20080111

THE meat man cometh

When he recognizes the girl on the movie screen, Rob Laurel nearly clutches his wife’s arm in glee, stopping his hand at the last possible millisecond. Christ was that close. Grinning in the dark, feeling his heart knocking against his ribcage, he studies the luminous wall-size figure for several minutes, making sure. But that’s her, all right, even with the fake British accent – and when, an hour into the flick, she strips down to nothing on a Caribbean beach, heart-shaped ass swinging like a metronome as she strides into the surf, he has to struggle again not to grab Angela’s arm. Babe, he wants to tell her, you’re never gonna believe this!

It’s too much. Five minutes after the beach scene, whispering to Angela something about that second Guinness he had, he gets up and heads for the lobby, actually forgetting to check out the cute brunette teenager working the snack bar. In the men’s room, staring into the mirror, still grinning, feeling his hard-on pressed against the edge of the sink in front of him, he leans forward, tells himself, Hey, buddy. You fucked a movie star.

* * *

Despite her exhaustion, Angela slips into character when spotted on the sidewalk outside the theater: Mitch Gable this time, the local attorney who’s just made the city's front pages by arguing City Council into green-lighting slots casinos for the old steel-mill sites. Angela, Mitch groans, that restaurant. Rob, amused, watches the old codger’s hand knead Angela’s lower back – then sees Mitch’s poodlish wife observing the same. You’ve really hit it out of the park. That bouillabaisse. Never had anything like it this far from Manhattan. Whatever you’re paying that chef, double it.

Aw, thanks, Mitch.

How’s work, Rob?

Busy busy.

Saw that interview with you on the news last week, about the new arts center. And that bartender of yours, turning back to Angela.

Cindy.

First proper martini I’ve had in Galilee in twenty years.

Yeah, it’s her martinis you love, Angela thinks as they walk back to the car in the cool November air, not her ass, which you leered at all night, never mind your wife was sitting right across from you.

In the Land Rover, Rob actually tries to get a hand into her skirt. Oh God, you’re joking, she says, right? I just put in ten hours at the restaurant and – get off – went with you to see that god-awful, male-gaze-privileging – ow – flesh bonanza.

Just let me touch it, just for a sec.

She goes limp, puts on a long-suffering face. All right? she says. Done? He starts the engine, grinning. That Kelly Merchant slut, she says. There should be a warning to wives and girlfriends at the start of her movies.

Oh, if he could only tell her! You have no idea, he says.

She doesn’t bother asking what that means.

* * *

They roll up to a pre-fab manse dropped into the middle of what was, till two years ago, a cornfield. It’s surrounded by a dozen others just like it. Last week Angela parked in a wrong driveway, ambled up a wrong front walk, tried to put her key into a wrong front door. Inside she