Loss Aversion
Posted 18 February, 2008 in D: 2007, F: Casino Royale, Pairing: Het, Rating: PG13
loss aversion
This is how it might go:
James Bond adjusts his bow tie as he stands outside the casino. Cars whiz by on the road and expensively dressed people pass him on the left and right, seemingly unaware that they might get run over.
James looks at the casino and its bright lights. He remembers Solange, dead in the hammock, covered in sand, eyes open and staring. All her money and beauty hadn’t stopped her death. Death can’t be stopped. Perhaps the only alternative is to delay it awhile. Or to stop thinking about it.
“Sod it,” says James, pulls off his bowtie, and disappears. No one ever sees him again. Le Chiffre wins the poker game and Vesper Lynd lives. And that’s how it might have gone. If James had known the future, he might have given up $100 million to terrorists in order to save Vesper’s life. Or he might have tried something else. Like crawling onto Le Chiffre’s yacht and opening his guts out onto the deck. Then the whole point would have been moot. Death can’t be stopped. But if you’re James Bond, and you have your armor on, you can at least delay your own.
So this is how it goes. James comes back to England. He has dispatched his enemies and those who work with him sense a change in persona, as if James is bent on constructing himself a legend. In ten years or twenty, will his name be whispered with awe and wonder in the back rooms of Langley and the Kremlin? Everyone in the office ventures their opinion; places bets on what high-tech gadget will keep him alive the longest. No one mentions the imploded building in Venice that is Vesper Lynd’s grave. No one quite meets his eyes anymore.
One late night he breaks into M’s house again. If he had thought to give himself a reason, it would probably be because she told him not to. He prowls in her refrigerator (not much); her liquor cabinet (quite a bit, all expensive); and her bathroom cabinet (migraine medication, estrogen, face creams with exotic names). He looks for, but does not find, the weapons cache he is quite sure she has somewhere.
He lounging in her leather armchair, working on his fourth Scotch and rocks, when she walks in, fighting on the phone with someone, arguing about funds and he hears her utter the most boring words in the world — “expense report.”
“I wouldn’t have your job for the world,” he says as she catches sight of him, puffs out an exasperated breath, and disconnects the bureaucrat with a snapped, “I’ll call you back.” She starts to say something, probably something like, I told you not to — but then she gives up, the words unspoken.
James holds out a Scotch he has poured for her. She has six bottles of it — he has guessed that she might like it.
“I was saving that,” she says, but she takes it and sinks into a chair opposite him. She is wearing a smartly tailored pantsuit and some torturous-looking heels, which she kicks off. She does not sigh in relief, but he sees it in her eyes.
“For what?”
“What?” She looks puzzled, a little nonplussed. Her hair is not perfect as it is in the office; it is scuffed a bit. It looks punk. He smiles.
“What are you saving the Scotch for?” He tips back the glass and lets all the liquor slide down his throat, then crunches on some ice chips.
“Oh … I don’t know. A party or something. A special occasion.”
“This is a special occasion.” He reaches for the cut-glass bottle again and then watches her drink hers neat, still watching him round the glass.
“No it’s not. It’s not the first time, or, one assumes, the last time you’ve disobeyed me.”
“Do celebrate with me, M,” he says, smiling still. “I’ve overcome my loss aversion.”
She puts down her glass and uncrosses her legs, leaning forward a little bit. Her eyes are so blue that he imagines them to be the heart of a gas flame, ready to send everything up.
“Bond,” she says, “That’s not a good thing.”
“Oh yes it is. It means I can go to any lengths to get what I want.”
“That’s what the bad guys say.”
“Ah yes,” he says, “But I’m doing it for Queen and Country. Doesn’t that make everything all right?”
“I thought so once.” She stands up and goes over to her big picture window. She stands so rigidly upright, even in her stocking feet, stands like a soldier. Was she ever a soldier? Before he quite realizes, he is standing up too, watching the lights of London through the glass, watching the long line of her back and the straight square of her shoulders.
“But I was wrong,” she continues. “Sometimes there are things that one must do anything not to lose.”
“It’s too late,” he whispers softly to the window, to the lights, to the back of her neck. “I’ve already lost them.”
“Yes.” She sounds sad, as if she hadn’t set him up as the sacrificial lamb in the first place. “I know.”
He puts one hand on the cool glass and one on her shoulder, touching the white line of her neck with his thumb. She shivers but stands still. He pulls the collar of her white starched shirt a bit to the side and he kisses her where his thumb has been. Her hand finds his in the silence; her breath quickens. In spite of all the cameras in the world, and all the eyes of the city, no one is watching them.
–end–