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"You’re just what I wanted.” Tor regarded Ian with the gloating pleasure of one who has made an extravagant purchase, but is convinced of its ultimate worth.

“Oh?” Ian’s curiosity was piqued despite himself.

“Yes. Your commitment, your focus, your submergence into a role. That is going to be especially valuable here.” 

“How so?”

Tor poked a stick into the glowing coals at the heart of the fire, smiling to himself, as if in on a joke he wasn’t quite ready to share. 

“I want to start this journey off with you. Us together. Here is where it begins. Who knows where it might lead?" Tor's Norwegian-accented English fell easily into a storytelling cadence: the rhythm of a thousand years of the Scandinavian saga in his blood. "Dangerous places, false trails, dark unintended pathways before the road home is found. Such was Odysseus’s fate.” His expression could only be described as a smirk. A quarter of Tor’s now glowing stick broke off in the fire. “You’re willing to follow his footsteps.”

Ian sat hypnotized by the fire and Tor’s words, thinking of past roles, old wounds he’d opened for the sake of a character, a scene, a moment. Things he’d done to himself to go deeper and find something to give when he feared he’d have nothing. That freezing chill like a dash of ice water to his face: the moment before he had to do a tough emotional scene, that one frozen mask-like moment of terror—I have nothing, I feel nothing. Slowly, though it took only seconds, the melting away, the prickling and stabs of emotion returning, and he could work. Of course, he’d done scenes without feeling them, numb, but to him they were a betrayal.

As he listened to Tor, his heart sank. More than what Tor said, it was his demeanor, his piercing eyes, that conveyed he wanted it all, everything Ian had for this film. Here at the cusp of the production Ian usually felt an anticipation and excitement about what he was to do, the whole film in front of him, all his ideas nascent and untried, no compromises yet demanded of the artistic vision in his mind. 

Now, the night before, the director at his fireside, all he could feel was dread. Usually at the beginning he didn’t remember his precipitous fall into character, his personality change, the isolation and obsession that marked many of his filmmaking experiences. Somehow memory was kind and wiped these painful metamorphoses clean until the next time.

Yet here was Tor, asking for all that and, Ian sensed, something more.

“Trust me. My vision for the film—it’s what I told you the very first time we talked about it—Odysseus’s world as it’s never been seen: all its violence, lust, and treachery. This will be no child’s adventure film. This man travels to the darkest places any mortal can, and lives to tell the tale. We tell your story, albeit in the flashes our time pressure will allow.” He waved his hand dismissively. “The moments highlighting how desperate it is for you, how you despair. How you lie to survive. Your wily perseverance. You’re no modern ordinary hero. You’ve survived the ages, and deserve a retelling. To do it without smoothing the rough edges, without making pablum for a squeamish audience. I’m trusting they can take it. I need you with me. Willing to go to the darkest places the story demands. This will be the greatest
Odyssey
ever filmed.”

Just the way to start a story figuring the Greek gods, Ian thought. With hubris to spare. Ian sighed, his breath too faint to touch the fire. 

“You have me.” He locked eyes with Tor across the flame-spent logs.

Tor smiled to himself and nodded. 

“Good. Tomorrow, then.” He stood and reached across to shake hands. Ian rose and they clasped hands briefly, the heat roasting Ian’s arm until he withdrew it. With a quick farewell Tor turned and paced off into the darkness, until Ian heard him scrambling up the rocky slanted cliff to the road. Ian sat back down by his fire, letting himself be mesmerized again. Whether the muse would find him now, this night, he did not know.

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE
ORDEAL
OF
dropping Marta off at the hospital was made much briefer due to a call made by Jane, in advance, which provided for an attendant with a wheelchair waiting at the emergency room doors at the time of arrival. Jane prayed she’d keep her mouth shut and make discreet telephone calls.

Back home, Jane found her thoughts straying to years past, when Ian’s friends had been around more. It must be a few years ago now; Tam a toddler. 

