I hope Jamie won't get mad at me for posting this!
I wrote it some time ago, actually for the sole purpose of cheering her up, but then I thought, why not?
Of course this silly shortie must not be compared to the brilliance of Intimate Portrait, I wrote it just for fun.
Copyright of Mena, PG-13 rated.
The song belongs only to good old badass Robbie Williams, and the characters to the dear J'aime. Hope you'll enjoy!
Ghosts.
One of the perks of showing up for an audition when you are already an acclaimed movie star, is that your turn takes place at a quiet hour, when there is virtually nobody around. No extras or curious fans lurking around to sneak a peek, and even the members of the crew are scarce. It's just you, the director and a couple of producers, and maybe someone else who's there for the same reason as you: give a try to the umpteenth role, to jump into the sheltering masquerade of fiction and forget about himself for a while. But when it happens it's always professional actors, maybe someone famous that you already know, or at least you heard about. And it's a good, healthy competition: we are all here to woo the character we are going to be, study it like it was a new piece of clothing: we touch it, smooth the fabric, and we try to picture how good we'd feel inside it.
"Hey, Viggo!" Scott greets me with a friendly pack on my back, "Glad you are here. The guys of the production said I was crazy to call you, that you were never going to show up."
I scroll my shoulders with the proper modesty.
"I thought I was ready to go back to work again; thank you for calling me."
Scott nods wisely.
"That's what I thought, too. I mean, you're an actor through and through, I guessed your teaching experience just didn't give you the same thrill."
I smile to mask my annoyance. Good Lord, are we up to that again? My teaching experience, Christ, lasted only a semester and it happened nearly two years ago.
"Indeed." I say simply, "It was not the same thrill at all."
It's not totally true, actually. It felt good for a while, a sort of long-lasting role I could play still bearing my name, and without needing to focus on improbable ways of acting. I was my own director, and my co-actors and spectators were not afraid to go wrong. Nobody waited for the word 'cut' to be screamed out of the blue, because it was life we were shooting, without rehearsals or second tries.
Yes, I miss La Sorbonne sometimes. Too bad the pleasant memories are helplessly commingled with other moments, moments of disappointment I don't like to recall.
I take my time in walking lazily around the big studio, waiting for my turn. There is virtually nobody in here, just a man slumped in a chair at the far end. He must be another auditioner, but I cannot see his face. I walk closer, more out of boredom that for true curiosity, looking at him simply because he is more interesting than the voltage caves on the ground or of the grey walls. He sits curled down on something, his head hidden by a hat. But the sound of my feet betrays my presence, and suddenly the man snaps his head up in my direction. When he does, I stop dead on my tracks, for two reasons:
one, I am pretty sure the man must had been crying: his eyes are wet and flickering, and there's a light red sign on his chin, left by the pressure of his knuckles when he propped with his face on them, to read the book now I see he kept on his lap. He shoots me an unfocused look, just like he woke up from slumber, or a painful dream abducted by hypnosis.
The second reason I stop, taken aback almost like him, is that the man before me is Johnny Depp.
Here I stand victorious
The only man who made you come
When you cried, you cried for us
And when we died, you died alone
Gravity's calling
Don't go home
Where are we
"Uhm, good morning." he sort of coughs, and I know he recognized me. We never met before, but voices in Hollywood run fast, especially on the smooth freeways of magazines.
I feel like I interrupted something, and the worse thing I could do now is to back off and act respectful: it would equal to shove my awareness into his face, so I simply smile in a friendly way.
"Mister Depp, good morning. We finally meet, then. I didn't know you were here for this audition, too."
He smiles, wrapping his cool around him like a coat. He is back to the self I am used to know, the charming man looking sharply in your direction from screens and pages.
"I am, yes, but now that I see you here I could spare my time and just go home."
I laugh.
"You're too kind, maybe I should be the one going home."
He snorts.
"What about we both quit this nice ass-licking thing and we wait, instead? Come, sit." he hooks his foot to a near chair, dragging it closer. I sit, mentally noticing we got to that little, hesitating pause at the beginning of a conversation when the first topic is picked up.
