JULIAN KNEW WHY HE NEVER WANTED TO BECOME AN ACTOR. All the waiting around on sets made him want to drive off a bridge. It was no way to live.
The one-minute scene of Mia wordlessly walking down the street before getting hit by the bus was taking days to set up. They were still building the sets. They kept telling Julian to come back, that they weren’t ready for him. Maybe the next day. Or the day after. Finally, they promised him that tomorrow would definitely be the day.
The night before the shoot, Julian dreamed of Big Ben again. He stood, looking up at the Great Clock, trying to see the time. He turned his head to see if he was alone in the street. But no, a crowd of people, familiar and strange, had gathered around him. The armless man, the fingerless man, tall men and dwarfs, prostitutes, thieves, men with Bibles and manuscripts, in suits and bandages, albinos and giants, they all stood, and, like him, everyone was looking up at the Tower. The bell kept tolling. He heard someone say, start over, Swedish. He wasn’t Swedish. Why did he think that was meant for him? The bell stopped tolling. They stood in the silence. No one spoke. Then it began again. This time Julian counted.
The bell tolled 49 times.
When Julian woke up, around four in the morning, he couldn’t get back to sleep. He began the day with a feeling of dread so heavy he could barely get out of bed. He tried to chalk it up to exhaustion, wishing he could take four sleeping pills and pass out until the day was over.
But it wasn’t exhaustion. When Mia woke up, she looked pale. She wasn’t her bubbly self. She was dragging and running late. She added cream and sugar to his normally black coffee. She called to him from the bedroom. “Jules,” she said, “how much time do I have?”
He stood in the door. “What did you say?” He spoke in a shaken voice. Why did he remember her saying that to him?
“How much time do I have? When is the absolute last second we can leave so I’m not late?”
Why did so many things with her—things they said, they felt, they did, they looked at—fill him with such a relentless sense of déjà vu?
His anxiety would not abate. He drove them to Warner’s, braking for every yellow light. When another driver cut him off, Julian actually jumped out of the car and started screaming at the guy. “Hey, buddy, what the hell is your problem? Watch where you’re going! You nearly crashed into us!”
Inside the car, Mia was staring at him. “Is the bloom off the rose?” she said. “Was that the real you you’ve been hiding? Or is there something else going on?”
Julian wouldn’t answer her. Both options condemned him. Either he was a jerk, or there was something else going on.
He was glad he was on set with her today, because, boy, did she need to be watched over. As she got out of the car, her silk scarf got caught in the door. “Just like Isadora Duncan,” she said as a joke, but it wasn’t funny. She tripped going up the stairs to her trailer and hit her shin on the metal step. As she was walking across the soundstage, she didn’t see a thick wire coiled in her way. She would’ve fallen had Julian not caught her. She took a sip of coffee, scalded her tongue, and dropped the cup, spilling it over her wrist and hand. She got a small burn. A corner of a desk ripped her stockings and left a bruise. With mounting unease, Julian watched it all.
Just when things couldn’t get any worse, the AD sent Julian home. They couldn’t shoot today after all, despite the promises. The weather was terrible. Miserable windy gray clouds swirled overhead. There were even a few drops of rain. In Los Angeles. No one knew what to do. If there was one thing you could count on in L.A., it was clear skies. It’s why the film industry moved out west in the first place instead of to a rain hub like Florida. Yet today, when they needed full sun to shoot, there was this.
As they said goodbye, Julian begged Mia to be careful.
“Of course, but what an odd thing to say. Why wouldn’t I be careful?”
“Odd, really? You’ve been spilling, burning, tripping, falling the whole morning.” He brushed the hair strands away from her eyes.
“Jules, nothing bad can happen to me today.” Mirabelle gave him a marital hug and a mistress kiss. “Don’t you know that today is my lucky day?”
“Why is that?”
“Today is exactly 49 days since we met! Remember I told you 49 is my lucky number?”
“No, and I didn’t know you were counting.”
She smiled at him full of love, but Julian didn’t think it was possible to feel worse. Big Ben tolling 49 times in his dream was as vivid as she was in his arms. To get rid of his pulsing anxiety, Julian drove to Freddie Roach’s and pounded the speed bag until it was a blur, until he could barely lift his hands. He pummeled the heavy bag, turning into it with his whole body over and over until he thrashed every fucking Big Ben thought from his mind. He took a Comedy Central meeting with Ashton, for which he was physically present but mentally a million miles away and spent the rest of the day at the Treasure Box, finally driving to pick up Mirabelle at seven.
She was in one piece, but quiet as a struck bird. She said everything was fine, she was just tired. She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t thirsty. She didn’t want to go for a drink, she didn’t even want dinner. She just wanted to go home. He asked if she wanted to go look at some furniture. A month ago, after they had climbed down from their Elysian outpost at the Marmont and returned to the world, Mia requested new sheets before she would stay at his place. She said she didn’t want to sleep on sheets, even laundered ones, on which a parade of other women had been entertained. Julian did one better. He took her to Cantoni on La Brea and they picked out a whole new bed, a leather pampas king-sized beauty with an adjustable base and a plush headboard you could sit up against when necessary and grab on to when necessary.
But now a full spousal remodeling was in order. They were planning to repaint the house, redo the floors, get new kitchen cabinets, and a wine fridge. She wanted to get a 75-inch flatscreen TV. He offered to take her shopping for it.
She said no. “Maybe tomorrow, my love,” she said, taking his hand as they drove. “I don’t feel up to it today, even though it’s my lucky day and everything, I’m sorry.” She tried to smile.
At home Zakiyyah had made buttermilk chicken and a summer salad, but Mia had no appetite. Ashton invited them to go swimming. Mia didn’t want to. Zakiyyah wanted to go dancing; not Mia. They brought out Taboo, Mia’s favorite game, and she didn’t want to play. She asked for a cup of tea, but when Julian brought it to her, she had fallen asleep on top of their bed. He couldn’t watch TV or work on his website.
Mirabelle slept, and Julian sat in the chair by the open French doors and listened for any change to her breathing, and to the laughter and guitar-playing and arguing and singing coming from Ashton’s house.
Eventually the joy died down, and Julian lay down by Mirabelle’s side. Rhythmically, deeply, completely asleep, she continued to breathe and live.
He fought his own sleep all night, searching her body for signs of destruction. How could he defend her from threats both mystical and mundane when he didn’t know what his dreams meant? Were they what had been, or what was yet to be? Were they memories or premonitions? Were they nothing but irrational fears? Though that was a fuckload of some pretty specific fears. He’d never been on a ship, or in a fire, had never seen bombs fall, or watched anyone stoned or choked to death. He had never killed a man. Had never been to London, yet London was so clear in his dreams like his mind’s eye had drawn a map of the city, with every well-defined street etched in bold.
Why London?
And why Big Ben?
What did 49 mean?
Nothing made sense, nothing.
Julian stayed awake, afraid of things he couldn’t express. He covered Mirabelle with the black cashmere throw from the Marmont and left his hand on her until dawn. His eventual sleep was brief but not dreamless. He saw Mirabelle as when he first met her. But it wasn’t at Coffee Plus Food. He saw her bathed in red lights, in a garden, naked in a house, in a crowded square, next to a field gun in a room with no ceiling, in a tavern, and on top of the horizontal door. Different stage, different life, but it was always Mia’s face and Mia’s eyes and Mia’s shining smile.