the deepness of a despair she hadn’t heard in his voice before. His fingers circled her wrists like handcuffs. “Only if you mean it. You have to mean it.”

She looked up at him from where she lay, her body three-quarters of the way covering his, his head propped against the wall where the bed met it. He held her wrists, not painfully, but he would not release her to touch his body. 

“It’s not Jane. It’s Tanais.”
Tan-a-ees
.

“Who’s Tanais?” He really didn’t know. She had legally changed her name when she came of age. 

“Me.”
I am a river. Ancient and lost in myth.

His chin rested on his chest, eyes dark, shining with faint glimmers at her, growing more liquid until for a moment they disappeared behind his shuttering blink. She searched her feelings. What was she doing here, with him right now? Was she here to gratify her desire, because she missed the physical pleasure of connubial bliss, or was she here to reestablish and strengthen the weakened bond between them? 

“Ian.” She pulled herself further up his body, closer to his wary head. “All we have is right now.” She brought her face up to his face, eyes level with his eyes. 

She heard their breathing in the darkness, as if they’d both been running. 

“Go away.” His voice was fragile, like she could break him with another word, a touch.

After the first sting of rejection, she felt a strange elation. She pulled free of his grasp and struggled backwards off him, shoving back off the bed. Without another word she ran back up the stairs to her own bedroom. As she crawled under the covers and curled into a sleeping position, her duvet close around her, she felt satisfied with an unexpected rush of sexual power. Her eyes flicked open again as she was struck with the suspicion that this experience was turning her from a sensitive empath into a heartless sadist.
I’m a freak
, she thought, and rolled into a tight ball, eyes wide in the darkness.

The next morning there was a feeling in the air as if the brush had been burned clear from the forest.

“I have to go and do publicity some other places.” Ian was cutting up oranges for breakfast, squeezing fresh orange juice for them. Tam had been racing from kitchen to living room all morning, watching cartoons and grabbing the next part of breakfast. 

Jane looked up from the
Guardian
. “Where do you need to go?”

“Berlin, Rome, Tokyo. Here.”

“Hum.” She watched his hands as he made a swift slice, halving one of the oranges he’d bought that morning, before Tam or she were awake. With competent twists, he coaxed the liquid out of the half on a ceramic hand juicer until the orange peel was a clean empty shell. He poured the juice through a cup-sized strainer into a glass, already half-full, and set it in front of Tam. 

“Okay. You want company?”

He set down the unsqueezed orange half. “You’d do that?”

“In for a penny.”

He went back to squeezing juice. “It’s going to be a whirlwind.” He was unable to repress his smile. “Do you think it’d be too hard on Tam?”

“Don’t know. She’s never done it before.”

“Company jet.” 

“Traveling in style.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Let’s not harp on it.” She fixed his dancing eyes with her stare. 

“I know, I just can’t believe it. You really want to?”

“Ian!”

“Okay, okay.” He lined up two more small, glowing glasses of juice.

“All right, then.” 

He placed a glass in front of Jane with his eyebrows raised, mouth in neutral.

“And no funny looks, either.”

“Lord, woman, I’ve got to express myself one way or another.” 

“You get ample opportunity for that. Why not an exercise in containment?”

“Oh, bother.” His lean brown face flushed with pleasure.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A
MOBILE
PHONE
vibrated in the front pocket of a certain pinstripe-suited, lavender-tied gentleman while he was eating lunch at the Palais Raj, an Indian restaurant in the City. He pulled the mobile out of his pocket and pushed a button. “Yes?” 

“I have a story for you.”

“Oh?” He delivered a maximum of doubt in a minimum of syllables.

“Yes, and I’m not messing you about, so you can keep the attitude. This is the real goods, and I expect to be paid proportionately. Cover. Huge.”

“My, my.”

“That’s right.”

“Huge, like what, say.”

“Huge, like you’re paying me six figures. It's still hush-hush, at the moment. But I expect to be able to break it very soon.”

“Ahem.”

“Well?”

“One moment." He spoke in an aside. "Ahem, sorry about this, James, I have to handle some business overseas. Just have to step out, half a mo. Sorry about lunch. Buy you a round next week. Right. Bye, then. Give me a ring. Goodbye, Mr. Chen. No, it was lovely. Duty calls! Right. Now, then. I’ll find myself a doorway to stand in. Have a bit of a lean.” His tone became confiding. “I must tell you, we’re not accustomed to paying that kind of sum, no matter how good the story. I don’t want you to get your hopes up. However, I do want to hear some particulars.”

