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JON: What was it like to kiss Jon Stewart? I'm sure that's on everybody's mind. I'm getting a lot of internet emails.
GILLIAN: Well, there were a lot of takes as far as I remember.
JON: I just remember blacking out and waking up with lipstick on my face. That is all I remember.
- Jon Stewart and Gillian Anderson, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (January 14, 1999)
+
1998
The Stahl House overlooks what feels like the entire planet. They share a cigarette during a break and are quiet for a brief moment. Then he says he's going to throw her off the cliff - to test his strength - and she giggles, says something about a snuff film. She bends down and extinguishes the cigarette, maneuvering herself into a sitting position. He sits down next to her and they lapse into silence again. They are winding down the shoot and her longing to continue on is palpable. She wishes she could stretch the time like taffy, but she returns to the X-Files in a couple of weeks - to guns, ooze, things that go bump in the night. She lays her head on his shoulder, high off the tiny bit of nicotine and content goodness freeflowing through her system.
"You are really good," he says suddenly. "Really good on that show, with the monsters, uh, what's the name?... but in this movie - like, scary good. Award good. What am I doing here with you?"
She is no good at not kissing people - not now, not ever - but she restrains herself because she doesn't know if the static between them is just that, static, or if it's something more robust and paralyzing. (Besides, they are due to go back to making out shortly on camera, so.)
"I feel the same way, all the time," she finally confides. "I've learned to trust in the universe."
She can hear and feel him laughing. "Can I tell you - I cannot believe you just said that. Is this something you repeat to yourself everyday, in the mirror?" She bites back a smile. She replies, straight-faced, "Everyday. And I listen to yogic chanting while I do it."
"That's tremendous! Get me a tape, will you? I want to practice it." She giggles into his shoulder. "'Trust in the universe,'" he mutters. "For god's sakes." She likes the way he says this, forgodssakes, in one rush. She can't help but notice things like speech patterns and she likes his.
"So this is your home now. New home," he says, looking out again onto L.A. She nods. "Won't be long before you're doing coke with Matt Perry at the Viper Room."
"Only if I'm very, very lucky. But you know, there are other things to do here."
"Such as?"
She takes a brief moment to miss Vancouver and its multi-faceted offerings. "Hiking - somewhere. Theatre. Arts. Creativity, practically in the water."
He shakes his head. "There's something in the water, but it ain't creativity."
She clutches his arm. "So cynical! Not every city can be New York. Although - god - I fucking love New York."
"I know. And it's the actual location of the theatre, arts, and creativity you just mentioned."
"And the actual location of Jon Stewart." He gives her a look then, something serious, but it fades quickly as most of his moments like this do. His eyes move from her face to just over her head. She clears her throat. "When I'm in New York, we'll have to get together for drinks."
"Indoor rock climbing."
"Bee keeping." She laughs at her own joke, pleased with the way that he amuses her, and somehow makes her sharper -- makes her funnier. It is a quality she has never prized high but one she is beginning to hold dear and important, in herself and others.
"Does this feel at all like summer camp to you?" He asks, fidgeting with a new cigarette and his lighter.
She watches his fingers move in calculated, deliberate patterns and she's so taken with him and the night -- "Yes, it does, actually."
"For me, though, it's like summer camp without the abundance of Jews. There I was a giant -- here, not so much."
"I wonder if people use humor as a shield."
"Are you implying that I am?" He takes a drag of his cigarette.
"Yes. Maybe. I haven't decided yet. Can I?" She steals and inhales from his cigarette -- a decidedly terrible habit, much like wanton flirting with a happily coupled man.
"So -- Dr. Anderson -- what am I shielding myself from? Anything my therapist hasn't yet told me?" She squints, staring into his face with its small wrinkles, the hairline that's starting to go grey. She puts one hand through his hair, making tracts in the salt and pepper -- mostly pepper.
"You're handsome," she says, appraising him, summing up her thoughts in a simple if incomplete way.
He looks away, blushing, or something akin to blushing. "Stop."
She smiles, pleased, and laughs. "I'm serious! Handsome. Classically so. Like Edward Murrow." It's his turn to laugh. "Murrow? Is that a compliment?" She nods emphatically, "I picture black and white, a swirl of cigarette smoke. You."
"You have quite an imagination," he says, and there's that undertone. He slides incrementally closer. In junior high, this was significant, this slight movement forward followed by an arm around your shoulders. She waited, even though it wasn't coming, but she liked that she was the type of woman who always hoped and waited for such a lightness in being. Hope springs eternal. Ethereal.
They hear a giant thud of some kind, and their heads whip around to see a large light has fallen to the ground. "We're gonna be a minute," echoes through the vast space. "Holy fuck, can you imagine, we could have been underneath that?" he whispers. "Glad I'm here."
She looks out into the grid of the city, the lights and beyond. "Me too."