I sat curled in the center of his large corduroy couch underneath a triptych of myself, in which Cole painted me swirling a blood-red maple leaf in a puddle of water, my hair blowing up mischievously in the wind. But it isn't a happy picture, it's so very cold and bleak and hopeless. I can't remember what he called it and I don't want to ask. Something like Waiting for November, I think.
Calling December, Caleb returns to the room with hot chocolate and cookies. I pick one up and put it back. Cranberry cookies. Store bought. Read my mind now, Diabhal.
But he fails and hits the button to resume the movie. We are, as Henry put it so eloquently yesterday, hanging out. Spending time in all of its brutal honesty which isn't what I would have chosen, for I am completely out of my element at this point and Lochlan has picked enough fights to make a bouquet, maybe since there's one in the front hall he didn't sent to me. Caleb did, because he promised he would when he was drunk as a skunk the other night. Possibly less drunk than I suspect, since he remembered more than I did.
The card read not mean. It made me smile.
This movie does not, however but I am riveted nonetheless. The Ledge. Patrick Wilson, Liv Tyler, Charlie Hunnam (who will forever be Nicholas Nickleby anyway) and I don't want to watch it but I can't not watch it because of the chemistry and Patrick as a bad guy and Liv as a power-mouse, as always. Caleb points out the compelling nature of her mannerisms in the movie. I am struck by how embedded his dominating tendencies are. It's like he is two different people, but then again, aren't we all?
I look up again at the girl with the maple leaves and wonder if she has this problem too. Probably not, she is confined to three panels and seventeen colors and she has no idea she'll be watching some sort of reverse-biography late in the evening in the pouring rain in the place she shouldn't be but sometimes the places you escape to to avoid the endless condescension of those who think they get it right, every last time, are the places where you can exhale for a moment.
This movie is a reminder that sometimes no one gets it right.
It goes on the pile with Into the Wild and Blue Valentine, I guess. Sad movies for ruthless realists. Misery, conjured on purpose. Unhealthy pastimes for people who definitely know better and still choose to get it wrong because it's easier.
Nevermind me. I'm a little down today. I know how the movie ends.