They had sat in this very room, gathered around the fire, when Kip, one of Ian’s actor friends, had quoted a poem about a girl who was loved best for her yellow hair. Only God could love her for more than that. Jane had searched the poem out later, “For Anne Gregory,” and found it was quite famous. In fact, it was by one of Ian’s favorite poets, Yeats. His friends were always spouting off verse or a playwright’s prose, which Jane usually enjoyed, though it made her feel somehow lacking, in education if not experience. 

This time, though, the content struck too close to home. Those lines sent a quick prickling up the hairs of her neck, and she had to force herself not to look at Ian or the others sprawled about the fire. She felt a recognition right at her core. Ian was the girl with the yellow hair. And what did she love him for? Even among their little group, theater and film actors, a handsome lot, Ian drew the light as naturally and without design as crystal: a prism. She felt an awful lurch in her stomach when she thought Kip might have said those words on purpose, for her ears.

As they continued around the room one by one, reeling off poems and snatches of plays, she got herself together. It was pleasant being in the company of theater actors: they could memorize and had resonant voices, full and rich like her mother’s. Their voices soothed her. After the first irrational glut of fear, she recovered somewhat. Her reaction was silly. Of course she loved her husband for himself; Kip’s choice wasn’t personal. 

Thomas, who sat next to her, finished something she hadn’t listened to and turned to Jane, asking her for a poem, too. This type of thing often happened, Jane getting pulled into their moments. They were the ones who were well-read, who knew the allusions to this play and that, and played off each other in an unending stream of literary connect-the-dots. 

It made Jane feel like the awkward bird, the albino raven she had seen once in a rehabilitation facility, unable to exist safely outside its habitat. She remembered she had wanted to ask the handler why, why was being different dangerous, unsafe? There were white birds in the wild. To herself she thought: standing out from the group. That’s why. And while essentially the same, never fully one of them, with them. She couldn’t survive in their world, even in fun, and it was unfair to ask. She shook her head and they passed her over, as they had every other time. 

Yet often they ran lines and needed someone to fill in other parts. Or on holidays they wanted to do scenes from a play. You’d think they got enough of that at work, Jane thought. But some of them had been at drama school together and the old “let’s put on a show” mentality was still there. She loved to watch. But they begged her to take small parts, and she felt rotten when she acquiesced. The amateur. Although she had certain performance experience in her past, it didn’t apply, and she made sure not to tell any of them of it. Not even Ian knew that story. They coerced her into parlormaid roles, or she was a lone Greek Chorus. They were kind, although she wondered if when she and Tam when to bed early, some nights, they engaged in kitchen table critiques of her skill. She had no sense of her ability. Once she asked Ian.

He looked into her eyes, a moment when he had been home a while, fully present, himself, and saw her insecurity. 

“You’re just right.” 

“I’m not, either. You’re the professionals. I feel silly.”

He stroked her back, pulling her close. “It’s just play, for fun. It’s a lark. Like children playing a game. Play like a child and have fun. Don’t take it seriously. We don’t. Everyone appreciates you taking roles when we need someone.”

She looked up at his face and saw in a sense, in some way of being she’d lost, he was right. Where had she lost that part of her that could play, that could take part in a game? She played make-believe with Tam, didn’t she, when the two of them were alone? Was she so afraid to play the fool in front of anyone but a child?

Jane fixed dinner for Tam and herself, enduring endless questions from Tam about the exotic and mysterious visitor, which Jane felt uninspired to answer with more than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at this point in the day. Exhausted, she tucked Tam into bed as soon as possible, much to Tam’s chagrin. Tam insisted on a glass of water, three stuffed bears instead of her usual one, and three kisses good night, each kiss requiring Jane to come back upstairs from where she had settled by the fireplace. 

At last, she retired into her comfortable chair, after instructing Tam with a stern warning that the third was a magical and therefore the absolute last kiss to be expected. 

Once Tam slept, the house took on a silent fullness in which Jane walked about like a guest whose host has gone to bed. She roused herself to crunch newspapers, then stuff them under the wood laid in the hearth. She lit a match to it. The wood caught briskly, well cured after the dryness of the last few months. Leaning back, she felt the heat drift toward her.

