Read Manhattan Nocturne Online
Authors: Colin Harrison
Manhattan Nocturne (11 page)
“Hey.”
“Well, all right, but Simon always had a lot of women around after his films started to make it big. I'd read about him in the magazines, and actually I'd figured he was an asshole like a lot of people in Hollywood ⦠but it wasn't like that, really. In the bar we just talked. Then Simon said he had to leaveâsome people were waiting for him uptown. Sharon Stone or somebody. I thought that was it, end of conversation. But then he pulled up close to me. He said he was
going to ask me a question, one crazy question, but that he was serious. A simple yes or no would do.” Caroline stared directly at me, her blue eyes daring me not to believe her. “He said that was all he wanted as an answer. Yes or no. I said okay. So Simon said, âI want to marry you.' I thought he was crazy and almost laughed. Then I realized he was serious and we didn't say anything. I just looked out the front window of the bar and thought about how ugly he was, but also how smart he was, and that was probably the thing that was so attractive. Then I just said itâI said yes.”
going to ask me a question, one crazy question, but that he was serious. A simple yes or no would do.” Caroline stared directly at me, her blue eyes daring me not to believe her. “He said that was all he wanted as an answer. Yes or no. I said okay. So Simon said, âI want to marry you.' I thought he was crazy and almost laughed. Then I realized he was serious and we didn't say anything. I just looked out the front window of the bar and thought about how ugly he was, but also how smart he was, and that was probably the thing that was so attractive. Then I just said itâI said yes.”
“You met him in a bar, he proposed, and you said yes?” I asked. “In the space of less than an hour?”
“Yes.”
“That's the most ridiculous story I ever heard.”
“I agree.”
“But I guess pretty romantic, too.”
“No,” she corrected, “it's totally crazy.”
“But you did it.”
She nodded. “He wrote down all his phone numbers for me and got my address and said he had to go meet some people now, he was extremely sorry, but that I would hear from him the next day. I thought maybe he would kiss me or something, but he just left. There was a car waiting for him outside. When I walked out maybe fifteen minutes later, there was a car waiting for
me
. He'd had his driver call another car.”
me
. He'd had his driver call another car.”
I had finished my lunch. Caroline took another orange from the bowl and handed it to me. “These are good,” she said.
“What happened after that?”
“I went home to my apartment in the car and didn't know what it all meant or whether I should take it seriously. I sort of stayed around the phone that night, but he didn't call. The next afternoon I got a package that had been sent from Los Angeles that morning, and it was from Simon. It was a tape and an engagement ring ⦠and then I
really
didn't know what to think. I mean, it was weird and sort of wonderful, too. I'll show you the tape, if you want.”
really
didn't know what to think. I mean, it was weird and sort of wonderful, too. I'll show you the tape, if you want.”
“This is all leading somewhere?” I asked.
“I promise.”
“I mean, it's interesting, don't get me wrongâ”
“No, no, you'll see.”
We went into the living room, and she put a videotape labeled LOOK AT ME CAROLINE [TAPE 11] into the machine. “You have to understand that Simon wasn't a regular person,” she said. “He was obsessed with these little tapes.
Obsessed.
He didn't like to write anything except scripts, and so he would make these tapes. Like diaries. He made all kinds of tapes. I mean, this was his big thingâmovies were the highest art, the image had killed print, stuff like that. He had a whole philosophy ⦠well, I'll just start this.” She drew the shades, plunging the room into darkness, and then sat down on the big sofa next to me and rolled a cigarette while I watched.
Obsessed.
He didn't like to write anything except scripts, and so he would make these tapes. Like diaries. He made all kinds of tapes. I mean, this was his big thingâmovies were the highest art, the image had killed print, stuff like that. He had a whole philosophy ⦠well, I'll just start this.” She drew the shades, plunging the room into darkness, and then sat down on the big sofa next to me and rolled a cigarette while I watched.
