The Actress took a sip of the sharp tea and absently tore off another piece of toast. The driver’s plate had been piled high, and even with a hearty appetite and their new silence, he wasn’t anywhere near half-finished. She contemplated what she’d told him thus far about the film and how he had reacted, realizing that she’d left out all the nuance. The two scenes in a brassiere. Her lover appearing shirtless on-screen. The interrogation by a policeman and her successful evasion of the law. How she had been written to exit the picture. She’d given him hardly any of the story, but he’d latched on to morals. He would go back to Los Angeles and — he would certainly tell his wife — he’d say he brought around that Actress to star in a picture featuring her as a thief and an adulterer. Not a secretary. Not a woman in love. It was her own fault if he came away with that impression. She’d been asked to tell the story and had told it in only one way.
He put down his fork. “Ma’am, I apologize. I can tell by the look on your face that I’ve upset you.”
“No, no. You didn’t,” she reassured him.
“But you’re so quiet all of a sudden …”
She reached over and rested her hand on his, the right hand, the one he would need to use to lift the fork, but she only thought of that after she pressed into the warmth of his skin, the eyes of the hostess at the café’s counter burrowing into her gesture, as if she knew that wives didn’t touch their husbands exactly that way.
“Really,” she said, smiling. “You’ve given me plenty to think about. You’re extremely thoughtful to ask me those questions. Sometimes we forget what it’s like to be someone in the audience, how they might perceive things.”
For a moment, the Actress thought the driver might take his other hand and clasp hers — he was looking down, not at his plate exactly, and not at her hand, just down in a posture that suggested a deep regret that didn’t befit their conversation. He looked ashamed and she felt for him and she didn’t want to take her hand away from his, not even to allow him to pick up his fork again and eat away their silence.
With his thumb, her hand still on his, he traced a light, downward feather of a touch, just once. Then his hand went still once again, and it became clear to her that she was the one who had to let go.
“We think the world of you,” the driver said, and it was he who cautiously took his hand away. “My wife and I.”
They ate the rest of their meal in silence, and though the driver kept his eyes on his plate and never glanced at the avenue, she knew that the Director and the crew had not yet arrived. The clock above the counter read eleven thirty and already a full lunch crowd was there. When the check came, she tried her best to insist on paying for her toast and black tea, but the driver refused, and she spared him the indignity of having the eyes of the café watch him take her money as if his own wallet were not enough.
He held the door open for her, and before she stepped outside, before she lost the humid, thick smell of the café and before she was greeted by the dusty odor of the sidewalks, she caught the briefest hint of his aftershave.
She sighed. “I guess we just keep waiting. It’s closing in on noon, and the scene we were supposed to shoot today takes place in the morning.”
He looked up at the October sky. “Can anyone tell the difference?”
“Some people can. The shadows. The way light plays on the face. Especially now in autumn. The sun is a little lower in the sky. You can tell what time it is just by looking outside, can’t you? Roughly?”
“I suppose you’re right,” the driver said, putting his hands in his pockets.
“You know, I really can’t imagine that I’m going to need you to drive me anywhere for the rest of the day. Why don’t you check into your room?”
“I’m not staying at this hotel, ma’am. Me and the crew find places over off the highway, where the truckers stay.”
She knew what those places were, the side motels she’d seen along Highway 99 leading into Bakersfield, work trucks parked patiently in their gravel lots while the drivers rested for the night, a long row of identical doors, identical rooms, meager by comparison to her own hotel room across the street, simple as it was. The Sleep-Tite Motel. The Knight and Day. The Star-dust. Their neon signs off during the daytime, but as the highway approached the outer edges of Bakersfield, they sprang up closer to each other, and she pictured how they might look to a weary driver, a cluster of safety in the darkness, and such a long day of driving that sleep would come with alarming ease, no matter the endless traffic droning on through the night, just outside the door.
He led them across the avenue, and she peered down the road one more time but knew the afternoon was now lost. She wondered briefly — then stopped herself — if there might have been an accident, and by wishing the thought away, she removed it as a possibility. They were running late was all, and when the Director finally arrived, he’d prepare everyone with a new schedule for the brief, decidedly private shoot. It was just the beginning of work on the film — the preliminary stages — and the hard work and the curiosity from the public was yet to come.
“Well, I suppose there’s not much else to do but go up and take a nap.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You should probably go on ahead and check into your room. Save yourself some time. I honestly won’t need you this afternoon.”
“Only if you’re sure, ma’am. I can wait here until the Director arrives.”
“No, no,” she begged off, and started toward the hotel door, and he moved with her, then ahead, in order to open it for her.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll call the front desk on the hour, so if you change your mind, let them know. I’ll drive right back.”
She smiled in thanks and was about to step into the lobby. “Driver,” she called out. “Listen, I feel terrible. I’ve never even asked you for your name.”
“Carter,” he said, returning her smile, and he bowed his head a little.
“Thank you, Carter, for everything this morning,” the Actress said. She stepped into the lobby, knowing he wasn’t going to follow, but disappointed still when his footsteps failed to sound behind her. The desk clerk nodded at her in greeting and also in silent affirmation that he had heard nothing yet from the missing guest, the lobby completely empty of any sound, any movement, and she walked to the tiny elevator and waited in the quiet, while the desk clerk turned a single page of newspaper to sink into his afternoon reading.
No one in the carpeted hallway, no maid’s service cart to inspect and memorize in passing, no maid with a downturned look of exhaustion. No one, she began to believe, on the entire floor. The Actress entered her room and took off her shoes, sitting on the bed to massage her feet. It had been a long morning, and she’d been up so early for the driver to bring her all the way here, only to wait.
A nap would come easy in this silence. She walked over to the door to double-check its lock, and once she was done, she removed her skirt, her blouse, and the constriction of her bra and lay on the bed. She closed her eyes, replaying the conversation she’d had with the driver, regretful of how she had described the role. Could she have told it to him in another way? Would it have mattered? It had been the only moment, really, when the driver had been anything but cordial, kind, respectful, the look that had washed over his face when he realized she would be doing something wrong in this picture. She opened her eyes and rested a hand on her naked breast and sighed. That look on his face. And over a bundle of stolen money. What if she mentioned the detail of the lunchtime tryst in a little hotel room like this one? I saw the script call for the opening shot to be this woman rolling around luxuriously with her lover. She isn’t wearing a blouse and you can see the hair on his massive chest. That soft feather downturn of his thumb tip and whether or not he would have done that.