Absolution

22 October

I should have been proud as hell going to dinner alone with Colin Firth.  There was no real joy in it this night.  I was wavering on how I felt about everything.  I didn't think I would be this mad for this long.  I have had my moments the past two days where I could almost forget what happened.  Right now I just wanted to know where he was taking me. That had nothing to do with dinner.  It had to do with a state of mind. He had been messing with my head since we left Barnard Park.  He'd been contemplative in the past, but not like this.  Not for hours on end. It had gotten to me some time ago and added to the problems I was already having. 

We pulled up to a small restaurant.  Club Gascon?  A valet came over, Colin got out and came over to my door.

"Come on, let's go in. Maybe this will end up better than before."

Before had started better though I thought.

"A reversal of the other night then you think?"

"That most probably will rest with you."

"Oh."

He was right though, wasn't he?  If he was laying it out for me.  I'd have to accept his reasons or not. That didn't sound promising. He asked that we have a table near the back.  I didn't particularly care where we sat.  We sat down, he just looked a bit nervous but kept his eyes on me.  I'm not sure if he was trying to gauge where I was or not.

"Something to drink?"

"If you like. I had planned on going out and getting plastered anyway."

"I see.  How about just some wine then?"

"Fine.  Whatever you like."

"Did you want to get something to eat now or wait a bit?"

"Colin, it really doesn't matter, cut the crap. I'm not hungry anyway.  I don't eat when I'm like this. We both know why we're here, don't we?"

"Yes, I suppose we do."

He ordered a bottle of wine that was brought to the table with two glasses.  He let the waiter know that we would probably order later and then turned to me. I wasn't sure I was prepared.

"So, where to start?  Look, I....I don't know where to start really. I've spent a better part of the day going round in my head about this. How to put it together that will make some sort of sense to you."

"Meaning what?"

"Don't go back to the intellect nonsense again, Diane.  That's not what I meant at all. It's. You've been so dour, I'm not sure anything I have to say will do. So, trying to get it just right has been very hard."

"Colin, I don't care how you put it, just put it.  You see, you have left the door open for me to leave here if I chose.  I can always call a taxi or take the tube."

"Then let me try to start somewhere."

It was about time.

"When you left before, as I came to realize, neither of us was quite certain how or if we would handle what had happened. Apparently neither of us did very well, at least at first."

"You're not making sense."

"I'm just totally, totally lost."

"I think what you are trying to do is reconcile what has happened in reference to the rest of your life? You do realize there are two of us going through this same struggle."

"I thought, after seeing you at the Premiere, that you had somehow handled it all very well.  I wanted to leave you with that impression of myself; but I was fooling myself in the long run.  I just didn't think how I was or wasn't coping should be laid on you. I was, as I had put it, doing better, but not entirely. It wasn't under regulation and I couldn't appease myself."

I wasn't sure where he was going but thought I might have an idea.  If I was right in my preliminary assessment, I was going to be ashamed of myself for not letting him explain before this.

"I thought...."

"Let me go on please....  I'd settled on some things.  For instance, that our meeting at all was chance and no harm really had been done there. The Fan Club certainly is a success. You were always gracious with my moods and were always more than sympathetic and understanding. Knowing all of this however didn't lay things to rest. Look, the point I'm trying to reach is that I was quite ripped and it was beginning to show."

Ripped?  Did he say ripped? Unhappy, upset, discouraged, distressed, melancholy?

"Maybe not to everyone around me, but to myself.  I could tell.  It wasn't so much all of the time as when I was alone. I will say, that unlike you, I didn't have constant reminders.  More when I did something for the Fan Club. That's when I would wander back in my mind. As I said, this was after the Premiere that it got a bit worse. I wanted to talk to you. It seemed you were the only one I could talk to about this.  I knew I couldn't phone. I emailed you several times, but you never replied.  Reasons for which we just recently clarified."

"Colin?"

"Yes, some of those emails were rather personal I'm afraid to say. He had a pained look, stared away.  "Just a moment, will you excuse me please?"

Before I could answer he got up from the table and walked away.  I watched as he went out the front door. He'd left me sitting there. Well, wasn't this great?  I wasn't sure if I should stay here or go see what was going on with him. I sipped on some wine and kept an eye on the door. I couldn't stand it any longer, I wanted to find him. Buried concerns for him returned. I got out the door and found him standing on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, staring into the night. I walked over and took his hand.

"Colin, ah, look. The wine is paid for. Um, this dinner business doesn't seem to be working. Perhaps we could go someplace else or just walk?"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes...I think so."

I didn't even know where we were, so I didn't know where we were headed.  He took me around the waist and we started off.  Silent at first, he got back to his narration.

"It's not that I was obsessing or anything, just trying to deal with what we'd done.  I thought perhaps we could work it out for each other by talking to each other.  So, the emails.  When you never answered I had to do something else."

We walked on.  He stopped talking for awhile but I held my silence and waited for him.  I felt he had more to say and I didn't want to interrupt.

"I, before I go further, wanted to say that through all of this you've been right for the most part."

I focused on his words and his face.

"All of the talks we had before, you were right."

