The Princess Diarist(16)

Kissing that way doesn’t necessarily sound like something I’d have been eager to do on a regular basis. Once a month maybe, under the right circumstances, which might include the drive from the studio to the city. It might have been the purr of the motor that got us there.

But get there we did somehow, having dinner with Mark, Peter, and Koo Stark—whose work in Star Wars tragically ended up on the cutting room floor—and who should avoid leaving things (e.g., purses) at people’s houses so they don’t have to hold the thing aloft and wonder aloud, “Does anyone know who this belongs to?” and ignite a chorus of the reply, “I think that’s Koo’s.” No matter how pretty she was (and undoubtedly continues to be), no one escapes a splash of the ridiculous when referred to in the possessive as “Koo’s.”

So I’m at a restaurant in London, with most of my thoughts centered on how much prettier Koo is than me, how confident she seems to be—obviously in part due to her beauty. I wonder if she’s having an affair with Peter and assume that she more than likely is, because Peter is attractive also. Not as attractive as Koo, but he doesn’t have to be because as you no doubt are aware, if you have a penis and a job, being handsome is a fantastic bonus but hardly a necessity.

So Koo was with Peter in all likelihood. Mark was alone, and Harrison was . . . Harrison was on his lickety-split way to being pretty much everything to me. He would all too soon become the center of my off-center, kilter-free world. Which, I agree absolutely, is pathetic in the extreme—but keep in mind that this whole thing was not my weirdly inexperienced idea. It was Harrison’s. I was just some innocent bystander doing her not-exactly-levelheaded best to burn off the alcohol she had ingested earlier that evening. Maybe then I could make some sense of what had happened in the car with Harrison—not what had happened so much as would it ever happen again? And if so, would that be on the soon side? Now that the offer was essentially on the table, would it stay on the table or continue onto the bed?

I don’t recall much about that dinner except how incredibly self-conscious I was, how awkward and fuzzy I felt from having consumed two and a half glasses of an alcoholic beverage. And not even hard liquor—the sort that’s as dense and inscrutable as cement. This was the softer variety of alcohol, floaty, giggly, and vague. I attempted to counter these inconvenient blur-encouraging effects by combating them with large quantities of my all-purpose sugary, caffeinated, carbonated healing elixir—Coca-Cola. I hoped I would feel its rallying effects very soon.

I drank a few restorative rounds of Coke and tried very hard to not look at Harrison. How could I? What would he think if he caught me looking at him? That I liked him? Ugh, in that awful embarrassing way that’s impossible to hide? And, this was totally his fault. He was the one who started making out in the back of the car. I would never have considered liking him, left to my own devices. What devices? How many did I have? Had I had them long? What if what I assumed were devices were, in fact, delusions? So, more accurate to ask, “Left to my own delusions, would I have been able to convince myself that I wasn’t suddenly infatuated with Harrison?”

Fresh Coke in hand notwithstanding, I was still a little drunk—an altered state that I was inordinately unaccustomed to. Stoned, I knew. Cheerfully bleary-eyed from the effects of pot—yes, that I was not only used to but got increasingly used to as time went on. Used to in a great way. Under the shade of its effects, subjects I had formerly considered barely worth noticing could now both catch my eye and keep it.

Alcohol was another matter. A dark, regrettable experience that I always promised myself (and/or whoever else might be listening) I would never go near again if whoever had the most pull in the area of intoxication would let me off easy. Yet, here I was again.

Seated at our table, I figured it would be all right to look at Harrison when and if he said something, but my hair could grow if I waited for that unlikely event, right?

Wrong. That evening he talked more than I’d ever seen him talk. There were stories about the day we’d had an early call—hardly unusual—and by early afternoon we still hadn’t been summoned to the set to film anything. “It doesn’t bother me that much to be kept waiting,” Mark volunteered as he sprinkled cheese over his pasta. “Obviously I don’t like it, but there are ways to keep yourself entertained.”

“Oh, yeah,” drawled Mr. Ford, “what are those ways? Catching up on your correspondence or taking up the zither.” I listened intently—everything depended on my getting into this conversation while trying to convey that it didn’t matter to me at all.

“I would pay many hard-earned dollars to see you play the zither,” I offered shyly, hyperaware of making a good impression.

Harrison studied me briefly from his prime real estate across the table. He slowly rubbed his chin with his left hand while he considered my offer. He pursed his lips and began tapping them very slowly. Narrowing his hazel eyes, he said, “How much?”

He waited for my reply calmly, knowingly—he wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t not smiling either. Under the table, I picked at the skin on my thumb, ripping off a strand, suddenly lost. What were we talking about? Why was he looking at me like that? Did I have food on my face? I looked at the other people at the table—coincidentally they were all looking at me as well! Why was everyone looking at me? I must have food on my face. I wiped the corners of my mouth with my now-slightly-bleeding hand.