Lost in Translation? Fiddle De-Dee!
The (frankly, my dear) damned exquisite disquiets of fame
Scarlett O’Hannson stood at the ticket-vending machine in the McPherson Square station of the DC Metro, fretting over all the possible destinations. They all look so interesting, she thought. Museums, galleries, oyster bars, monuments — how could a young lady, even one of discernment, possibly decide on her own where to go? Where was Jock, her publicist, when she really needed him? Or her so-called solicitor, Evan?
(Oh, she knew where they probably were, all right: off somewhere in some dreary courtroom or producer’s office, fine-tuning her level of public exposure up or down as they knew best: acquiescing in attention and praise from those instrumental to her success, savagely browbeating those from other quarters who offered the least regard of any sort.)
Her unusual features, her figure, her peaches-and-cream complexion and casually styled strawberry-blonde hair all made passersby — especially the men — stop and admire her. Some imagined traveling with her. Some fantasized themselves as her destination. Exactly one hundred per cent of the dreamers in both camps concluded their private little fantasias with the certainty of her eventual departure. An exotic, uncageable bird she was, perhaps not in a class of her own but without a doubt in a class other than theirs. Even if they managed to (haha) claim her, when she bolted from her perch, as she surely would someday — someday soon, if they were honest with themselves — they would be the ones with featherlets of heartbreak dotting their faces, adhesived to their cheeks by their drying tears. With sighs prefiguring the hiss of distant Metro doors, to a man (and many a woman) they proceeded on their own separate journeys…
To a man, that is, except for the one in the corner of the trash-strewn, soft-drink-and-smashed-corn-chips-stained concrete balcony upon which Scarlett stood, tapping an elegant foot in impatience, tapping her chin with an index fingertip as though she were lost in thought rather than self-consciousness. She had noticed him from the corner of her eyes at once:
He wore exquisite flannel slacks, and a rumpled sportcoat with suede patches on the elbows. To his credit, he carried a notepad and a ballpoint pen but neither handheld voice recorder nor camera. He was leaning against a guardrail, and writing something in his pad, and he was observing her. He would smile one moment, and frown the next, and then he would cross something out and add something new. At any moment, she knew, he would look up, and their eyes would meet, and she would blush. Prettily. He was, well, he was Continental, she thought. Something exotic. Not French but French-ish. He was… Norman. No: Luxembourgian. He would look up, and smile, and sidle in her direction, and she would get all flustered and forget her manners and her tongue and say Guten Morgen instead of—
But before they could make that connection, suddenly there was Jock at her elbow, blocking her view of the Luxembourgian.
“Scarlett, what are you doing out here by yourself?” he exclaimed. He clutched at her upper arm in that annoying way he had suddenly adopted, like he was her father or she was his daughter or something.
“Just wanted to take the train, Jock. Jeez.”
“By yourself? Where’s Larry?” Larry was her weekday bodyguard, dutiful, strong, probably fast on his feet and with his fists, but very, very deeply — almost charmingly — dim. She’d told him she wanted privacy, asked him to lock himself in the bathroom, and he’d done it. He was probably still in there, doing a Sudoku or posting updates to her Twitter feed.
“I don’t know where he is. Besides, it’s a free country.”
He pursed his lips. She thought she might have shut him up but nooo, not Jock, he insisted on and was used to getting the last word with everyone, including — especially including — people who spewed words by the gallon.
“Exactly my point. Anyone can approach you in a place like this. Panhandlers, Scarlett. Fans and stalkers. Policemen. Photographers, Scarlett. Novelists.”
Over Jock’s shoulder, she could see Gregoire (for that was the Luxembourgian’s name, she decided) roll his eyes, close his notepad, tuck his capped ballpoint pen into a jacket pocket. Shoulders slumping, he stepped onto the Down escalator. She knew just how he felt, and she rolled her own eyes at his back in fetching sympathy. She would have put away her own notepad and pen if she had had them. (She made a mental note: Send Larry out for a notepad and pen. Something in Moroccan leather and 24k…) Unrolling her eyes, she regarded Jock with scorn, impatience, and something like condescension. She raised her right eyebrow, a trick of Vivien Leigh’s she’d always admired.
You caught me today, she thought. But I was careless. Tomorrow, though— tomorrow is another day.
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Author’s note: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, famous or otherwise, is probably coincidental and surely the result of incompetence and/or naïveté. Likewise, any inferred connection to stories such as this one says as much about the inferrer as about the author.
