White Bodies(3)

Felix and I haven’t seen Strangers on a Train before, but we both like it, the chilling effect of the black-and-white, the clipped 1950s voices and mannerisms, and we all have comments to make as the drama unfolds; but Tilda, being an actress, and some sort of expert on Hitchcock, chips in more than Felix and me. Hitchcock put his evil characters on the left-hand side of the screen, she tells us, and good characters on the right. I laugh. “So I’m evil, because I’m sitting over here, and you’re good, Tilda.”

“Except, silly, on-screen that would be reversed. So I’m bad and you’re good.”

“I’m the most interesting,” Felix says. “I’m in the middle and can go either way. Who knows what I’ll do?”

“Oh, look at Ruth Roman!” Tilda’s suddenly distracted. “The way her lips are slightly parted, it’s so suggestive.”

I say “Hmm” in a skeptical way, pouting, and Felix raises an eyebrow. But Tilda isn’t put off.

“And Robert Walker is incredible as a psychopath. He does that clever thing with his eyes—looking so calculating. Did you know he died just after this movie, because he was drunk and his doctor injected him with barbiturates?”

“The other guy is using his wrists,” I offer. “He’s doing wrist acting.” Tilda laughs.

“I like the plot,” I say.

“Patricia Highsmith . . . She wrote the novel that the film is based on.”

The idea is that two strangers on a train could swap murders. The psychopath with the calculating eyes offers to murder the estranged wife of the wrist guy, if, in return, the wrist guy will murder the psychopath’s hated father. The police will never solve the crimes because neither murderer would have any connection to his victim. There would be no discernible motive.

“It’s a brilliant idea for a film,” I say, “but it wouldn’t work in practice. I mean, if you were plotting a murder and wanted to do it that way.”

“What do you mean?” Tilda is nestling into Felix.

“Well, you’d have to travel on trains the whole time, planning to fall into conversation with another person who also wants someone murdered. It’s not going to happen.”

“Oh, everyone wants someone murdered,” she says.

Felix rearranges Tilda so that her legs lie over his lap, his hands resting on her skinny knees, and I notice that they are beautiful people, with their fine bones, smooth, translucent skin, and shiny blond hair, looking like they are the twins. They pause the movie to open another bottle of the same French wine and Felix says, “Of course you’re right, Callie, about the murder plot, but these days you wouldn’t have to travel on trains to meet another murderer, you could just find someone on the internet, in a forum or a chat room.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“I suppose it’s true,” says Tilda. “The internet is where psychos find each other.”

? ? ?

We watch the final scenes, and afterwards I say I need to get home, but I’ll go to the bathroom first. It’s an excuse; I don’t really need a pee. Instead, once I’ve locked the door, I ferret around and find that there are two toothbrushes in a plastic tumbler, and a man’s shaving gear in the cupboard over the sink. Also, the bin is full of detritus: empty shampoo bottles, little nodules of old soap, wads of cotton wool, used razors, half-used pots of lotion. I realize that Felix has been tidying up Tilda’s bathroom mess, just as he was organizing the kitchen; and I’m happy that someone’s looking after her, sorting her out. I reach farther into the bin, and pull out a plastic bag wound around something hard. Sitting on the toilet, I unwrap it expecting something ordinary, an old nail polish or lipstick maybe. Instead I extract a small used syringe, with a fine needle, and I’m so shocked, so perplexed, that I head straight back into the sitting room, brandishing it, saying, “What the hell is this?” Felix and Tilda look at each other, faces suggesting mild embarrassment, a shared joke, and Tilda says, “You’ve discovered our secret. We’ve been having vitamin B12 injections—they help us stay on top of things. Intensive lives and all that.”

“What? That’s crazy.” I’m incredulous, and am still holding the syringe in the air, defiantly.

“Welcome to the world of high finance,” says Felix.

“Really!” Tilda starts laughing at my stunned face. “Really. There’s nothing to be alarmed about. Lots of successful people do it. Actors do it. . . . Bankers do it. . . . Google it if you don’t believe me.”

Then she adds, “Hang on—why the fuck are you going through my bin?”

I can’t think of an answer, so I shrug helplessly. Tilda gives me a wonky face that says You’re incorrigible!, and then she says I’d better be getting home. She fetches my coat.

Felix says he hopes to see me again soon, and as I leave he gives me a quick affable hug, the sort that big rugby-playing men give to nephews and nieces.

? ? ?

At home, I open up my laptop and start googling vitamin injections. Tilda’s right, it turns out, and I’m amazed at the weird things professional people do in the name of “achieving your life goals.” I decide to let it go and to accept that Tilda and Felix live in a different world from me. Then I start to make notes on both of them, working in the file I call my “dossier.” It’s a habit that I’ve had since childhood—monitoring Tilda, observing her, checking that she’s okay. I write: Felix seems like a special person. He has a way of making you feel like you’re in a conspiracy with him, sharing a joke about the rest of humanity. I’m astonished that she let me meet him, and, now that I have, I’m pleased that she’s met her match and that he is looking after her so well.