Yearn (39 page)

“It's just a question of time,” he muttered darkly.

“What do you want from me?” she screamed, but he had pulled the blankets over his head, huddling.

She went to sleep on the couch downstairs. As she wormed her way down into the lumpy cushions, an old quilt pulled over her like a tent, she wondered how he could be so jealous and so doubting when both of them knew that she was the more faithful.

She tried to distract herself from her weeping by thinking about the sculptures sitting in her studio like silent captive performers waiting to be led to the theater. She had made so many parts, the shape of her muse now resonated in her hands like the memory of a blind person. The familiarity was so real it was as if she knew him already. “Is this infidelity?” she wondered, just as the shape of his penis, or at least her rendering of it, fluttered down the back of her head and tingled in her fingers and groin. Could you want someone you'd never met so much? Was this how some women felt about celebrities?

She tossed and turned, trying to fold her long legs into the crook of the couch. Finally she pulled a long pillow from another chair and wrapped herself around it as if it were a man—her man, her creation—and slept without dreaming.

 • • • 

The next day, Toby, his body clock still in a different time zone, got up early and, after slipping past the sleeping Jennifer, left the house to drive into the city. He wound his way around Studley Park at that time of morning when there is no one around except joggers and cyclists, but already the day had begun to heat up and a dryness lay over the morning air. He felt all jittery, as if something momentous lay just ahead but he couldn't quite see it. It was disorienting, this feeling of a premonition, and Toby, who liked to be in control of the events in his life, felt threatened.

On Lygon Street he had a cappuccino and a pastry at his favorite Italian café, then walked around to the casting agency he'd always used for his films. Casey, a woman in her midfifties who'd worked with Toby for over fifteen years, was already in her office. A broad woman with a healthy disregard for the niceties of beauty, she was famous for her maternal earthiness and zero tolerance for the egotism of her more famous clientele.

Casey was leaning back in her chair, headset wrapped around her face as she talked furiously to someone in London. She was framed by the photographs of actors and actresses that covered her back wall, shiny in youth and hope. Smiling at Toby but not bothering to pause the rapid fire of her conversation, she indicated that he should sit. He threw himself down in a leather chair opposite her and, staring over her head, noticed a very early head shot of an impossibly young Jerome Thomas. For a minute Toby slipped back into memories of his own first film, the one that had launched the star's career. Casey finished her conversation and pulled off the headset.

“Sorry, trouble with a client in London. So Jesus, Toby, I thought you'd still be in Rome, or at best in an editing suite.”

“I will be in a couple of days, but I had a few days off and Jenny's got a show opening tomorrow.”

“That's right, I think I have an invite somewhere. . . . How is the lovely Jenny?”

“She's okay. Listen, I have a question for you.” He pulled out the magazine image, unfolded it, then laid it flat on the desk. “Do you know who this is?”

She turned the photocopy around so that she could see it more clearly.

“I mean, I figure you know everyone, right? Actors, models, wannabes . . . Southern and Northern Hemisphere.” His voice tightening, he wondered whether he really did want to know.

“You know me, babe, I'm a total face slut. If he's anyone I'd know him.” She studied the young man thoughtfully. “You thinking of casting him? He's definitely got presence, a little Keanu Reeves meets Hugh Jackman—but can he act?”

“Just tell me who the fuck he is, Casey,” he snapped.

Casey glanced up, surprised, then shrugged and pulled out a book filled with images of smiling actors—a casting reference book of A-list actors and models. She turned the pages, scanning the photos for a match. Finally she shut the book.

“Well, he's not a local actor or a model; that much I can tell you. And I don't recognize him from ICM America. Toby, what's this all about?”

“Nothing. Forget I asked.” He snatched back the photocopy.

Casey stood. “So when does the film come out? People are saying good things about this one, Toby.”

“I reckon we'll be finished by Christmas. We're on track for the release date.”

“Well, if you need me for the Australian end on the next one you let me know, won't you?”

“Always, always. Thanks, Casey.” He was backing toward the door. “And if you do think you see this guy anywhere, you ring me.”

“Who is he, your long-lost brother?”

“Something like that.” And he tried to laugh but failed.

When he got back to the house in the early afternoon, Jennifer had begun to pack the pieces up ready to be collected that afternoon and installed in the gallery the next day. When she heard the car pull into the driveway, she hesitated; feeling furtive, she stood with one of the porcelain faces wrapped in tissue paper. This is not clandestine, this is merely art, she rationalized. Nevertheless she was nervous about seeing Toby. She hadn't spoken to him since their argument the night before and had spent the day checking her mobile every five minutes, expecting an apology or at least a text from him; instead there'd been nothing but silence.

