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Fred hates to lie.
Sure, there are those little white lies that everyone is guilty of now and then: Yes, that hat looks swell on you. Of course, I’d be happy to. No, I won’t be late. He, like most people, can live with them as the price payable for a harmonious life.
No, it’s the bald-faced lies he tells Phyllis that eat at him the most, even as he accepts their necessity. Fred’s learned to compartmentalise it to some extent. Sometimes he gets so indignant that he almost believes he’s telling the truth: that he’s faithful, that he has absolutely nothing to hide. That’s all well and good right up until the point where he thinks about seeing Ginger, touching Ginger, and that simple idea sends both his pulse into overdrive and his carefully constructed universe crashing down around his ears.
So sure, he lies. It seems less painful than confessing to his wife that he has feelings for another woman. And he's acted upon them.
He’d woken up this morning expecting this conversation. After all, it’s the first day of full rehearsals with Ginger free to join them and Fred knows that Phyllis knows this. He also understands his wife well enough to anticipate that she won’t be able to let this event pass without comment.
“I suppose you’ll be dancing with that girl today,” she says from the kitchen doorway. It’s early enough that the rising California sun has only just crept over the window ledge, dappling the room in golden light. The brightness reminds him that if he doesn’t leave soon, he’s going to be late.
Nevertheless, Fred doesn’t look up from his position standing at the counter. Instead, he slowly turns the page of the morning newspaper in an excellent imitation of nonchalance.
“Her name is Ginger,” he replies, perfectly aware that Phyllis knows this all too well. He wishes he could let her jab slide - it would certainly be easier - but he just can’t help but want to give Ginger the respect she’s due, even to his own detriment.
Various morning headlines shout up at him, but given this potentially precarious interaction, none of them successfully penetrate his mind. Taking a sip of his too bitter coffee, Fred hopes it isn’t obvious that his hand is shaking a little when he lowers the cup back down. He doesn’t particularly enjoy confrontation and Phyllis has a sixth sense for any weaknesses. While it’s a skill he can’t help but be impressed by when she uses it on others, it feels extremely lethal when she decides to turn it on him.
His wife scoffs, unamused. “I don’t care what her name is. I won’t be made a fool of.”
Although Fred refuses to reward her behaviour with eye contact, he can still imagine how Phyllis’s lip will be curled in derision. His tiny possessive wife, not even a year into their marriage.
He sighs, breath somehow holding steady despite the raw energy that is coursing through him. Fred tries to focus on an article about a factory fire in some small town he’s never heard of. But instead, he ends up thinking about the way Ginger’s hair catches the light sometimes, colours shifting like flames: gold to amber to copper and then back again. He feels tight with desire to see her.
Phyllis continues, undeterred by his stubborn silence. “You really think I don’t hear the rumours? About you and her?”
At this, Fred finally glances up, taking in how perfectly coiffed she looks, despite her dressing gown and the earliness of the hour. He doesn’t like it when she’s like this; it’s a side to her personality that he’d never really noticed up until the point when he’d started having things he needed to hide.
Besides, it also seems cruel to begrudge Phyllis her anger when she’s not exactly wrong.
“Rumours are just rumours,” he says finally, and Fred’s surprised at how easily the false platitude trips off his lying tongue like it's absolutely nothing at all.
“There’s no smoke without fire,” Phyllis shoots back, the response clearly preloaded. Her angular nose is raised in striking defiance. He thinks of how, when they first arrived here, he used to kiss it when she was mad at him, and how that tiny action would seem to turn the tide in any disagreement.
It’s been a long time since that had worked, and as of late, Fred has stopped even attempting it.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he answers impatiently, draining the rest of his coffee and wincing at the aftertaste. The cup slams down on the countertop with a little more force than he intended. “I have to go.”
He makes for the door, but this morning Phyllis doesn’t budge from her position in front of his only exit. He’s forced to halt in front of her, nerves jangling to escape this stifling atmosphere.
“Frederick, if you think for one second that I-”
She talks, and although Fred knows he shouldn’t, he stops listening. Besides, they’ve had so many iterations of this conversation that he’s sure she’s not saying anything he hasn’t heard one hundred times before.
Instead, Fred mulls over the dance steps they’ll run through today; those that he and Hermes have been honing for weeks now. He thinks of how wondrous Ginger will look as she surrenders into a sweeping back bend, and his heart pounds imagining how their bodies will align in the movement, the utter trust she places in him in more ways than one.