"Such as?"

"You'd said that we, neither of us, would live with a lie.  That it all was a truth we'd have to live with.  That whether any of it was divulged would be something we'd have to decide for ourselves and that the compromise we'd made was something that neither of us chose to stop."

"No, you don't have to live with a lie.  You live with a truth. We both will have to live with this, don't you see?  Colin, whether you choose to divulge or not, it was a fate or a quirk of reality that we even met.  That we compromised ourselves was a path neither of us seemed to want to stop or tried to. How you choose to remember it is up to you.  It won't go away, it will always be there. It can be a wonderful memory, filed away to keep, or a banished thought of caustic pain."

"You remembered that?"

"Most everything we talked about, I believe."

"Apparently even down to degrees of sex, right?"

"Diane, I don't know what frame of mind you're in right now.  It's very difficult to tell. I would like to explain about Ken."

"I don't know, there may not be any point to it."

"For the past two days there seems to have been a big issue of this.  I'd rather explain than leaving it open to interpretation."

"So, shall I help you get started then? I'll let my intellect come to the fore if you like."

"Oh, I thought you had given up on having intellectual thoughts."

"Colin, please."

"You started it."

"Anyway. You didn't get responses from me and you needed to have a sounding board.  Ken was the sounding board.  Though I don't know the particulars of why you chose him, that's none of my business. That you seem to have disclosed just about everything, well, that's what cut me down."

"You know you're not as conventional as you make yourself out to be."

He stopped walking and turned to me.

"I didn't tell him everything, I want you to know that. I never mentioned your name, where you were from, how or where we'd met.  None of it."

"But then, how?  I mean he knew when I danced with him. He never said so directly, but I got the general idea of what he was hinting."

"Apparently, from our slight carelessness."

"Carelessness?"

"He said it didn't take much to put together the facts. You were gone, apparently, an inordinate amount of time for a phone call.  We came into the restaurant at practically the same time, from the same direction.  Where if you were on the lobby phone and I was just arriving we'd have entered from different sides. He noticed you were, well, glowing but flushed?  After you sat back down and through dinner he noted the change in your "perfume" to that of Zanzibar or a combination of it with something else."

"Of course he would have smelled that, you were.  Oh, right......"

"Yes, you were too, by that time anyway.  He hadn't noticed that before you went out."
"Damn.  Could we find some place to sit down?  I'm feeling a bit disconcerted."

"I don't see any benches about. We could use the curb there, if that will do."

I shrugged and sat down on the curbing.  It would have to do.  I patted a spot next to me.  He followed, sat down next to me and began talking again.  I was at least grateful for him finally telling me.

"I talked to Ken at length about everything that occurred.  He said that he wasn't sure exactly what statement set you off. Didn't feel he had disclosed much but your reaction and subsequent leaving confirmed his suspicions."

"His suspicions that it was me?"

"Yes."

"Maybe I handled it badly then. If I hadn't been so defensive."  I got up and stood in the street. I clinched my fists and stomped my foot.  "God, how stupid was that?"

"No, you had direct reactions to what he was saying or implying. I imagine you felt like you had been kicked in the stomach."

"Something like that.  Can, can we go back now?"

I was feeling fairly foolish now for not having kept my cool and avoiding Ken's remarks on the dance floor.  I could easily have diverted his comments, but didn't.  It had all led to this big mess. I knew I was always emotional and on guard where they were concerned.  This time I had been too guarded.  Livi was gone. I'd been mad at everyone for two days.  I probably messed up the video and I had Colin in a state for all this time. He may think that I have some modicum of intellect.  I wasn't so sure right now. He took my arm as we walked back to the club and the car.

"You didn't know did you?  Why I was upset?  Why I left?"

"No, I'd no idea.  Well, until Olivia cornered me."

"Yes, she told me, just before she left." I started thinking about Livi and the hurt I had from that. The hurt I had inflicted on her.  A broken friendship I'd waited so many years to find. The agony I'd put my daughter through, and the unnecessary misery I'd made this man endure. As we walked I turned my head away from him.  I didn't want him to see the tears streaming down my face. "She doesn't have all of the facts  She was too angry to find out. I don't blame her."  We reached the restaurant, none too soon for me. I stood back against the wall as the car was brought around and he paid the valet. I wasn't sure exactly what had happened. I came here incensed at him and was leaving angry at myself. I couldn't leave it alone.  I had to say something heroic, I guess. Before he could open the door for me. "I have to say this. Being around me has not only been a waste of your time, I believe, but also a waste of your energies.  You didn't ever need any of this in your life.  I regret all of the turmoil and injury I've brought about for you."

He stopped me short with his hand to my mouth. He turned his hand over and wiped some of the tears off of my face. Without a word he leaned down and kissed me. A soft easy kiss. He opened my door for me to get in then bent down towards me.

"Did you want me to stay tonight?"

I couldn't answer.  I was speechless and addled. I watched him go around the front of the car and get in.  Was he serious?  Of course he had to be.  After all of this.  Did I really want to go there again? We drove off.  No sounds in the car except breathing. I turned a bit to the side, he looked at me.

"Yes."