[The static ends, an image appears: a chair and table in a kitchen in an expensive home. A window in the background is dark, and a digital clock reads 1:17 A.M. A few seconds go by, and then there is a sigh audible off camera. Then the backside of Simon Crowley appears as he walks toward the chair, carrying a cigarette and ashtray. He is a small figure, skinny, soft in the gut. He sits down and stares at the camera and then past it, his eyes calm. His dark hair flops across half his face, and from time to time he pushes it back. His face is somehow misshapen, the lips and nose too large. Yet the eyes are bright with perception, ready with thought. He sighs again, slowly.] Okay. Hey there, Caroline, I'm back in Bel Air, got in from LAX maybe an hour ago. The whole time on the plane I thought about being married to_ you. I kept thinking about it, and there was one thing that bugged me: I think I'm uncomfortable with the regular vowsâwhatever vows we decide to use. In fact, you decide and I'll go along with them. It's not the ceremony, or the language, it's that I'mâas you knowâI have a copious appetite to say things, Caroline,
and “I do” will not do. It just won't
do
. [He drags on his cigarette, his eyes squinting at the effort, almost as if he is drawing his next thought directly from the burning tip itself.] So the
reason
I'm here tonight, something like thirteen fucking hours after we just met, is that I want to make my vow to you
now
, this exact minute. It's better for me this way. I don't know exactly what I'm going to say, but when it's all said and done, it will be my wedding vow. And I'm videotaping it. Obviously. Forgive me that, if you can. I suspect that you'll have to forgive me for a lot of things. [Looks down, smiles to himself. Takes a drag.] So after I said good-bye to you I had dinner with Sharon Stone. She wants to be in my next movie. We talked about it. She still looks pretty good. It was just a regular conversation. I mean, I was there talking to Sharon Stone and I was thinking of you, some girl I just met, right? Some girl at the bar that afternoon. The beautiful Sharon Stone didn't interest me. I didn't get the click from her. I got the click from you, Caroline, I got the click in a way I have not gotten the click in a long, long time ⦠And then I was thinking of you, Caroline, and I remembered when I worked as a busboy as a kid. I told you this afternoon that I was a busboy, but I've never really told anybody what happened to me, stuff I learned ⦠[He pulls a pack of matches out of his breast pocket and fiddles with it.] You know, I was living in my dad's house in Queens, still in high school. I was going to so many movies, like four or five on Saturdays, and renting them, too, that I didn't have any money. My father wanted me to get my elevator electrician's license, but that wasn't for me. I helped him anyway. The union said I could be called a temporary apprentice. I went with him on his service calls sometimes. He had a lot of small accounts, old buildings downtown, wherever. But I didn't want to spend my life doing that. So I needed to get a job, and I got one as a busboy at this place called Dante's Café, which used to be down in
the Village before it went out of business. I liked working in the Village, because of all the alternative movie houses. I could get off at eleven and still catch a show. Pretty soon I realized how hot the place was, how a lot of the TV people and writers in New York used to go there, even some pro athletes, Darryl Strawberry when he was still big, people like that, and models and Japanese women carrying little black purses. People were always taking pictures with instant cameras and passing around the photos, doing an instant mini-hit of fame thing ⦠[He gets up and wanders away. Behind him the kitchen clock reads 1:21 A.M. He comes back with another cigarette and lights it.] Getting this job was a big thing. I could watch the people. I could understand how you acted if you were rich and famous. Of course, I was nobody, I was just some skinny busboy. It was hard work. At the end of every shift I smelled like garbage and cigarettes and every kind of stuff mixed together, sticky on my arms. After a while I got to know who the regulars were and if they needed a menu or an ashtray, whatever ⦠I was invisible. I was just a kid in a white shirt with a bow tie. Sometimes the models who came in were so beautiful that I went into the restroom and jerked off. I had to. I could do it standing up in, like, twenty seconds. One time I was doing it and a rat came out of a little hole that led to the storage room. I saw the money that was being spent. A couple of people would blow a few hundred bucks on food and drinks. I was making decent tips and I bought a video camera. I used to just walk around filming things, people having arguments, the barges moving up the river, whatever. I'd been working at Dante's for maybe a year when this very beautiful model started coming inâher name was Ashley Montgomery. Everybody has forgotten about her now because she ended up marrying, like, the richest man in Kuwait. She was tall, with practically the best ass in America and long straight black hair, and she was perfect. For six months she was on the