Phyllis is still talking, but her words continue to fall short of his ears. Her arguments won’t change anything anyway. She’ll never persuade him back to New York; back to a life of eight shows a week on Broadway that will wreck his body for a fraction of the salary. And as much as she asks him to avoid working with Ginger, it’s convenient that Fred can lay that blame at the feet of the studio. After all, he’s under contract, he tells her. The studio likes him and Ginger together, and the public seems to like them too, even though it’s early days still. That, he always reminds her, is out of his hands.
These things are all somewhat true. But these truths are riddled with omissions. Because Fred has come to realise that having his fate entangled with Ginger’s is one of the best things that has ever happened to him. And although he’d initially resisted the idea of another partnership after Adele, he can’t pretend that his own self-preservation wasn’t a key factor in his reluctance.
After all, the very second Ginger had walked back into his life, Fred had seen the writing on the wall: he was going to end up breaking every vow he’d made to Phyllis. And despite the lies, and the guilt, he was going to enjoy every second of it.
It’s not like he hadn’t known Ginger’s effect on him. After all, the time they’d shared in New York had left him in no doubt that she had the ability to make him lose all sense and sanity. Back then, it had only taken one evening of dancing for him to be totally hooked. And by the time, many weeks later, she’d pushed him backwards onto her tiny bed in her tiny apartment that she’d shared with her mother, more confident than he’d ever seen a woman of her age, Fred was done for.
The letters he’d written to her after she left for Hollywood were, he admits now, hopeless and sentimental. Her lack of response had crushed him.
But then her name had come up as a potential dance partner for Rio and Fred’s traitorous heart had completely overruled his head.
Yes, Ginger Rogers would do very nicely, he’d heard himself saying to the powers that be, as if it had been their idea all along and not his. And quite soon after, there she was. She’d walked into his studio rehearsal space, hair lighter and even more in command of herself than ever and the way she’d lit up at the sight of him made Fred instantly forgive her every bitterness he’d been clinging to. It was obvious from that moment on that he was completely powerless to stop what was going to happen next.
And so now they’re bound together in something akin to a marriage, in a way. And while it’s not what either he or Ginger had imagined, it’s a convenient tether that has drawn them back to each other.
So he’ll pretend his hands are tied when Phyllis protests, but in the shadows Fred happily lets Ginger crush him against her dressing room door, and press her lips to the line of his jaw. He’ll be polite about his dance partner in every single way when his wife asks and digs and jibes, but his mind will always be recalling the way Ginger breathes his name when he glides his knuckles down the knots of her naked spine.
“You’re not listening to me,” his wife says now, astute as ever. Her small fingers pluck at the cuff of his sports jacket for his attention. Her nails are perfectly manicured, but remind Fred more of grasping talons. He hates that he’s come to think of her this way; he doesn’t want to. He loved this woman once; still loves her, he thinks. It’s… no longer a straight forward equation.
Luckily, he doesn’t need to have been listening to provide a response. He knows what Phyllis wants to hear, even if she won’t believe it.
Fred pats her hand tenderly, before gently shaking free of her grip. “Nothing is happening,” he says, meeting her eyes with what feels like a superhuman effort. He sees no flicker of belief there, only indignation. To evade further engagement on the subject, he leans forward and plants a quick, perfunctory kiss to his wife’s cheek. “Nothing will happen,” he lies, as he turns away and strides for the front door.
By the time he slides into the driver’s seat of his car, he’s already plotting as to how he and Ginger can find some time to be alone today. The rehearsal room is no place for what Fred has in mind and it’s been an age since he’s felt Ginger’s bare skin under his hands. He’s quite sure he’ll go mad with distraction if they don’t get some privacy, and soon.
So no, Fred doesn’t like to lie.
But sometimes he just has to.
—
The creak of the door and the click-clack of dance shoes alert him to another presence.
Fred knows just by the lightness of the steps that it’s her. A spark of anticipation flares in his stomach.
“Good morning, darling,” Ginger chirps, voice echoing in the cavernous, and otherwise empty, space of the rehearsal room. Glancing up, Fred takes in the reflected version of her walking towards him in the mirror, the rhythm of her hips a mesmerising swing beat. His heart becomes a little erratic at the view. He turns in place to take in the real thing, rather than the facsimile of her.
“Hello,” he replies breathlessly, oxygen short from both the steps he’s just been working through, and the desire that has coiled itself tightly around his lungs.
