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When I saw who was sitting next to me in first class for the flight back to the States from London, my gut did a little flip. There he was, in the flesh, the guy whose work on the big and small screen over the past thirty years had made him a recognizable celebrity on several continents, though not the kind of superstar that would be flying home in a private jet.
He was good at the acting craft, because it was easy for me to suspend my disbelief and quickly think of him as someone other than himself, which helped me get over that dull stab of pain I felt whenever I would first see his face. But seeing him here, big as life and just himself, was a little like having a wild animal rake its claws over old wounds.
As you've probably guessed, I'm no fan. You see, this is the guy who stole my girl's heart before she and I had a chance to see if what we had was going to work.
Alice was her name. The lovely, beautiful, intelligent, sharp-as-a-tack Alice. The Alice with sunlight in her laugh and an elephant-shaped birthmark on her shoulder blade. And while there was an unmistakable attraction between us, it eventually became clear—to both of us—that she'd never really gotten over what had been a one-night fling with Jeff Marsh, the guy sitting next to me. Eventually, there came a moment when she brought this guy's name up just once too often, whereupon I lost it. We weren't talking about this guy again, were we? And then I packed my bags and left, with my tail between my legs, carrying wounds I licked for years.
And so here we were, in adjacent couches, aboard one of those packed flights with no empty seats—certainly none in first class—so I sat down and buried my nose in a book.
But I could not concentrate on reading. Mentally, I was trying to dispassionately step back and take a good, hard look at myself and understand my emotional state. I glanced over at Marsh. He was looking somewhat vacantly out the window at whatever there was to see out there and idly swirling what was left of his drink in his glass. He actually looked fairly harmless.
Have you ever heard of exposure therapy? It's a technique used to treat anxiety, PTSD, and the like, and to describe it in overly simple terms, it consists of getting a subject to come face-to-face with fear in a controlled environment. It occurred to me that, in point of fact, Marsh had never consciously done anything to hurt me, obviously posed no danger to me here at 36,000 feet, and so I was actually in a pretty good place for some impromptu self-therapy, because deep-seated hostility is not healthy unless there's a good reason for it.
So, by the time the attendants were preparing to serve the main meal, I had settled down, put the book away, and had started to do what I do for a living: I struck up a conversation and got him to open up. It's a talent of mine that's let me to make a comfortable life for myself and my family, and by the time our dishes were being cleared away, it was as if Jeff and I were old friends, and the feeling I had started with—that he was somehow Fortunato to my Montresor—had dissipated completely.
“So, is it true what they say about all you Hollywood types,” I said, sotto voce, in my best nudge-nudge-wink-wink manner, “how members of the opposite sex simply throw themselves at your feet?”
After a moment, his eyebrows shot up and he gave a little shrug. “Well, I've been married and divorced three times, if that answers your question.” He smiled a little and took a sip from his scotch-and-soda.
“Tough to find the right lady, isn't it?” I asked.
He didn't say anything and, after a moment, went back to looking out the window and swirling his drink, as if he hadn't heard me. I supposed I had crossed some line, but I held my peace. After a minute or two, he turned in his seat and faced me directly.
“The trick isn't finding her, Rhys, it's realizing when she's standing there, in front of you, when you weren't looking for anyone at all,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
He sat back in his seat and took another sip of his drink. “A long time ago—oh, it must've been thirty-something years ago, before I hit the big time—I met this one girl and we hit it off from the get-go. Man, we had a great time... but it wasn't just the physical part that made it so fantastic. We were... so completely with each other, you know what I mean?” A moment later, his body seemed to deflate a little and his eyes drifted away again, toward the window.
“So what happened?”
“We said our goodbyes the next morning, and dashed off to wherever we were going that day, that's what happened. And then try as I might, I couldn't get her out of my mind. Heck, after all these years, there are still moments when I think of her.” He finished the rest of his drink and pressed the call button for the attendant. “I don't know why I'm telling you this.”
“Why didn't you go after her, tell her how you felt?” I said, while I thought What were the odds...?
“I would've, but—well, what can I say? I lost the scrap of paper on which she wrote her name and number, and the private detectives I spoke with said they'd need something a little more substantial to work with than 'green-eyed redhead with a curious birthmark'.”
“A birthmark?” I asked, and was struck by a unsettling combination of dread and relief.
“Yes, a birthmark. On her shoulder. It looked like an elephant. Can you imagine that?”
As we flew eastward, we spoke at length about other subjects, and by the time we landed, we'd exchanged business cards and our private phone numbers. We hugged like a pair old frat brothers as we parted company at the entrance to the immigration area, and I soon lost sight of him in the crowd.
As I walked out of the arrivals terminal into the New York sunshine after clearing customs, I looked at the card Marsh had given me, ran the ball of my index finger lightly along its edge, and wondered what Alice had done with her life since I had seen her last.