cover of everything. In my own private dialogues, I defied anyone to find a more beautiful woman. But it would be a mistake, a pitiful mistake, to say that I loved Ashley Montgomery as soon as I saw her walk into Dante's that first night. [He shakes his head in wry disgust.] We can
assume
the oboe music in the background and the laughter and the little tables. We can
assume
that her entrance into my consciousness was constructed with the cunning of the devil. [He seems to have entered a fugue state, living within conjured memory.] Yes, we can assume that. But it'd be wrong to say that I loved her instantly. No,
that
would be insufficient terminology, which is what lawyers complain about when they are hammering out movie contracts. It would be insufficient to say that I
loved
Ashley Montgomery. She
killed
me. I mean that. In a certain sense, she killed me. Ashley Montgomery
killed
me. She did not
see
me ⦠[He is no longer looking into the camera but instead, the smoke lifting and curling about him, is staring off to one side, the light from the lamp unrelentingly stark upon his strange features.] I can remember all of itâher eyes swept across the restaurant as she came in, looking for other people, the real people, not the
filler
. But she didn't see me. She just did ⦠not ⦠see me. I understood this in the same way that I understood I was fucking
breathing
. I mean, most people looking across a room, when they meet the eyes of someone looking back at them, they do one of two thingsâthey either meet the gaze of the other person and hold it, if even for a heartbeat, or they blink as they shift their eyes away. The blink is the physiological transition. It is all. It is volumes. It says, “I am moving on, what I see does not interest my eyes.” It is proof, however, that
something
has registered ⦠[He closes his eyes and draws in a breath, inhaling the memory back into his head. His eyes open.] But Ashley Montgomery did not blink when she looked away from me. Why? I was not
there
. I was a spoon in a fucking coffee cup, I was
a thumbprint on the fucking wallpaper, I was the dust filtering imperceptibly through the gloom of the place. I was not fucking
there
. She killed me. I used to go home and cry on the subway. Sometimes, if I was in the kitchen and she was outside at one of the tables, I would force myself not to think of her by cutting myself a little with one of the vegetable knives. Just a tiny slice ⦠a stigma. It never worked. I even cut a tiny piece of skin off my penis in the men's room. Just to see how much I loved her. When she came in I would pay another busboy to switch tables with me. I saved her cigarette butts. I kept a Ziploc bag in my pocket. There was a similar pattern of lipstick to each ⦠I remember this, tooâthe ring of lipstick was uneven, and it began about a quarter inch in from the end of the filter. Different shades. I realized that the lipstick would be coordinated with what she wore. If she came in one night in a black dress, then the lipstick would be deep red. If a lighter colored dress, then lighter ⦠I think everybody is a fetishist. Ashley Montgomery wore about six shades. I was thrilled when I found aâ
and “I do” will not do. It just won't
do
. [He drags on his cigarette, his eyes squinting at the effort, almost as if he is drawing his next thought directly from the burning tip itself.] So the
reason
I'm here tonight, something like thirteen fucking hours after we just met, is that I want to make my vow to you
now
, this exact minute. It's better for me this way. I don't know exactly what I'm going to say, but when it's all said and done, it will be my wedding vow. And I'm videotaping it. Obviously. Forgive me that, if you can. I suspect that you'll have to forgive me for a lot of things. [Looks down, smiles to himself. Takes a drag.] So after I said good-bye to you I had dinner with Sharon Stone. She wants to be in my next movie. We talked about it. She still looks pretty good. It was just a regular conversation. I mean, I was there talking to Sharon Stone and I was thinking of you, some girl I just met, right? Some girl at the bar that afternoon. The beautiful Sharon Stone didn't interest me. I didn't get the click from her. I got the click from you, Caroline, I got the click in a way I have not gotten the click in a long, long time ⦠And then I was thinking of you, Caroline, and I remembered when I worked as a busboy as a kid. I told you this afternoon that I was a busboy, but I've never really told anybody what happened to me, stuff I learned ⦠[He pulls a pack of matches out of his breast pocket and fiddles with it.] You know, I was living in my dad's house in Queens, still in high school. I was going to so many movies, like four or five on Saturdays, and renting them, too, that I didn't have any money. My father wanted me to get my elevator electrician's license, but that wasn't for me. I helped him anyway. The union said I could be called a temporary apprentice. I went with him on his service calls sometimes. He had a lot of small accounts, old buildings downtown, wherever. But I didn't want to spend my life doing that. So I needed to get a job, and I got one as a busboy at this place called Dante's Café, which used to be down in
