Geography Read Free Page A

loud.
    â€˜What are you thinking?’ he murmured as I was dozing off. As if he had a right to my thoughts and feelings.
    â€˜I was thinking about something very corny,’ I said. ‘About a poem that seems geographically appropriate: Licence my roving hands, and let them go / Behind, before, above between, below / Oh my America, my new found land .’
    I can’t believe I said that now, looking back. The things you say when you are young and confident.
    â€˜You don’t need to quote Donne at me,’ Michael rolled me over so my back was to him, spooning in behind me, putting his arm over my waist and placing it between my breasts, pulling me close. ‘You’ve got yourself laid already.’
    When I woke he was putting on his socks and shoes. He was polite, but all the intimacy of the night before had evaporated. ‘I’ll call,’ he said, ‘about dinner tonight,’ but in such a way that I wasn’t sure if he would; I couldn’t read him at all. My relief when he did call was immense.
    We went to a Mexican place that night and I ate chocolate chicken for the first time. Food tasted good around him. Wine went more quickly to my head. All my senses had become more intense in the three days since we’d met.
    â€˜I’m going to give you a Hollywood tour,’ Michael said, ‘then let’s go to a movie. I missed The Piano the first time around, but since Holly Hunter’s won the Oscar I’ve got a second shot at it.’ I didn’t tell him I had seen it already. I’d been to Hollywood Boulevard too, though when we got there it was different to the times I’d seen it during the day, looking like a rundown fairground. At night the lights brought it to life, and the shadows covered the seediness.
    We started the tour at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, which, according to Michael, was the centre of Hollywood in the twenties. We zigzagged back and forth across the boulevard and looked at the buildings on either side. We walked past the Frederick’s and Newberry Company buildings, in all their art deco glory. Past the Egyptian Theatre, which struck me as having seen much better days. We stopped at the Lee Drug Company building on the corner of Hollywood and Highland to look at the neon Coca-Cola signs set under frosted glass in the pavement of the entrance. We passed the Max Factor Building, the Paramount Theatre and the Masonic Temple.
    When we walked past the Chinese Theatre, there was a premiere on with a red carpet and spotlights. I saw Brad Pitt get out of a limousine and I gasped.
    â€˜So he does it for you, huh? It’s his film that’s opening,’ Michael said. ‘ Legends of the Fall .’
    Michael waved at one of the women walking down the carpet, and she smiled back at him.
    â€˜Who was that?’ I had abandoned attempts to act unimpressed.
    â€˜A film producer,’ he said. ‘Not one you would have heard of.’ But she looked like someone I’d have heard of, with her long dark hair and clinging silver gown. I looked down at my own outfit: long grey skirt, flat shoes and a navy polo neck. I began to feel self-conscious.
    â€˜That’s the forecourt with all the handprints,’ Michael said, gesturing off-handedly. ‘You have to be a mega star these days to get a shot at it because they’re running out of room.’
    We went to see The Piano at a smaller cinema on Sunset. At the moment Baines fingered the hole in Ada’s stocking, there were sharp intakes of breath around the cinema. Michael leant over to me and whispered in the dark, ‘Is that power? Or love?’
    After the film we went back to Michael’s house in Venice. He wandered into the kitchen and I stood in the middle of the living room, awkwardly. Not sure what to do with myself, not sure whether he wanted me to stay or not.
    He came back into the room and up to me, standing close, his body almost touching