Out of habit and of taste, I look at the book on his lap. He closed it when he addressed to me, back-cover up, but he sneaked two fingers among the pages to bookmark them.
I gesture towards it.
"What are you reading?"
It is an innocent question, but Johnny grimaces slightly, almost a reflexive move, scrolling his head. When he looks at me again, he is smiling like he did before: the same open smile you would never guess is hiding something.
"Just a bit of fiction," he replies easily, lifting the book with his fingers still in it, quickly for me to read the title, putting it promptly down again, like he showed me just not to look impolite, but he didn't really want me to see.
I'm probably wrong, though. It's just a book, and I am sure I am simply imaging things, because this is what I would do. Because although Johnny's move was brisk, the words itched in gold on a dark pink image of the Pont Neuf on the cover flashed before my eyes and sunk deep into them, through my brain, and I felt a twinge of pain in the middle of my stomach.
Intimate Portrait.
How long it has been since I read those words! It is not possible, I tell myself, yet aware my hands are sweating and my heart is racing madly in my chest. Clearing my throat under Johnny's curious stare, I gesture timidly towards the book.
"Can I… can I take a look at it?" I ask, trying to sound simply interested. But my eyes refuse to leave that volume, and I must make a true effort to prevent my hand from shaking when I reach it out.
Johnny clearly hesitates. For a moment annoyance flashes in his eyes, and there's something else, maybe jealousy, and something else I can't define. But he handles me the book, and I rush at examining it, bending my head down to avoid his eyes.
Paris on the cover, deprived of its true colors under the coarse, screaming gold of the title. And under it, the name of the author, printed in smaller fonts that still grow immense inside my head, they buff to fill all the possible space.
Anna Scarlatti.
I still cannot believe it. I lift the cover in a quiet frenzy, devoured by curiosity and fear. I go straight to the first chapter, and when I read the opening lines it's like hearing a song I used to play years and years ago: you forgot it was there, but as notes and lyrics play on, you discover, amazed, you still remember all of them, and your lips move slightly to follow the rhythm of the chained letters.
Who does she turn to after yet another disastrous encounter? Well, in actual fact, no one. And you can't really classify them as disasters…
"…if she doesn't classify them that way herself."
It's true, then. I wasn't mistaken. Anna really did it. Like a nightmare coming through after he sun has risen, when you thought you were finally safe, this little tale is back to haunt me.
Did what I could
For one of us
I always thought it was for you
And when I lied
Oh I lied for us
Because you never heard the truth
I shuffle a page backwards, the one that is sometimes blank and sometimes brings the bleak thanking lines of the author. It's usually for mum and dad or their significant other, but of course Anna thought she owed this little tale to others.
"To Amber, Mia, Elijah, Dom, Stacy; friends of a lifetime, foes, forgivers.
And to Jaime; especially to Jaime, although she won't read."
Jaime… so it is her. Of course it's her, I tell myself. It was the edited version you read first, remember? On the unabridged one there was her name. So, it's Jaime, the little redhead with hollow eyes I still vaguely remember, the protagonist of Anna's book. It's Jaime the unreachable one, the one who embodied, to Anna, the ultimate inspiration that mystery always fits. It was Jaime who had a love story with an actor whose name has been accurately erased from here.
Could it be a lie, I wonder for the first time? Could Anna have just made it up to spice up her little tale? Probably not, given everything else was real.
"Viggo?" Johnny calls me, and I see his eyes are still fixed on the book on my lap. I don't want to give it yet back, but I have to: how could I explain what this little amount of pages and words means to me? How can I tell to a stranger how I feel to hold it in my hands, given what it represents?
I can't, so I handle it back to its owner, feeling strangely weightless.
"You read it?" Johnny asks in a conversational tone.
I am about to scroll my head, but I do not. Pushed by something I cannot identify, I nod, instead.
