The Princess Diarist(17)

“How much for what?” I asked them sadly. “I’m a little lost, what scene is this?” Now I sounded as if I was pleading. Not for my life necessarily, but for a way to live it nobly—like a poet on a porch.

They laughed when I asked what scene it was. Harrison didn’t laugh, but he looked as though he might have if he’d been made a different way. Then I remembered, at least part of it.

“Play the zither! I’m going to pay you to play the zither!”

“Now?” Harrison said.

“Yes!”

That was the first I had laughed. We all laughed. Maybe everything would be all right now. Sure! That was it! It was a sign! It all started and ended with the zither. And something else, too—I was going to go home with Harrison. I wasn’t sure up until that moment, and I wasn’t sure of what would happen after I went home with him. I knew it wasn’t a good idea. It would never be a good idea, but it wouldn’t be a really bad one either. I mean, weird and grumpy as he might have been, he wasn’t a bad human. He was much more on the good side of the bad/good human graph. He was bad and good, like most people. A good person who does bad things or a bad person who does good things—as long as people are involved, people will do bad or good things to them. Especially when there’s money (and small dogs) involved.

The check was fought for valiantly by all us available good soldiers, understanding as we did on some dark and smiling level that those blessed with a bounty of backed-up semen would actually pay it. Koo and I played at being semi-cloyingly grateful for the gallant sacrifice of their hard-won shekels and we rose from our four-sided trough, thus easing our way out of our eatery and on to the finer events that no doubt awaited us all.

I was in no shape to do anything but take cues, when and if they were distributed with intent. But perhaps I had misread the situation—was I following a lead that only existed in my unaccustomed-to-alcohol-and-as-such-altered mind? But I was slowly sobering up, and the likelihood that I was misreading signals was getting lower by the minute as we stood on the sidewalk outside the little Italian restaurant I’d so recently managed to survive. The cool air was welcome—who knew that there was so much of it outside! Especially when compared to the overall quantity of air set aside for eateries.

We stood under the timid light of a nearby street lamp, shuffling from one foot to the other, checking watches, lighting cigarettes, or squinting into the night to ascertain whether or not there were any incoming cabs.

“I’m in Chelsea,” Mark said.

“So you decided to keep that place in the end?” Peter observed, nodding wisely.

Mark shrugged. “In the end I figured, why not? It’s got great views, an awesome kitchen . . . I mean, sure there are better neighborhoods, but . . .” He paused and shrugged again. “But not with a second bedroom.”

Harrison flicked away his barely smoked Camel and coughed. “Okay!” he said to everyone. He then looked at me. “I can drop you at your place—it’s on my way.”

He took my arm and steered me toward Piccadilly Circus.

“Good night!” I managed as Harrison drew me along into the street and away from them. That I didn’t stumble was a miracle, not like the virgin birth or anything, but you could’ve fooled me. We walked in silence for several moments while I riffed through an assortment of remarks I might make, enabling me to seem . . . to seem like someone . . . a woman even, who knew what she was doing—or didn’t care what she was doing—because wherever she went only the very best people would follow. Follow her every word like welcome stalkers—why wouldn’t Harrison want to be where she was? If only she felt this way about herself, if only she could think of what to say to him—other than ask him what they were doing. Where were they going and why? Would he ask her to the prom and cover her in hickeys?

Now, of course she loved him, didn’t she? She wouldn’t have dared to before that business in the backseat, but now . . .

“What’s your address?” he asked, startling me, standing there beside this king, Han Solo and all the other characters he would eventually play seeded in him now. And then there was me, pregnant with all those people I would play: a vengeful hairdresser, a hostile mother-in-law, a flute-playing adulteress, a psychologist, a drug-addicted writer, a boyfriend-poaching actress, a boy-hungry casting director, myself, an unfaithful wife, an angry boss, myself, myself, myself, myself, and a couple of nuns. He took me by the elbow and eased all of us into the backseat of a taxi.

“What’s your address?”

I looked at him, blinking. “My address?”

“Where we going, ladies and gents?” The driver put the taxi in gear and it growled back to life. “Or I could drive you kids around all night, it’s your money.”

Harrison nodded in agreement, twirling his index finger rapidly—the international indicator to hurry things along.

“Fine, Esmond Court, off Kensington High Street.”

“Okay, lady. Have you there in a jiff,” he all but cheered in his cockney Dick Van Dyke East London accent. The one I wish I had. “That’s behind Barkers, is it?”

I was about to tell him when Harrison pulled me back into the seat, moving us closer and closer together, face-to-face, until we were two faces, four eyes, one kiss, going to the place where we could rehearse that kissing we would be doing a year and a half later in The Empire Strikes Back—and apparently we wanted to get a jump on it, as it were. People think you just kiss in a love scene. They don’t realize the years some actors put into those scenes. Real actors. All that practice really shows. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Check out those kisses in Empire. See? Those were years in preparation and I promise you, they did not have to use special effects there. These were the early days and nights of the Force.