Chapter Five: Let The Night Cover Us
I saw her running in the twilight, very small and far away. I thought that maybe she could reach me, before the darkness fell. So I sat where I was, and I waited, and it never occurred to me that I could go out to meet her.
I sit here still, but I think she has turned back; because the world is black and she does not come.
* * *
Low music, music to croon to. The people sway back and forth, and she watches them intently. She wonders where he is. A part of her is slightly troubled, but she has never been the sort of girl to let anything intimidate her long. She needs to see him.
Since the chance encounter last week, she had waited for some sign from him. Something to tell her that now he could find her again, he would come. She had waited in vain. He had not attempted to contact her whatsoever. She had not thought it would sting as much as it did, but somehow the lack of response had stirred something crazy in her. Which explained how she was here in LA, late in the evening, her husband and child left behind in San Francisco, both imagining she had flown to New York to deal with an emergency.
* * *
"You're kidding me, right Rory?"
"I'm not. I'm more serious now than the night I told you I was marrying Jess."
"But why? I thought you'd decided to leave it all behind! What's done is done. You can't make the past come back. Leave it alone."
"I need to see him, Lane. I thought at first it was something that would pass, that when I went back to Jess, everything would fade. I thought it would be like waking up from a dream, and thinking, 'That was nice, but now I have to go back to the real world.' I was ok, really, I just accepted that some things are not meant to be -"
"Some things aren't. That's life for you."
"I know, we all make choices, and then we deal with the consequences. Except that somehow, I've gotten a second chance. It isn't coincidence, that now when everything is going wrong with Jess, I get to meet him again. It's a sign. I just want to see Tristan, just once. I never got to say goodbye to him, Lane. Do you know what that's like? I need to make it right with him. I have to do this."
"I don't know, Rory. You can't keep jumping in and out of people's lives. It isn't fair."
"It wasn't fair to Tristan, to be left like that."
"How is seeing him one more time going to make up for that?"
"I can explain it to him, tell him everything."
"How do you know he'll listen?"
"If he still cares, he'll listen. If he doesn't, what I have to say won't matter."
"Just promise me this won't get messy. Promise and I swear I'll help you. "
"It won't get messy, I promise."
"Alright, what do I do?"
"I just need an excuse to leave San Francisco. If you think up an emergency for yourself, I can pretend to be flying down to help you."
"This sounds really sneaky."
"Will you do it anyway?"
"Fine. But never again."
"Sure, whatever you say."
"I mean it, Rory."
"I know you do. Anyway, gotta go."
"Rory...I'll do it...but I really don't like it."
"I knew I could count on you."
"That's not the point Rory."
"You're right, but I really have to go. Bye, Lane."
"Rory!"
Click.
* * *
So here she was, stepping out into the great unknown. Except that she'd been sitting up here for over half an hour, and she hadn't seen head or tail of him. He'd once told her that he loved watching other people dance, so she'd made her way to the main dance floors, which were on the third level, but to no avail. He was isn't here. She's almost starting to get angry.
Not that it was supposed to be easy or anything, but he was at least supposed to be here to talk to, however awkward that might be. There wasn't supposed to be time to think and re-consider. It ought to be a sort of headlong rush, where you stopped thinking about everything for once, and just felt. Except he isn't here to rush headlong into, and instead she's imagining a little face, looking at her accusingly, with eyes which are a blue to match her own. She never thought she'd ever end up resembling her father. When she thought about kids, she thought about her mother: 'I had a great mother, so I'll be a great mother too.' That sort of thing. Except now her own kid seems a million miles away. A grinning, black haired two-year old she sometimes finds herself frowning at. Which means what? That she's a bad mother who resents her own kid? That isn't true. She loves her daughter very much. Just maybe not enough. And she really doesn't want to be thinking these thoughts, so she stops thinking altogether. Just sit here, Rory. Listen to the music. Watch the people, wait for him. He'll turn up eventually. He has to. Just sit here Rory, easy does it.
* * *
He pulls up at the Bombay around one, tired and not feeling very well. He has been getting headaches for several weeks now. His doctor is afraid it might be the start of migraines. Which is so boring. Businessmen get headaches, and he isn't a businessman, just a guy helping his father spend a surplus of wealth. Or so his father would have him believe. He isn't a total dunce though. He can add and subtract as well as the next guy, better even. He understands accounting and taxes and all that, else what was the point of a business degree? He knows that compared to the offspring of his father's associates, he's relatively responsible. Relatively.
Being rich, he has decided, means only that you can have drugs and sex whenever you want. Otherwise your life is just as empty as the next guy's. Course if you're too smart (or too dumb) to use your own money to destroy yourself, you'll use it to destroy other people. Mind games, further amassment of wealth, there's only so much you can do. You can be rich and powerful, but what good is that if you can't even control your own son? It's pointless, all the money in the world, all the dirty games you can play with it, if you can't bring your own children to heel.
