Page 61 of Marlowe Banks, Redesigned
As the sun set through broken blinds, sending pink streaks across a sea of beige, Angus and Marlowe started in on the tacos while chatting about the day. They laughed about a spat that’d erupted between Fritz and Wes, and remarked on the efficiency of the hair and makeup crew, sweeping in with a comb or sponge between takes. They joked about his fake height and her fake boobs. They only flirted a little. Relatively speaking.
“What would you be doing if you didn’t come over tonight?” Marlowe asked as she nudged a teetering sprig of cilantro deeper into her tortilla.
“Hanging out at Idi’s probably. He runs a monthly poker game. I always lose but we have a good time.” He twisted a strand of melted cheese around his finger, struggling to tame it in a way Marlowe found deeply entertaining. “I lucked out with this job. None of us knew each other when we started filming season one. Now they’re five of my best friends. Crazy to think next week might be our last working together.”
Marlowe lowered her taco, struck by a note of deep sadness in Angus’s voice.
“You don’t thinkHeart’s Dinerwill have another season?” she asked.
“Depends how ratings are doing. It could go either way.” He finally managed to sever the cheese strand, peeling it from his finger with his teeth. “Honestly, I’m hoping we get one more go, even if the material’s tired. Otherwise I’ll probably end up on an action film. They’re pretty much all I’ve been offered lately. So far the top contender is a script about a wrongly convicted parolee whosets out on a path of revenge. It’s super formulaic but someone else would do all the stunts so I’d just have to look pissed off and say things like, ‘You really thought you could get away with that? Think again, asshole.’” He fired a finger pistol, rolling his eyes as he lowered his hand. He played the idea off as if it amused him, but the note of sadness hadn’t left his voice.
Marlowe let her dinner idle. “Doesn’t sound like the role of your dreams.”
Angus shrugged as he prodded his cheese. “It is what it is. You spend enough years glaring at the camera as a borderline alcoholic with a sex addiction and a ready box of matches, people don’t line up to put you in a rom-com about an earnest flower seller who takes in too many stray cats.”
Marlowe smiled to herself as she pictured Angus surrounded by bouquets and meowing kittens. It was a nice image, and she suspected she wouldn’t be the only one to think so. Funny how she’d thought someone with Angus’s name recognition could pick and choose whatever roles he wanted, but apparently his situation wasn’t that different from her own, even if he made a lot more money and spent a lot less time in shoe stores.
He leaned over to examine her remaining taco, extracting a few of the more offensive vegetables and adding them to his fillings, easily intuiting that she didn’t want them.
“How about you?” he asked. “What’s next for Marlowe Banks, costume designer, challenger of sexist producers, and lover of cute but malodorous jalopies?”
Now it was her turn to shrug. She had her hopes but so much was still unknown.
“Same,” she said. “Vigilante piece. Lots of guns.”
“Thought so.” He circled a hand in front of her face. “You havethat hardened ex-con look about you. Bet you pulled the legs off spiders as a kid.”
“No, but I punched Pete Kensington in the eye when he called my best friend fat.”
Angus let out a burst of surprised laughter and requested the rest of the story. Marlowe cringed in embarrassment but with further encouragement, she described her first and only foray into pugilism. She was nine years old at the time, gangly, awkward, and frustrated at the ways people used words to hurt others, especially when those people took pride in the accomplishment. The strange bridge between ego and malice.
“It’s funny when I think about that day. It wasn’t funny to Pete Kensington, of course, but it was the first time I realized how often we judge people based on their appearances. Rather than try to pretend that wasn’t true, I started looking for ways to understand it.” She got up to refill the water glasses, calling from the kitchen as she ran the tap. “It was how I got interested in costumes. If we know we’re being judged by our appearance, how do we curate that appearance? How does someone choose their outfit, or hairstyle, or shoes, or tattoos? What makes a person feel brave or beautiful, and how is someone’s approach to those ideas unique to their outlook and life experience?” She returned to the living room with the glasses. Two glasses, she noted. Not one.
“Then there’s Halloween,” she continued. “People light up when they put on clothes that make them feel like precisely who they want to be. As a kid, that often meant a princess or superhero costume. Later it meant busting through gender norms or assisting actors with body dysmorphia. Clothes are often considered trivial and superficial, but they’re incredibly powerful tools of expression. And when we change the outside, sometimes we change the inside, too.”
Angus took his glass from her with a smile she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t smug. It wasn’t amused. It wasn’t particularly flirtatious. It was…
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He shook his head, still smiling. “I’m just glad I’m here.”
After dinner, Marlowe and Angus settled in to watch a film on her tiny TV, opting for a classic detective movie so they could stay on brand, there being a shortage of films in the not-really-a-cattle-tycoon genre. She picked outThe Thin Man. He suggestedThe Big Sleep. They tossed a coin but he swatted it aside mid-spin and suggested a double feature instead. Anxious to retain his company as long as possible, she agreed.
They started the first film seated beside each other with their feet kicked up on the coffee table and the beige comforter blocking the worst of the sofa’s odor. Gradually, awkwardly, and with very little subtlety, they scooted closer to one another. When their elbows bumped, he swung an arm over the back of the sofa and invited her in. She leaned into his side with her head tipped against his shoulder. Sweet. Friendly. Cozy.
After a few mutual yawns—maybe feigned but probably not—sitting became spooning. His body was warm and solid against her back. She also liked the weight of his arm resting on hers. She liked it even better when he eased his arm sideways and set his hand on her thigh, where his fingertips inched past the hem of her dress and drew whisper-soft circles on her skin. On the other side of the room, William Powell and Myrna Loy tossed out lively banter about martinis and murder, but Marlowe’s attention was locked on that spot on herthigh where four fingers circled, circled, circled, making her toes curl and her breath catch in her throat. Did he notice? Surely he noticed.
About halfway through the film, Angus shifted behind her, gently nuzzling her neck, the contact so subtle it could almost be mistaken for an accident. Almost, but not at all. She wedged her body more tightly against his, pressing backward with her hips and adjusting the bend in her knees, almost like she was stretching. Almost, but not at all.
His fingers inched higher, barely, an unspoken question.Is this okay?
She closed her eyes and drew in a breath.Yes,she thought.More than okay.
They went on like this for several minutes, ostensibly watching the film while his hand made its slow climb up her thigh and she fought a growing inability to lie still. The higher those circles climbed, the greater her unrest. Her toes pressed against the tops of his feet. His feet flexed and pressed back, easing his thighs against hers. His lips rested against her neck, not forming a kiss, just… there. She tilted her head away from him, letting his breath curl around her neck. His soft stubble grazed her skin. She waited for him to kiss her,willedhim to kiss her, but he didn’t, wouldn’t. Instead he hovered there, never crossing that line.
They might’ve continued in the same vein all night—playing at cuddling while not really cuddling—but as his thumb neared the edge of her underpants, her hips rolled against him in a way that could no longer be attributed to a random act of restlessness. It was pure desire.
Marlowe turned over, nearly sliding off the sofa in the process. Her stupid comforter might as well have been made of Teflon. Angus prevented her from falling with a strong, splayed hand on her back, watching her with unblinking eyes and parted lips. Thosedamned lips, the ones she’d become so well acquainted with earlier that day, the ones she longed to kiss again, here, now, where no one else would see. But she and Angus had agreed to a friendship, and they’d made that agreement for good reason.
