The dreams remained locked behind their glass cabinets, where they could be viewed from any angle but never touched. And the people, tired of just looking, turned down the lights and slid between their heavy sheets of frustration.
Frustration. The itch that cannot be scratched, the sadness that words cannot bury. Juliet sent off her letter of intent to the blackmailer’s post box, still no closer to finding his identity, or finding the money to pay him. And with every day that passed she became more certain her secret was almost out. It became so that just looking at her father, seeing the seeds of disappointment already planted in his eyes, was too painful. He sensed her discomfort and made it worse by asking her what was wrong, again and again and again.
Charlotte played every one of her ten favourite romances on the large flat-screen television in her room, but none of them helped explain why Malcolm remained so cold and distant. Perhaps there was an irony to be appreciated in the situation, the sort that would play well in black and white. But in Charlotte’s mind, her own scenario—the fact that the first boy she had ever been interested in, properly intensely interested in, was also the first boy not to be interested in her—spoke of a director who had grown old and bitter and should have moved over to make way for a more optimistic generation.
Brian tried to pretend it wasn’t true, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. The Woman on the Phone. Juliet. Much as it pained him to admit it, he wanted her. But wanting wasn’t having and, although every morning began with the same promise to himself, that he would find a way of seeking her out, every night finished with the same admission, that when it came to this, he had lost his nerve. It was even true that, should you have happened by Brian’s bedroom window on a night like this, you would have heard the sound of a stifled sob or two, for Brian wasn’t used to complications.
Even Kevin, resolutely patient Kevin, slowly chipping away at the granite of Brian’s masculine heart, had moments when he wondered. When the shape before him appeared no more refined than the shape he had started with, and he doubted he would ever find any expression there. He would simply chip on and on, until he or the rock were there no more.
And then there was Malcolm. Malcolm was broken, too dispirited even to feel frustration, for frustration requires a certain force against which it can push. Indeed these were troubled times, times of distracted days and restless nights, times in need of a cure.