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Bit Player
The conversation dries up at the table and everyone takes a drink from their beer. Kathy is first to finish though and between sips has thought of one of those questions intended to kick-start the conversation again.
"If you could re-enact any scene from a movie, which would it be?"
This one is easy, I've practically got it memorised already.
"I'd be Pacino in the scene where he sits across from De Niro in Heat, talking about his dreams and telling him to his face that he's going down" I say.
Kathy looks to her new boyfriend who doesn't seem to have understood the question.
"I'd be..." he hesitates "I dunno, some guy who doesn't have to act much or do much work but gets paid lots" he finally says, completely missing the point.
She's had enough time to think about it and decides upon her answer.
"I'd be Ingrid Bergman in the end scene of Casablanca, when Rick tells her to get on the plane."
"Haven't seen it" grunts her squeeze who is eyeing up the waitress as she walks past.
"Its brilliant, she's had an affair with Bogart but then her husband turns up alive, having escaped from a concentration camp and they all reunite in Casablanca trying to escape to the U.S. and although she loves Bogart he does the honorable thing and puts her on the plane, sending her off with her husband... christ... what's the husband's name?"
I try to help; "Well Bogart plays Rick of Rick's Café Americain and you've got Claude Raines as the French cop, Bergman plays Ilsa... Ilsa... can't remember her married name."
Kathy and I sit almost nose to nose, extolling over the plot and intricacies of Casablanca as her boyfriend yawns and watches the crowd. We talk of the letters of transit and Ferrari at the Blue Parrot bar and neither of us can remember the name of Ilsa's husband. I do my Peter Lorre impression and she quotes Sacha the barman "Yvonne I love you, but he pays me" and for a moment we both forget that her boyfriend is right there, absorbed in our connection.
"I'm going for a slash" he says and heads off to the bathroom.
I lean in close to Kathy and tell her that I've remembered the name of Ilsa's husband and I'll tell her in exchange for a kiss. Her face flushes red and she looks away guiltily. She can't. Its not that she doesn't want to, she does, but she can't. And yet she desperately needs to remember, needs to fill that mental void. She can picture him but she can't name him, and the longer she waits the greater the chance that she could be caught kissing another man.
She finally makes a decision but before she can act on it he's back at the table, standing over it expectantly.
"Shall we go?" he says, bored of the scene and more than a little threatened by me.
We do the round of goodbyes and as I kiss Kathy on the cheek I whisper to her that she's got herself a Victor Lazlo.
May.10.2006