Ginger’s wearing her rehearsal clothes - dance shoes, dark blue slacks and a loose blouse that he’s never seen before. Her hair is curled and half pinned up and she looks so young like this; so unassuming and unadorned. Sure, she’s pretty much a bona fide movie star these days, and Fred knows from experience that in the most exquisite of gowns she’s an absolute knockout. But it’s in the middle of rehearsal, face rosy with exertion and hair damp at the temples, that he finds her the most beautiful.
If Ginger notices his blatant admiration, she doesn’t comment on it. Instead she just smiles, expression warm and obviously happy to see him. It surprises him still, that look. To think that he could have that effect. It’s a revelation every time.
“Oh dear, Freddie, just look at you,” she says as she approaches, hands planted firmly on hips. She makes a frank appraisal of him as she walks, stare fixing on his open shirt collar, exposed undershirt and sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Fred glances down at himself. After several hours of solitary practice already this morning, he supposes he could be considered more than a little rumpled.
Finally, she’s in front of him, curls listing endearingly to one side as she tilts her head in amusement. He can now smell her familiar perfume; the same scent he finds lingering on his rehearsal clothes after long days of practice.
“Been at it for hours already, I assume?” she asks. Her bright eyes seem so crisply blue this morning, like a cold water spring.
Fred’s not confident in his ability to string together a full sentence yet, so merely nods. Ginger smiles tenderly, fingers reaching out to fuss with his skewed collar. As she focuses on putting him back together, her fingertips brush the bare skin of his neck, the ticklish spot under his ear. He’s not sure it’s intentional, but the way her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip definitely is. She’s wearing the faintest hint of lipstick, a glossy pink that reminds him of her cheeks when flushed and the connection sends his head spinning. Fred’s body sways towards hers.
Yesterday had been their first rehearsal day together in months - the event that Phyllis had been so worked up about - and yet they’d not been able to find a scrap of time to be alone together. To say he’s been on edge ever since would be a vast understatement.
Therefore, Fred considers it positively restrained of himself to merely take one of her busy hands from its task and bring it to his mouth. He takes his time pressing a kiss to the underside of her wrist where the skin is at its most translucent.
Her dark lashes flutter at the contact. “Why good morning,” Ginger repeats, voice softer now, a solitary eyebrow arching at this intimate gesture.
It feels glorious to touch her outside of a dance hold; to touch her without worrying who might see. Already Fred’s senses are starting to get fuzzy around the edges, and lord, he’s not sure he’s going to survive the day at this rate. And so, in a moment of opportunistic boldness, he slides the span of his other hand into the small of her back, and with a kick of pressure, cants her body towards his. Her palms land hard against his chest, and he’s gratified at how Ginger sucks in an audible breath at the sudden impact of her hips against his.
He’s been aching to kiss her properly ever since she arrived yesterday, fresh off another film set, looking tired but happy. But with both Hal and Hermes in the room, their greeting and subsequent interactions had needed to remain professional. Sure, there had been heated glances and a lingering of hands, but it was nothing that anyone would have noticed if they weren’t looking for it.
However, just as they’d all been leaving the rehearsal room at the end of the day, and Fred’s anticipation levels were threatening to overwhelm him, an assistant from wardrobe had appeared, asking for Ginger. Ms Rogers was needed for fittings, they’d said, and it soon became clear they were likely to take some time. The pained and apologetic look that she’d thrown Fred over her shoulder as she’d departed had echoed in his mind all night.
But for once, he supposed, Fred could be honest with Phyllis over the dinner table that evening. Nothing had happened.
So this morning, he’ll be damned before making the same mistake again. Not while they have this sliver of solitude before the others arrive soon. After all, who knows what other interruptions today will bring. Fred needs some small piece of her to sustain him.
“Heya Ginge,” he finally says, realising he’s remained mostly mute this entire time and feeling a little silly for it. “What took you so long?”
She grasps his intimation immediately, like she always does. “Some of us need sleep,” she replies. “And breakfast. Normal people can’t hoof it all day on just a cup of coffee, you know. Besides, aren’t I on time?”
“Oh, sure. But I just wanted the chance to say a proper hello, that’s all.”
That eyebrow arches again. It kills him.
“Well, what’s stoppin’ you?” she asks as her fingers wiggle themselves behind the knot of his improvised tie belt and use it to tug his hips even more snugly against her own.
The sensation is exquisite and any clever retort he’d been formulating immediately evaporates. Fred gawks at her wordlessly for long seconds, his thoughts buzzing in ways that the production code office would have a fit over. When they dance, he’s used to the lack of personal space between them, but when they do this, it’s another matter entirely.
