I hate that he’s made me so afraid of him. He’s slowly killing my will to do the one thing in life that truly brings me joy. He’s winning.
I lose.
I hesitate at the door before I head outside, wondering if I should find Thomas at least and let him know where I’m going. I like long runs and might be gone until past nine.
In the end, I decide against it and head outside. Rush is the one who didn’t set a proper meeting time.
There are dewy gravel paths which twine around the park, and I set off into the birdsong greenery. The path winds through gardens and past follies and a lake. It takes more than half an hour to get all the way around and back up to the house.
As I puff up the short slope, I see Rush is jogging down the path from the house to join me. He’s wearing a charcoal sweater and jeans, and the sweater hugs his defined chest and biceps. I’ve always been weak for knitwear over muscles. I notice that he’s got that violet contact in, too. I don’t know if I like it or if it annoys me. If he can’t be himself, then what else is he hiding?
He gives me that lazy grin. “Good morning. Sleep well?”
“Fine thanks.” I pant, hooking my right foot up and stretching my quad. “I’m kind of wondering why I’m here, though.”
“To get a feel for the place, and for me. So we know if we can work together.”
“On what, though? I still don’t really know what the project is.” I try to return his smile, but I think I just come across as frustrated.
“Come with me. I want to show you something.” He leads me back up to the terrace, and I follow him. “I want to film the video here,” he tells me, gazing out across the grounds. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since I bought the place. It goes perfectly with the concept.”
“What’s the concept?”
He looks down at me and smiles slowly. “This is the part I hate. Trying to get the picture in my head into words so someone else can see it in their minds. The boys have already told me I’m crazy.”
By the boys, I suppose he means his bandmates. “Crazy is fine as long as you can dance to it. I’ll tell you if it won’t work physically.”
“All right. So, it’s a midsummer festival. Very pagan. There’s a maypole, flowers, dancers. A woman in a white dress, like a priestess. A huge effigy of a wicker man, ready to be burned. There’s an intruder from the laneway.” He points up the slope to the left where a low dry-stone wall runs along the property. “The woman in the white dress finds him and dances with him, drawing him closer to the effigy. The viewer figures out what’s coming, that he’s going to be sacrificed, but he has no idea. He’s having a great time. The woman’s intended to be the sacrifice, but she tricks him into taking her place inside the wicker man, and the revelers set it alight.”
“The intruder is you?” I ask, and he nods. “You’re killing yourself in your own music video?”
“Not quite. The woman runs for her life, but at the last moment she comes back and drags him from the bonfire, and they escape together.”
A twist on the handsome prince rescuing the princess from the dragon. “Grotesque. Pretty. Dark. Romantic. I like it. How many minutes is the video?”
“The song is just over four minutes, but I want to video to be around six. A short film. The focus is on the atmosphere the dancing creates with the music. I’ve been looking for a choreographer that has a classical background but a modern approach.”
He must be throwing so much money at this. The dancers, the sets, the costumes, the crew. It’s going to be insane.
Rush turns to me, an appraising eyebrow raised. “So. What do you think?”
“Yeah, it’s crazy.”
“But that sort of crazy appeals to you?” He must hear it in my voice, that I like the idea. The ambition. The approach. This is something that’s going to be very hard to turn down.
But I have to turn it down. It’s way out of my league.
“Have a think about it. I have to take care of a few things this morning, and my assistant has a draft contact for you to read. I’ll let you get back to London after that.”
He squeezes my shoulder and heads back into the house. I stay where I am, looking out over the garden. It sounds like Rush wants to play with themes of celebration and destruction. The flowers and joy of high summer masking a descent into death and horror. There’s so much that can be done with contradicting ideas like that, and I start to imagine the movements in my mind.