The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose Read Free Book Online Page B

you that.’
    ‘Nice hotel,’ he said, surprised she was staying there. ‘You know Robert De Niro owns it?’
    Jane did, although she hadn’t until she’d checked in. She didn’t remember how she’d come to book it. Small decisions had become a mystery to her since Karl’s death. It was as if there were parts of her brain going about life with no awareness on her part.
    They took the subway to Canal and walked the few blocks towards the Hudson. Levin didn’t ask any more about her personal circumstances, but now he could see the word widow was pinned to her like a conference badge. It might have been easier, he thought, if he had a simple descriptor too. Turncoat. Coward. Bereaved. Abandoned. Abandoner. Any explanation for his situation seemed to require a paragraph. A debate. A fugue. Sometimes followed by silenzio . Or crescendo .
    The barman welcomed them, delivered iced water, a dish of warm olives.
    ‘I hardly know what to order.’ Jane laughed.
    The barman suggested a martini and she agreed. Levin ordered a Guinness. Away from the gallery, he felt as if they were devotees, two people drawn together by an obscure obsession. He realised they might have nothing else in common, and suddenly felt awkward being with her.
    ‘Do you get to meet the movie stars when you’re the composer?’ Jane asked.
    He shook his head. ‘I work for the most part on my own. Then, when the director is happy with what he’s hearing, I put together a team of musicians. It’s very structured. I spend a lot of time consulting with the director, watching edits, but I’m a long way from the actors. When I was younger, I’d spend time on set. There’s not much magic to it. It’s all craft. Lighting. Acting. Editing. The music is just one of the elements to make the illusion seem real.’
    ‘What inspired you—you know, when you were younger?’
    ‘Have you seen The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ?’
    Jane shook her head.
    ‘It’s an early Clint Eastwood,’ Levin said. ‘Ennio Morricone did the soundtrack. He did The Mission too. It’s a remarkable score.’
    ‘We saw The Mission ,’ Jane said. ‘It was terribly sad.’
    ‘Well, you’d know the soundtrack to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly too if you heard it.’
    Jane said, ‘I have to confess, we’re not really filmgoers.’
    ‘You and your husband?’ Levin asked.
    ‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘Karl only died in September last year, so it seems way too early to stop saying we . I’m not very good at this.Can we, you and I, just move on and pretend there’s not a death on my shoulder?’
    Levin nodded, instantly disliking the image. He felt certain that she was going to ask him if he was married. But she didn’t.
    She smiled and said, ‘So how did that happen? That you started making music for movies?’
    ‘A friend of mine . . . a writer/director . . . We met at Julliard.’ He shrugged. ‘It often happens that way.’ There was no point in mentioning Tom. It was the death on his shoulder.
    Jane said, ‘And you must have won awards?’
    ‘There’ve been a few.’
    ‘Oscars?’
    ‘Three nominations but no win. Still, that’s nothing compared to Randy Newman. He’s been nominated something like seventeen times and only won once.’
    ‘Sometimes,’ said Jane, ‘I think to be famous must be like having a disease. Everyone who meets you or sits next to you at a dinner, they all know you have it and I’m sure they change how they are because of it.’
    ‘That’s kind of true,’ said Levin. ‘Unless they have more of it than you, and then you change. And in the film business it’s very obvious who has more of it.’
    ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Well, I shall promise to try to be entirely unimpressed by you.’
    ‘That would be terrible,’ said Levin. She was pretty when she smiled, he decided. He would have liked her to be his art teacher back in middle school.
    ‘Shall we have dinner?’ he asked. ‘We could walk over to the Meatpacking District. Although