A 'SUB' REQUEST (Cate Blanchett x OC)

Chapter 20: An unfathomable deviation

I scheduled a time to visit Cate on a Saturday, just so I wouldn't have to go to work the next day if I didn't take the news so well. She was completely covid free, Andrew had gone, and the kids were going to fly back to London soon for their fall semester. She herself would leave LA soon and fly to Berlin to film Tár. It had all the makings of a farewell meeting. 

Everyone sensed that I was a bit shaken up as I came to work on Friday morning, our first week back in the office once the first wave died down. I called two novels by the wrong titles in meetings, and Thérèse, my assistant, had to slip me a note with the right titles on them so that I didn't completely humiliate myself in front of the directors that were pitching to me. I cried in the bathroom twice by lunchtime, and the caesar salad that Thérèse bought me untouched by 4pm. 

 My boss was out that day taking meetings over town, as was his normal routine on Fridays afternoons. The other assistant was on sick leave with covid, and our accountant went home early. So by 7pm, the only people left in the office were me and Thérèse. My morose eyes were glued to the screen, but could sense her glancing at me from behind her laptop. 

"I hope this doesn't come off inappropriate in anyway, but you wanna go for a drink?" she said close to 7:30pm, as the sun began to set. 

"Why not." I barely hesitated. 

We sipped on some very potent gin at Above Sixty, a tropical-themed bar on Wilshire. It wasn't until they turned the disco lights on that I noticed that she wore to work a very tight dress that revealed quite a bit of thigh as she sat cross-legged on the bar stool, which bothered me a lot. 

"So like...what's been bothering you all day?" her inquisitive eyes danced over the cocktail glass with a blue tint, her gen-Z valley girl voice standing out from the noisy din and chatter of the bar. Her wavy auburn locks, tied up in a ponytail during the day, had come down in a waterfall around her neck and shoulders. 

"Nothing," I said, "and you might want to pull down your dress a bit, you're almost flashing the gentlemen over there." 

On the contrary, she did nothing but probe more deeply into me with her eyes. "Not that anyone cares," she claimed, "I literally just broke up with my boyfriend, so." 

"That's too bad." 

"I posted a selfie with Timothée Chalamet at the Oscars, and he got, like, super jealous," she held up her phone, and their faces were very close together in the photo. 

"Okay,"

"C'mon, let's get you on the dance floor - you need to blow off some steam." 

I had two more drinks in me when she dragged me out into the thickening crowd, where she began gyrating against any guy who was there, ready, and willing. The air started filling with smoke and haze only punctured by neon light beams, and my consciousness expanded under the influence. As I looked back on that night, everything was a blur, except for the few lucid moments when I felt lips and hands that were not my own making contact with my body, like tiny sparks of fire turning into black soot in a frigid winterscape. 

-----

I woke up the next morning to the brightly lit ceiling of my own apartment, and to my great horror, Thérèse's naked body next to mine. 

"FUCK," I bellowed, frantically searching for memories that couldn't possibly co-exist with alcohol. 

"Bonjour, ma chérie," she purred, her hands gliding over my body. Her skin, flawless like porcelain, seemed lifeless to me, completely unmarked by age and experience. I almost felt like a pedophile. 

The clock read 10:18. "I'm so late," I got up skittishly, "I have to be somewhere else." 

"Calm down," she said flirtatiously, "you were not nearly this uptight last night...you know, when you were between my legs." 

"Shut up!" every word out of her mouth seemed like a nightmare, "and please go." 

"Wow," she raised her eyebrows and put on her bra over her round melon-like tits,"fine. And whoever this 'Kate' person whose name you were screaming last night, I hope you're very happy together." 

-----

I was completely not ready for any semblance of the truth when I rang Cate's doorbell. The drowsiness of my hangover and the biting anxiety of what was to come did not sit well together in my chest. Dashiell came to the door. 

"Hi there!" He pulled me into a big embrace. 

"Hey,"

"Mum's in her room - you can go up!" 

I stepped into Cate's house. All of the partitions and bunk beds have been put away, and the living room was the same as when I first saw it, when I delivered a box of musical scripts to Cate. I tiptoed up the stairs, and I heard her before I saw her. 

She was seated at the piano, one elbow propped on the lid of the piano while another hand produced the solitary, elegiac notes of Bach's baroque masterpieces. She was wearing a black shirt, her sleeves rolled up a bit. Her shoulder-length dirty blonde hair was down, and her eyes were half-closed. 

Little did I know, but this frame that my eyes captured would be replicated to the almost exact sameness in Tár, and that I was the first person in the world to witness it. 

Then she opened her eyes and saw me. She stood up, pulled me into her, and her lips pressed into my cheeks, my lips, then my neck. 

"How are you feeling?" I asked. 

"Much better," she whispered, "didn't turn into a human soup."

"Evidently," I placed my hands on her back, then around her waist, feeling her tangibility in my palm. 

"You're quite popular with the kids," she said, "your presence was sorely missed."

I took a deep breath - she was trying to cushion the pain of what was about to happen next. I insisted that she get to the point, "so, what did you want to talk about?" 

Her face changed, and she motioned for me to sit on the bed. Then, she sat down next to me, her arms around my shoulders. 

"Darling..." she said, "I've done a lot of thinking over the past week - a lot more than you'd normally expect of a sick person." 

Uh oh. This was not going in a good direction. I braced myself for the worst. 

"The virus took a lot out of me, and I was left feeling...fragile. Susceptible. And I realized," Cate continued, "Andrew and the kids, they're always going to be a part of my life, no matter what..."

Shit. No. Please. No. 

"...and they make me feel so safe and cared for, in my worst moments..."

Just spare me the niceties. So I could get this over with. 

"...you've already made me so happy in the past few months, dearest, and I know this may not be what you expect right now. But I just had to let you know this, before I left for Berlin..."

Our entire history in this room flashed before my eyes. Our intimate nighttime whispers, the fires her touch elicited in the depths of my body, the hopes and fears that she revealed to me past midnight, her seductive gazes that drove me wild with passion, our serene cuddles that stabilized all of my agitations...all of that would be gone, in a second. 

"Darling, there's nothing I want more in the world than to have a baby with you." 

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