Yup, it's been one of those days again. Lawyer Day. It's always a pain having to deal with lawyers, but when you wake up to find one standing at the foot of your bed, wrinkling his nose at the boozy heap which is yourself, you know you have woken into a nightmare. His father's lawyers are always disapproving. He never gets the jovial clever ones his father likes to hang around with, just the hang-dog gloomy types. They always say the most encouraging things too. "You're on the verge of bankruptcy" - "Ms. ____ is threatening to sue you" - "Your father is cutting off all your funds" - "Your mother wrote you out of her will" - "The police are investigating you" - which is all well and good, but not what a fellow wants to hear every third Sunday of the year. Especially not when his life is one continuous party. It's very hard, despite what you might think, to live the nightlife twenty-four seven. It gets tiring, night after night of looking better than most and being better than most and getting better than most.
He doesn't know why his father continues to harass him. He has managed to stay afloat without handouts from Daddy for the past three years, ever since he left his company desk job and came out here to personally manage his father's West Coast properties. Profits continue to flow and he has handed over most of the management to guys who like poring over paperwork and dealing with bureaucracy. Except for the Bombay. The Bombay Palace is his pet project. Most nightclubs don't ever last longer than a decade. They spring up and wink out, because nothing is ever continuously cool. The Bombay is still cool, mostly, because he runs it. It isn't boasting to state facts. He has worked hard to build up his reputation, and he still works hard at maintaining it. The odd scandal, now and then, a few outrageous acts. The reputation as a bastard too, that's what really helps. People spit at kindness, they couldn't care less. What people crave is someone to kick them when they're down. It's sick, very, very sick, but people are always fascinated by those who treat them like dirt. Of course, you have to keep within the law. He isn't into abuse or anything like that. Just old-fashioned meanness. The kids who won't let anyone else play with them, so of course everyone is just dying to. It doesn't work on everybody, nothing ever works on everybody, so you have to subtle, and change depending on the temperature. He's cold to most, cruel to those who come too close, and tired when everything is said and done.
It's very dull, really. His life is like a dream. He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, because there's enough of his own money. Except he never ends up doing anything. Just sticks around, lives, wonders what it's all about. He used to think maybe he could live to spite his parents, and then he realized they weren't worth it, and then he discovered he didn't have any reason for living. And maybe that's the key, really. He isn't living. Only drifting, passive, through colourful scenes. If he died, who here in LA would realize he had ceased to exist? The club would, which is funny. He exists for the club, and it exists for him. It's a strange existence, to wake up in the evening, and go to the club till the morning, and then sleep till dusk again. Bills and licenses and supplying food and drink and hiring entertainment, all those things which are connected to the real world, are dealt with in the evening, before the night really falls. Talks with lawyers and bankers happen regularly at six pm in the 'Private' rooms he keeps at the Bombay for all business dealings. It's unusual, but he's the guy with the money, and he can do things anyway he wants. It's almost like being a celebrity in his own created world. He says the world and people jump. He has so many people, people to manage his business during the day, when the normal world is at work. People to worry for him and think for him.
His father would never approve of his methods. It isn't smart to give up control. He doesn't care. They can rob him blind, stab him in the back. It's all quite okay. He'll only keep on floating, anyway, through everything. His father keeps threatening to cut him off, unless he turns his life around, makes himself useful. He'd do it too, probably will, one of these days. It doesn't matter though. He'd thought that, seeing her again, things would change. He thought it would be a revelation. Then she'd shown up and it sort of was. To have the whole torturous story explained to him. To discover that her disappearance, so painful, should be so easily explained. All that time spent wondering, crying out in a dead city "Why?" and the reason was only stupid and common. A man leaves his wife. She comes back to him one day. End of story. He doesn't even belong anywhere in it. Or he shouldn't, but he knows he does, and he knows she cared, but she still left him anyway. Which doesn't explain what he's been doing with his life the past three years, or why his life seemed to de-rail when she left. His failure, the steady sinking until the point he currently finds himself at, there's no great reason to explain it. She was hope and light, and then he discovered that she was none of these things, but only a person like himself. So he doesn't blame her or curse her or try to follow her when she leaves again. He doesn't try to track her down in the week that follows. He doesn't do anything, because he's used to doing nothing now.
He's up on the third floor, strolling over to the bar when he sees her. She's by herself at a table, watching the gyrating mass of people dancing. He could walk right past her, and she wouldn't know. He could turn around and leave the club and go home, if he liked. Except that he knows why she's here, and some part of him thrills at it. She's here for him, and him alone.
* * *
"Mind if I sit down?" asks a voice above the music.
And it's Him, and he's sitting down, before she can say anything.
They're silent together, watching the people. There's a sweaty looking couple bathed in blue light who are dancing right in front of them. The light moves on and their faces are obscured until a red arc catches them. They're laughing, but she can't hear them above the surrounding noise. It's so awkward again, because it would be so easy to be familiar, but she isn't sure how he'd react. She keeps staring at the couple, because despite the fact that this her chance, what she's been waiting for all night, she's not sure what to say anymore.
Then he puts a hand on her arm and says something which she barely hears, except "...somewhere we can talk..." and he stands up and beckons and she follows. They end up on another floor, and down a corridor which is strangely empty, and then in a sort of sitting room where he holds the door open for her and closes it behind him.
"There," he says, "This is one of my private rooms. I keep them for convenience."
"Business or pleasure convenience?" she blurts out, even though she doesn't mean to.
"Business," he replies, and laughs. Then suddenly she knows everything is going to be alright, and it's such a relief that she looks him straight in the eyes for the first time
And somehow she's in his arms, whispering "I'm sorry," and he's murmuring back "I know. I understand."
