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The energy shifted the moment Alan refused a drink— refused anything to lighten the mood. It didn’t stop Tom from making his own as he watched Alan slump back onto the couch; utter defeat shone in his eyes. It wasn’t the first time Alan dropped by the House of Zane with the sole intention of moping. It wouldn’t be the last. Zane allowed him to mope for a few seconds, taking the time to see which level of sad cat Alan would be today. No visible injuries, he wasn’t clutching to his flashlight like a lifeline, nor was he complaining about Scratch. Whatever plagued him must have plagued him from the start of the loop like a terrible day would have ages ago when days were still things you kept track of.
It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.
Zane sauntered over to sit next to Alan with a raised eyebrow, letting silence fill the room. He had plenty to say— plenty of prying to do specifically– but that didn’t work. It often had the opposite effect where Tom would start talking and find himself unable to stop, leaving Alan’s thoughts to drown within his own mind as Tom flooded it with whatever spilled out of his mouth like water being let through a dam. Not a leak; Tom spoke far too much to consider it to be leaking through his mouth, but rather the water that spills out to prevent the far larger portion of water from escaping its concrete prison with the difference being purpose. Tom could stop himself from speaking whenever he wanted to, but why would he want to? Why hold back when he had so much to say and so little people to say it to before Alan landed himself here? Evidence of that phenomenon being at this very moment, as Tom knew what he wanted to say to fill the silence, yet knew that sometimes there had to be silence.
If a film was filled with music constantly, it would fade to background noise. If it never grew and never subsided like waves moving back and forth, it would become meaningless. A waste of time; a waste of opportunity. A good film took advantage of every second, visually, audibly, and everything in-between. You need silence to truly appreciate the things you do hear. Silence could force many things as well– A feeling of unease, a push to look more closely at what you could see when there were no other distractions, a moment for the audience to think. To process. Silence could not last forever, however; something would have to give.
Alan shook his head at what Tom assumed was some internal monologue that he missed (and if only he could hear it. Alan always had good monologues). He broke the silence, “Do you ever miss her?”
Tom couldn’t say it wasn’t what he expected when he wasn’t expecting anything at all. He blinked as he processed it, “Miss… her? Be more specific.”
“Barbara.” Alan mumbled her name as if saying it would be a sin, “Do you ever miss Barbara.”
“Well, of course!” Tom said without thinking. It was an instinct, not in the sense that he didn’t actually consider what Alan said, but rather than the way he missed Barbara was so integral to his being that he didn’t have to think about it. He knew it as much as he knew the sky was blue and that the sun rose every morning when there is a sun to rise.
Alan seemed to want more out of the answer. Or, Tom assumed so by the way Alan didn’t look away as if he were still speaking. Not like Tom would ever give up the chance to open up that dam, “I think about her everyday. If I were to be vulnerable and honest, I think there is a little bit of Barbara in everything I do. Does that answer your question?”
Silence filled the room once more as Alan nodded. If Tom had to guess, he would think Alan was gathering the confidence for whatever was on the tip of his tongue. He raised his eyebrow, trying to pass on the energy of “Well? Get on with it” without saying it, without being pushy. Alan seemed to get the message or perhaps he gathered the confidence he was searching for.
“Why did you stop? Trying to write her back, I mean.”
He had to think about this one. There was no instinct, no easy answer to give. Tom’s face fell with a rising urge to avoid the question. He could be vulnerable, but that was a different level of vulnerability. It was something he managed to avoid with Alan so far while hiding behind the helmet of the Diver, the Poet, even the auteur. He had no role to fill in a narrative of his own, an autobiography he had done so much to avoid creating. All he would be is Thomas Zane. The thought made him uncomfortable.
Alan could tell, “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” He was especially sopping today.
Perhaps that was why Tom felt he could match that vulnerability. Or, at least, that was what he would tell himself if he ever started to regret opening up. “No, no. Don’t say that,” Tom waved him off, “I didn’t expect it, that’s all. Barbara and I weren’t like you and your wife.”
“What do you mean?”
Tom leaned back into the couch with a sigh, “Barbara was my muse, yes? She was my muse and my sweetheart, but she wasn’t my partner. Not like Alice is yours. Our love for each other was just as real, just as strong. No, I’d say even stronger. Ferocious even, like a hurricane. It tears through everything, but it has to stop eventually. Whereas your love mellowed out in some way, became a part of you in a way you grow into. I wouldn’t say Barbara and I weren’t meant to last because maybe we would have. All I’m saying is that we were never given the chance to.”
