“Oh, I blame that on the director and the screenwriter—us actors, we’re just glorified puppets, really,” he joked, hoping she would leave him alone but meanwhile adopting the false modesty that had endeared him to many a TV host and journalist—a rehearsed response. The hostess smiled indulgently, then moved on to the next passenger, leaving him alone with the Chinese woman once more.
Jerome glanced across—still no reaction or even an acknowledgment. How delicious. Well, she could wait. He would seduce her but he would take his time, test his skills by doing it as slowly as he liked—after all, the flight was a good ten hours long and they’d only been in the air for an hour. Besides, wanting her was
almost as erotic as having her, Jerome concluded, such was the mentality of a man who always got what he desired. Smiling to himself, he opened the script he had to read for his meeting in London.
The lines of the first page seemed to writhe around seductively as Jerome tried to rein in his concentration. The script was an English period drama, set in the mid-nineteenth century, about a great rivalry between two famous Victorian biographers that had ended in a huge sexual scandal that had ruined both of them. Jerome was to play the part of the younger biographer, D’Arcy Hammer.
Restless, Jerome flicked through the pages, scanning only his character’s lines. He arrived at an extended monologue: a scene between D’Arcy Hammer and Clementine, his young fiancée, a role that had been offered to the latest English ingenue to be catapulted to Hollywood. Hoping to absorb himself in the psychology of Mr. D’Arcy Hammer and temporarily forget the alluring woman sitting so close to him, Jerome began reading:
D’ARCY LEANS FORWARD AND POKES THE FIRE, HIS FACE NOW FLUSHED WITH EXCITEMENT AND SOMETHING ELSE—THE MANIACAL GAZE OF THE OBSESSIVE.
D’ARCY
You have to understand, Clementine, what it must have been like for Banks, suddenly finding himself in this tropical paradise, this alien world where very few white men had walked before, and to feel this great passion, this irresistible attraction to a woman whose customs, appearance, and language were as strange to him as Eskimos might be to us. And yet love or perhaps primal lust . . .
C/S OF CLEMENTINE BLUSHING AND YET SHE CANNOT TAKE HER EYES OFF THE YOUNG WRITER.
D’ARCY (CONT’D)
...I believe, transcends the constraints of civilized society. It is pure; it lies in the heart of all of us, dormant. Unbelievably dangerous, and yet . . .
HE LOOKS INTO THE BURNING HEARTH.
D’ARCY (CONT’d)
...the young Joseph Banks had the courage to thrust his hand into the fire. . . .
C/S OF D’ARCY: HAS HE GOT THE COURAGE TO THRUST HIS HAND INTO THE FIRE? WILL HE INCLUDE THE SECRET JOURNAL IN HIS BIOGRAPHY AND RISK RIDICULE? HE GLANCES ACROSS AT CLEMENTINE—THEIR EYES LOCK.
CLEMENTINE
I believe in the real you, D’Arcy. I don’t care what my uncle says, or what your adoring public believes. I know the truth of the man I love, whatever the future holds.
AND D’ARCY HAS MADE HIS DECISION.
• • •
Jerome stopped reading and gazed out the window at the azure twilight that had become that moment’s time zone, the dull roar of the plane’s engines behind him. The role had caught his imagination. Here was a man who’d found someone who loved and desired his private persona, the vulnerable, fallible human side. D’Arcy had found someone who hadn’t cared about his fame or money. Who cared if it had ended badly? This character could have been him, 150 years ago, another brave explorer of human nature who yearned for true intimacy, just like he did!
Now he could see D’Arcy crouched before that Victorian fireplace; he could feel his own chest encased within the tight velvet waistcoat, the starched stiff wing collars, the heightened pleasure of the proximity of the young woman D’Arcy wants but cannot have until marriage, the young biographer’s ability to live through his subject’s adventures—Jerome felt it all now.