the Village before it went out of business. I liked working in the Village, because of all the alternative movie houses. I could get off at eleven and still catch a show. Pretty soon I realized how hot the place was, how a lot of the TV people and writers in New York used to go there, even some pro athletes, Darryl Strawberry when he was still big, people like that, and models and Japanese women carrying little black purses. People were always taking pictures with instant cameras and passing around the photos, doing an instant mini-hit of fame thing ⦠[He gets up and wanders away. Behind him the kitchen clock reads 1:21 A.M. He comes back with another cigarette and lights it.] Getting this job was a big thing. I could watch the people. I could understand how you acted if you were rich and famous. Of course, I was nobody, I was just some skinny busboy. It was hard work. At the end of every shift I smelled like garbage and cigarettes and every kind of stuff mixed together, sticky on my arms. After a while I got to know who the regulars were and if they needed a menu or an ashtray, whatever ⦠I was invisible. I was just a kid in a white shirt with a bow tie. Sometimes the models who came in were so beautiful that I went into the restroom and jerked off. I had to. I could do it standing up in, like, twenty seconds. One time I was doing it and a rat came out of a little hole that led to the storage room. I saw the money that was being spent. A couple of people would blow a few hundred bucks on food and drinks. I was making decent tips and I bought a video camera. I used to just walk around filming things, people having arguments, the barges moving up the river, whatever. I'd been working at Dante's for maybe a year when this very beautiful model started coming inâher name was Ashley Montgomery. Everybody has forgotten about her now because she ended up marrying, like, the richest man in Kuwait. She was tall, with practically the best ass in America and long straight black hair, and she was perfect. For six months she was on the
cover of everything. In my own private dialogues, I defied anyone to find a more beautiful woman. But it would be a mistake, a pitiful mistake, to say that I loved Ashley Montgomery as soon as I saw her walk into Dante's that first night. [He shakes his head in wry disgust.] We can
assume
the oboe music in the background and the laughter and the little tables. We can
assume
that her entrance into my consciousness was constructed with the cunning of the devil. [He seems to have entered a fugue state, living within conjured memory.] Yes, we can assume that. But it'd be wrong to say that I loved her instantly. No,
that
would be insufficient terminology, which is what lawyers complain about when they are hammering out movie contracts. It would be insufficient to say that I
loved
Ashley Montgomery. She
killed
me. I mean that. In a certain sense, she killed me. Ashley Montgomery
killed
me. She did not
see
me ⦠[He is no longer looking into the camera but instead, the smoke lifting and curling about him, is staring off to one side, the light from the lamp unrelentingly stark upon his strange features.] I can remember all of itâher eyes swept across the restaurant as she came in, looking for other people, the real people, not the
filler
. But she didn't see me. She just did ⦠not ⦠see me. I understood this in the same way that I understood I was fucking
breathing
. I mean, most people looking across a room, when they meet the eyes of someone looking back at them, they do one of two thingsâthey either meet the gaze of the other person and hold it, if even for a heartbeat, or they blink as they shift their eyes away. The blink is the physiological transition. It is all. It is volumes. It says, “I am moving on, what I see does not interest my eyes.” It is proof, however, that
something
has registered ⦠[He closes his eyes and draws in a breath, inhaling the memory back into his head. His eyes open.] But Ashley Montgomery did not blink when she looked away from me. Why? I was not
there
. I was a spoon in a fucking coffee cup, I was
a thumbprint on the fucking wallpaper, I was the dust filtering imperceptibly through the gloom of the place. I was not fucking
there
. She killed me. I used to go home and cry on the subway. Sometimes, if I was in the kitchen and she was outside at one of the tables, I would force myself not to think of her by cutting myself a little with one of the vegetable knives. Just a tiny slice ⦠a stigma. It never worked. I even cut a tiny piece of skin off my penis in the men's room. Just to see how much I loved her. When she came in I would pay another busboy to switch tables with me. I saved her cigarette butts. I kept a Ziploc bag in my pocket. There was a similar pattern of lipstick to each ⦠I remember this, tooâthe ring of lipstick was uneven, and it began about a quarter inch in from the end of the filter. Different shades. I realized that the lipstick would be coordinated with what she wore. If she came in one night in a black dress, then the lipstick would be deep red. If a lighter colored dress, then lighter ⦠I think everybody is a fetishist. Ashley Montgomery wore about six shades. I was thrilled when I found aâ
I leaned forward and pushed the pause button. “This guy is saying his wedding vows?”