“Why, Freddie,” Ginger smirks, “cat got your tongue?” He feels the weight of her thumb moving towards the zipper of his pants.
At this, Fred crumbles. He has Ginger in an embrace within moments, propelling her backwards with a few quick steps. As the cold expanse of the mirror hits her back, she lets out a surprised hiss, pupils dark with excitement.
Her smaller frame fits so neatly inside the bracket of his arms as he crowds himself along her body. With a bend of his head, and a lopsided grin as his answer, Fred presses his mouth to hers with a satisfied moan, kissing her in just the way he’s been thinking about for weeks now. When Ginger mirrors the sound, his knees buckle a little.
Her lips are warm and insistent, parting deliciously and easily under his, tongue slipping into his mouth in familiar movements. Her eagerness always makes Fred feel so weightless: like he could reach out and touch the moon. He adores how unabashed she is, how her hands aren’t shy. They explore the plains of his sides, the flat expanse of his back, the hard muscle of his upper thigh. Oh god, he’s missed this, missed her and the very open way she reacts to him; they are like separate pieces, placing themselves back into orbit with each other.
Sometimes the realisation of how wonderful Ginger is floors him. Truly, he thinks she’s far too incredible for someone like him, all gangly arms and skinny legs and head too big for his body. A jumped up hoofer, at best. She could have anyone, and yet somehow she wants to waste her time on him; a man who can’t even give her everything she deserves.
But she’d explained it to him once, when they’d been tangled in the bed sheets of some Beverly Hills hotel, the name of which he can’t even remember now. Nevertheless Fred can exactly recall the tang of sweat in the air and the way they couldn't stop touching each other. It was like an addiction, she’d said, hair splayed out across the pillow, and she’d looked like an angel lying there next to him. He was both a want and a need, and she had no desire to overcome either.
He’d covered her slick body with his own then, as if to tell her yes, yes, that’s exactly how he felt too; that she’d just reflected back at him precisely what he’d struggled to put into words.
Ginger had clung to him so tightly that night, just like she was doing now. There’s always something frantic in her touch, like she fears he might slip through her grasp and it’s only sheer tenacity that can prevent it from happening. There’s something about the way his knee is trapped hard between her thighs that reminds him of that night in the hotel, the desperate entwinement of two people who should know better, and yet can’t bring themselves to stop.
Her urgency is making Fred’s brain disconnect from his own good sense, his nerves red raw with the need he has to immerse himself in her. One hand buries itself in her hair, the strands twisting around his fingers like liquid. The other rises to palm at her breast through her blouse, revelling in the wonderful heft of it, the firm sweep of her collarbone under his fingertips. Ginger gasps at this, and the wet expanse of her mouth opens even further, tongue rough against his own, teeth nipping at his bottom lip.
Fred has always believed that he was an inherently decent person. He’s not perfect, of course not, but when he’d recited his marriage vows, he had meant them.
But Ginger has turned out to be the exception to all his good intentions. And he’s found that he gets as much pleasure sitting next to her in his dressing room while she flicks aimlessly through a magazine, as he does when he persuades her to help him find a room with a lockable door at an extremely boring party.
On that particular evening, as he’d snapped the lock behind them, Ginger had whispered in his ear that one of her favourite things in the world was knowing that she could reduce him, such a superlative gentleman, to his most basic male needs.
“I’m not sure that’s any power worth having,” he’d answered dryly, already distracted with trying to figure out where on earth the concealed zip of her dress might be.
“Oh, yes it is,” she whispered back minutes later with a sly smile, her face so close that her lashes brush against his cheekbone. All the while, her hand never hesitates in its rhythm of ruthlessly effective strokes. “Seeing you just like this is far more rewarding than any seven-year studio contract.”
Fred’s attempt at a reply had been swallowed by a strangled choke as Ginger slid down his body to put him in her wet, hot mouth.
Even now, months onwards, he can sense that same hungry pride from her when his hands clumsily flounder for a gap between her blouse and slacks, along with his triumphant huff when he finally finds the naked curve of her waist. Her skin is so shockingly smooth there, and more than anything Fred wants to lie her down and press the flat of his tongue to that exact spot and listen to her response. He knows every part of her body intimately, and yet the process of each rediscovery never fails to delight him.
She squirms under his tickling hands, even as her hips continue to rock against his own in a maddening rhythm. Fred’s not sure they can get any closer, not with Ginger’s arm now slung around his neck and a hand burrowed into the hair at the nape of his neck. Her nails dig into his scalp in the best sort of way; that fine line between being in perfect control and having absolutely none at all.
