Chapter Text
Lars
The 7:42 is three minutes late.
I’ve been standing at the corner of Harris Street and Pyrmont Bridge Road for exactly eleven minutes, and the bus was supposed to come at the eight-minute mark. It bugs me but I don't mind waiting.
It's a Tuesday. Tuesdays are better than Mondays. Mondays are the actual start of the week and chaotic. But on Tuesdays people have accepted that the week has started and they look at their phones or their work instead of talking.
Bianca is at home waiting. She was sitting by the window early this morning because she likes the way the sunlight feels on her skin. She told me about it when I asked at dinner. She also just has the kind of face that looks even more naturally beautiful in the sun.
When the bus arrives I get on. I find a seat near the back where no one will sit next to me unless the bus fills up, which it won't. It's 7:45 on a Tuesday and we are going the wrong direction from the city. I put my bag on my lap and look out the window.
There's this billboard I pass every morning. It takes up the entire side of a building on Ultimo Road and it's been there for two months, which means I have passed it approximately forty times, accounting for sick days and the week Gus made me take off when he was worried about me.
The billboard says: METALSTORM. ONE MAN. ALL THE ODDS.
There's a man on it. He has his arms spread wide like he is about to catch something or has just let something go, and the background is all fire and full of collapsing things. He's smiling in a way that I think is supposed to communicate that he finds it all exciting rather than distressing
I would find it distressing. Mildly distressing at least.
The office is the same every day. That's the only thing I like about the office. Janet from accounting says good morning and I say good morning back. Margo and I occasionally exchange a few words but that’s it. I sit at my desk. I open my computer. The work is quiet work, the kind that asks nothing of me except silent attention.
At lunch I eat a PB&J at my desk. Sometimes people ask if I want to eat with them in the kitchen and I try my best to politely decline.
I call Bianca at 12:15. I let it ring once before I hang up, because it's not really a call. It's more of a — I don't have the right word for it. A check. Making sure that she is still there and that nothing has changed since this morning.
Nothing really changes between me and Bianca. I think that's a good thing. I think I have organized my life carefully around the principle that things don't have to change, and it mostly works.
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TOM
Here's what nobody tells you about killing someone: it doesn't stop.
Not like—-I don't mean it in the obvious way, though obviously yes, Henry is dead and that is a permanent situation, I understand the concept. I mean the inconvenience of it doesn't stop. Every morning I wake up and for one beautiful half-second I don't have to think about it and then I do.
I find that extremely… not just inconvenient but irritating.
I'm on the balcony of the hotel-—not the glass apartment, Gail moved me to the hotel three weeks ago for reasons she explained twice and I didn’t listen either times because her answers involve words like ‘optics’ and ‘controlled environment’ and at a certain point I decide I'm done being controlled. I haven't told her that yet.
I'm drinking coffee that costed twenty-two dollars, which is insane, this country is insane, everything here is either beautiful or wants to kill me and somehow it's always both—-and the coffee isn't even good. It's mediocre. For twenty-two dollars it should at minimum be interesting or flavorful but it isn't, it's just expensive and mediocre and I'm drinking it anyway because I paid for it.
Sydney is spread out below me like something built for me to look at. I'm good at looking at things that were meant to be looked at. I'm good at most things, actually. That's a documented fact, I’m not bias.
I've been famous for eleven years. I've been the biggest action star in the world for six of those eleven years. That's not an accident. That's not luck. That's work, it's me deciding what I was going to be and then being it, and I need that on record even if the only person listening is myself on a balcony at seven in the morning.
Henry was an accident.
He provoked me, which is something I've decided not to say out loud anymore, not because it isn't true, it is absolutely true, but because Gail communicated that “he provoked me” is not going to land the way I think it is in the court of lawZ I disagree. I think context matters. I think if you say to a man's face, on HIS set, in front of HIS crew, that YOU could do HIS job BETTER—-you've made a choice. You've made a decision about how the next, well last, five minutes of your life are going to go.
Henry made a decision.
The biggest thing, the most important thing, is that I'm going to be fine. Colt Seavers is back in Sydney now. Gail brought him in as what she keeps calling a solution, and I've stopped asking her to explain the solution because every explanation makes me feel like I'm missing something obvious, which I'm not, I never miss obvious things. Something about a patsy. Something about how nobody pays attention to a stuntman.
The thing about Colt Seavers—-and I want to be precise about this—-is that he's useful. He's been falling off buildings on my behalf for seven years and he's good at it. That's all I need him to be. What I don’t need him to be is whatever he's currently being, which is present but silent in a way that feels like a silent accusation.
I don't want him dead. I'm stating that for clarity. I just want him to stop looking like that.
My phone buzzes. It's Alma, which means Gail wants something and has decided not to call me herself, which is usually her way of telling me I'm in trouble without telling me anything. I let it buzz. Below me the city moves around like it doesn't know I'm watching it, which is unusual. Cities always know. It's part of how cities work; you look at them, they perform.
Sydney isn't performing right now—-or maybe it is and it’s the cocaines fault I can’t see it clearly—-I'll admit that bothers me more than it should.