Week 3. Intersection!
I have been fortunate to be "intersecting" this week with that incomparable wonderer,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
adpaz!
He was good at the acting craft, because it was easy for me to suspend my disbelief and quickly think of him as someone other than himself, which helped me get over that dull stab of pain I felt whenever I would first see his face. But seeing him here, big as life and just himself, was a little like having a wild animal rake its claws over old wounds.
As you've probably guessed, I'm no fan. You see, this is the guy who stole my girl's heart before she and I had a chance to see if what we had was going to work.
Alice was her name. The lovely, beautiful, intelligent, sharp-as-a-tack Alice. The Alice with sunlight in her laugh and an elephant-shaped birthmark on her shoulder blade. And while there was an unmistakable attraction between us, it eventually became clear—to both of us—that she'd never really gotten over what had been a one-night fling with Jeff Marsh, the guy sitting next to me. Eventually, there came a moment when she brought this guy's name up just once too often, whereupon I lost it. We weren't talking about this guy again, were we? And then I packed my bags and left, with my tail between my legs, carrying wounds I licked for years.
And so here we were, in adjacent couches, aboard one of those packed flights with no empty seats—certainly none in first class—so I sat down and buried my nose in a book.
But I could not concentrate on reading. Mentally, I was trying to dispassionately step back and take a good, hard look at myself and understand my emotional state. I glanced over at Marsh. He was looking somewhat vacantly out the window at whatever there was to see out there and idly swirling what was left of his drink in his glass. He actually looked fairly harmless.
Have you ever heard of exposure therapy? It's a technique used to treat anxiety, PTSD, and the like, and to describe it in overly simple terms, it consists of getting a subject to come face-to-face with fear in a controlled environment. It occurred to me that, in point of fact, Marsh had never consciously done anything to hurt me, obviously posed no danger to me here at 36,000 feet, and so I was actually in a pretty good place for some impromptu self-therapy, because deep-seated hostility is not healthy unless there's a good reason for it.
So, by the time the attendants were preparing to serve the main meal, I had settled down, put the book away, and had started to do what I do for a living: I struck up a conversation and got him to open up. It's a talent of mine that's let me to make a comfortable life for myself and my family, and by the time our dishes were being cleared away, it was as if Jeff and I were old friends, and the feeling I had started with—that he was somehow Fortunato to my Montresor—had dissipated completely.
“So, is it true what they say about all you Hollywood types,” I said, sotto voce, in my best nudge-nudge-wink-wink manner, “how members of the opposite sex simply throw themselves at your feet?”
After a moment, his eyebrows shot up and he gave a little shrug. “Well, I've been married and divorced three times, if that answers your question.” He smiled a little and took a sip from his scotch-and-soda.
“Tough to find the right lady, isn't it?” I asked.
He didn't say anything and, after a moment, went back to looking out the window and swirling his drink, as if he hadn't heard me. I supposed I had crossed some line, but I held my peace. After a minute or two, he turned in his seat and faced me directly.
“The trick isn't finding her, Rhys, it's realizing when she's standing there, in front of you, when you weren't looking for anyone at all,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
He sat back in his seat and took another sip of his drink. “A long time ago—oh, it must've been thirty-something years ago, before I hit the big time—I met this one girl and we hit it off from the get-go. Man, we had a great time... but it wasn't just the physical part that made it so fantastic. We were... so completely with each other, you know what I mean?” A moment later, his body seemed to deflate a little and his eyes drifted away again, toward the window.
“So what happened?”
“We said our goodbyes the next morning, and dashed off to wherever we were going that day, that's what happened. And then try as I might, I couldn't get her out of my mind. Heck, after all these years, there are still moments when I think of her.” He finished the rest of his drink and pressed the call button for the attendant. “I don't know why I'm telling you this.”
“Why didn't you go after her, tell her how you felt?” I said, while I thought What were the odds...?
“I would've, but—well, what can I say? I lost the scrap of paper on which she wrote her name and number, and the private detectives I spoke with said they'd need something a little more substantial to work with than 'green-eyed redhead with a curious birthmark'.”
“A birthmark?” I asked, and was struck by a unsettling combination of dread and relief.
“Yes, a birthmark. On her shoulder. It looked like an elephant. Can you imagine that?”
As we flew eastward, we spoke at length about other subjects, and by the time we landed, we'd exchanged business cards and our private phone numbers. We hugged like a pair old frat brothers as we parted company at the entrance to the immigration area, and I soon lost sight of him in the crowd.
As I walked out of the arrivals terminal into the New York sunshine after clearing customs, I looked at the card Marsh had given me, ran the ball of my index finger lightly along its edge, and wondered what Alice had done with her life since I had seen her last.
I have been fortunate to be "intersecting" this week with that incomparable wonderer,
adpaz!
