Just Last Night(82)
Finlay Hart in a slim-cut, dark brown sixties suit, one arm thrown over the back of a leather booth, the other holding a lowball glass with ice, staring straight down the lens with a come shag me then petulant challenge in his eyes. His hair is coal black and short; his skin looks lit from within.
“You look phenomenal,” I breathe. “Seriously. I don’t know why you’re embarrassed. I’d have this shit framed.”
“If it’s cheered you up then maybe it was worth it,” he says, charmingly, repocketing his phone and sipping his tea.
“You’re an enigma, Finlay Hart,” I say.
Fin sets his cup down and turns his face to me, and we gaze at each other in the flickering moon glow of the television.
“I don’t want to be an enigma.”
“What do you want to be?”
“Isn’t that always the big question.”
We both pretend to watch people hanging out of rolled-down windows and firing guns in the police car chase through nocturnal Los Angeles streets in whatever film is playing, after the rugby. I don’t think either of us are thinking about it.
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like, to drop all . . . this, with someone?” Fin says, eventually. He makes a gesture up and down from his face to his shoulders and down to his waist that leaves me nonplussed. “The defenses and the deceptions and ways we have of impressing people. To fully be yourself, with no . . . no fear, I guess? Of how you’re coming over. No management of the impression you’re making. Total honesty.”
I get an unwelcome flashback to being astride Zack, getting ready to pretend to be someone who would please him.
“No,” I say. “Maybe I should.”
“For what it’s worth, if you could see yourself through my eyes, I don’t think you’d think you were a busted flush at this ‘living,’ Evelyn.”
“Really?”
“Really. I see a person who has everything going for her. The only thing you lack is self-belief.”
“Thank you,” I say. I parcel this incredible compliment up, mentally, to unwrap and fully enjoy after he’s gone. “You’re not doing badly yourself.”
“Hah. That’s what I told myself. It’s so strange being back here. I realize I left part of myself behind. Like pulling yourself out of a bear trap and half your leg not coming with you. You’re free, but you limp.”
“Why was it a bear trap?”
“I said had you ever wondered about dropping this.” He motions at himself again, smiling. “Not that I was ready to.”
“Haha. I don’t want to be an enigma, said the man who spoke in code.”
“I think what I really meant was: I don’t want to be an enigma to you.”
“Why?”
We’re side by side on a bed and he’s looking down at me, steadily. I’m accosted by an urge to pull his T-shirt upward. Wait wait wait . . . are we going to kiss . . . surely not? I’m very nervous, yet, I discover, receptive to this turn of events, looking at his outline in half light and being close enough to smell his shower gel. I lean in closer so our sides are touching, my right breast pressing against his arm. It’s as encouraging as I can be, using nerve endings, without seizing him. He’s still too intimidating for me to risk that.
“I should go to bed,” Fin says, pulling back and sitting up straighter, voice a notch louder.
“. . . OK.”
Finlay pauses, swings his legs over the side of the bed, and stands up.
“See you in the morning, Eve.”
He pads across the carpet and the door closes with a snap-click behind him. Well. That de-escalated quickly.
I turn the bedside light out and lie still, listening to the ambient, offstage noises of Edinburgh city center, late at night.
What was that about? Lots of intense staring, photos of him as Don Draper, I don’t want to be an enigma to you, and then, gone.
Maybe he wanted to know he could have me if he wanted.
I remember our first kiss when we were kids, my asking, Would you like to do it with me?
I got a direct answer in the affirmative, back then.
How have my skills with men degraded in the intervening twenty-five years?
As I’m drifting off to sleep, I think: In the actual Waldorf, surely reception would’ve had a spare iPhone charger? Did he want to see me again, tonight? Was he heading down here with—surely not—any amorous intention, and then I burst into tears? If so, why just up and go, later? No. That’s the cocktails telling me flattering lies.
I imagine relaying what he said about a reconciliation never being off the cards, to Susie. I picture her picking at her sleeve, face set in grumpy consternation, except the pout and the frown not for comic effect this time. She’d resent being asked to feel something that wasn’t ire, I think. The hurt and sadness would make a fleeting appearance.
Believe it when I see it, Eve.
Then she’d change the subject.
33
The morning after the night before, and I’m apprehensive at seeing Finlay. Following any awkward encounter, nothing’s as hard as the second your eyes meet, before the hello, and you give away everything in the discomfort of your expression.
Will he get all “American therapist” and discuss it? I hope not. I want the British version: squash it into the glove box, so to speak, and never mention it again. Finlay Hart dolefully explaining to me why I’m not someone he wants to kiss—even in glorious splendor, after smoked old-fashioneds, with no strings, when someone else will be washing the sheets and we’ll be on different landmasses within a week—really isn’t a clarification I want or require.