An idea rose foggily into her head and she got up again, to wander into the dining room. There she examined the wine rack and selected some port. She wanted something red and sweet. Searching the breakfront, she got what she thought was the right glass for port; they looked like the set Ian had used when he’d introduced her to it many years ago. It hardly ever occurred to her to drink when there wasn’t something set in front of her, or another person there to suggest it. Tonight was different. Tonight she could relate to the statement she’d heard from other’s tongues:
I need a drink
.

She took the heavy bottle by the neck and drifted into the kitchen in search of a corkscrew. She didn’t find one in the first or second drawer she searched. Damn. Where was wine paraphernalia kept? After serious scrounging, she hit pay dirt in a small, glass-fronted, triangular drawer in a cabinet she never used. There could be such a thing as too many drawers. Now she struggled with the screw and the cork. The long ear-like things on the side kept flopping up and down when she tried to start the screw going to pierce the foil and dig into the cork. There was no doubt she was doing it wrong. 

For a moment she stood at the counter, corkscrew in one hand, bottle in the other, and thought about calling her neighbor Hank. He would get it done in ten seconds, with style. But calling Hank to open a bottle seemed a little unfair when she would be drinking alone. For a moment she felt quivery, about to cry, because all she wanted on this particular night was to taste that rough bittersweetness gliding down her throat. Now. Then, with her head still bowed, she laughed a little. She could change a tire. A corkscrew was a tool. She could figure out a damn tool. If she had to go online, ‘how to open wine bottle,’ she’d solve it.

After some careful fiddling and turning the object around, turning a certain piece back and forth again and again, she thought she might have a clue. She attacked the cork again, this time flipping a flippable part in one direction. She started to have success mining the cork. The corkscrew was going in crooked, but as long as it got in there, who cared? Now she was in. Biting her lip, she flipped the flippy thing back again and pressed the ears down slowly. A dignified ‘pop’ and she had an open bottle of port. She put the bottle up to her nose and inhaled. She didn’t have the blood of a drinker in her, not like some she knew, but at that moment there was no finer smell than the sweet earth tang of port in her nostrils. 

She poured a three-quarter glass and returned to her chair, bringing the bottle. She sipped faster than she usually might. There wasn’t any food to eat in-between, no people to converse with. It tasted good. She lay her head back after a while and let the glass sit on the table next to her. Her head felt clear, thoughts coming in waves, like surf washing over her body, her mind. 

He was coming back. When late summer came he would be here. The incompleteness would be filled out. The edges of the room blurred. She floated on the warmth of the fire. 

Except for the light over the oven in the kitchen and the firelight, the house was dark. 

She thought of Ian at this moment, wondering if he were in darkness or light. After calculating the time difference, she knew it was early morning there. He might call.

The movement of the fire, the trembling of the flames made her smile as she thought of other evenings. Less welcome memories, his other selves, dissolved like knots under the hands of a healer. She rested her head against the side of the chair. The phone was on a table at her left. She put the phone in her lap. Pulling a blanket around her, she tucked up her feet and let herself be lulled by the warmth of the fire within, the fire without. Someone was asking her something. What was it? It was hard to hear above the song in her head, the voices singing. She had to answer the question, it was important she remember what it was. Her eyes opened. The firelight flickered in her pupils.

How often is he home?

“He comes home,” she said. “He always comes home.”

The phone was smooth and cool in her hand. Before the grandfather clock struck nine, the phone had fallen in between the cushions; she was asleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ODYSSEUS: LOVE ROCKS THE ANCIENT WORLD

Amidst the romantic Greek setting of the
Odysseus
set, whispers are rustling that the lovely Delaney Corts and sexy Ian Reilly may not be acting, after all. When two stars collide, is it any wonder sparks fly? Scenesters say things are hot and heavy between Del and Ian. Ian’s marriage may not be the only thing on the rocks, if rumors are true: strife on-set between Ian and director Tor Torsten is said to plague the production as well.