He thinks of how he wants to run a hand down to the place between her thighs, how Ginger keens and moans and whimpers when he does that. He’s fully hard now, thinking about the last time he’d had the chance. It had been all the way back in the spring, in the backseat of his car. Fred remembers how boneless she’d become in his arms as he’d found the exact right spot to make her eyes roll back in her head; the way she’d pressed the wet circle of her open mouth to his ear and panted his name.
“Do you remember that night?” she’d murmured down the telephone to him a few weeks ago, a late night call to his study phone where they couldn't be overheard. She was on location somewhere, otherwise Fred would have gotten into that same damn car and driven straight to her house, consequences be damned. “Do you remember it, Freddie?”
Of course, he’d said, clutching the phone receiver in his hand so tightly he thought it might break. As if he’d ever forget. He thought about it every time he got into the driver’s seat of his car. Whenever he looks in the rearview mirror, he still sees the way her limbs had splayed out against the upholstery, her figure limp like a ragdoll underneath him.
It had definitely been at the forefront of his thoughts yesterday. So much so that he’d begun to plot how, as soon as they reached her dressing room, he’d slip her trousers down her thighs, and sink to his knees in front of her. The way Ginger’s eyes had widened every time his hand slipped just a little too low had made him sure she was thinking about it too.
In the present, Ginger whimpers, head lolling back to expose the column of her pale throat. He kisses the scoop of her neck and she murmurs something nonsensical into the air. It might be that they should stop, and yet one of her hands now seems bluntly determined in its path across his hip bone, before boldly sliding lower.
He groans out a curse as it reaches its destination, her grasp firm and achingly perfect. This whole situation is getting out of control and yet Fred’s shameless enough to accept that he’s willing to let her break him into a thousand little pieces right there against the rehearsal room wall, and not lift a finger to prevent her.
Ginger, at least, seems to finally realise the dangerous point they’ve reached. If they don’t stop now, they risk outcomes they can’t easily come back from.
And so, ever so slowly, she releases her grip on him, winding down the tempo until their kisses turn languid, less frenetic. Even so, Fred can’t manage to catch his breath, his body still quivering hot with need for her. Reluctantly, he pulls away, head falling forward against Ginger’s shoulder in surrender, and he tries to think of calmer topics until his heart rate returns to something less like a runaway train.
“Alright, Mr A?” Ginger asks eventually, and Fred finally feels collected enough to raise his head and meet her gaze. Her hands have been smoothing up and down his shoulders, while his have been toying mindlessly with the buttons on her blouse. He thinks of how easy it would be to slip them loose: one, two, three, four and then spread the fabric wide.
“You know we can’t; not here,” Ginger murmurs as if reading his mind, even as she runs a thumb across his lower lip, following the shape of it with her eyes. She’s become loose-limbed in his arms, and Fred can’t help but feel a little proud of the glazed look on her lovely features. “Hermes and Hal will be here any minute now and they don’t need to find us necking like teenagers - or worse.”
Fred knows he’ll be dreaming about that ‘or worse’ part for a while longer yet.
“Fine,” he says begrudgingly, recognising that while she’s right, he doesn’t have to like it. He forces his hands to settle in a more acceptable place at the rise of her hips, on top of her clothes.
“Besides,” Ginger adds, bopping him on the nose like he’s a child, “you’re the one who always says no fooling around in the rehearsal room.”
It’s an old rule he’d implemented for their last film. Mainly so that Fred knew he had at least one safe place on the lot where he was forced to maintain some kind of professional boundary with her. At the time, his request had amused Ginger, rather than offended her. She seemed to instinctively understand these little moods of his, tended to realise before he did that he’d be the one to crumble in the end.
“Hey, who was foolin’?” he protests.
“You’re the one who kissed me, and don’t you forget it!”
“I was forced,” he defends, batting away the index finger that she’s waving in his face.
“Forced, huh?” He loves the haughty tone she gets when they tease and bicker; the way her jaw sets in stubbornness.
“Yeah! You left me with absolutely no choice.”
“Oh, and how’s that?”
He can’t resist leaning in until their noses bump together. Ginger’s breath is coming out in short exhales that he can feel on his skin. “If you hadn’t got stuck in wardrobe fittings for hours yesterday,” he says, voice low and close, “we could’ve been spending that time alone in your dressing room fucki-”
She cuts him off with a gasp. “Fred, honestly!”