Caroline turned to me. “This was Simon.”
“Original.”
She smiled. I started the tape again.
Â
Simon:ânew color. When she would come in, I'd know about the lipstick. Sometimes I'd go into the bathroom right away and sometimes I'd wait until I got home. When I got home I'd undress and lie on my bed and lay the cigarette butts all over my chest. I'd put them under my tongue and in my ears and my nose and even in my ass once. The lipstick carried the perfume, the
faintest
essence, and then ⦠well, then I did the usual, the business. I didn't consider this depraved. She was a fetish, a beautiful fetish.
After a few weeks, Ashley came to recognize me ever so little ⦠a smile, a politeness. Maybe she sensed something ⦠my quivering attentiveness. I tended to sweat, I tended to take away her plate too quickly, like I was hurrying her out. I realized that I had to keep my job. I became the best busboy at Dante's Café. They wanted to make me a waiter but I refused. Waiters, I saw, were too busy. They couldn't stand at the back of the room and study the people. This I could do. I could watch her talk, I could watch her listen, watch her get cigarettes out of her purse, then smoke them and put them into the ashtray. She usually came in with a crowd, maybe once a week. Actors, TV people, Broadway people. Someone else always paid. Ashley didn't even offer, not once. She would come in wearing jeans and a baseball cap, and it worked, or she would come in wearing a mink that went all the way to the floor and weighed about a hundred pounds, and that was right, too. Men didn't scare herâthis, by far, is the most erotic quality a woman can have. She loved menâin their varieties. She was a little older than she looked. She was twenty-six. She could be witty and quick. It seemed that she was spending more time with movie people. Some older guys, directors. And also one man in particular. He was her new guy, and it looked pretty serious to me. God, did I watch them carefully. She listened to him. There was something about her that he understood. Sometimes they took a table in the back where they just sat there reading, sometimes he would read aloud to her. Once I saw that he was reading to her from
The Confessions of St. Augustine
. I went out and found the book and I read it. What a fucking classy thing to do together. A couple of times they stayed till closing time. They seemed to take great pleasure in each other. It was about sex but it was about a lot of other things, too. He matched her vitality. Here he was
sucking in other men's cigarette smoke,
vitally
, in a pressed shirt and reading St. Augustine to one of the most beautiful girls in the city. Then one time he came in carrying an ice chest, a big one. It was early, maybe six in the evening, before it got busy. He had the ice chest up on his shoulder and took it into the kitchen. There were four yellowfin tuna in there, maybe forty pounds each. I was stupid with awe. Maybe I was at an age where I just fell in love with everybody, I don't know. Anyway, the guy said he had caught them that afternoon out in the Gulf Stream fifty miles off Montauk. He held up the fish. They were huge. Beautiful. [Simon pulls a match from the matchbook and lights it contemplatively, watching the flame burn toward his fingers.] Each fish was a grotesque amplification of his manhood. I was fascinated. [He throws down the match.] I would never have what he had,
never
. He gave one fish to the owner and another to the chef. He was going to have a bunch of people in that evening and he wanted the other two fish cooked for his table. God, he was fabulous. He was handsome and well dressed and becoming famous for something, and he was arrogant. Who wouldn't be? He was about thirty-two or thirty-three. He was very sure of how it would goâI heard the conversations, of courseâI was invisible, I was a shade, I was the smoke behind the table. [Simon lights another match, blows it out. Now his face is cold, dull.] Then, a couple of hours later, when the man had just come back from the men's room, on the way to his seat he turned to me with a sort of conspiratorial whisper. I was thrilled for a moment, then he said something like, “One of the crappers isn't flushing, pal.” That was what he said. I said okay and went into the men's room. The fucker had stopped up the toilet with paper. All the fixtures in the restaurant were old as hell, and I had to unclog the toilets every couple of nights. But this