"Some time ago, yes. It's… it's a good book." I try to focus on the present situation, trying to decide whether my behavior would look odd seen from the outside. It would a bit, yes, so I force myself to follow Johnny conversational tracks, despite all I wanna do now is snap the book off his hands and find a place to hide myself in to read it, or maybe burn it, I don't know.
"So, I didn't expect you to read this kind of stuff;" I joke, pointing at him, "I thought you were rather into Bukowski or Baudelaire, not this kind of chick-flick."
Johnny grins, his eyes tenderly resting atop the cover.
"Well, the same goes for you, actually. Why you read it?"
I could tell him the truth, or at least a part of it, the one I am not ashamed of, the one I still can recall without regretting every single instant of it. It's a deep-rooted sense of self preservation that prevents me from doing it, or maybe it's the shame I feel.
"I read a lot, I ran out of written stuff and I had a plane to take, so I bought the first book I grabbed at the airport bookstore." it's a lie, a fat dirty lie, and although Johnny won't know it I rush in talking again, to silence the little shaming awareness in my head.
"What about you? Did you nag it from your wife's bed-table not to fall asleep during the audition?"
My tone is light and friendly, and the negative snort from Johnny's indicates he noticed it. Still, his eyes focus on a point on the floor for a moment, before gazing at the book again.
"No, well, I sort of… well, I sort of know the author and I was curious."
My heart sinks in the pit of my stomach, like an elevator jolting suddenly to ground floor. I stare at Johnny, dumbstruck, but he's not looking at me: he is staring quietly at the book on his lap, and, released from his inquisitive stare, thoughts and memories jump on me again, tackling me down.
Last time I ever saw Anna Scarlatti was on the front veranda of her dormitory of the campus of La Sorbonne. She sat there quietly and her eyes widened when I marched resolutely in her direction, the rage inside me so strong and burning that menaced to explode in my chest. But I forced myself to stay calm, be rational and cold.
"I just want you to know that there's no need for you to turn up to the last few of my classes…" I hissed dangerously. Oh yes, I remember well every few words we spoke on that last exchange. I remember every single detail like it happened yesterday.
"What, why? Is it because of last night, because we can just forget about that…"
I didn't want to forget. I wanted to use what happened between us to hurt her. I wanted to use it as a proof that I was in the position of being mad at her, because I wasn't a mere teacher, I was a man who reached out to her, who opened up for her, and she had fooled me and lied to me.
I felt so frustrated, so betrayed, and so foolish and angry with myself for judging her wrong.
"I expected more from you, Anna. Someone who seemed so intelligent, so mature."
She seemed, indeed. She seemed different from all the girls of her age. More spiritual, deeper, wiser. I felt so insulted by the ugly truth, fooled to find out that she was, actually, just like all the others, and it was this grudge I felt that turned into rage and revolved towards her.
I walked away, and she didn't stop me. Shame on me, I found myself wondering what would have happened if she had more than I should, on the months to come. I wasn't in love with her, no, but I could have been if only we would have been given more time, if only she wouldn't have been so stupid, so superficial. She had talent, and I liked the way her eyes lit up when she looked at me. If only I had known why they did!
If we are ghosts
(A long long time ago)
It looks like we could have made it baby
We are ghosts
(A long long time)
Me and you
We are ghosts
(A long long time ago)
We could have made it
We are ghosts
(A long long time)
Me and you
(Ago)
"I finished it the other day," Johnny whispers pensively, "but sometimes you need to check this kind of stuff more than once, you know, when it gets too deep."
"Too deep?" I question, bewildered. I didn't find it deep. Well articulated, yes, good choice of words. But maybe the first version lacked too much for me to find it interesting, and the second… well, I wasn't properly in the unbiased position to judge it correctly.
Now that I think of it, I have no idea of how Anna ever concluded her book.
"Can I look at it again?" I ask, and this time Johnny gives me the book less reluctantly. But there's still a sorrowful light in his eyes, that follow the movement of my hands when I reach the last page.
Alright, I should wrap up. Please don't hate me, everyone, for things I've said and done. All I wanted was to be honest, to paint a beautiful intimate portrait of my best friend Jaime, and now look what I've done. Remind me not to get close to people. Remind me not to fall in love. Remind me that emotion hurts.