The look in Ginger’s eyes tells him she’s pleased far more than she’s scandalised over his language, even as she gives him a half-hearted shove that’s mostly just for show. She’s no prude, but even he’ll admit that it is slightly uncharacteristic of him to be quite so…well, blunt.
He merely grins. “Baby, where you’re concerned, it’s amazing I have any self-control at all!”
“Oh, I can see that,” Ginger retorts, eyes flicking to his crotch where evidence of this fact still remains visible. “Fred… I've only been back one day!”
“Let’s not forget one very long night,” he adds earnestly, holding his palms open in supplication, like some kind of romantic martyr. If Ginger ever knew how long he’d had to spend in his dressing room shower last night before he felt in a fit state to return calmly home to his wife, she’d laugh him off the lot.
With an indulgent look, Ginger slides back into his space, chin tipping upwards. Her hips lean against his once more, an intentional pressure that feels so good Fred has to grit his back teeth.
“Maybe you’re not the only one that suffered?” she says, giving a throaty kick to each syllable that he feels in every part of himself. Fred seizes the opportunity to thread their fingers together, her tiny hand enveloped so easily in his larger. Her warmth grounds him, even when everything else about her makes him feel totally and utterly frazzled with longing.
“Perhaps you should tell me all about that. In great detail.”
Ginger rolls her eyes, even as a smile tugs at her corner of her mouth. “Well, maybe I’ll tell you all about it over lunch.”
Fred can think of nothing more excruciating than sitting across from her in the studio commissary, eating limp sandwiches and not being able to touch her.
“Lunch?” he echoes, his disappointment obvious.
“Oh, Fred, are you really so dense?” Ginger’s eyes are alive with amusement. “I was planning to have lunch in my dressing room today. After all, I didn’t get a chance to settle back into it yesterday. I can make sure there’ll be a whole… spread - if you think you’ll be hungry?”
God, he’s so utterly, utterly, stupid for her; everything about her. He’s sure his grin is nothing short of goofy, but he doesn’t care.
“Gin, did I ever tell you you’re terrific?” The words come out in a hum in delight.
“Not lately, so go right ahead.”
“Ginger, you’re terrific,” he says emphatically, body prickling with admiration.
Her teeth catch on her glorious lower lip. Her mouth is a thing of beauty. “Oh, say that just once more, Freddie dear.”
Ignoring the request, he leans in to try and kiss her again, but she’s too quick, ducking just out of his reach with a reprimanding smile. As ever, Ginger will never be neatly contained if she doesn’t want to be. She’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle, and Fred knows he’s exactly foolish enough to never stop attempting it.
He takes her in, standing there: lipstick smeared, mouth swollen, and hair mussed. She bears all the markers of his very pointed attentions and yet she’s still so very much her own person. When asked by anyone who’s interested, he’s happy to admit Ginger’s importance to him: her quick study of footwork and the way she looks at him on celluloid has made things happen in his career that Fred once never would have dreamed of. On film, she’s not merely his dance partner: she’s somehow made herself look like an extension of him.
And to those who only care about their ability to generate money, this good fortune is more than satisfactory to keep the wheels of commerce churning and keep the patrons in their seats.
And yet, there are a great many things that Fred doesn’t say, and can never say, which are also true. One is that Ginger is so immeasurably, incalculably vital to him; so alive to the point where it feels like she’s raised him from the dead somehow. She’s the reason he knows what it feels like to crackle with desire, and need, and love. He’s felt these things before, sure, but it’s different with her. It’s always been different.
And so perhaps a big part of the reason Fred hates to lie is that he doesn’t like having to deny this aspect of himself: the side of him that loves her, and values her, and wants to venerate her for the world to hear. Logically he understands why that isn’t possible. He’s not a fool. But the fact that he can’t be open about how much Ginger really means to him makes it seem like what they have is dirty and sordid, even though, to Fred, it’s anything but.
So no, he doesn’t like having to look his wife in the eye when he goes home and pretend he feels less than he does about his dance partner. But that’s where his guilt ends. Perhaps if it were just about sex, it would be easier. But it isn’t - and so it’s not. Fred feels equally thrilled just sitting and talking to Ginger, as he does when he finally gets to bury himself inside of her and be rewarded with her plaintive moan of appreciation.
And perhaps he should feel guilty over that completeness that she represents to him. But Fred can’t make himself feel what he doesn’t feel.
Whatever happens, Fred has come to accept that these secret truths are, and must remain, just for him and Ginger. For now, at least. And so, although he hates to do it, they are lies always worth telling.
No, it’s not perfect. But it’s perfect enough.