“Are you saying you used Barbara?” Alan asked after letting Tom’s words linger in the air.
“Doesn’t everyone use the people they love?”
Alan stared at Tom with a blank expression, clearly fighting back the instinct to argue. His silence implied a want for an explanation and Tom took it as such.
“Love is selfish, Alan, terribly so. Look at us!” He gestured at the two of them, “We tore open reality to get our loved ones back. We find a person that we like and decide that person is ours to keep as long as we can. We use that for safety, for comfort, for love, for affection. And in turn, we let them use us.”
Alan frowned, “My love for Alice isn’t selfish–”
“Aren’t you special?” Tom said with a laugh, “That’s the thing. Being selfish isn’t a terrible thing. Everyone is selfish. When you don’t take, all you do is give and give, it becomes draining. Your lover becomes not just selfish, but greedy. If you give up everything, there will be nothing left to love. You have to be selfish to love and to be loved.”
“I think you’re getting sidetracked.”
“I don’t think so. I have a point with all of this, you know,” Tom gave Alan a moment to recognize that before he continued speaking. “That’s why I knew to let Barbara go. When I brought her back, I brought evil into the world because the boundary between being selfish and being greedy started to blur. I wanted to love her more than I wanted her to live. Her time was up in this world, Alan, and I clung to her like a child. There was no Barbara left beyond the Barbara I wasn’t ready to give up loving.”
“And Alice wasn’t like that. She was still alive.” He continued Tom’s thought.
“Yes. But, even more than that, you wanted Alice to live. You craved her love but not enough to consume her like I had with Barbara. You allowed Alice to be selfish and you gave yourself so that she might live. Not your entire self, not the parts of you that craved to have her back. That’s why you still fight to return to her.”
“Doesn’t that contradict what you said before?” Alan asked, “About being selfish enough to take as well as giving? Did Alice survive because I wasn’t selfish like you were with Barbara? Or because I was too selfish? You make no sense.”
Did he make sense? Tom had to think back to his words, to his monologue about giving and taking. Selfish. He had said that word so many times, but what did it truly mean to be selfish? Of course Alan would get lost in his words like a ship at sea; Tom did so himself despite being their author or more like their conduit at times as they flowed without his control often. Even the sea couldn’t control its waves.
“You gave and you took. I took and I took. It was never about who was more or less selfish, dear Alan, it was about how we were selfish.” Tom concluded as if he didn’t have to think about it.
Alan nodded as if he was satisfied with Tom’s conclusion, but his frown was still deep on his face. His shoulders slumped over even more than they usually did, “I miss my wife.”
“Oh, Alan…” He reached over to put his hand on Alan’s shoulder, “She misses you too, I’m sure of it, and your reunion will come before you know it. After we Return, of course.”
Not that Tom had much confidence in his own Return as he did in Alan’s Return. “We” rather than “You” was as much of a prayer as it was a promise, a prayer to the godlike creature Alan was becoming more and more of each loop, even as he forgot his gradual transformation. He wanted to Return more than anything, to find a life outside of the complete darkness he grew so used to. He wanted to see how the world shifted in his absence with his own eyes. To live again. To grow old and eventually die, knowing that he was something more than the roles he became so used to, so reliant on.
“What are you going to do after we leave?” Alan asked
“Make another movie.” Tom answered without hesitation– Another instinct. The world deserved another Thomas Zane film, whether it knew it or not. “What about you?”
“I think I’ll tell Alice I love her.”
Tom chuckled and slapped Alan’s shoulder, “That’s a better answer than mine.”
“That and then declare myself as alive when I’m ready and we’ll probably have to find an explanation for you looking like me…” Alan’s words fell to muttering as they usually did when he wasn’t moping.
“Or you looking like me .” Tom corrected.
Alan looked at him with several beats, “But what do you mean by that exactly? I mean we’re not–”
Fear coursed through Tom’s veins. He was asking too many questions and perhaps his sudden nervousness was obvious in some way because Alan opened his mouth to speak again. Tom was quicker. He shoved his drink into Alan’s hands and stood up before any words could spill from Alan’s mouth, “Let’s talk about something else. We have writing to do to Return you to that wife you love so selfishly, don’t we?” He’d worry about that explanation later.