Toby climbed out of the car and decided that he wouldn't go into the studio to say hello. As he left the concrete driveway he noticed the mail still poking out of the letter box. He collected it on his way to the house. He felt Jennifer, her presence stretching across the front lawn, catching at his back. He would not succumb. At the doorstep he shuffled through the mail: three junk flyers, one postcard from an actor friend for him, and two letters addressed to Jennifer. One of them was elegantly handwritten in black ink. There was something disturbingly masculine about the handwriting, and he tore it open.

Hello, you don't know me but I got your address from your London Gallery. Forgive my audacity but I just wanted to write to tell you how much I enjoyed your London show. Your work is a rare combination of both the sublime and the sexual, and I have to say that the beauty of the execution of your sculptures elevates it above other artists of a similar ilk. I hope it won't be too long before you will again show in London.

Yours, an admirer.

 • • • 

Toby's heart thumped uncomfortably against his rib cage and he felt nauseous. He slammed the front door shut and ran through the house out to the back garden, then walked furiously toward the studio.

“This is from him, isn't it?” he found himself shouting. The pieces piled on one table seemed to push against his hot eyes, mockingly naked, mockingly realistic. All he wanted was a confession, something concrete he could fight against. Jennifer stood staring at him in her work smock, one cheek smudged with white dust.

“What is?” she replied, backing toward the wall, still holding a half-wrapped hand, the porcelain fingers strangely cold and tentative against her own. She was trying not to cry. He thrust the letter toward her.

“This!”

She still had the presence of mind to put the hand down carefully, the fingers upright. Trying to hide the tremor in her hands, she unfolded the letter and read it. After a moment she looked up.

“I don't know who this is from. It's just some English fan—probably a buyer. . . .”

“You're lying, Jennifer. You've been lying ever since I got back. I mean look at you! You even look different! And who are you dressed up for today? You're even wearing makeup—you never wear makeup unless it's a special occasion!”

“I told you before, I've never met him!”

“Then how could you know his body so well, eh? Tell me that much!”

She edged around to the front of the worktable, so much anger and so much fragility—both dangerously close to each other. She met his stare but she could not give him the answer he wanted.

“I don't know.”

Suddenly all of his fear, all of his frustration burst through him and before he realized if he had swept his arm through all the mocking faces, clawing hands, those loud penises, and they fell to the concrete floor, smashing in sharp clouds of dust and shards. Toby looked up to see that Jennifer's face was now as white as the broken masks, her mouth open. He ran out, out toward the car and away.

She was shaking from shock. She stared in total disbelief at the carnage he'd left behind. The floor and worktable looked like a macabre operating table or butcher's slab, the broken body parts now tangled in with each other, the broken tip of a cock lying next to half a smashed face, snapped off. The whole show was ruined, unfixable.

Her shock was lacerated by the sound of a phone signaling an incoming text. She turned and realized Toby had left his mobile on the table. She was moving toward the phone when she heard the sound of a car pulling up outside the house. “He's come back,” she thought. “He's driven off, then turned back around. He's realized what he's destroyed, how much he's broken.” The sentence pounded through her as she ran out through the garden, down the side of the house, and into the front yard.

By the time she reached the pavement she was flushed and shaking. A man was standing by a white rental car, staring down at a piece of paper. Despite the fact that his face was turned away from her she recognized the profile immediately. He looked up at the house. She froze. He swung around and she saw instantly that he was exactly how she had imagined him to be, if not a little taller and a little more fully fleshed, his dark hair blacker and those deep-set eyes bluer.

“Sorry . . .”

He had a French accent, she thought, and now he smiled uncertainly, wondering at her flushed face and disheveled state.

“Do you live here?”

But Jennifer could not speak. She could not assimilate his physical presence here in her own world, his very real existence. His smile wavered, uncertain.

“I'm looking for Toby Gladwell, the film director? I believe he lives in this house. I've never met him but I'm a journalist from
Le Monde
and I happen to be on holiday in Australia and I am a big fan. Would it be possible to interview him about his latest movie?” He stepped forward, a little tentative in his movement.

“You want to meet Toby?”

“If that's possible, I am happy to wait.”

Jennifer glanced up the street. There was no sign of Toby's car; it might be hours before he decided to return. She looked back at the Frenchman; his skin was exactly the shade she'd visualized and his lips curved out in a bow she herself had created. He was hers, not Toby's. Him standing there, outside her own house, was fate. A coincidence she had made happen. “And I am happy to wait with you,” she replied, then turned toward the house.

I would like to thank my partner, Jeremy Asher, and all at HarperCollins Australia who have made this book possible, particularly Anna Valdinger and Katherine Hassett for their superb editing.