was too much. I collapsed in that toilet stall on my knees and looked at his shit and the shitted-up toilet paper and I fucking wept. [He looks up at the camera.] I wept because I was an ugly fucker, Caroline, I wept because I was just smart enough to understand my own misery. And I guess I wept for love, too. I wept for love. I can't really say it better than that. I was certain that I would never be loved. Never. I swore that if I ever had the chance for somebody I loved, I would take it right away. Never hesitate. I was in the stall for something like ten minutes. Finally the manager came in ⦠[He rubs his eyes, breathes, looks away.] This is always who I'm going to be, Caroline. I'm always going to hate myself, I'm always going to be that fifteen-year-old kid, Caroline, always outside, always fucked-up somehow. I've made three big movies now, and each one was more successful than the last, and they gave me the Oscar, and I'm glad, I'm ecstatic. Now everyone thinks I'm a genius, but what does it really mean? Why am I saying this? I am trying to say that my whole life I have been trying to be happier. I have been trying to find my best self, and I don't think I'm getting there much. So ⦠my vow to you is that I will love you as best I can, but I warn you that I am a fucked-up person in many ways, Caroline. [He sits looking at the camera, then exhales, gets up, retrieves another cigarette, and returns.] Now, if you would, please open the small box that came with this videotape. Okay? You have it there, I hope. I made some calls from the plane while I was thinking of you and had a guy meet me. What you have, Caroline, in your hand, is a Roman antiquity. The stone is camelian. If you hold it up to the light, you'll see that it refracts the light through it, sort of in a star ⦠the gold band is highly imperfect. The figure on the stone, the goddess with a helmet on, is Athena. The dealer told me it was made by hand two thousand
years ago, more or less, and was discovered in a cave in Italy in about 1947. Some Brazilian millionaire owned it for a long time. We'll never know who wore this ring, Caroline, but its first wearer was probably a young Roman girl born to a wealthy family. Perhaps it was passed on for a number of generations, perhaps it was stolen and buried in the cave with the other loot. I don't know but I don't care. I want only for you to have it ⦠I hope I don't disappoint you, Caroline. We'll have toâsee, when I saw you in the bar, I was the boy who worshiped Ashley Montgomery, except now it was
you
I worshiped. Today I saw a woman who had been places, who could take it, who could take
me
, who would fucking kick it
back
at me if she had to. This is my excitement and this is my terror ⦠You see, my heart thrills to your heart, Caroline, my dark heart thrills to your dark heart. That is my vow, Caroline. My vow to you. [Simon gets up from the table. Static. End.]
faintest
essence, and then ⦠well, then I did the usual, the business. I didn't consider this depraved. She was a fetish, a beautiful fetish.
After a few weeks, Ashley came to recognize me ever so little ⦠a smile, a politeness. Maybe she sensed something ⦠my quivering attentiveness. I tended to sweat, I tended to take away her plate too quickly, like I was hurrying her out. I realized that I had to keep my job. I became the best busboy at Dante's Café. They wanted to make me a waiter but I refused. Waiters, I saw, were too busy. They couldn't stand at the back of the room and study the people. This I could do. I could watch her talk, I could watch her listen, watch her get cigarettes out of her purse, then smoke them and put them into the ashtray. She usually came in with a crowd, maybe once a week. Actors, TV people, Broadway people. Someone else always paid. Ashley didn't even offer, not once. She would come in wearing jeans and a baseball cap, and it worked, or she would come in wearing a mink that went all the way to the floor and weighed about a hundred pounds, and that was right, too. Men didn't scare herâthis, by far, is the most erotic quality a woman can have. She loved menâin their varieties. She was a little older than she looked. She was twenty-six. She could be witty and quick. It seemed that she was spending more time with movie people. Some older guys, directors. And also one man in particular. He was her new guy, and it looked pretty serious to me. God, did I watch them carefully. She listened to him. There was something about her that he understood. Sometimes they took a table in the back where they just sat there reading, sometimes he would read aloud to her. Once I saw that he was reading to her from
The Confessions of St. Augustine
. I went out and found the book and I read it. What a fucking classy thing to do together. A couple of times they stayed till closing time. They seemed to take great pleasure in each other. It was about sex but it was about a lot of other things, too. He matched her vitality. Here he was
sucking in other men's cigarette smoke,
vitally