Oh, Anna.
Words flow and wrap me up, and my mind reels back on the sight of her, a young woman crying desperately for what happened to her best friend. This is the hard lesson she learnt, then. On the night we parted that awkward way she said everybody hated her, and my only response was questioning whether she blamed them. Blaming them! Anna was undoubtedly blaming herself, and only now, for the first time, I wonder if she really had to do it.
"So, she left in the end." I whisper pensively, "Jaime left."
"Yes." Johnny sighs, and when I look into his eyes I see pain, true, pure pain. He folded some pages, tucked the angles for bookmarking. I read quickly through, slightly surprised to find them unfamiliar, obviously editing I missed that were added then.
It's the sharp, cruel dialogue reported by a third person, like Anna recollected the words from witnesses of the scene. The name of the man is not here, but Jaime's is, and it's her face I picture inside my inner eye, I see her mouth opening to allow words to come out.
"You said I am not the person you thought I was. Well, what do you think I was? What do you WANT me to be? 'Cuz I can be it, I swear, I can become it… I've never felt this way about anyone before in my life, and I just want to be with you, and I can change for you…"
Anna didn't make this up. Nobody could make this up. There's too much honestly in such words, too much fear, too much self-loathing.
Too much love.
"She didn't look like that," I say before my mind registers what I am doing, "so fragile."
It's only when Johnny's eyes widen in shock that I realize my words meant more to him than how I could ever know or expect.
"Do you know her? Do you know Jaime?" it's almost a moan, a question rippled by desperation.
Like a veil had fallen from my eyes, truth hits me with all its cruelty, it's impossible, mocking irony. I stare at Johnny's face, and everything makes sense: it's him. He is the man from Anna's book, the man Jaime had fallen in love with.
Now I know it has always made sense. I have always known. If only I wouldn't have been so self-centered, so focused on my personal dismay, on my little pride offended, I would have understood it.
Truth looks even uglier, this way. How must have Johnny felt reading this? Did his heart skip a beat when he first saw this book in a store, like mine did five minutes ago? All pieces fly back together in my head, all characters of Anna's book pull their masks of oblivion off their faces, and memories get clearer again. I see Jaime like she was here now, I see Mia, Elijah, Amber. I see Johnny, now.
Look at the time its taken me
To get away from what was said
I'll never leave
I'll always love
You know that all those words are dead
Buried in yours tonight
Move aside
I'm taking you home
Good Lord, she aborted his child.
Anna told me that day, the day I kissed her. And yet, a part of me refused to believe her then, and why? Because I didn't care. I was more interested in her than in her feelings, and the people she was talking about were faceless strangers, to me. But now, the man whose story lies open and blunt on my lap is looking at me, he has a name and a life, and my pain and shame are so deep that I am tempted to slid my fingers through my ears, deep to the brain, to scratch them out my head.
I feel indescribable.
"I know them, too." I say to Johnny. Maybe I am wrong, he might think I am judging him, now that I know all he went through. But I must tell him, to be finally cleansed, in some way, because we both lost great opportunities, through in different ways: I ignored mine as it passed me by, and he took his own and then threw it away. I won't fool myself thinking my pain is of the same extent of his own, of course it's not, and yet, I am the one and only man in this world who can imagine how he's feeling.
"The teacher Anna writes about… she changed his name, but it was me."
Johnny's eyes simply widen. For a moment it looks like he cannot speak, like he won't ever be able to speak again. It is strange to see him so unarmed, so in shock, so desperate. I thought his kind of people was immune to this kind of feeling. I could not picture Johnny Depp looking hurt, looking lost.
Nor Jaime, by the way, and this was a mistake of underestimation I share with Anna.
We've been so superficial, so hollow to believe they were different. We put them on a pedestal and got surprised when they got hurt on the fall. Now I know it's not the ones making mistakes to be blamed, it's everybody else.
"There has not been a day…" Johnny whispers, coldly, every trace of tears in his eyes now gone, "… there has not been a day when I didn't think about her. There are so many things I didn't get."
