Turn Left at Venus by Inez Baranay

Author:Inez Baranay
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781925760408
Publisher: Transit Lounge

20

YOU KNOW HOW TO WORRY

‘It’s dark, it’s disturbing,’ Ada told him.

‘You like that,’ said SK.

‘Happy endings are an insult to the intelligence.’

‘You’re one twisted sister.’

‘It’s all the more disturbing because it’s funny,’ Ada told him.

‘Funny should be disturbing.’

Ada tried to say something she had been thinking about films; she had seen a few in Sydney. And now here, also, of course.

About how images from films become our own memories, our own dreams, and we come to believe they were made by our own minds. It works differently with books, in which we create our own images to a large extent. There must be an effect of others watching with you at the cinema while with books it’s only you there.

As if he hadn’t heard all this before, but she discovered these ideas with him.

SK liked to meet in the lobby of his hotel. An area beyond the reception desk held a few chintzy couches and small tables, and they would bring him tea in a big silver pot. ‘This hotel is the only place in the whole of the United States where they know how to make a pot of tea,’ he said. SK had taken up drinking tea in England. He was going to move permanently to England soon. He and his wife loved the countryside there, so green and pleasant, and he knew they would find the perfect place to live. ‘Away from the fakery and fraudulence and bullshit of Hollywood,’ SK declared.

SK liked meeting writers and talking over ideas, a practice that seemed fine to Ada, who expected that life was now always going to be like this. Conversations in hotel lobbies with people who think and make. At this point Ada thought life’s disappointments were behind her.

‘Excuse me, aren’t you …’ The group of five people had entered the hotel, with an idea they could find him there. They knew who he was, and four of them adulated him.

SK was a little pleased and more displeased. ‘I’m in a meeting right now,’ he said, but they didn’t quite believe him, thought he might be waiting for someone.

‘You are my inspiration,’ said a long-haired young man. ‘I’ve always wanted to make a film about Napoleon.’

‘You should definitely make a satirical thriller next.’

‘If you ever want anyone to work for you, I just want to learn.’

‘You can become invisible!’ SK said to Ada when they had gone. ‘They thought I was talking to myself.’

He wanted to know everything, see everyone: inner being, outer being, halo, mask, Shadow, all of it. He wanted to know everything, he read all night, he never slept. But he did not like to be seen and would avoid meetings in public. Plus, people in the business, you don’t wanna know, you’re better off writing novels. Stay independent. So he was doing his work up here in San Francisco rather than in LA. But good to be actually invisible.

‘Can you teach me?’ he asked.

‘No.’ Ada didn’t want to even try to analyse it. She

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