Add these oddities, however, and the effect is stunning yet approachable, with a kind of Audrey Hepburn vulnerability that makes everyone around her either want to fuck her or protect her from those who want to fuck her. As she stares in the mirror, apparently fascinated with herself, Sarah ties her brown hair in a high, loosey-goosey ponytail, puts on her coat, and leaves.
When she steps out of the trailer, which is parked outside a closed-off street, she finds Ian at the foot of the vehicle. For a moment he looks like a star-struck teenager waiting for an autograph from his favourite actress. Ian offers his hand and helps her down the trailer’s steep steps.
“I thought you’d gone home,” Sarah says.
“Before I left, I just wanted to thank you for a really amazing day.”
At first Sarah doesn’t read much into this compliment. She knows how obnoxiously self-congratulatory actors can be and that they say this sort of thing to one another all the time, especially on the first days of a shoot. But something in Ian’s eyes, the way he gazes at Sarah but quickly turns away as if the gratitude he feels is too overwhelming, convinces her of his sincerity. She stands close to him, peers into his eyes, and kisses him on the lips softly, barely touching them. “You’re so sweet, you know that? You’ve waited just to tell me that?”
“That and …”
“And what?” she prompts.
“I … well, the thing is. Back then, when we were making love, I mean, pretending to … I just want to say I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? What for?”
He hesitates as though trying to find a discreet way to speak his mind.
“What on earth are you sorry for?” she asks again.
“For getting, you know …”
“Oh, that …” she says with a smile of sudden recognition — a perverse grin, actually.
“I just wanted to assure you that it was no disrespect on my part.
I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I couldn’t help myself.”
Sarah finds his clumsy apology endearing, touching even.
“You’re so very sweet.”
This behaviour isn’t what she anticipated from a man who has become a box office sensation by playing bigger-than-life heroes who save East Coast cities from psychopathic Arab terrorists or who single-handedly terminate giant bloodthirsty bugs invading from South America, wavy brown hair blowing beautifully in the wind. Sarah expected him to strut around the set, sweet-talking female crew members out of their pants, charming them into making a pilgrimage to his sizable trailer. Sarah even figured he would attempt a quick on-set fling with her. She didn’t imagine herself standing in front of a man so shy, so quiet, that she can barely hear him.
Suddenly, Sarah is overcome by guilt for almost refusing to take the role in the film when she discovered that Ian Harmer would be her co-star, that her first foray into cinema would be alongside a man whose movies she can only bring herself to watch when she takes her godchildren and even then finds it difficult to sit through them. But having actually done some scenes with him now, she sees that underneath the matinee idol is a good actor who could someday be great if only he challenged himself more often. She feels a strong physical attraction toward him. Her desire made sense when he was naked and she was touching his beautiful body, feeding off his reaction to her, but fully clothed outside her trailer on a cold, rainy September night, she can’t make sense of it.
“Would you like to have dinner with me?” Sarah asks him, almost before the thought fully forms in her head. “The food at the hotel is … well, let’s just say I’m not looking forward to it.” She realizes she might have stepped over an invisible line whose crossing could have very serious consequences, especially only two weeks into principal photography. What if something does actually happen between us? she wonders.
Sarah doesn’t entertain that idea any further, for there is Michael, her husband, to consider. It is Michael who really makes her think twice about what lies on the other side of desire. If she had an affair with Ian, it would break Michael. She knows he would find out, too, not due to his own cleverness but because she could never keep something as big as that to herself. No matter how hard she tried to wipe away the residue of another man such a secret would manifest itself in some unforeseen way.
A part of Sarah admires people who possess the peculiar talent of taking from others what they can’t get from their husbands or wives while at the same time holding on to those things they cherish most in their spouses, those things that made them say “I do” in the first place.
Could I be one of those people? Sarah asks herself as she and Ian walk side by side on the wet, shimmering pavement on their way to dinner, shoulders occasionally touching. There is one thing she knows, though — her capacity to surprise herself.
For a brief moment Zakhariye thinks he is having a nightmare as the sound of George W. Bush’s voice talking about spreading freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East ricochets in his head. He jolts up, popping his head from under the pillow. It dawns on him that it isn’t a nightmare. He fell asleep with the television on last night while watching CNN and has awoken to the sound of Bush’s self-righteous voice as the president gives another speech on the campaign trail.
When he opens his eyes, Zakhariye is blinded by the harsh morning light flooding the room. We really should get heavier drapes, he thinks. But how will he sell the idea to Thandie? His wife adores these sheer cream curtains that she chose — at a hefty price per metre — more for the sophisticated elegance they bestow on their lives than the shelter they provide. If he does ask his wife about putting up heavier drapes, then that would make their sleeping arrangement official. So far, for the past month, his sleeping downstairs on the sofa has had an accidental appearance. When she recently asked him why he was sleeping on the couch, he told her that since he was watching the news so late at night he didn’t want to disturb her, thus portraying himself as a self-sacrificing husband rather than a man more comfortable sleeping by himself in the living room than on his side of their bed next to his wife of nine years.
Zakhariye sits up on the sofa and cranks the volume to hear what the experts are saying about the previous evening’s presidential debate. He watched it and was thrilled at how well John Kerry did, but he wants to know if everyone else saw what he did or if his hatred for George Bush clouded his objectivity. The longer he listens the clearer the victor of the debate becomes to him.
Even though Kerry has won two debates in a row, Zakhariye hears the wholesome, all-American TV announcer reading the latest polls, indicating that if the election were held today, Bush would win. The prospect of George W. Bush returning for four more years as the leader of the free world saddens Zakhariye in a way that scares him. Such anguish over an American presidential election makes him worry about his mental state.
The time on the bottom right side of the TV screen above the CNN logo reads 8:04 a.m., and Zakhariye knows his wife will be coming downstairs any moment dressed in faded blue jeans and a sweater, with a knapsack on her back to carry her scrubs. Exactly as estimated, Thandie sprints down, full of energy and enthusiasm for the day ahead. Zakhariye represses a surge of resentment at his wife’s tampon commercial perkiness. He wonders if he, too, would be so giddy if he took his multivitamins as religiously as she does. They exchange quick smiles as she makes her way toward the kitchen and he folds the blanket he covered himself with the previous night and puts it in the linen closet next to the kitchen.
Zakhariye’s eyes fix on her willowy neck that would make her look so regal if it were a bit shorter but in actuality makes her seem fragile, almost childlike. He turns his attention to the small amount of cereal she helps herself to in the green ceramic