, in a pressed shirt and reading St. Augustine to one of the most beautiful girls in the city. Then one time he came in carrying an ice chest, a big one. It was early, maybe six in the evening, before it got busy. He had the ice chest up on his shoulder and took it into the kitchen. There were four yellowfin tuna in there, maybe forty pounds each. I was stupid with awe. Maybe I was at an age where I just fell in love with everybody, I don't know. Anyway, the guy said he had caught them that afternoon out in the Gulf Stream fifty miles off Montauk. He held up the fish. They were huge. Beautiful. [Simon pulls a match from the matchbook and lights it contemplatively, watching the flame burn toward his fingers.] Each fish was a grotesque amplification of his manhood. I was fascinated. [He throws down the match.] I would never have what he had,
never
. He gave one fish to the owner and another to the chef. He was going to have a bunch of people in that evening and he wanted the other two fish cooked for his table. God, he was fabulous. He was handsome and well dressed and becoming famous for something, and he was arrogant. Who wouldn't be? He was about thirty-two or thirty-three. He was very sure of how it would goâI heard the conversations, of courseâI was invisible, I was a shade, I was the smoke behind the table. [Simon lights another match, blows it out. Now his face is cold, dull.] Then, a couple of hours later, when the man had just come back from the men's room, on the way to his seat he turned to me with a sort of conspiratorial whisper. I was thrilled for a moment, then he said something like, “One of the crappers isn't flushing, pal.” That was what he said. I said okay and went into the men's room. The fucker had stopped up the toilet with paper. All the fixtures in the restaurant were old as hell, and I had to unclog the toilets every couple of nights. But this
was too much. I collapsed in that toilet stall on my knees and looked at his shit and the shitted-up toilet paper and I fucking wept. [He looks up at the camera.] I wept because I was an ugly fucker, Caroline, I wept because I was just smart enough to understand my own misery. And I guess I wept for love, too. I wept for love. I can't really say it better than that. I was certain that I would never be loved. Never. I swore that if I ever had the chance for somebody I loved, I would take it right away. Never hesitate. I was in the stall for something like ten minutes. Finally the manager came in ⦠[He rubs his eyes, breathes, looks away.] This is always who I'm going to be, Caroline. I'm always going to hate myself, I'm always going to be that fifteen-year-old kid, Caroline, always outside, always fucked-up somehow. I've made three big movies now, and each one was more successful than the last, and they gave me the Oscar, and I'm glad, I'm ecstatic. Now everyone thinks I'm a genius, but what does it really mean? Why am I saying this? I am trying to say that my whole life I have been trying to be happier. I have been trying to find my best self, and I don't think I'm getting there much. So ⦠my vow to you is that I will love you as best I can, but I warn you that I am a fucked-up person in many ways, Caroline. [He sits looking at the camera, then exhales, gets up, retrieves another cigarette, and returns.] Now, if you would, please open the small box that came with this videotape. Okay? You have it there, I hope. I made some calls from the plane while I was thinking of you and had a guy meet me. What you have, Caroline, in your hand, is a Roman antiquity. The stone is camelian. If you hold it up to the light, you'll see that it refracts the light through it, sort of in a star ⦠the gold band is highly imperfect. The figure on the stone, the goddess with a helmet on, is Athena. The dealer told me it was made by hand two thousand
years ago, more or less, and was discovered in a cave in Italy in about 1947. Some Brazilian millionaire owned it for a long time. We'll never know who wore this ring, Caroline, but its first wearer was probably a young Roman girl born to a wealthy family. Perhaps it was passed on for a number of generations, perhaps it was stolen and buried in the cave with the other loot. I don't know but I don't care. I want only for you to have it ⦠I hope I don't disappoint you, Caroline. We'll have toâsee, when I saw you in the bar, I was the boy who worshiped Ashley Montgomery, except now it was
you
I worshiped. Today I saw a woman who had been places, who could take it, who could take
me
, who would fucking kick it
back
at me if she had to. This is my excitement and this is my terror ⦠You see, my heart thrills to your heart, Caroline, my dark heart thrills to your dark heart. That is my vow, Caroline. My vow to you. [Simon gets up from the table. Static. End.]
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