Patrick Flanery - Night for Day

Also by Patrick Flanery

Fiction
I Am No One
Fallen Land
Absolution

Non Fiction
The Ginger Child: On Family, Loss and Adoption

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2019 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Patrick Flanery, 2019

The moral right of Patrick Flanery to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

With thanks to the editors of Film Comment for permission to quote from the article Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir by J. A. Place and L. S. Peterson in Vol. 10, No. 1, JanuaryFebruary 1974.

The quotation from My Secret Beat: A Notebook of Prose and Poems by Michael Burkard, Copyright 1990 by Michael Burkard, is used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78239 6 055
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 6 062
EBook ISBN: 978 1 78239 6 079

Printed in Great Britain

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for
Andrew

Above all, it is the constant opposition of areas of light and dark that characterizes film noir cinematography. Small areas of light seem on the verge of being completely overwhelmed by the darkness that threatens them from all sides. Thus faces are shot low-key, interior sets are always dark, with foreboding shadow patterns lacing the walls, and exteriors are shot night-for-night. Night scenes previous to film noir were most often shot day-for-night; that is, the scene is photographed in bright daylight, but filters placed over the camera lens, combined with a restriction of the amount of light entering the camera, create the illusion of night.

J.A. Place and L.S. Peterson, Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir

For in some recognitions comes a refusal, and your life had become such a refusal, a conversion of day for night, night for day, and there was no beginning and no end. And there isnt, except you were not able to see that way.

Michael Burkard, The Sun

The last time I saw you was the day my life ended. I say that it ended but you understand this is only a figure of speech. Say instead that my life up to that point came to an end but in the intervening decades my body has kept walking around in the world, although I have now reached an age when such movement occurs at what feels like a nearly geological pace. If I manage a mile in forty-five minutes I have accomplished something significant. That last day we spent together we both still had the energy of our youth, the resilience of our bodies, never imagining how quickly our energy might begin to dissipate or how long and unswerving the decline would prove. To say that I have wished to hear from you without ever expecting you to phone or write suggests I believed the onus was on you to initiate contact, as if I felt no sense of responsibility to do so myself. This was never the case. Shame has kept me silent, distant from you and Helen and all the people I used to call friends, though even to call you friends fails to admit of the strength of our bond, the way we managed for a few brief years to craft the closest thing to family I have known since leaving the home of my parents.

Over the course of the preceding night I began to formulate what I knew I must do. I can no longer recall whether this private planning plans I did not share with you until far too late was the spur for the argument we had, or if the argument itself prompted the decision. You would tell me now, I suspect, that even asking the question suggests a denial of guilt. Perhaps you will reply to this letter and tell me what you think, whether and how I should judge myself in the last months of my life. It was not my intention when I decided to write that I would return to grievances, because I know after all these years that you are, if not entirely innocent, at least more so than I. So this is my defense, an explanation of how I came to the decision I made that day so many years ago, and an apology for the consequences that have marked us both.

Let me start much earlier, back when we met, four years before the day we parted, on the set of a film in which you had only one line but a line I nonetheless wrote, and in seeing the boy they had cast for then you could have been no more than twenty-two I rewrote the line to suit the face cast to speak it. And you, performing a navet as intoxicating as gardenias in twilight, slouched across the soundstage and asked me the meaning of those words I had blown into your mouth. That was the first time we spoke, although we had noticed each other on the lot at various points, since your arrival fresh from military service, unscathed because you never reached a battlefield. You caught my eye, and I flatter myself to think I might have caught yours. We knew what we were before you ever spoke to me at least I knew what you were even if you might have been unsure of me. It was not how you walked or spoke but the way your gaze lingered when it fell upon my face.

Because following the eye as it traveled could lead us into the arms of a sting if we were reckless or unlucky, it was natural to distrust our instincts, to doubt the pull of our attraction. You were young and beautiful enough that I thought it possible you were no one I should allow myself to follow. I understood that I was attracted to you and hoped you might be attracted to me, but there was no guarantee that you were conscious of any attraction you might feel, and I could not trust you knew yourself well enough to accept what you were. Dark skin and pale hair and eyes the shade of California lilacs. Who could fail to notice? We bumped into each other at the newsstand one December morning when you were buying a copy of Life with Ingrid Bergman dressed as Joan of Arc on the cover and I noticed how embarrassed you were to be seen holding a magazine like that, or perhaps it was because a woman was on the cover, or because that woman was dressed as a man. I remember thinking you needed someone to show you how to comb your hair differently, to move the part from the center and off to the left, and then, when I saw you again a few weeks later, catching your eye in the commissary, you had done just that. In changing your hair, you looked more yourself, self-contained without being smug. You were having lunch with Helen that day, the two of you cast in the same film, and because Helen was already my friend I drummed up the courage to ask her a few days later who you were. A kid from Montana, she said, a farm boy. A ranch boy to be precise, with two brothers. But does he have a girlfriend? I asked Helen. I remember the way she turned to me. We were sitting in my living room after a Christmas party to which only five people came. I had filled the picture window with poinsettias and bought a white-flocked tree hung with red ornaments and matching lights. Helen let her head tilt back and half closed her eyes. No, the farm boy does not have a girlfriend. Why do you ask? And then she must have seen me blush because she whispered, Oh, is that it? Well, I cant say for sure but you might have a chance.