"Why you never looked for her?" I ask.
Johnny scrolls his head.
"Because it's too late. No matter how many times I rewind those moments in my head, when I do, it's not the true Jaime I am talking to: it's the idealized image of her, and I had plenty of time to perfection it. I know, I am sure that in the real world things never go like we wish… and that is why someone who is not related to that book could love it: because it's so fucking honest. And honesty hurts, and we are all a bit fond of pain, or at least of painful tales: because while a side of us knows they are true, the other can linger in the indulgence it's just a story, and life might be better."
"But it's not fiction to us." I say slowly. It's not a question, it's an affirmation.
"I don't want to see Jaime, anymore. What happened… ended in a way that cannot be restored. You cannot fix it when you walk away leaving her behind."
Does he know I did it, too? Of course he does, her read the book. But I hope he forgot, otherwise he'd be a true jerk to say it.
"I can cope with it," Johnny says, "I can cope with my memories, and even with having them written down so bluntly. But," he points at the book,
"that's not what got me. Before reading that, I could still cherish the hope she was alright. That she got through, somehow. But now I know she hasn't and she never will."
On the radio
She was that summer song
Packing them in
Making them dance
A law of her own
Taking the time to sing it
"It's not your fault," I object. He glares at me and I try to explain myself:
"I mean, a girl like Jaime… she was like a bomb ready to explode. Granted, you lit it up, and I am not sure this would make you feel better but… if it was not you, maybe it would have been someone else."
"But it was me!" Johnny hisses, and there's a sick pride in his voice.
He is not claiming only the blame, but also Jaime herself: true, he means, he hurt her, but at least she was his own for a while. His, not someone else's, and he is refusing to believe it would have been the same.
"And anyway, I don't think it would." he says indeed, "Do you know why? Because she is just like me. She is… she was, complicated, but very sheltered and safe inside herself, like Anna pointed out. People like Jaime can't return whole once they fall apart, but it takes a very rare circumstance to break them. That's why I say it was my fault. She wasn't likely to burst in pieces just in a matter of days. Not without a solicitation, one of a kind."
I don't need you
But I'm lost
I'm lost without you tonight
Have you no heart
Where are we
(Everybody sing it)
"This kind of pride is self-destructing." I point out.
Johnny nods.
"It might be, but it's surely spontaneous. Or am I not even allowed to feel like shit because of this all?"
I defensively scroll my head.
"No, you're right, I am sorry."
Johnny nods again, looking silently ahead.
It doesn't take a great sensitivity to know this conversation is over. I make as to get up, aware that I cannot endure to sit here with Johnny now more than he can.
We cannot sit in silence, do some polite small-talking, or go further on this painful subject. My only choice is to leave him now, alone with his ghosts. And, I am doing it without another word, 'cause it would be too much. But before, I need to read the last paragraph of Anna's book. I will be buying it as soon as we finish with this audition: it's a scary date with destiny, but I cannot avoid it. I must not.
And above all, remind me that people are vulnerable, and I am only human. Don't ever let this depression lift, for I am unworthy of lightness now, just as Jaime is. We're all tainted, evilly and irrevocably, in a place we thought would make all of our dreams come true. If we think this is Hell, which undoubtedly is, just wait 'til we get back to the real world.
Goodbye.
I get up and place the book lightly on my empty seat, cover-down like it was a spyglass and the ghost of its author could come through.
I don't want Anna to see me now. I walk towards the stage, wondering how I'd ever manage to put up my performance, feeling so attached to my body, so put down by the weight of my feelings.
Ghosts
We love like ghosts
We are ghosts
They're taking down our satellite
We are ghosts
Because I have been vain, I have been too eager to judge, too persuaded of my unquestionable wisdom.
But most of all, I have been wrong.
I'll follow your star tonight
We are ghosts
If not tonight
Then when will she say
(Everybody sing it)
We're not ghosts
I said to Anna it was all about her, because for me it was only about her. But it wasn't, and we both learnt it too late.
The end.