“You don’t have this kind of story put in your lap every day.”

“So far you haven’t told me anything worth paying tuppence for.”

“Listen, I know my position. I’m not going to get scooped. I need a guarantee of some kind. I say big, I mean big. Top two or three stories of the year. Could be number one. That depends on what else happens here on out, of course. You can’t predict.”

“True.” The gentleman in pinstripes brushed a stray crumb from his suit.

“So what are you going to give me as good faith? How important is it to you that the Stargazer is the first one out of the box?”

“Now, now, steady on. One needs a bit to chew on, to start the salivary glands working. There’s no need to be hasty. Surely we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. You’ve got the story. We’ve got the outlet. A match made in heaven. So let’s talk speak rationally together. Can you give me some idea, without compromising yourself, what it concerns in general?”

“I don’t think I can quite yet.”

“We’ll keep it broad. Is it the political arena?”

“No.”

“Sport?”

“Not really.”

“The world of entertainment, then.”

“I can’t say.”

“I see. Does it involve people?”

“What do you mean, does it involve people? What kind of question is that? Have you had a scandal that didn’t involve people?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised, my dear, you’d be surprised. I remember the great champion dog thefts at Crufts, years ago. Ransoming show dogs, they were. Hit quite a tender spot with the animal-loving public, let me tell you. Then that puts me in mind of the Anglo-European Hedgehog Society’s battle to preserve our native hedges, lest one of our beloved small mammals be lost forever. Let no one say that the
Stargazer
cares for naught but sensation, glamour, and gore. We have our softer side.

“But enough of that, stories of the past. You describe your story as a scandal. A scandal that has yet to come to light, for if it had, there would be no story. And it involves the world of entertainment. Well, well, that gives us a hint. If it is a very big story, huge, as you like to say, it can only be because it has as its participants people who are very famous in that world. Big stars, in other words. I begin to see, my dear. Yes. Give me a couple of hours. I’ll get back to you. Ta for now.”

“But I…hello?” Marta shut her burner phone, much concerned. What if she were scooped?

Berlin.
Jane and Ian decided to walk to Ka De We, one of the largest department stores in the world, and see if they could find some things for Tam. Ian had glasses and a slouchy hat on, but Jane was wondering how it would go in such a public place. The street had been okay so far. A few recognitions but no crowds. Europeans were in general more laissez-faire about celebrity, Jane thought, but in some cities there were so many tourists that most of the people walking around were from other places, and they thought a sighting of a famous person was something like a stop on a tour, part of their vacation. A photo and autograph opportunity, or a time to stop and chat, or tell him about the screenplay they were writing or the film idea they had. She was going off her experience of six years ago when they had traveled together in London and other cities when he was doing plays. And he hadn’t been nearly as famous then as he was now. She just wanted a nice day for their family. Her eyes swept the sidewalk and street as they walked along, aware of anyone who looked their way. They hadn’t had any paparazzi in Berlin so far, but they hadn’t had the premiere of
Lunacy
yet. They had managed to sneak in to town by, of all things, taking public transportation from the airport, and staying at a small hotel. She suspected they rode just ahead of a wave that loomed closer and closer. The longer they stayed ahead of it the higher and more dangerous it became. But for now all she cared about was riding clean as long as they could.

They made it to Ka De We without incident. Her heart felt light. As they entered, she looked at Ian. “Think you need a bigger hat?” 

He pulled the brim down a little further. 

“Only hope they don’t toss you out for being a fashion victim.”

“I’m starting a new look. They’ll all be wearing them.”

“They already are. Except they are all out on a lake with rods fly-fishing.”

“It ‘tis rather an ugly hat.” Tam spoke with a suspiciously English accent.

 Ian chased them all the way up to the third floor.

They found some darling outfits for Tam, including a small dirndl. Also Jane picked up a couple of pairs of shoes and a couple of clutches to go with the new clothes she’d found at a small boutique. Now she would have something for Tokyo and London, which was the last premiere. Jane paid for everything so Ian could lurk in the background, looking faintly disreputable. Their luck had held. Maybe the hat was just that ugly. By the time they were on their way out of the store, they were all giggling with the headiness of it. Tam wore her dirndl and kept spinning in circles getting dizzy. She careened around. This was not exactly diverting attention away from them as a family, so Jane hustled them out on the street and they stood there laughing in the sunlight.