Chapter 32 – Getting Roger in Gear
The pooch led the way up the steps to the back porch and into the kitchen, where Roger washed his hands and got the pasta machine out of the cupboard. He pounded down the dough, kneaded it, rolled it out, cut it into two foot lengths, and set a pan of water on a flame. Then he smelled the wine in the decanter, set a sauté pan on the range, and got shallots, garlic, and tomatoes out of the pantry. With his ammunition at the ready he went into the hallway and called up the stairs, “Gwenny, lunch in fifteen minutes. You ready for your pasta?”
“Ready,” came the word from on high. He smiled and went back into the kitchen. When Gwen entered she said, “Can’t wait. How’s Shim?”
“He’s good. He just had his priorities wrong. Was setting civic duty, morality, and artistic achievement above pleasing his beautiful girlfriend. We set him straight, now he’s back to writing. The block is gone.”
Gwen thought this over for a minute and decided not to pursue a deeper understanding of the logic. If the dog had concurred, things were ok. “What kind of wine’s in the decanter?”
“Hermitage. Beautiful.”
“That’s a syrah; a big wine. Rich. It’ll hold up for a few hours, won’t it?”
Roger, whose back was to Gwen as he stirred the shallots, garlic, and tomatoes in the olive oil, now turned around to face her. He didn’t like the sound of her last sentence. In it he detected an allusion to NOT drinking the wine now, with the pasta, which all morning he had hoped would lead to a little romance afterwards, preluding the siesta. He said, “It’s ready now. It’s been breathing. It’s ready to go, now, with the pasta, perfect.”
Gwen looked at him with manipulative eyes, said, “But it will keep for a couple of hours, right? Still be great later?”
He turned back to the stove and his sautéing, closed his eyes, fought back the disappointment, and remembered what he’d told Shim just an hour earlier. Beautiful women rule; no defense; take what you can get, when they want to give it up, and be thankful; don’t bother fighting it, no way; capitulate. He said, “It won’t be horrible. Won’t die on the vine in the decanter. May still have a little flavor later; not like now, not like the level of perfection it has attained at this moment; but it still will be alive.” He almost cried.
Gwen said, “Ok, good, because we have something to do after lunch. Something important.”
Roger knew it didn’t have anything to do with a prelude to a siesta. He knew it might be important to Gwen, but he also knew, whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be as important to him as what he’d been hoping for. He felt all that intense desire flow out of him, and watched it flow down the sink drain. He looked at the decanter, at the embodied efforts of Monsieur Delas, at all that monumental effort the good Frenchman had put into growing the grapes and making the wine, and knew he wasn’t going to get that anytime soon, either. What a bust. The pasta probably would be crap, too. Rubbery, overcooked. He said, “What’s so important? They waiting for me to cast that vote, break the four four tie, one way or the other?”
“More important than that. Have to help Laleh with the movie. You do.”
Roger didn’t like the sound of this, either. First, deprivation of the ultimate in hedonism: lunch, wine, and sex with his wife. Now, work. Labor. Struggle. Gwen always gave him the hard jobs in these production numbers. During the ballet he’d had to find, recruit, and enlist the services of a master musician to play the Stravinsky score that had been lost to the world since 1914. They’d needed someone who could play the entire thing on synthesizer, simulating all the instruments of an orchestra, and he had succeeded, getting Pete Townshend to come over from London for eight weeks and do the gig; that genius songwriter and musician who’d transcribed the orchestral score for synthesizer and played the entire thing for all eight performances. A year later, for the rock opera, again Gwen had told him to find the musicians and singers, and again he had succeeded, getting Paul McCartney to write thirty original songs and play them with an all-star band, and had persuaded Renee Fleming to drop her gigs at the Met and La Scala, and sing the McCartney songs in the eight performances of the opera, in Charleston.
Now what? What did Gwen and Laleh want for this movie? Bring Cary Grant and Catherine Hepburn back from their graves for one last superlative collaboration? For what did he have to give up the Hermitage and the prelude to the siesta? What was worth that? Oh, yes, to be able to watch Gwen get out of bed and walk to the bathroom. To be able to kiss the back of her neck. To see her feet in the golden slippers, drawn up under her on the couch on Sunday morning.
He said, “Ok. Where? When?”
“After lunch. Down at The Hall. She’s there now, with Gale and Jinny.”
Resigned, he said, “What about Shim? Aren’t we going to bring him into this? He’s the boyfriend.”
“You think he’s ready for the big time? Going to be a lot of pressure on all of us. Again. He’s a writer, remember. Wuss.”
“What pressure? We get the right actors and director, they do all the work. We just hang around, manage their quirks. They get out of line, get big heads, get contrary and too beautiful for their own good, we send ‘em into the orchestra pit with Little Jinny, he straightens ‘em out. Problem solved.”
Gwen saw his logic and had to agree with his solution to any problems with thespian egos. It was called Little Jinny Blistov. But there was something lurking in the back of Gwen’s mind; something that hadn’t yet formed into an intuition; something that seemed far away and very foreign. She was certain something was there but she couldn’t get it to materialize.
And she was right. There was something lurking far away, and its name was Colonel Aliaabaadi.