As if in response one of the actor’s eyebrows started to twitch as his face adopted the expression he imagined would suit a character like D’Arcy—a combination of haughtiness and vulnerability. He could make this work. He had run the same gamut of emotions as the troubled young biographer! He could play D’Arcy. All the acting possibilities began to run through his mind. Searching for role models for the character, gestures he could use that he’d observed in friends, other actors, the few young aristocrats he knew personally, he began to put together an emotional palette he could draw upon.
Just then a movement down the aisle distracted him. He looked up. The steward was now standing over the Chinese businesswoman, asking whether she was ready to order dinner. Her shining jet-black hair was illuminated by the pool of overhead light, the shadows transforming her pale face into a prism of sharp planes in perfect symmetry that was broken only by the length of her eyes and the large full mouth. And there appeared to be a gleaming, wry intelligence in those black eyes.
Was he falling in love or in lust? He wondered, then decided it didn’t matter; the most important thing of all was that he was still unknown to her. He was every man and no one, plain Joe Blow with all the advantages and disadvantages that came with that. But there was something else that made the prospect of seducing her even more erotic, and that was the anonymity of air travel. In this nether-time they could be anyone. They were citizens of the sky, bound together by a restless need to keep moving. Surely that in itself indicated a need to reinvent oneself over and over with each new country, each new destination, so there was a double anonymity—the fact that he was unknown to her and the fact that both of them were literally in no-man’s land. Jerome, fancying himself as somewhat of a philosopher, played with the notion. He’d always liked sex in the air, but up until now he’d only made love on private planes. The public domain was a whole other ball game, one that was far riskier and far more exciting—it violated all conventions.
With her he could choose to be his younger self, the idealistic and intense young actor with all the choices in the world or the questioning, more secretly vulnerable self he was now, or anyone else, for that matter, but one thing he would not be was Jerome Thomas the film star. And fuck, that was sexy. Now he was erect again, rock hard, his cock pressing up against the blanket over his lap.
Pretending to read his script, Jerome surreptitiously studied the woman’s every movement; it was the careful observation of the hunter. Again, she seemed to be oblivious of his interest. There was no subtle angling of the body toward him, no unconscious preening—the hand to the hair, tongue running across lips, fingers stroking skin—to indicate that she was even aware of the gaze of an attractive man, never mind a world-famous film star.
The steward described the menu. The businesswoman looked up at him. It appeared she didn’t speak or understand English. The steward then repeated the menu in fluent Mandarin.
The woman broke into a smile and the severity of her beauty softened. It was then that Jerome was absolutely convinced he must act. Like the fearless D’Arcy Hammer he too would thrust his hand into the fire—or in this case, hopefully, between those smooth slim legs. Determined, Jerome lifted his pen from his breast pocket and wrote in the margin of the script: Rom, you will have her by the end of the flight. It was a promise to his secret self, his hidden persona. It was a commitment.
He pulled out the TV screen set into the side of the booth. The touch screen came on and he pressed the YOUR JOURNEY icon. Immediately a graphic of the plane flying across a curved map of the northern hemisphere came up. They were now somewhere over the icy plains of Alaska, as far as he could tell, and there were about eight hours to go before arrival. Eight hours to find a way of getting her attention, charming her without language or the advantage of his fame, and then seducing her without causing a disturbance or a newsworthy scandal. It was a deliciously erotic and extremely dangerous prospect, one worthy of both Jerome Thomas and D’Arcy Hammer—the question was, how? Across the aisle, the woman donned her headphones and, with eyes closed, appeared to be listening to music, her long delicate fingers tapping the arm of her seat. The in-flight magazine now rested on her lap, open. It was then that Jerome first noticed she was wearing a wedding ring. Good, he thought. In his experience married women were easier to seduce and less likely to have any emotional expectations afterward.
Reaching into his trouser pocket, he pulled out a second-hand wedding ring he’d bought years ago as a ploy to wriggle out of any unwanted advance; instead he’d discovered that presenting as a married man usually engendered one of two reactions. One was to make him even more desirable, which depressed him as des