Men Read Free Page A

her. She has known him forever and is gettingto know him second by second: it is here and now , just the right moment in life, taking a risk on adventure, good times, the union of the present and the ever-after. She is drunk. They discover similar interests.
    He likes to read. She plucks up her courage and laughs for real. ‘There’s nothing more sexy than a man who reads.’ She would like to elaborate. She would like to explain to him—as he leans in, alone, needing no one, caught up in a crowd but with his unfathomable head held high, a smile to light up his entrance, his welcome interruption: hello, hello, my love. She would have so many things to tell him. So many things to explain to him. He is reading for a project he’s working on. He reads a lot on set. ‘All those actors who want to stay focused between takes, all that fuss about the Actors Studio, what a joke.’ He gives a short laugh. The two of them are not American. He reads at night. She pictures him wrapped in a white sheet, naked to the waist and hunched forwards, his long hair slipping over the book. He recites the names of writers she has never heard of; she catches the two syllables of Conrad and whips out some French names. He doesn’t pick up on it. But he stays there.
    The silence unfolds, changes direction. He smells good. She wants to touch him. He smells like a church, like an Indian temple. The moon has risen. The sea has expanded, black and starless, a second sky. She racks her brains for something to say. She would like to say that she came to Los Angeles for the sea. In Paris the sea was too far away; evenwhen she was small she missed the sea. But he won’t believe her. Especially coming from an actress. He is standing in profile against the charcoal-grey sky. Between her and the sea there is only him. She can look at him just by raising her eyes. A high, rounded forehead. Some kind of grooves in his skin: she can’t tell in this light. Scars? Invisible eyes, slits. A long, thin nose, aquiline. Large lips, firmly closed, well defined. How does it happen, why do these particular elements form such consummate beauty?
    She thinks back to early school drawings: 2, and 4, and 6…by lining up the numbers in a column you produced a strange, bumpy shape. She can hear him breathing in the silence. He doesn’t like chatterboxes, it must be that. Or explanations. He likes to go at his own pace. Or else it is all in her own head, and the city is nothing but a projection; she thinks she has been living there for four years but all she does is float on the surface. She tries to cling to the illusion that her feet are grounded, that the vibrations she feels are part of the city of Los Angeles itself. She would like to tell him about the week when a huge image of her face was displayed on a billboard, at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and La Cienega Boulevard, for the launch of Musette . There were so many things she could say about it, say to him, that would be unexpected, witty. Not at all what he imagines, not at all like other actresses. She asks him for another glass of champagne.
    ‘I like the way you say champagne ,’ he says. ‘It’s so chic,so French.’ She laughs. He makes fun of the American accent: ‘They say champayne like John Wayne .’ She laughs again. Every word he says is precious, reveals a little more behind his unfathomable demeanour. His eyes reveal nothing. Perhaps he saw her in Musette. Perhaps he’s got a thing for French girls, the usual thing.
    A few people walk back towards them. Of all these bipeds only George and he know how to carry with elegance our lot as upright creatures. Everyone else uses cigarettes, glasses or studied gestures in order to keep their hands beside their bodies. Those two are simply upright on Earth. He reminds her of someone but it’s not George, despite their shared elegance. She casts about, compares the nose, the mouth, but it’s more about the look, or the stature…or, she’s