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“I think you liked it. When we had sex and I was talking to you.”
“Yeah, I guess?”
“You were excited,” she answered for him.
She stopped and leant against the wall of a house, catching her breath. She produced the Drum pouch and searched for a paper.
He juggled the DVDs he was carrying, stacking the boxes into a neat, straight pile.
“How long are you going to be?”
“Not long, I only have to give back the movies. I’ll call you.”
As he waited, Sean read the blurb to Belle De Jour.
“A young Paris housewife, Séverine,” he pronounced the name with a flourish, “grows bored with her stable husband. When she learns of the presence of a high-class brothel in her neighbourhood, she quietly goes to work there – but only during the day, until five o’clock in the afternoon.”
“What?”
He spoke in a bad French accent.
“It is Bunuel’s Belle De Jour! Catherine Deneuve in her most famous role ev-er!”
He waved the case before her eyes and she grabbed it off him, scrutinising the package.
“That’s me! Can we watch it?”
“Bit late now, I have to return them today.”
She ran her hand over the reproduction of Catherine’s icy, blank face.
“This film is good too. It’s about a girl who suffers from schizophrenia. She starts to see doubles of everyone she knows, such as her boyfriend, and other apparitions. No one else can see them.”
“What is it?”
“Images. Robert Altman. And because seeing these doubles is making her distressed, she decides the best way to get rid of them is to… well, kill them off. She blows away a couple with a shotgun. There’s a really good scene where she’s happy to have shot one, and she’s skipping over the dead body, which is blown to bloody bits, and she’s whistling and singing.”
Rachel became both more excited and agitated as she listened.
“But at the end she stuffs up and accidentally kills the real version of her boyfriend, husband. Meaning she’s left with the evil double.”
“Can we watch these?? I really want to watch them!”
“They don’t work in the DVD player?”
“Oh yeah.”
He handed over the other films. She shuffled the DVD cases, absorbed in the images of movie stars and sets and different locales and eras, the cigarette long forgotten.
“I want to watch all these!” She stopped at the final DVD. “Well, maybe not that one.”
The film in question was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The front cover was a photo of the entire female cast, their amply endowed, naked bodies covered in a collection of fur jackets. Sean retrieved the box from her.
“This one is about big tits and drugs,” he commented brusquely.
He read from the dust jacket:
“Lance Rocke! Greek god and part-time actor. See how well he performs… The golden hair, the bedroom eyes, the firm young body. All are available for a price...’”
He smiled, remembering the scene of Lance lolling on a duvet, as that piece of narration played.
“I love that line: the bedroom eyes.”
He tried to make his eyelids as droopy as possible.
“How are my bedroom eyes?” he asked her.
“Terrible.”
“Must be why my film career hasn’t taken off,” he joked.
“I was in a short film… as a Venetian princess.”
“Really.”
“Mmmhmm.”
She reached out for him and he lent a hand to help her up off the pavement. He stacked the DVDs neatly again. She weaved her arm around his elbow. When they parted company at the lights, he was glad in the thought that she wouldn’t be with him at the Institute library.
When Sean entered the library, no greeting was forthcoming from the staff member manning the front desk. He dumped the DVDs in the return slot and walked through the security gates.
The girl working was the less plump of the two library assistants. He guessed that she was in her mid-twenties but wouldn’t have been surprised to find out she was closer to her early thirties. She struck him as nice, in a harmless, middle of the road, cipher-of-a-person sort of way. Books recently returned had attracted her full attention. She sluggishly scanned the items back into the system. He strained his mind to remember her name.
“Hey, Renee,” he guessed.
“Hi!”
She looked up from the books and paused, staring at him. She always wore a grin, and for his tastes, too much makeup for someone so plain.
“Hey.” He scanned the lounge area of the room – all modern libraries had them, it was akin to a waiting area in an airport – and returned his attention to her. “How’s it been today?”
“Good!”
“Been busy?”
“Oh, you know!”
He nodded and drummed his fingers on the counter. There were no patrons browsing the shelves of the collection. A sole student from the dance academy across the road sat in front of a computer, adding Facebook friends.
“I have to pick up some stuff… do I need a key card to get into the staff room?”
He had asked the question already knowing the answer.
“No, just go round the back. Someone will buzz you in.”
“Great. Thank you so much.”
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